AROUND THE WORLD
AROUND
THE
WORLD
ODE the British gay movement, and Ron Clarke, secretary general of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), had introduced on the question of lesbian and gay rights, a Hungarian delegate from Rumania asked if "having wasted an hour talking about homosexuals, it would be possible to deal with the question of Transylvania"!
The third world was, happily, not forgotten — Pakistani filmmaker Roshan Dhunjiboy spoke of the responsibilities of the northern countries to those of the south at the inaugural session and his
EUROPE
Helsinki Citizens'
Assembly
AROUND a thousand delegates from nearly every country in Europe met in
Prague October 19-21 for the constitutive session of the European Assembly of Citizens/Helsinki Citizen's Assembly (HCA).
Convoked at the initiative of the independent peace movements, the Assembly originated in the first Prague Appeal addressed by the Czechoslovak dissidents of Charter 77 (notably Vaclav Havel, Jiri
Dienstbier, Jaroslav Sabata, and Petr Uhl)
to the Perugia conference of the European
Nuclear Disarmament (END) movement in 1986.
"Civil society is henceforth in power"
declared Vaclav Havel in his inaugural speech to the Assembly, and, added the
Czech president, in order to counteract the deformations which inevitably accompany the exercise of power, "it must rely on its own moral conscience"
The solution proposed could leave something to be desired, but this theme of a scely was at the heart of the Assem- civil society was at the heart of the Assembly's debates and was the occasion for its most heated controversies.
For Thomas Mastnak, of Slovenia, rather than speaking of the accession to power of civil society - which is in any case a contradiction in terms - it was better to recognize that civil society had not been able to seize the occasion which had been offered to it to transform the exercise of power.
All that had happened was that only cerlain of its representatives — self-proclaimed for the most part, as minister of state Jaroslav Sabata stressed with justice and without self-satisfaction - have been sucked in by the state apparatus.
This "rank and fileism" on the part of a good number of the delegates, particularly those from Slovenia, yielded some of the best and worst aspects of the Assembly. The best, as in the very live questioning of the presence of German SPD leader Oskar Lafontaine at the inaugural session by some German delegates, but also the most wooly - for example Thomas Mastnak defending a conception of the HCA as an "institution of civil society" from which all representatives of political power (parhamentary representatives and so on) would be completely excluded.
This also raises the issue of the nature of the HCA and of its relations with the "actually existing institutions", namely the state.
As regards the situation of the three Baltic countries, warmly evoked by the very numerous delegates from these countries, a proposition was put to the "Civil Society and European Integration" commission seeking to link the recognition by the HCA of the European Conference on Security and Co-operation to the recognition by the latter of the Baltic states as sovereign and independent nations.
Finally another motion from the Baltic delegates themselves was adopted, demanding that the agenda of the Paris conference of the ECSC should include the question of the independence and demilitarization of the Baltic states and that the delegations of these countries participate at the summit.
During the debate, a Ukrainian delegate had to moreover recall that, important as it is, the Baltic question is not the only national question on the agenda south at the inaugural session, and his contribution was the most applauded. A public debate was organized on the question of the Gulf, which regrettably was dominated by the preoccupations and problematics of the French left. Going by the applause, the values of "the left" were dominant. The British pacifist Mary Kaldor made a long speech in the closing session against the "dictatorship of the market" which was warmly applauded, but a good deal of wooliness prevailed on this question. Thus the economy and ecology" session pronounced itself in its provisional conclusions in lavour of a "democratic market economy which lakes account of ecological balance and respects the rights of workers and women" without the concept of "democratic economy" being in any way explained.
Despite this, and even if the role and functioning of the HCA and its national sections, which are now to be established and structured, will become clear only in time, it represents an important framework for dialogue between militants of cast and west. *
Other speakers, like Viner speakers, like Miet Jan Faber, a leader of Pax Christi in Holland and copresident of the HCA or the French sociologist Edgar Morin, attempted to link the question of the stateless nations in the East to similar cases in the West (Corsica, Euzkadi, and so on).
One of the public debates was devoted to the three questions of the North of Ireland, Kosovo and Transylvania.
The question, certainly very central, of the notion of "civil society" did not stop other controversies from surging forward.
