Date: Mon, 9 Dec 1996 16:58:13 GMT
From: itusc-AT-gn.apc.org (Keith Standring)
Subject: M-I: ITUSC and Movement for Socialism


This is from the International Trade Union Solidarity Campaign
(ITUSC) at:-
e-mail:        itusc-AT-gn.apc.org
website:  http://www.itusc.org.uk
'snail' mail:  PO Box 18, Epsom, Britain, KT18 7YR
Tel/Fax    ++ (0) 1372 817 778

AN OPEN LETTER TO ALL ACTIVISTS IN THE WORKERS' MOVEMENT

Dear Comrades and Friends,

                                    The ITUSC and the MOVEMENT FOR SOCIALISM

Prior to the 23 November Conference in London, the ITUSC Committee decided
to support the initiative to form a new political organisation aimed at the
building of a new working-class socialist party. The ITUSC became a founder
of the MOVEMENT FOR SOCIALISM (MFS). Our guiding strategic line, since the
foundation of the ITUSC in 1991 and in taking the decision for the MFS has
been that the working-class movement as a whole must be reconstructed, that
at the centre of that must be the reconstruction of its internationalism,
and that this is inseparable from the reconstruction of what has been called
'the world party of social revolution'.

Let us recall how we came to support this proposal for a new organisation,
with the aim of a new party. The collapse of Stalinism marked a qualitative
change in the relationship of class forces, favourable to the working-class,
in particular to the reconstruction of its internationalism and, with that,
the reconstruction of the world party of social revolution, which above all
must not be understood as just a matter of combination of groups.

In this new situation, the same structural crisis of capital which had
accelerated the collapse of Stalinism and then been itself accelerated by
that collapse, was directly reflected politically in the abandonment of
Clause 4 by 'New Labour' in Britain, another important component of the new
political situation, raising for more and more people the question of "what
party for the working-class?"

Learning from our experience, our mistakes and analysis of the new
situation, we began to understand several things. First, that a Marxist
vanguard party has to be the vanguard of the class itself organised into a
party, capable of building a network of organisation reaching into and
responding to all important sections of the working-class movement. Second,
that a party's being founded on Marxist theory means that its programme must
be developed in response to the changing actual needs of the masses,  so
that today the impact of the structural crisis on the life of the masses,
and their manner and means of response, must be continuously studied.

These are only the bare outlines of the perspective we developed. Every
comrade is strongly urged to study thoroughly, discuss and distribute as
widely as possible the booklet 'A New Party for Socialism' by Cliff
Slaughter (obtainable from Workers Press, PO Box 735, London. SW8 1YB at  £2
each + post &packing).

The ITUSC decision was that we should seek agreement with others to go
forward resolutely, not 'proclaiming' a new party but combining with those
who fight for such a party. The new party in a real sense will be founded
only on the crest of a big wave of struggle, a big historical shock- most
likely caused by the experience of  a Labour Government?

Very shortly , the temporary steering committee formed on 23 November will
have to call a founding conference, which will need to adopt a broad basic
statement of aims and principles. The Movement will succeed only in so far
as it is able to relate and respond to a wide spectrum of issues, demands
and movements ( indicated already by the forces coming out in support of the
Liverpool dockers and reflected in the paper 'Reclaim the Future' within
which we are working).

The ITUSC suggests work on the following as the framework of the statement
of broad aims and principles of the Movement for Socialism:-

1)  Only a socialist society can answer the urgent needs of humanity. The
rule of capital, in countries with parliamentary 'democracy' as well as
under repressive dictatorships, has in the 20th century brought misery and
death to countless millions in war, famine and exploitation. Its continued
existence threatens the very survival of humanity and of the planet.
2)  The winning of socialism, and the running of the future socialist
society, will be the work of the working people themselves. A party for
socialism can have no interests separate and apart from those of the
working-class, before or after the overthrow of capitalism. Socialist common
ownership of the means of production is nothing to do with the
bureaucratically controlled nationalised industries, directly serving
capital, introduced by Labour Governments, nor with the type of control once
exercised by Stalinism. From the time the working people take ownership and
control, the state will begin to 'wither away'.
3)  The working-class and all those who join it in the fight for socialism
are international, rejecting all distinctions, barriers and discrimination
of a nationalist or racialist nature. The movement for a socialist party
must therefore be for a party which is international and internationalist
(as the ITUSC has always been).
4)   The traditional parties claiming to be socialist and working-class
(Labour,   Communist, Social Democratic, Socialist) have failed and betrayed
socialism and the working-class. They have completely accepted the rule of
capital, that is, they now accept that the mass of the people will always be
wage-slaves. A new party is necessary. The movement for a new socialist
party seeks to unite all those who work for such a party.
5)  Socialism cannot be achieved through parliament (which is part of the
capitalist state-machine) and parliamentary political parties.
a)  The new party must be a party of the working-class, not for it.   
b)  It will aim at socialism through self-action, political independence and
self-organisation of the working-class and all those fighting against
capital. Most important is to build up the mutual solidarity and combination
of these many forces. 
c)  The separation between the industrial and political 'wings' of the
working-class movement must be ended, because capital's domination extends
and must be countered in every sphere, from work and everyday life to its
control of the state and attacks on basic rights.
 
