Editorial THIS IS our 100th issue since International Viewpoint was founded. Our first numbers were published in the midst of mass demonstrations in Paris in support of Solidarnosc. And the pace of international politics has quickened since then. GERRY FOLEY
In the last few months, two long-standing dictatorships have fallen, the Marcos regime in the Philippines and the Duvalier dynasty in Haiti. In both countries, tumultuous political developments are underway that could generate a dynamic of socialist revolution.
The mutiny of the military police in Egypt was a further sign of the growing explosiveness of this decisive Arab country, the tinderbox of the Middle East.
A movement has developed in Pakistan against the military dictatorship, with mobilizations of hundreds of thousands of people, that could lead very quickly to the fall of yet another dictatorship, on this occasion not in an isolated country but one whose frontiers are focuses of crisis.
After the fall of the Marcos regime, the mass movement against the dictatorship in South Korea, a still more strategically sensitive country, is again on the rise.
Even in the developed countries, where the workers' movement has been suffering setbacks for some time, we have seen a number of important struggles, such as the British printworkers' strike, the Hormel strike in the United States and another Belgian general strike, along with recent general strikes in Norway and Finland.
There is also movement in the Soviet Union, where the bureaucratic regime is being put into a tighter and tighter corner by its inability to develop the collectivized economy.
In Poland, a mass antibureaucratic movement persists, and political discussion is deepening among forces that could lead a revolution to establish genuine workers' democracy.
The fight against the new Danube dam project in Austria, the protests against nuclear pollution in Britain and the response to the recent Soviet nuclear disaster exemplify the widespread rise in the movement in defence of the environment.
International Viewpoint 2 June 1986
EDITORIAL
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International VIEWPOINT
100
The women's movement is changing, with its emphasis shifting to defence of women workers against the capitalist offensive and the spread of movements of women among the poor and dispossessed peoples of Latin America.
The revolutionary nationalist movements that have been a major force for radicalization in West Europe over the past decades, Irish republi canism and Basque separatism, are facing new challenges.
In a number of areas also, sections of the Fourth International are having new experiences. An example is the section in Mexico, which has organized oppressed Indian villagers to take control of their town govern. ments, played a major role in peasant organization and been involved in work in mass organizations of the young urban poor.
All these developments point to some of the more obvious reasons why we need a larger International Viewpoint. We need to be able to offer a rounded picture of world polities and the development of revolution around the globe - that is our fundamental purpose. We have only 26 pages every two weeks, while in the 1970s the equivalent journals of the Fourth International had 48 pages weekly to report a narrower range of developments.
But unfortunately, instead of being able to expand as we had hoped, we are now obliged to cut back the magazine, eliminating two issues a year. We had in fact been looking forward to some modest expansion. That is why we launched an expansion fund a few issues ago. There was an encouraging response.
We hope those who contributed will not be disappointed now. Their support was not in vain. It helped us make some improvements in the presentation of the magazine, such as the recent improvements in the cover.
Most of all, these contributions gave an indication that it may be possible to get the sort of support needed to maintain the magazine and expand it in the near future.
We believe that there is sufficient demand and support for IV now to enable it to grow. We feel that one of the fundamental problems until now has been the lack of tradition in building a genuinely international revolutionary socialist magazine. There has not been enough experience in using the international press to complement national publications. In many countries it still tends to be a thing apart.
In particular, there has been no tradition of fund-raising for an international magazine located in a coun try other than the ones it serves. That is a big problem when every national revolutionary and radical publication depends on fund-raising to survive:
We think that it is essential for an international journal to be published under the auspices of an international organization. But that does not mean that there is some invisible shadow establishment that pays the bills. Quite the contrary. We need every penny, pinginn, ceiniog, yen, pfennig, ore, and so forth that our readers and our supporters can spare for us.
Such contributions, moreover, are not just for us, but for the many revolutionists who need IV but are deprived of resources by their struggles or the imperialist exploitation of their countries. We are already, for example, providing free subscriptions for a number of political prisoners, thanks to a very successful prisoners' fund that we launched over a year ago.
In this issue of IV, our 100th, we want to initiate both systematic fund-raising for the magazine and a special subscription campaign, with the very modest goal of 100 new subscriptions by the end of this year.
We appeal to our readers to begin sending contributions to the magazine - however small. In particular, we offer membership in a society of friends of IV for contributions equalling the cost of a six-month or year subscription. (We will send them bulletins on the progress of the magazine.)
Send money, subscribe, and help to win us more readers. The world won't wait!
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EDITORIAL