Some of these were attributable to inevitable cultural differences. For example, in the commission on "minority rights" , after Peter Tatchell, an activist in
Obituary - I. B. Tabata
International Viewpointrecords with sadness the death on October 15 of Isaac Bangani Tabata, in Harare, Zimbabwe. Mr. Tabata was 80 years old. He went into exile from South Africa in 1963 and was president of the New Unity Movement. He was the first person to be served with a five-year banning order. He was the author of several books, including "Education for Barbarism" and "The Awakening of Our People". Together with other outstanding political leaders of his time such as Dr. Goolam Gool, Jane Gool and others, he pioneered as early as the 1930s and 40s a historical materialist and class analysis of South African society. He was a founder member of the Workers' Party of South Africa (linked to the Fourth International), the All African Convention, the Cape African Teachers Association, the Society of Young Africa, and the African People's Democratic Union of
Southern Africa. He was an outstanding organizer and a powerful orator capable of rallying all layers of the oppressed. He was particularly prominent in organizing the rural poor and made a rich contribution to many seminal historical documents.* ments.* 97 November 12, 1990 • #194 International Viewpoint
AROUND THE WORLD
SWITZERLAND Immigrant workers demonstration A BIG demonstration of immigrant workers - Yugoslav, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and Turkish — took place in Berne on September 15, 1990, at the initiative of the Swiss construction trade union. About 30,000 people demonstrated for the suppression of the status of seasonal laborer and for the rights of immigrant workers. The status of seasonal laborer affects 120,000 workers in building, tourism, and the agricultural sector whose permission to stay in Switzerland is limited to nine months, with important restrictions; they can change neither their job nor their place of residence — that is, move from one canton to another - and they are not allowed to bring their families with them. Leaders of Spanish and Italian trade union confedcrations addressed the demonstrators and demanded the ending of what the Swiss trades unionists call "our Berlin Wall". *
TROTSKY Commemorations FIFTY years after his death, the legacy of Leon Trotsky is the subject of increasingly keen debate, especially in the context of the global crisis of Stalinism.
A group of East German sympathizers of the Fourth International organized a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Trotsky's assassination on September 22 in East Berlin, which was attended by more than 200 people (see /V 192)
Meanwhile, in Paris, nearly 500 people attended a commemoration of Trotsky's legacy organized at the Sorbonne on October 13, at the initiative of Pierre Broué (director of the Leon Trotsky Institute). Two round table discussions took place, one on Trotsky's fight against Stalinism and the other on the relevance of Trotsky in the era of perestroika. Ernest Mandel, Maurice Nadeau (writer and editor), Vladimir Billik (Leningrad historian), Catherine Samary (economist), Workers of all lands...
Proletarios de todos los países...
Workers of all lands...
Travailleurs de tous les pays ...
Travailleurs de tous les pays ...
Proletarios de todos los paises...
SINCE July 1990 a video film has been available on the history and struggle of the Fourth International and its sections. The film is available in
English, French and Spanish. The film provides a good overview of the activities of the Fourth International and is an ideal introduction for those new to the organization. It is available for $40/
200F, or $60/300FF for institutions, from PEC, 2 Rue Richard Lenoir, 93108
Montreuil, France. Cheques should be made payable to PEC. Postal transfers to PEC, CCP No 2 322 42T Paris.
28
International Viewpoint #194 • November 12, 1990
Vladimir Ragovin (sociologist and CPSU militant from Moscow) and Didier Motchane (vice-president of the Modern Republic club of the French Socialist Party).
Finally, the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil organized an international sympoSium September 10-14 under the title "Past and Present of Socialism". Over 3,000 people participated. Among the foreign guests at the colloquium were Alexander Potchekoldin of the Moscow Institute of Marxism-Leninism, Valery Pisigin of the Moscow Bukharin Club, Miklos Kun of Budapest University, Pierre Broué, and Michael Lowy of the French National Centre for Scientific Rescarch. Guest of honour was Sieva Volkov, Trotsky's grandson. Numerous academics and leaders of the Brazilian left also participated. Debate centred on the thought of Trotsky, the history of the Trotskyist movement in Brazil, the links between Trotskyism and surrealism, the role of Trotskyist currents within the Brazilian Workers' Party, and Trotsky and perestroika. *
NEWS FROM LISTEN MU THE FOURTH INTERA AM ONAL
Youth summer camp
FOR THE first time, more than 100 young people from Eastern Europe
(Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Hungary) attended the 7th summer camp of European youth organizations in solidarity with the Fourth International, which took place July 21-28 near Louvain, in Belgium. In total, 700 young people from throughout Europe attended the camp. As is now usual, the political discussions at the camp were organized through central forums and commissions on the main issues facing radicalizing youth today (ecology, racism, antimilitarism, exploitation of the third world, international solidarity, the upheavals in Eastern Europe, and so on).
The debates were for the most part introduced by members of the European youth organizations in solidarity with the
Fourth International, but representatives of the Mexican Revolutionary Workers'
Party (PRT), Sinn Fein, the FMLN of El
Salvador and the Workers' Organization for Socialist Action (WOSA) of South
Africa also introduced discussions on the struggles in their countries.
Beyond the political activity, a range of leisure activities (pop concerts, cinema, discos) allowed the various delegations to mix and communicate beyond national and linguistic barriers. The presence of youth from Eastern Europe added a new experience to this year's youth camp. It is hoped that they will return in even greater numbers next year.*