Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 21:48:40 +0200
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-I: One world, one fight -- learning internationalism


When mobilization is under way, things happen fast.

On Friday, the tenth day of the struggle of the dockworkers with the Sao
Paulo steel company in Santos, Brazil, the biggest demonstration in the
town for years, with over a thousand people, took over the central square
-- there's a couple of pictures at the dockers' web site

http://www.portodesantos.com/sindicatos


During the demonstration, greetings and a message of solidarity from the
striking Liverpool dockers' were read to the crowd, to loud, continuous
cheering.

The main slogan heard was: "Santos, Liverpool, Seoul, Amsterdam -- one
world, one fight".

On Saturday, a conference of dockers leaders from all 18 ports of Brazil
decided to call an all-out stoppage if military force is used to remove the
25 dockers peacefully occupying the two ships in the Steel Company berth.

When determined working people mobilize, and then learn that they're not
alone but are doing the same thing as other determined people all over the
world (the slogan covers three continents!!), this fuels the mobilization
even further.

Anyone who remembers the events of 1968, say, and sat glued to a telephone
or the radio/television when they weren't occupying some university or
factory or other, will know the feeling very well. And people learn fast in
situations like this. The lessons of the 18-month dispute in Liverpool will
not be lost on the dockers in Santos. And the Liverpool dockers will become
all the more determined when they know their fight is being taken up round
the world in the best possible form of solidarity -- ordinary workers
taking up the cudgels against oppression and exploitation in their own
place of work and their own country.

The other day a couple of 16-year-olds got into a fight at a lower
secondary school in Stockholm, and the 20-year-old brother of one of them
joined in. So did all their mates. In the end it took *20 police* to
"restore order"!

Now imagine if similar fights had broken out in say, five schools, or twenty!

And now imagine where on earth the forces needed to "restore order" in all
the ports of a country at once would come from -- or in several countries
at once!

We are witnessing the impotence of repressive forces against popular anger
in two countries right now -- Zaire and Albania. The importance of these
examples lies in the ease with which arms were obtained by the people in
Albania, and the ease with which an armed rebellion which had at last
obtained a solid foothold and organization in one part of Zaire has been
able to shatter the remaining forces of state oppression in the rest of the
country. Even such poor, downtrodden countries as Grenada, Panama, Haiti
and Somalia can provide challenges that almost choke US imperialism!

The repressive machinery of the state has the morale of a bully. Whip the
weak! As soon as the weakness is replaced by the slightest sign of enduring
strength, the rotten demoralization of the mercenary thugs who do the dirty
work of the state is exposed for what it is. This is why "keep your enemy
weak and split" is the first and most important rule for all imperialist
oppression.

This dynamic of state oppression -- ferocious and merciless against the
weak, yet feeble and cowardly against the strong -- is not the same as the
one-sided Maoist slogan characterizing imperialism as a paper tiger.
Imperialism can indeed *become* a paper tiger, but only when it's
transformed from a bloodthirsty man-eating monster in confrontation with
the united strength of the enraged and mobilized  working people.

The struggle isn't easy -- don't get me wrong! What I'm saying is that
fighting and attracting others to the fight becomes a lot easier when
things are going your way and mobilization is spreading like a chain
reaction. Or Lenin's prairie fire.

And it's in situations of upsurge and mobilization such as those we are
starting to see more and more of now, that the quality of revolutionary
preparation during the bad years will be put to the test.

There's plenty of tinder around after a couple of decades of international
Thatcherism and Reagonomics, so look out for sparks!

Cheers,

Hugh




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