AROUND THE WORLD
Belgium
POS campaign results THE OCTOBER 13 legislative and regional elections saw the return to power of Martens and a coalition government of Social Democrats and Liberals.
The POS/SAP (Belgian section of the Fourth International) waged a massive campaign in these elections to present a working class alternative to the crisis.
The party fielded 232 candidates and got 17,000 votes. This was 2,000 more votes than in the legislative elections in 1981 but about 8,000 less than in the European elections. However, the important thing was that in the three main industrial centres in Wallonia - Liege, Mons and Charleroi, the POS was greatly strengthened, thus demonstrating the audience it is beginning to have within the trade union movement.
Over half the candidates on the POS/SAP list were independent trade unionists who had chosen to stand on the POS/SAP ticket because of the work the comrades had done in the recent strikes. They were also attracted by their excellent campaign on the theme of "The creation of 700,000 jobs is possible if all social needs are met.' Portugal PS loses out THE OCTOBER 6 elections in Portugal the eleventh set of elections since the April 25 revolution) brought victory for the right wing parties and, for the Socialist Party (PS), the worst result in its history with 20% of the votes cast. This compares with 36% in the 1983 legislative elections and means that Mario Soarez, the PS leader has lost his chance to stand in the presidential elections.
The elections were also marked by the spectacular breakthrough of the PRD (Democratic Renewal Party) which got 18% of the votes. Made up of dissidents from the Socialist Party and enjoying the support of the current president Eanes, this party looks set to become a significant third force in Portuguese politics.
The fact that some workers are looking for a real alternative to the policies of austerity implemented by the last government was demonstrated in the votes for revolutionary didates rections candidates which were doubled in an ese elections. The People's
International Viewpoint 28 October 1985
Democratic Union received 1.27% and the PSR (Revolutionary Socialist
Party), Portuguese section of the
Fourth International, who put up
350 candidates, got 36,000 votes - that is 0.65%. They centred their attack on austerity and the need to mobilise for action at the base.
The PSR lists included a number of leaders of different far left currents as well as a significant number of trade union leaders.
Obituary
Manuel Sacristan
AT THE end of August, Manuel Sacristan died in Spain. Less well known in other countries than in Spanish speaking ones, Sacristan was considered in Spain and Latin America to be one of the most important Marxist theoreticians and philosophers of the last decades. In Combate, paper of the section of the Fourth International in the Spanish State, comrade Jaime Pastor characterised Sacristan as "the foremost Marxist of exceptional stature since the defeat of 1939." We agree completely with this assessment.
Manuel Sacristan is above all remembered as the translator of the complete works of Georg Lukacs. It should be noted in this context that these translations are much more complete and of a better quality than those that exist in French and English. The prestige of these translations is considerable, as much in academic circles as among Marxists. But Sacristan was much more than a Marxist philosopher. He was one of the rare theoreticians after the Second World War who managed to personify 'open Marxism' , breaking with the dogmatism and talmudism, which limits itself to the eternal search for quotes from the classics to "demonstrate" that there is nothing new under the sun. To be capable of applying the Marxist method in a living and creative manner to new phenomena and to new currents of opinion, without throwing into question the internal cohesion of Marxism, that is what distinguishes a real theoretician from an eclectic gossip or a charlatan who continually repeats that it is necessary to "pose" a thousand questions, without being capable of answering a single one of them.
Manuel Sacristan was fundamentally antistalinist, antibureaucratic and against class collaboration. A former
Readinist Part of Cafelonia (PUcted leading militant of the Unified Catalan CP), he followed a trajectory of a left communist oppositionist. This became apparent on the publication of two critical communist journals, Materiales and Mientras Tanto. In these journals he began to elaborate radical positions on the issue of ecology and on the question of the danger of nuclear war, which led him to challenge - at least implicitly -the Leninist strategy of world socialist revolution. We had occasion to polemicise with him on these questions.
Manuel Sacristan was a great Marxist intellectual of the stature of other outstanding theoreticians like Franz Mehring and Georges Plekhanov - great men who possessed a great confidence linked to a real humanity. The fraternal relations that Trotskyist militants were able to establish with him, at a time when most people in the Communist parties would have nothing to do with our movement, was evidence of these great qualities which are indispensable to the construction of a new world. Our move. ment, all non-dogmatic Marxists and the world of tomorrow will honour the memory of Manuel Sacristan.
Ernest Mandel ERRATA wo signiticant errors slipped int ecent issues of International Vieu point, one of inadvertence and the other of mis-information. In Ernest Mandel's article in No. 83, September 30, 1985, "The first six months of Gorbachov's reign." In the first column of the first page it should have said that economic growth rates have been falling in the Soviet Union for the last "two decades" and not the last "two years."
In Issue No. 77, June 3, 1985, in the "Around the World," column, the information that Udi Adiv, an Israeli political prisoner, was released in the framework of the prisoner exchange negotiated by Ahmed Jibril of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command proved to be without foundation. Adiv was released in accordance with an established procedure for "time off for good behavior," which, however, has been denied to political prisoners in the past. This unusual step has aroused speculation, but no basis in fact has been produced for linking it to the prisoner exchange.
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