Unity and struggle to defeat the government
The Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT) and the Socialist Workers Party/Revolutionary Marxist Workers Party (PST/POUM) have decided to set up a permanent coord-
The PRT is the Peruvian section of the Fourth International.
The PST/POUM originated in the PST and a tendeney of the POMR led by Senator
The PRT had taken the initiative of proposing to set up this committee in a
December 6, 1982, letter, 'in order to launch joint work in the mass movement and establish an alternative pole to the reformism of the United Left (IU) in all possible a socialist parliamentary bloc, a trade-union coordination, human rights, in-
In the same letter, the PRT proposed to the PST/POUM that, 'on the basis of recognizing each other as revolutionary organizations', a discassion be opened on the
Nicaraguan revolution and on the balance sheet of the 1979 split in the Fourth International in which that revolution was an issue, as well as of the subsequent blow-up in the International Committee to which both the PST and POMR belonged.
The PST/POUM gave a positive answer to the PRT's proposals in a January 31,
On February 14, both organizations then signed a joint statement - amost entirely reprinted below - defining revolutionary tasks on the main issues on the agenda, following the replacement of the Manuel Ulloa government by the Schwalb tria.
Against this background, the weaknesses in the Green ideology also stand out with particular sharpness. The ALO's principles of "concern for the environment, grass-roots democracy, solidarity, and nonviolence" are not sufficient to provide a credible reorientation for the workers movement in the context of the capitalist crisis.
The ALO has so far refused to make any distinction between the SPO and the bourgeois parties. And it has been unable to build any bridges to the embryonic left groupings in the unions.
The election results can be expected
THE EASY LIFE IS OVER FOR THE SPO
Over the last 13 years Kreisky became a legend, which still survives. But it was not so much his personal role that marked this era as a number of exceptional circumstances that gave Austria a special position in the capitalist world:
- A favorable position in the world capitalist economy that made it possible to dampen the effects of the first world economic crisis in the period following the mid-1970s.
- The established position of the SPO as the government party in Austria.
- An accumulated need for certain of the chairperson of the Socialist Youth, Josef Cap, who waged an indep dent campaign in the elections, since the party was not willing to run him for a seat.
In the SPO convention last fall, Cap was voted out of the SPO leadership after he attacked a right-wing top party functionary, National Guard Captain Theordor Kery, for his privileges and his militaristic tendencies.
But on April 24 Cap got 61,900 firstpreference votes. This means that many voters wrote his name alongside the SPO on their ballots (this is an option that has never been used before in the history of the Second Republic (post-1945 Austo strengthen the right wing of the ALO, liberalistic social reforms that the SPO which is calling for fusion with the VGO. They hope that in this way they can have a better chance to get seats in parliament in the next elections. Nonetheless, the "Alternativen" important revolutionary politics as long as many youth see them as an expression of their rebellion against the capitalist social system.
The GRM, therefore, considers it one of its most important tasks to promote the development of left currents. For this reason, we have been working for some time in the Vienna Alternative Liste, in which such left currents have been most clearly differentiated. In the elections to the Vienna city council that were also held on April 24, we called for a vote for the Vienna Alternative Liste, which got 2.5% of the vote, a significant success. inating committee. Ricardo Napuri. (1) ternational solidarity....' (2)
was able to meet at the beginning of its period in the government.
- The great capacity of the SPO leadership to coopt critical and leit tenthe Austrian workers movement (both the SPO and the unions).
These factors are the secret of Bruno Kreisky's success. Despite its absolute predominance in Austrian politics, however, the SPO was unable to maintain even one of these factors for the future. This is clearest with respect to the consensus in the Social Democratic movement.
Whereas in the past, at most, dissident and critical personalities in the party protested against the official policy, today possibilities are appearing for the first time for the development of a left wing. This is shown by the sensational success tria). This figure represents 11% of all SPO voters in Vienna.
On the basis of this victory, Cap went on a campaign against the party leadership demanding that the SPO go into op. position. Moreover, he announced that on many questions in parliament, such as more equipment for the army or the putting of the Zwentendorf nuclear reac tor into operation, he would not accept the discipline of the SPO parliamentary fraction.
Un the other hand, it may be expected that the formation of a coalition government with a bourgeois partner will reinforce the most right-wing tendencies in the top echelons of the party. The conflict ahead will increase the possibilities and tasks for a revolutionary socialist current in the Austrian workers movement. Life is become less placid on the "Isle of the Blessed."
/PRT
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The atrocious death of the eight journalists in Uchuraccay (3) showed how far the cynicism and brutality of our rulers can go. It showed that this government believes that a vote determined by the circumstances of an election entitles it to turn Peru into a circus, its wealth into merchandise, and the majority of the people into docile subjects.
This government rules for the imperialist banks, the multinationals, and a handful of capitalists who thrive on the poverty and hunger of millions of Peruvians....
The cabinet change only goes to prove that it is not this or that minister who is responsible for the economic policy, corruption, and the attacks on democratic rights, but the government as a whole, headed by Belaunde Terry himself.
