Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 14:12:41 +0100 (MET)
From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki)
Subject: M-G: Letter To ITUSC Conference. (Jan.18-22,1997)


Dear Keith,

I am forwarding the following letter to your trade union 
conference.Hopefully it will be distributed and discussed as one alternative.

Warm Regards
Bob Malecki


The Capitalist Crisis and the Tasks of Trade Unions.

The foremost problem facing trade unionists today is understanding that the 
crisis we are facing is a crisis of leadership! But it is also a crisis of 
having a program which can counter the declaration of war that Capitalism 
has declared against the working class Internationally after the 
disintegration of the former Soviet Union. It is a new period of growing 
imperialist rivalry. It is realizing that this is just the beginning of a 
new period of either wars and facist solutions or victorious working class 
revolutions. The trade unions and it leadership can be a powerful tool in 
mobilising the working class against the capitalists and imperialists who 
once again will use the blood of millions upon millions of our class 
brothers and sisters to keep their privileges and complete 
bankrupt,undemocratic, anti poor, anti-working class system from being 
pushed onto the historical garbage heep of history. There is only one 
solution. Either they put their solution on us or we the International 
working class and its allies the urban poor put our solution on them! There 
is no middle way!

The reason for this crisis is obvious to every class concious militant with 
any common sense at all.  On the one hand it is directly connected to the 
disintegration of the former Soviet Union after decades of bureacratic 
mismanagement and the counter-revolutionary line of peaceful co-existence of 
these Stalinist traitors with the International Capitalists and Imperialist 
Countries that Stalinism represented and which led to so many defeats and 
disasters in the past decades! 

On the other hand the Social Democracy which already had sold out the 
International Proletariat at the beginning of the First World War only to be 
resurrected in the capitalists countries after the second world war along 
with its historical line of reforming capitalism. These "Socialists" have 
after the demise of the Soviet Union deserted into the camp of the 
bougeoisie! Today they are the best organisers of policies that throw 
millions upon millions of workers out on the streets. They are destroying 
most of the reforms won by the working class since the second world war and 
even reforms that go much futher back in history! They are openly trying to 
destroy the unions with anti-union legislation. The leadership of the Social 
Democracy and its loyal supporters in the trade union have deserted the 
working class and entered the camp of the bougeoisie as loyal supporters to 
dismantle and plunder the social gains made by the working class in the 
previous decades.

These events have left the workers movement and the trade unions in a 
shambles! Beheaded of both the Stalinist and Social Democratic misleaders 
and being attacked all across the board by and agressive capitalist class 
who no longer have the "Communist" threat in the former Soviet Union to 
worry about, have declared war on the working class everywhere and are 
trying to take back all of the reforms that workers have fought for in the 
preceding period.

This is not a conspiracy.The general attack on the working class 
Internationally is only the first sign of this new period we are entering. 
It is the logical conclusion of a new period of inter-imperialist rivalry 
which once again finds itself in a historical dead end. It is a new period 
of both wars and revolutions that we are entering. Because the general 
attack on the working class internationally will not solve the 
contradictions that this system produces. Either a new period of wars and 
facist solutions is on the order of the day or successful proletarian 
revolutions that will sweep away this system once and for all.

In order to combat this general assault on the International Working class 
and its former treacherous misleaders a new leadership must develop. It must 
oust these traitors from there posts and put forward a new leadership which 
will fight on a program ONLY in the interests of the working class. A 
program which not only defends the old reforms and gains made by workers, 
but goes on to extending those gains and ultimately posing the question of 
which class rules. Because if we do not rule with our program for the 
working class--the International bougeoisie have a program that they will 
(with their reformist and centrist allies) impose on the working class. Not 
only mass unemployment,downsizing,cuts in the social sector, and all the 
rest. But ultimately fascist solutions where trade unions will be smashed 
and the working class organisations destroyed! So we need a program to 
counter this situation. We need powerful trade union organisations and far 
more! Not in the least a revolutionary International organisation which can 
show the way forward. Because trade union organisations just will not be 
enough to counter the present assault being made on our class.

Trade unions in the first place only organise a part of the class. So it is 
neccessary in the coming crisis to create other organisations in the course 
of the struggle. Strike Committees, factory committees, and not in the least 
Soviets or workers councils.

Already today we are seeing that the working class is organising itself. The 
unemployed Committees, The recent strike committees in France and Danmark 
amongst the Transport Workers for example. The new mass activity in Germany. 
As the crisis deepens we will need organisations and more organisations 
which coheer to the situation existing. We must understand that in periods 
of acute crisis the trade unions try to become the master of the situation 
in order to render it harmless. This we can already see happening as the 
traditionalists in the trade unions try to disarm the growing rage of the 
workers who see their leaders betraying them day after day. And in 
revolutionary situations trade union leaders usually become bougeois ministers!

To combat this stuff. We have to boldly put forth new leaders and in 
critical moments be prepared to renew those leaders if they have a tendency 
to become careerists, functionaries or whatever. Because we want these 
organisations to be fighting organs in the interests of the working class 
and not top steered bureaucratic organisations that sell the workers out 
time and again.

A program!

Well I suggest "The Transitional Program" written by Trotsky. It is a 
program which not only takes up the daily needs of the working class but is 
a program of transitional demands which pose the ultimate question. Either 
the working class and its organisation rules or the Bougeois destroys us. 

I suggest that the Transitional program is just as actual today as it was 
when it was written. So if the ITUSC really wants a program of struggle that 
is it. 

There fore I purpose that the Transitional program, here are its main 
points, obviously be the program your organisation can find worth fighting 
for in its entirety!

1. Sliding scale of Wages---Sliding scale of Hours.

2. Factory Committees.

3. 'Business secrets' and Workers Control of Industry.

4. Expropriation of Seperate groups of Capitalists.

5. Expropriation of the Private Banks and State-ization of the credit system.

6.The Alliance of the Workers and Farmers. (third worl countries)

7. (A new Section on and alliance with the urban poor)

8. The Struggle against Imperialism and War.

9. The Slogan of a Workers Government.

10. The section on Soviets.

11. The section on Backward countries.

I think that this is the only road forward in the present siutation for the 
trade unions.

Warm Regards
Bob Malecki

Member of the Swedish Kommunal Workers Union.
(The biggest union in Scandinavia)
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