AROUND THE WORLD
Western Europe SOCIALIST FEMINIST FORUM THE SECOND gathering of the European Forum of socialist feminists, following that organized in Copenhagen in 1985, took place in Hamburg, West Germany on the weekend of November 7-8.
The main theme of the weekend was "Women and restructuring labour" This was discussed from a number of different angles. The starting point, emphasized in the short descriptions of the situation in each country represented into the moss mante. At the same time it was also recog nized that the crisis is forcing employers to restructure the workforce, in ways which have particular effects on women.
This relationship was discussed from a number of angles ranging from women's entry into the workforce, into what jobs, with what expectations; their role in the workforce and their relationship to it as a worker and through the family situation; to how women workers can be affected by the experiences of redundancy.
The subject was also tackled from the point of view of the relationship between women, the state and their place in the labour market, including a contribution on the work of the European parliament in this respect.
These discussions indicated the interesting work being done by those who define themselves as socialist feminists today. This label covered a broad range of women, those in parties and those not. The parties included the communist parties in a number of countries, social-democratic parties and far-left groups, including revolutionary Marxists.
The 110 women at the conference represented at least 15 different countries, although the fact that the conference was limited to one language, English, meant that there was a higher attendance from northern Europe. It was generally agreed that the experience reflected in the conference was one-sided in being overwhelmingly that of white European women, and that the particular experience of immigrants, political refugees or of Black Europeans, those who are born and bred for example in Britain and identify as Black British, 26 was lacking. Positive steps to overcome this are to be made for the next forum.
The planned discussion on socialist feminist perspectives on a European scale did not lead to any conclusions other than to organize a third socialist feminist forum, probably in the Spanish state in November 1987. The papers of the Hamburg conference will be published Britain. France STUDENT STRIKES ON THURSDAY November 27, more than 500,000 university and lycee (high school) students across France demonstrated against Alain Devaquet's proposed reform of higher education, in what were the biggest student mobilizations since 1968.
Starting with several universities outside Paris, the movement spread in days, so that by Monday November 24 there was a general student strike throughout the country, with hundreds of thousands of students from the lycees joining it. Numbers on Thursday's demonstrations were estimated at 30,000 in Grenoble, 40,000 in Toulouse, 25,000 in Marseille, 30,000 in Lyon, 20,000 in Bordeaux ... the list goes on. There were at least 300,000 on the Paris demonstration, which forced the debate on the proposals to be put back a day to Friday 28th.
Most of the students on the demonstrations were aged between 15 and 20, and for many of them it was their first political involvement. In general, the students are reluctant to see the strike as overtly "political" and are wary of possible attempts to manipulate their movement. But in the slogans on the marches and in their response to some attacks by the extreme right, the influence of the anti-racist campaign amongst youth is clear.
Devaquet's proposed law, which talks of increasing the "independence" of the universities raises the whole question of their financing. Its most striking effect would be that students who passed their Baccalaureat would no longer be automatically entitled to enter higher education, introducing a system of selection depending on the faculty applied for. There are numerous smaller attacks on the present organization of higher education and the position of foreign students is also under threat.
In introducing the law, however, the government had not anticipated the sort of opposition it is coming up against. On Thursday night, immediately following the demonstrations the national student coordination met and called for the strikes to continue. Occupations of the colleges are being planned from Monday and a national demonstration has been called for December 4. An appeal for support from teaching staff has also been launched.
All the indications at the moment are that the strike is continuing to grow and that the determination of the students, as well as their confidence in their ability to throw out the new legislation, is stronger the ever. Mexico DEBT RESOLUTION IN LATIN AMERICA, October 23 was a continent-wide day of action against the debt, following a similar protest last year. In Mexico, one of the biggest Latin American debtors, there was a large-scale mobilization of trade unions and mass organizations, which held various forums, meetings and round-table discussions on this issue.
The following resolution was adopted by a trade-union panel which brought together the trade-union organizations independent of the government. It is taken from the newspaper of the Mexican section of the Fourth International, the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT), Bandera Socialista, October 26, 1986.
On February 21, 1986, President Miguel de la Madrid proposed to bring the payment of service charges on the foreign debt into line with the country's real capacity to pay. Seven months later, he announced the renegotiations of the same debt that has increased still more and will reach 110,000 million US dollars in 1987. Mexico will then be the most heavily indebted country in the world.
This debt, and the obstinate determination to pay this astronomical sum, indicates an increasing dependence on imperialism; a policy that means lowering workers' real wages; an official rate of 15 per cent unemployment; a constant increase in inflation; rising prices for goods and services;
International Viewpoint 8 December 1986
decreasing social spending on health, education, housing; attacks against the workers; brutal attacks on trade-union rights; and cuts in social benefits.