6)  The anti-union laws must be challenged and defeated. To do this, trade
unionists will need to organise against the government (Tory or Labour),
that is to say, politically, as a class. This means putting an end to the
control of the unionised workers by the trade union bureaucracy, which
accepts the laws and is integrated into the capitalist state.

These aims and principles are no utopian ideals but are the only alternative
to the uncontrolled and uncontrollable destructiveness of capital in its
insoluble, structural, historical crisis nationally and internationally.

Until the third quarter of this century, in the major capitalist countries
it was possible for the ruling class to grant from time to time a number of
'reform' concessions, on the basis of  the profits of colonial slavery and
expanding domination of world finance, trade and industry. These reforms
were never inroads into capitalism but became the actual form of rule of
capital, implemented through the Labour and 'Socialist' parties. Every one
of these concessions was indeed made in fear of the strength of the
working-class, but the fact is that by means of them the ruling class was
able to divide the workers of Europe and America from the impoverished
masses in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and to divide the better-paid
workers from the low-paid and unemployed in Europe and America.

The other, and most powerful, political force which held back the
working-class from realising its international strength and socialist aims
was the Stalinist bureaucracy which usurped power in the Soviet Union after
the socialist revolution of 1917. Its 'socialism in one country', which
could supposedly 'peacefully co-exist' with  and even overtake capitalism,
has ignominiously collapsed.

This 'national' basis for the Labour and 'Socialist' (reformist) Parties and
for Stalinism has ended. Capital has no way any longer of expanding
globally. The future progress, indeed the very survival, of humanity now
demands that the massively increased potential of higher productivity of
labour with science and technique is at the disposal by free men and women.
The obstacle is the continued existence of capital, for which living labour
exists only for exploitation, profit, even at the expense of the destruction
of millions of people and of nature. Capitalist 'enterprise' no longer
carries humanity forward, but is turned to parasitic money-making, organised
crime, the drugs and arms trades.

The basic and elementary demands of the mass of the people- work in human
conditions, a decent standard of living, free time, housing, health-care,
security in old age, freedom of expression, of organisation and of movement,
and so on- can no longer be conceded and are everywhere under attack. These
basic demands- of those defending the environment, of trade unionists, of
the unemployed, of the old and the young, of the peoples of colonial and
semi-colonial countries cannot any longer be tolerated and integrated into
the capitalist system. Those who fight for these demands must expect to come
under attack from the repressive forces of the state. The necessity of their
solidarity, combining against those attacks and turning defence into attack
is a solid objective basis for the reconstruction of the working-class
movement and the fight for a new party.

More and more capital destroys full-time work and job security, driving for
individual contracts, part-time and low-paid work, and inflicts mass
unemployment especially on the youth. Trade union solidarity actions are
made illegal. These attacks come not from capital's strength but from its
crisis. 

Here is a vital question for the reconstitution of the class movement of the
working-class. 150 years ago, Marx saw capitalist industry as the historical
force which exploited the working-class but at the same time was compelled
to concentrate that class, its necessary opposite, driving it to
organisation and discipline, producing the very force that would bring
socialism. Some ex-socialists say that today's capitalist developments
(decline of manufacturing, part-time work, individual contracts, etc.) now
break up and weaken the working-class, destroying the prospects for
socialism. It is not true.

The 'globalisation' in which capital has reached the limits of its expansion
means at the same time a profound crisis of capital's old methods of control
and rule. The international scale and the interconnections of the operations
of every transnational company and bank make them more vulnerable to the
united actions of the working-class, provided that these actions are united,
combined internationally in solidarity.

The inability of today's capital to make any important concessions to the
workers of particular countries, or industries, or occupations, means that
the working-class must seek a way forward as a single class,
internationally. Added to this, the fact that millions upon millions of
those better-off 'white-collar' workers who once helped form a base for
conservatism and reformism are now driven into unemployment and insecurity,
brings new potential strength and unity to the working-class. The
working-class can find millions of forces among the youth, who face a future
without hope under capital.

