Blowup in Belgium Sparked by Antilabor Offensive
BRUSSELS--From the beginning of Janvary to the end of March, the Belgian working class waged a struggle unprecedented since the general strike of December 1960-January 1961.
Nonetheless, this upsurge of struggle failed to culminate in a full-scale general strike. The divisionist policy of the CSC (the Catholic union confederation) and the sabotage by the FGTB (the Social Democrat-led confederation) deprived the workers of the victory they earned by their fighting spirit.
The "trains" of antilabor measures are going to go through. It is undeniable that the government has won the first round. But it is equally clear that the workers have not been beaten. And this is not just a generality. Aside from the steelworkers, who engaged in a fight to the finish ("our last battle, " as some of them say), the workers have a clear feeling that they didn't get the chance to really start fighting.
So, the score is one-zero, with the bourgeoisie ahead, but the match is continuing. In fact, the bourgeoisie is engaged in a long-term austerity offensive. It will have to continue this course.
The general results that emerge from three months of intense struggles is rather a strengthening of the workers organizations, a radicalization of the forms of struggle, a very extensive politicalization among thoution to the bureaucracy in the trade unions, and an expanded audience for the revolutionary organizations.
The fifth Martens government, which was formed with great difficulty after the special parliamentary elections of November 8, 1981, is the result of the political turn the bourgeoisie made in the middle of last
The first workers upsurge in the winter of 1980-81 had kept the union bureaucracies from going along with a sharper austerity policy. The capitalists drew the balance sheet of this experience. They decided to dispense with the ponderous and costly mechanism of parliamentary debate and negotiating with the unions.
Thus, the bosses shifted from a gradual austerity carried out on the basis of deals with the bureaucrats to imposing a drastic austerity by force. To accomplish this, they were counting on one big advantage. The Martens-5 government, a coalition of the Walloon and Flemish Christian Democrat and Liberal parties, had gotten the support of the Flemish wing of the CSC. Thus, a dangerous division had been created in the workers movement.
The fundamental strategic problem, therefore, for a counterattack by the workers movement was to overcome the unevenness in the level of consciousness, combativity, and organization of the workers. The basis between the FGTB and CSC which amounts, more or less, to unity in action between the Walloon and Flemish workers (the FGTB being in the majority in the Walloon coun try, the CSC in Flanders).
In view of the nature of the government a homogeneous and determined bourgeois coalition) and the scope of the attack it launched against the main gains of the workers movement, only a decisive response by the workers movement as a whole--unity in action up to and including a general strike--could force the government to retreat. This, in turn, could only lead to the fall of the government. And so the defensive struggle of the workers raised from the outset the questions of a programmatic and governmental alternative.
The national leadership of the FGTB (the current led by Debunne, the general secretary) realized from the start the terms of the problem. It came out quickly in opposition to special powers as a method of governing and against the measures envisaged. But it also defined the limits of a struggle against it. It could not be mere protest, because that was now useless; but it could not be an all-out fight either.
The objective to which the FGTB bureaucracy remains attached is a return to balanced, gradual, and negotiated auster-
How could this knotty contradiction be untangled? Debunne aimed, through a
measured application of pressure, to draw the Flemish CSC into opposition to the
Martens-5 government. This was a sound social agitation between Flanders, the
Walloon country, and Brussels.
--A creeping general strike in the Walcondition for effectiveness against a tough bourgeois government and in conditions of severe unemployment.
political calculation. The problem was that loon country, with successive surges in to do this the only effective means was direct action by the workers, since the Flemish leadership of the CSC was determined to keep the Martens-5 government in office.
The national leadership of the FGTB cautiously launched the movement at the end of January. In doing so, it unleashed a special kind of dialectical relationship between a numerous and combative working class, mass unions (the rate of unionization
Liege, Mons-Borinage, and Charleroi.
--Progress toward unity in action between the FGTB and the CSC in Flanders (but which finally proved to be too slow).
The rise of this movement went through seven stages, which are outlined in the accompanying chronology, until March 27. At that point, the CSC succeeded in breaking the development of unity in action on a national scale. And the Walloon FTB managed to break the creeping general strike in
The main conflict was not between the class and the trade-union structures, but within these structures themselves, between the shop stewards (and sometimes certain sections of the apparatus) and the union bureaucracy •
The decisive role fell, therefore, to the shop stewards and certain union activists. They had at the same time to give leadership and confidence to the rank-and-file workers and fight the bureaucracy's policy of division and sabotage. To play is 85%), a militant working-class and trade-, its part of the country. union vanguard, and a trade-union apparatus reflecting a variety of positions.
The movement grew, generating increasing pressures for united action at the rank-and-file level and leading to more and more audacious methods of struggle. The union apparatuses were temporarily thrown off balance. By the end of March, the country was on the verge of a general strike.
Unlike the general strike of 1960-6l, this development was not the result of a social explosion rapidly going over the heads of the bureaucratic apparatuses and immediately determining the alignment of
To the contrary, it was the outcome of an escalation of militancy that swept away one obstacle after another, to arrive finally at a convergence of three elements:
--Hard-fought struggles of specific sections of workers for their own specific demands in which the steelworkers played the
Each union confederation played its own specific role to prevent the unification of the struggles and their growth into a full-scale general strike.
Thus, an important opportunity was lost. The question has to be asked, Why? It is true that the union bureaucracy was going to do its utmost to prevent a general strike. But on the other hand, the workers had every reason, given the scope of the attack on them, to fight to the finish.
The answer seems to be that the upsurge from below did not have the inherent drive to overcome rapidly enough the inertia created by the union bureaucracy, which relied essentially on the still great unevenness between the Flemish and Walloon workers, between the FTB and the CSC.
The bureaucracies were bypassed, but the most conscious workers looked for this upsurge to be oriented toward the organized structures of the trade-union movement. To undertake a fight to the finish, the workers the role demanded of them, they had to develop a sophisticated strategy to achieve unity in action on the ground and to find ways to get the official cover of the union movement for extending the struggle, without offering any opening for repression by the bosses or the bureaucrats.
Where these conditions were achieved to any extent, the workers demonstrated a marvelous initiative, including in Flanders.
One of the most important results of the struggles was an unprecedented rise in political consciousness. Large layers of workers came to understand the role of the banks and trusts in the crisis; the role of the Social Democracy, which was completely absent from this struggle; and the need for
Id a political solution, which cannot be a new class collaborationist government of the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats; and the role of the union bureaucracy, in the forms that it takes both in the CSC and the FGTB.
main role. These were centered in the Wal-were waiting for directives from their orloon country, and the railroad workers acted as a transmission belt relaying this ganizations.
They wanted the struggle to be waged in a united way, an essential
An intense discussion has now begun throughout the country on a working-class strategy to meet the economic crisis.