AROUND THE WORLD
'Fourth Interationalist Tendency' formed in US mittee and three national coordinators to help organize our work and to guarantee that we function in a cohesive and centralized fashion.
The F.I.T. campaigns for readmission into the party of our tendency members and of all others unjustly expelled for their political views as part of the leader-
This article was published in the Bul- active and most conscious supporters of letin In Defense of Marxism, New York, No 4, March 1984. It has been abridged
On the weekend of February 3-5, expelled Socialist Workers Party (SWP) Minneapolis, [Minnesota] in response to the January 17 call for the formation of a Fourth Internationalist Tendency. As a result of recommendations meeting and subsequent decisions by local groups, the F.I.T. was constituted as a national organization and has local committees functioning in nine cities. Its members are discussing final formulations of the F.I.T. platform, to be printed in Bulletin No. 5.
The members of the F.I.T. all agree that its political priority is to participate in the absolutely essential process of. theoretical and programmatic discussion which has been placed on the agenda by the [SWP] leadership's attack on Trotskyism. Always in the past, when revolutionary Marxists have been faced with
Trotskyism have been expelled, and the leadership has substituted a campaign of slander and personal vilification for infomed political discussion and debate. All of this makes our task more difficult and changes the forms that our programmatic and theoretical struggle will take. But it does not alter the basic content of the fight that must be waged to maintain the SWP as a revolutionary party.
The F.I.T. does not want to put any organizational barriers in the way of the necessary discussion of political program with the members of the SWP. We are not trying to build a new organization in opposition to or as a substitute for the SWP. We have, however, been forced to organize ourselves outside the party because we have been bureaucratically expelled. In each city where supporters of our tendency exist we are constituting local organizing committees. also elected a National Organizing Comship purge. We have endorsed the Bulletin in Defense of Marxism which was started in December by Frank Lovell, and we will continue to publish it and other materials as our major contribution to the discussion in the SWP and the Fourth International. Other priorities will be our own education and the circulation of International Viewpoint, the biweekly magazine that reflects the views of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International.
We plan to actively support and participate in the public campaigns of the SWP, most importantly the 1984 MasonGonzalez election campaign, but also in defense work, Militant sales, forums, etc. And we hope to work in a fraternal way with party members who participate in their unions, in Central America and Caribbean solidarity work, women's liberation activities, the Black struggle, and other mass movements where we too will be present and active.
La fundamental programmatic challenge of this kind, the response has been to subordinate everything else to a defense of Sri Lankan women workers defend living standards our theory.
This is because we understand that the program is the party, and defense of the party means first and foremost a fight to defend the program. Nothing else the party does, important as it may be, can actually lead to our goal - the overthrow of class society and the initiation of a new era of human solidarity and liberation - if we lose sight of the basic lessons of the past codified in the historic program of the SWP and the Fourth International.
The last time our movement in the United States faced a challenge of the same theoretical scope as the one presented today by the Barnes leadership was during the 1939-40 fight against the petty-bourgeois opposition of BurnhamShachtman-Abern. At that time the response of Trotsky and Cannon was the same as we propose today - mobilize the ranks of the party, take on the programmatic challenge as our number one priority, and defeat the revisionists politically.
In the 1939-40 struggle the proletarian Marxist current was a majority in the party leadership and ranks, although a slim majority. Today we are, at least so far, a small and persecuted minority. The 26
Thirteen hundred women workers are presently in struggle in the Polytex textile factory in Sri Lanka, the largest textile factory Colombo free trade zone. This strike is led by the Industrial Transport and General Workers Union.
Polytex is controlled by big Ceylonese and Hong Kong firms. Since 1978 Chinese technicians have been training the women workers to produce quality textiles for export to Europe and the US.
In December 1982 the workers, 95% of whom are women, went on strike for a wage increase to 22 rupees a day, and a bonus for reaching the quota. The demands were won and the strike ended in mid-January 1983 An important factor in its success was the international solidarity achieved.
A new conflict erupted in 1983 when management refused to recognise that production goals had been met, and thus to pay the bonus of 100 rupees per month. They also demanded that the union agree not to oppose disciplinary action against workers who do not reach the production goals.
Management then began a campaign of harassment, sending warning letters to the employees. On February 15, 1984 they sacked 7 women union activists.
The women went on strike two days later. Their main demands are for the payment of the, as yet unpaid, monthly bonus; a daily rate of pay of 30 rupees and reinstatement of the 7 women.
This conflict has obviously been provoked by management to smash the union. Management says that the government is primarily concerned with pro. tecting' foreign investors from the organised workers movement - in the free trade zone strikes are forbidden.
The union has appealed for international support and financial aid, as it is not able to pay so many strikers for very long. Send letters of support to the striking women: C/O Industrial Transport and General Workers Union, 53 Rajamalwatte Road, Colombo 15. Letters of protest to: Mr Sohly Captain, Managing Director, Polytex Garments Ltd, Hemas Building, 3rd Floor, Colombo 1; and Minister of Labour, Labour Secretariat, Colombo 5.
International Viewpoint 7 May 1984
Uruguayan PST-U asks for recognition as
Fourth Intemational section
The second congress of the Socialist Workers Party of Uruguay (PST-U) took place last January. The first point on the agenda was the question of the international affiliation of the organisation.