The workers of Eastern Europe, the ex-Soviet Union and China, for so long
separated from the working-class in the West, now confront a nascent class
of capitalists who are, in the main, the very bureaucrats who paraded for so
long as 'communists', leading the people to the victory of socialism. These
budding capitalists are directly servile to the same international finance
capitalists and transnational companies as exploit the peoples of Western
Europe and the rest of the world.

In the ex-colonial countries, for three- quarters of  a century the
struggles of the working people in 'national liberation' movements have been
used by the national capitalists of these countries to establish their own
repressive power against the working people. Now their days of balancing
between the capitalist powers and the Stalinist bureaucracy and claiming to
be 'socialists' are over.

All this means that the objective conditions for a truly internationalist
movement have changed qualitatively in favour of the working-class. This is
quite contrary to the view of those who bewail the collapse of Stalinism and
of the so-called socialist camp. Facing us is a conscious settlement with
all those false paths of 'gradual' parliamentary roads to socialism',
'socialism in one country', 'national liberation under bourgeois leadership', 
--all of them now in the dustbin of history—and a conscious reconstitution
on new foundations of the socialist, international, class movement of the
working-class. The decision to form an organisation now for a new socialist
party is above all part of that reconstruction, and can be taken on these
firm foundations. 

There is one other, vital element in these objective conditions which favour
the building of   a socialist working-class movement. The crisis is global
in the sense of universal (intensively as well as extensively) and
threatening the end of humanity. Therefore, it provokes many, many struggles
and demands, not in themselves socialist but requiring the abolition of
capital. The movement as a whole against capital is therefore pluralist,
because capital's crisis gives rise to mass movements. This pluralism
corresponds to the really mass nature of the production of a communist mass
consciousness and self-emancipation, etc. As Marx stressed already in 1851,
the working-class revolution is unique in that it is a social and not only a
political revolution; it engages the masses in continuous struggle, beyond
the conquest of power, to transform all their basic conditions of social
life (' the permanent revolution', Marx).

The programme of a new party will be the result of the work done by the many
different movements which now begin to come together in recognition of the
fact that it is capital which is the obstacle to the realisation of every
one of their demands. From this it follows that a movement of the
working-class as a whole and its allies is necessary to defeat capital.

With the miners' strike of 1984-85, it was made very clear that the task
facing the working-class is a political one (state repression, solidarity),
and the import of Polish coal by Thatcher against the strikers proved the
international character taken today by all struggles and of the necessary
working-class resistance. Since then there are new and very important examples:
Liverpool dockers' internationalism (work for international solidarity,
defence of Turkish workers, support for Bosnia miners' union, international
conferences and now the building of a dockers international organisation
which will go beyond the present dispute permanently), the youth ( Reclaim
the Future) inspired by the dockers fight. Rejection by the dockers' leaders
of anti-union laws, of the bureaucracy's control and of the
political-industrial divide. Their anti-sectarianism. The role of women in
the dispute. 
Asylum seekers, immigrant workers and their fights-- internationalism starts
here. We in the ITUSC are for one party and one movement including all
these. Without them it will not be an internationalist and international party. 

We in the ITUSC will pursue the implications of comrade Toure's (Ivory
Coast) speech at the ITUSC Conference about liberation fighters in exile in
London. We will bring together workers and political refugees from amongst
others Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Kurdistan, Bangladesh, Africa, Turkey and
Kashmir, into the Movement for Socialism.

We are for a pluralist movement within (not above, outside!) which a party
(not the same thing) is built.

We shall endeavour to draw all the lessons of the collapse of
Social-Democracy and Stalinism, and of the history of sectarianism and we
recognise the necessity of international reconstruction. We will strive to
unite, even with some differences still to be thrashed out, into one
movement to a new party. Those of us who are Marxists in the ITUSC will not
be satisfied with the kind of Marxism which only knows how to win arguments,
rather our task will be to develop Marxism in the real movement by combining
and organising.

 The new party must be one that does not try to impose itself on the class,
but must immerse itself in all its struggles. It must have a unity of
purpose and a mutual solidarity and discipline founded on a common
understanding of tasks,  it must not tolerate any bosses,  it cannot arrive
at agreement and unity of purpose without the free expression of differences
and clash of opinions.

These are the views of the ITUSC which are contributed to the impending
discussion on the formation of the Movement for Socialism in particular, and
to the international debate on the future tasks of the workers' movement in
general.  

Yours in solidarity,
KEITH STANDRING
General Secretary
 
 
Keith Standring    (itusc-AT-gn.apc.org)





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