The model of development chosen by the government, so-called industrial reconversion, has simply meant redundancies and plant closures by claiming that modernization inevitably throws thousands of workers onto the streets. There are many different examples: the steel plants of Monterey, Dina, Acros, Aeromexico, Renault, Ficar and so on. This has been accomplished by a so-called reconversion, потоне рост не і і ро meaning the super-exploitation of the workforce and changes in the production process with the stated aim of increasing productivity. To this should be added the continued rejection of any increase in wages and social benefits.
What is more, it should be emphasized that many public and private companies, with the complicity of corrupt trade unionists and official factory inspectors, have used these redundancies to get rid of independent trade unions, leaders of democratic organizations and collective contracts. The organizations taking part in the trade-union panel propose to the peoples', peasants' and trade-union organizations to join in the battle for the following objectives:
* a policy that gets the country out of the crisis and which therefore suspends obligatory payment of the foreign debt and interest payments;
* an emergency wage rise of 50 per cent and the establishment of a sliding scale of wages; against redundancies and factory closures; for 56 hours pay for a 40-hour week and unemployment insurance;
respect for collective agreements and trade unions;
* respect for the workers' rights guaranteed by the constitution. Book review MEMOIRS MEMOIRS of a Radical Rank and Filer by Ben Stone, 7.95 dollars, Prometheus Press, Box 318, Gracie Station, New York 10028. 188 pages Reviewed by Gerry Foley).
A long-time member of the American Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has published memoirs covering the decade of the 1940s and 1950s in the history of the Trotskyist movement in the United States. The book helps to fill a gap by giving a personal account of part of the all-too-thin generation that maintained the continwity of the American radical movement between the upsurge of the 1930s and the new waves of radicalization that began in the 1960s. The author, Ben Stone, also writes about one of the more notable radical labor leaders in recent times, a leader of the painters' union in San Francisco who was assassinated.
The book offers a number of personal portraits of rank-and-file activists, as well as of the leaders that inspired them. In that respect, it is rather in the tradition of a work like the biographies of the Swedish left socialist and communist leader, Zeth Hoglund, especially the volume entitled De Haerlige tidet (The Glorious Time), which tried to do justice to the many people who had to strive and sacrifice to build a party of working people, a new historical type.
Stone also gives some interesting vignettes of circumstances of poor Jews on New York's Lower Eart Side. Guatemala URNG COMMUNIQUE VINICIO CEREZO, Christiandemocratic president of Guatemala, has just rejected any perspective of dialogue with the Guatemalan revolutionaries regrouped in the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union (URNG). By demanding as a precondition for any discussion that the revolutionaries lay down their arms -which they, of course, categorically refuse to do - the government is driving towards a purely military solution.
Cerezo is in an uncomfortable position, caught between the democratic aspirations of a reinvigorated mass movement (see International Viewpoint No. 106, October 12, 1986), and the intransigence of a military hierarchy that considers any negotiations with the insurgents would be a de facto recognition of the guerrillas and a betrayal of the army. The following communique from the URNG was put out at the end of October.
To the people of Guatemala and to international public opinion: After ten months of a new civilian government, it is necessary to demand without delay that the president keeps to his promises made during the election campaign. The time has come not to present successes or spectacular results, but the political guidelines that the government intends to follow.
Proclaiming with a big fanfare the proposal to begin a process of democratization is not enough to get such a proclamation translated into governmental policies and measures.
Far from having seen changes in the power structures and the real decision-making centres [the army], there has been growing repression against the civil population. Families' standard of living have deteriorated alarmingly, all sorts of obstacles have been put in the way of trade-union freedom, the various churches have been ignored when they have called for changes in the repressive forces, the disappearances and assassinations continue and thousands of refugees are still stranded in other countries with no hope of return.
The military high command, with the agreement of the government, is looking for a military solution, trying to annihilate the revolutionary movement and terrorize the population. In the face of this political extremism, the revolutionary forces of the URNG have had to maintain their military activity.
Instread of putting all its efforts into establishing real democracy, the government is content to reiterate its appeals for the laying down of arms. But this has already lasted too long and the people cannot wait forever.
Once more, the URNG reaffirms its political will for dialogue and discussion on the minimal condition of a democratic process. We equally emphasize that there exists the possibility of a real political solution, but in any event that is not the path the government is taking.
AL-MITRAQA: Revolutionary communist review for the Arab region.
Issue 3 out now (April-September
1986). Contents include: The crisis of the PLO a balance sheet;
Dossier on Islamic Fundamentalism;
The new programme of the CP of the USSR.
Yearly subscription (3 issues), 50FF;
1 issue 12FF. Write to PEC, 2 rue
Richard-Lenoir, 93108 Montreuil,
France.
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International Viewpoint 8 December 1986
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