Representatives of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, and the International Committee (IC), led by Pierre Lambert's Internationalist Com-
Moreno current. As this current refused to accept the international commission of enquiry proposed by the PST-U, the congress demanded that it stop this campaign and make a public self criticism. congress showed itself open in inviting all the Uruguayan activists who remained with the International Workers League (LIT) led by Moreno at the time of the 1980 break to participate in the congress with full delegates' rights.
This congress demonstrated the existence of a party forged by ten years of opposition to the dictatorship. Particularly to its credit are the strong workers implantation and the regular publication, over six years, in the country itself, of a journal that has now reached its munist Party in France, were invited to The ORMDS) of Brazi asks to affiliate
The PST-U leadership considers the split from the Fourth In- to Fourth International ternational by the Lambert current, and that led by Nahuel Moreno with which it was itself associated, in 1979 as irresponsible, although it considers there have been recent positive developments in the political line of the IC. By a large majority it agreed to ask for recognition as the Uruguayan section of the Fourth International at the next world congress.
The congress took place only a few days after the January 18 general strike and in a situation very marked by the vigorous rise of the mass movement over the last year. The organisation decided to integrate the PST-U into the Frente Amplio at every level. This broad front first appeared at the time of the 1971 elections. Marking an attempt to break with the traditional two party system of Uruguay, it won over 20 per cent of the votes, and was the largest minority in the capital, Montevideo. It reappeared in November 1983 in the upsurge of the mass movement and the reorganisation of the trade-union movement. Composed of the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, Christian Democracy and a grouping known as the Independent Left, the Frente Amplio also has 20 local committees in Montevideo.
Against the transitional plan put forward by the dictatorship for the period until the November elections, the PST-U counterposes the demand for the immediate re-establishment of all democratic, political and trade-union freedoms, a punishment of torturers and the calling of a Constituent Assembly. Instead of the bourgeoisie's plans for a national agreement and social pact, it puts forward workers demands, wage increases in line with inflation, rehiring of all those laid off and non-payment of the foreign debt. The PST-U is working to build the PIT (inter-union coordinating body called the general strike) as the single workers federation, in the tradition of the National Convention (CNT), banned by the dictatorship over ten years ago.
On organisational questions the congress showed itself to be firm but open. Firm in categorically and unanimously condemning the campaign of calumnies directed at two PST-U leaders by the International Viewpoint 7 May 1984
The second congress of the Revolutionary Marxist Organisation (Socialist Democracy) [ORM(DS)] took place in March
The organisation was founded in 1981. It is the result of a process of revolutionary regroupment on the basis of two programmatic agreement on the key questions in the class struggle, and practical agreement in building the PT.
The different elements now organised in the ORM(DS) were the first of all the revolutionary groups to commit themselves wholeheartedly to building the PT as an independent workers party, organised at the grass roots in groups of activists. Building a revolutionary party with mass influence in Brazil requires combining the work of building the PT with bringing together all the revolutionary
This is neither an entryist orientation, nor simply a tactical relationship to the PT, but a real effort to build a militant mass party. This conception was reconfirmed by the second congress of the ORM(DS) at the same time as the discussion of a first balancesheet of the PT and the new tasks on the agenda.
By a large majority, the congress also took the decision to ask for recognition as the Brazilian section of the Fourth International. The ORM(DS) - and before that the different groups that came together to form it - have had fraternal and active relations with the Fourth International for several years. cision to join the Fourth International is thus the logical outcome of this process of collaboration. concerning the political situation today in
Firstly, on the situation in the trade-union movement, given the split that took place in 1983 between the CUT (United Confederation of Workers), led by unionists linked to the PT, and the Congress of the Working Class (Conclat) which is organised by Communist Party activists and a section of the 'pelego' union bureaucracy, symbolised by the bureaucrat Joaquim de Andrade, presi-
Latin America.
The other debate concerned the curelections, which concentrated on the dietatorship's plans for transition towards a controlled democracy.
On the trade-union front, the ORM(DS) decided to make a priority of strengthening the CUT as a tool for the struggle of the most combative sections of the union movement. At the same time, it reaffirmed the need for unity in action with the reformist bureaucratised forces of the Conclat, and a reunification congress of the two confederations that are being built. The division, delib erately provoked by the bureaucrats and reformists of the CP when they found themselves in a minority on the eve of the second congress of the working class and the foundation of a real united confederation, does not aid the combative forces, contrary to the naive belief of many of the CUT union activists.
This division is rather an obstacle to the organisation and mobilisation of a new general strike, bigger than that of June 1983 (see International Viewpoint, No 39, October 31, 1983).
Within the campaign for direct elections the ORM(DS) argues for going further in the slogans directed towards a democratic break with the dictatorship. It particularly emphasises the call for a free, sovereign constituent assembly. It also puts forward the need to constitute a popular and workers bloc in the country around the most urgent demand of the masses: repealing the 1983 decrees on freezing wages; a radical agricultural reform; a break with the International Monetary Fund, by the non-recognition of the foreign debt, starting by declaring a unilateral moratorium on repayment The masses should participate in the campaign for direct elections with their own candidate, the main workers leader in the country, Luis Inacao da Silva, 'Lula'. This will be the proposal of the ORM(DS) members at the PT convention in April. •
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