This is why our struggle must be aimed against the government. And the government's refusal to listen to the people's cries should tip off those who care to know to the real alternative: either the workers defeat this pro-imperialist government, or the latter will open the way to a historic defeat of the exploited and oppressed.
THE WORKERS RESIST
The Peruvian workers and people have resisted and are resisting this government. Just as they previously headed the strug gle against the dictatorship, opened a revolutionary situation, and conquered the elementary democratic rights we enjoy today. Now, the workers are resisting Belaunde's reactionary and pro-imperialist policy. Because that is not what 5,000 trade-union leaders were fired for, or so many working men and women died for in 1977 and 1978.
All sectors of the people took part in the resistance. The youth, the students, the peasants, the street vendors, but especially the workers defense fronts and trade unions took on the policy of a government that wants the only people who are not responsible for the crisis to pay for it: the toilers of the cities and country.
Cata-Acari, Caridad, and Canarias miners, this militant resistance went to the fight dispersed. (4) Each sector fielded only its own forces against an enemy that was stronger in terms of repression, and therefore achieved only limited results. The basic responsibility for the lack of coordination and centralization of the struggles lies with the General Confederation of the Workers of Peru (CGTP) and the United Left (IU) (5) who, although they still enjoy great influence and authority over the masses, let them take on the government and the bosses in near isolation.
Yet, the organization of the workers and people has reached a tremendous level. Almost no important sector of the exploited is not organized in one way or the other: communities, cooperative, peasant leagues and trade unions, student federations, and various forms of neighborhood organizations, workers federations and confederations, unions, and public sector associations, street vendors' union....
One important form of organization devised by the popular masses people's defense fronts in which various popular layers at times united in a single front to press their demands. lutionary forces present in this organization were able to help bring about a defeat of the government every time they united in action and fought on a clear and militant line of class independence.
However, at this time they are dispersed. And the government cannot be pushed back and defeated unless a united leadership of the political and trade-union struggle is formed, that brings together all these forces, calls for an ongoing light against the government, the national bosses and imperialism, and begins that fight as urged by the masses, with a 72-hour united national strike mobilized and prepared from the ranks.
### IZQUIERDA UNIDA (IU):
A CLASS COLLABORATIONIST
The Popular Action-Christian Popular for three years, yet until now this goal could not be realized for lack of a genuinely class-struggle and revolutionary
Peruvian workers need a leadership for their struggles and an organization that will guide them on the road to the socialist revolution. This need was clearly retlected in the explosive way FOCEP came on the scene, and later, on a smaller scale, by ARI (6).
However, this need was not fulfilled in either case. Our organizations assume the share of responsibility and self-criticism they deserve for these failures that made it possible for Izquierda Unida to emerge later as a class collaborationist body. Under the hegemony of pro-popular front sectors, IU became a key base of support for the present political regime. Under the motto of 'not destabilizing the regime', it refused to give workers a class-struggle leadership and demobilized them.
This situation is the result of the that sought to turn IU into a mere alternative electoral solution in the framework of the present regime of decomposed, second-rate bourgeois parliamentary democracy.
there was an attempt to draw the workers into an alliance with APRA (7), the main bourgeois alternative to the AP-PPC coalition and a supporter of the military dictatorship even during its worst crises. In reality, IU ended up being no more than a coalition of parties for purely electoral goals, and let political initiative and the banner of opposition to the regime pass over to APRA.
The social crisis of IU is the result of this collaboration and search for political mainly APRA. Nevertheless, there is a small movement inside it - that spoke up at the Vanguardia Revolucionaria convention - which is challenging the class collaborationist line.
OUR POSITION ON SENDERO LUMINOSO
But, as was shown by the case of the Party (AP-PPC) government has existed
Hugo Blanco addresses meeting (DR)
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As for the Peruvian Communist Party (Sendero Luminoso-Shining Path), it has launched armed actions combining guerilla with sabotage and terror acts against Shining Path (SL) is a Maoist-type organization which upholds the theory of revolutionary war from the country to the cities and implements tants who fight for their ideas, but this does not mean we should not express our differences with their characterization of Peruvian society, their evaluation of the political situation today, and their conception of the tasks of the Peruvian revolution, especially in relation to armed
At the same time as we recognize the SL militants' heroism and pledge to defend them against the criminal repression unleashed against them, our parties firmly state that the revolution this country
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REVOL
Peruvian Indian women (DR)
anticapitalist demands. We propose a Socialist Front that will call for the only type of government that can lead the country out of the crisis, a government of the workers and peasants organizations and of the people's defence fronts....
### WORKERS TO POWER
WITHOUT BOSSES OR GENERALS
Lima, February 14, 1983 Footnotes
The Revolutionary Marxist Workers Party Lambertist current current led by Nahuel Moreno. The PST/POMR (united party) is the result of a local reshuffling of these two currents following the September 1981 crisis of their internabers followed their leader Ricardo breaking off relations with the Lambertist curneeds will only be successful if the labor- ploited people need: ing people, mainly the organized, mobilized and armed working class, take full charge of it.
