MEXICO "Left unity must be forged in the class struggle" FIVE Mexican left organizations have just confirmed their decision to fuse into a single organization in May. The main ones are the Mexican United Socialist Party (PSUM, the Communist Party) and the Mexican Workers' Party (PMT). The three other formations are smaller - the Revolutionary Patriotic Party (PPR), the People's Revolutionary Movement (MRP), and the Union of the Communist Left (UIC). A section of the PMT, the so-called Rank-and-File Current, has refused to associate itself with this fusion, which has in fact been carried out quite quickly. The PSUM only made the proposal in July 1986.
The Mexican section of the Fourth International, the Revolutionary Workers' Party (PRT) has refused to participate in this accelerated unification, which is far from being the product of political convergence and common mass work.
For example, the student movement that shook Mexico in December-January showed the breadth of the differences existing among the various organizations. From the outset, the PRT were involved with students engaged in the struggle and in the University Student Council, the leading body of the strike. But the PSUM and PMT denounced the students' demands as reactionary and petty-bourgeois.
The following is a statement of the Political Committee of the PRT issued at the time of the official announcement of the fusion of the five parties.
As has been made known publicly, the Revolutionary Workers' Party, has decided not to participate in the present unification process being conducted by five left political organizations:
1. The PRT considers that progress in a process of unification by a major sector of the Mexican left could have a considerable significance. For that very reason, we think that this can be accomplished only through a broad process of convergence. A simple desire for unity is not enough - it is necessary to measure carefully the real possibilities for such a step.
We are convinced of this, inasmuch as the frustration of. such a move would have totally negative repercussions. And this is all the more true when we see in some sections of left activists a certain skepticism about the present relevance of the fight for socialism.
2. Our party proposed a method that would make it possible to assess the possibilities for a unification. Since September 1986, we have noted that the formation of a federation of parties with its own organizational structure, but leaving a certain autonomy of functioning for each organization, could be a basis for deciding whether it was possible to form a unitary political organization.
We proposed the formation of a collective leadership to orient the process; joint functioning on a state and municipal basis; publication of a common journal and a joint internal bulletin; coordination of trade-union, peasant, urban neighborhood, women's and youth work; as well as holding public conferences to discuss the policy to be followed in all of these sectors; the drawing up of an agenda for discussion on a series of fundamental aspects of the class struggle and so on. As a guiding principle, we proposed that the ranks of the parties be the fundamental protagonists in this process, regardless of whether this extended the time necessary to conclude it. Because we were, and continue to be, convinced that only in this way could a solid unification be International Viewpoint 4 May 1987
achieved, in which the members of the parties involved would not find themselves limited to reading the daily paper to find out about the deveopment of the unity process.
3. This proposal on method was based on a fact that seems to escape some people today. The lett organiza tions have functioned separately for many years. This has not happened simply because of the sectarianism of some of them, but because of a lack of political and programmatic convergences. Today, under the slogan of "modernize or die," some left activists want to wipe out these differences by fiat.
The PRT does not suffer from confusion on this score. We know that there are a myriad of political differences, some of them very important. They are not, as some have claimed in an attempt to discredit our position, over what happened decades ago or about everybody's ideology. They are different judgements about the type of party that is to be built.
From our point of view, we need an organization that not only guarantees minority rights but also guarantees the usefulness of the party in the class struggle, a party whose members do not find themselves on opposing sides in a conflict, some supporting the movement and others the authorities.
We have no reason to hide the fact that there are differences over how the various forces assess the relationship that the party should have with the mass movement, and over the significance of political independence from the PRI [the governing party in what to a large extent is a one-party state] its currents and the bosses and so on.
4. Despite all that, the PRT's proposal was based on another real fact - the Mexican left has begun to overcome its cannibalism, and thus it was possible to initiatesa process enabling us through joint work and serious discussions to test the possibilities for unifying the left into a single party.
5. Five left organizations have decided to go ahead with another method, and we respect their decision. However, we want to point out in brief our differences with it. We think that under the pressure of approaching elections the parties involved in this fusion have turned the mechanisms for unification upside down. In their congresses, the five organizations are going to decide to fuse in May. They will legally register the new party with the Ministry of the Interior. Then they are going to discuss what policy this party will support in the mass struggle, and decide on what its analysis will be of
International Viewpoint 4 May 1987 what is happening in our country
These questions will not be decided upon until the new party's first congress, but it will have existed as a party legally since May. The PRT thinks that these questions are key to knowing whether it is possible to form a new party since this involves not merely tactics of a secondary importance but central political questions. Problems
A single example suffices to demonstrate this. Recently a trade-union congress was held by the five fusing parties and the PRT. This conference discussed industrial reconversion and the strategy of the left in the workers' movement. On the first question, only the PSUM and the PRT expressed a point of view, since the other parties indicated that they did not have a position on it (and we are talking here about a fundamental problem for the Mexican workers).
However, the most revealing discussion was on the question of strategy. Here the PSUM proposed trade-union collaboration with the bureaucracy of the Congreso de Trabajo [Congress of Labor] as the key element. The MRP argued that the Mexican left should form a union confederation outside the Congreso de Trabajo, as has been done in. other countries in Latin America. The PPR maintained that in view of the crisis it was essential to offer an answer along lines similar to that put by the oil workers union (the Quinista bureaucracy, no more, no less). And the PMT argued that the basic element of strategy was to form party committees in the unions.
It may be expected that if similar conferences are held for each of the sectors of the mass struggle, the result would be the same. It could not be otherwise when you have a discussion on the recent student movement at the University of Mexico in which some of these forces think that the University Students' Committee (CEU) raised reactionary demands and fought for privileges.
6. The PRT wants to reiterate its conviction that unity is the fundamental element demanded today by the class struggle. Calls for such unity arise in every struggle that is waged against the PRI regime's rightist policy. The unity that is needed is unity of the mass movement, unity around the struggle of the CEU to transform the:university and to ward off attacks on the students' just gains; unity in the struggle of the Mexican Electrical Workers' Union against the state policy of wage restrictions; in the struggle of the education workers against the undemocratic methods of the union bureaucrats; in the struggle of the Ford-Hermosillo workers against the starvation-wages policy of this transnational company and so on.
It is these struggles that will reveal what is consistent and what is sectarian. This is where we propose that unity of the left be forged; otherwise we would be reduced to an apparatus unity. It is to this struggle for unity that the PRT has devoted its efforts, as it has to its proposal to offer the people of Mexico a single democratic electoral alternative through the formation of a coalition of all the left for the 1988 federal elections. These are the roads to be followed and the challenges that face the Mexican people. Counter-austerity demonstration (DR)
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