Our criticism of SL is not, as some leftists claim, that its actions destabilize the regime, but that its policy and its way of conducting the armed struggle will lead neither to the defeat of the regime, nor to the overthrow of the bourgeois state, nor to a socialist revolution led by the working class allied to the peasantry and exploited and oppressed masses.
### OUR ALTERNATIVE
As the crisis deepens and the workers and people's resistance to the government begins to spread, it is becoming urgent for us to return to the road of united action and the united front that already led to the formation of FOCEP, and later at another level, of ARI, and to forge the leadership that all the exploited call for and the situation requires.
It was this conviction that led our parties to set up a coordinating committee, and it was the same conviction that led us to call on all organizations, inside or outside IU, all those who have struggled uncompromisingly against the dictatorship, all those who supported FOCEP and ARI in the battle for class independence, all who identify with socialism, the class-struggle workers and leaders, the peasant, student, and neighborhood activists and leaders, to call on all of them to lorm a revolutionary pole, that is a socialist Front that would take the lead in the struggle and impose the unity the exunity to oust this government that is an agent of imperialism.
We propose a Socialist Front that:
- fights for the mobilization and selforganization of the masses;
- fights for a struggle against the bosses and government;
- fights for the workers to unite in a single United Workers Confederation;
fights to turn the defense fronts into class and popular organs of power for the exploited;
- defends the political independence of the exploited against the various bourgeois alternatives: APRA, the armed forces, for instance;
subordinates all parliamentary activity to extraparliamentary lutionary mass action;
fights for self-defense as the only means to counter bourgeois attacks.
We propose a Socialist Front that would answer the crisis with an action program incorporating concrete measures such as: a minimum living wage with a sliding scale controlled by the workers institutions; the right to job security, the repeal of antiterrorist laws, the punishment of those politically responsible for the massacre of the eight journalists, the refusal of unemployment; non-payment of the external debt, nationalization of banking, foreign trade and the key sectors of industry, the reorganization of the economy on the basis of the interests of the workers and people.
That is to say, an anti-imperialist program that incorporates democratic and
On September 15, 1982, a meeting of the PRT and PST/POMR parliamentary delegations Bloc: its first intervention was to challenge the Manuel Ulloa cabinet in September 1982 a statement dated December 16, the parlia mentary Socialist Bloc pledged to make the "voices of the exploited heard in parliament' and from this position to give impetus to the revolutionary mobilization of the masses. 3. On January 26, 1983, a group of journalists went to Uchuraccay, Ayacucho department, to investigate the January 22 assassination of seven members of the Shining Path guerilla organization that had been blamed on peasants from a nearby village. After crossing a variety of police checkpoints, the eight journalists and their guides arrived in Uchuraccay where they were lynched, allegedly by the local population that had mistaken them for guerillas. An investigation recognized the methods used by the 'sinchis, an antisubversive police agency that urges isolated and often predominantly illiterate peasant communities to oppose all strang-
The sinchis had encouraged them to kill any intruder in their community, because 'friends arrive by air' (i.e. helicopters) whereas enemies 'come on foot'. 4. Actions by workers and the people of these mining centers led to large mobilizations (strikes, occupations of churches, and marches on the capital) demanding payment of their backpay and opposing layoffs and the bankruptcy practices of the bosses. 5. The CGTP is the largest Peruvian trade-union confederation and is led by the Communist Party. The United Left (IU) is an electoral coalition that was set up under the pro-Soviet PCP-Unidad's hegemony with the People's Democratic Union (UDP), a grouping of centrist organizations, for the 1981 municipal elections. It was ARI's political failure in 1980 that allowed the PCP to win over some of these centrist formations and organize this regroupment around its reformist strategy in order to regain the leadership of the mass movement it lost for a while during the FOCEP and ARI experiences. 6. The Workers, Peasants, Students and People's Front (FOCEP) was an electoral coalition set up for the 1978 elections to the Constituent Assembly that brought together most of the Peruvian forces identified with Trotskyism, Maoist and centrist organizations, and significant sectors of workers and peasants' 'class struggle' unionism.
The Revolutionary Left Alliance (ARI), was regroupment of almost all revolutionary forces in the workers movement struggling for a workers government without bosses erals'. that was set up to support our comrade Hugo Blanco's candidacy in the spring 1980
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INTERNATIONAL VIEWPOINT presidential elections. ARI included the UDP, a coalition of centrist and Maoist groups. Unfortunately, united framework ARI broke up before the vote was even held, and it could not appear as the workers and people's pole that it should have been in the electora arena. 7. The American Revolutionary People's Alliance (APRA) was the dominant formation of the bourgeoisie until the 1980 elections, at which time it suffered a crushing electoral defeat that profited Belaunde Terry's People's Action (AP) which then took power.
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ged through meetings on the Copenhagen to Paris Women's Peace March in 1981.
Because there was already a widespread network of