Founding conference of
Solidarity held in US ON MARCH 30, three US organizations - International Socialists, Workers Power and Socialist Unity - voted to form a new revolutionary socialist organization, to be named Solidarity. Members of several city-wide collectives as well as unaffiliated individual socialist activists participated in the conference. Many of them decided to join the new organization bringing the initial membership to 230. In all, there were some 200 participants, supporters and observers the contemporary problems of the Central American revolution, the relationship of Marxism to feminism and the political impact of the United States' economic decline. There were also workshops on the anti-intervention, women's liberation and labor movements.
Solidarity, as an organization, has set for itself the goal of helping to overcome the splintering of revolutionary groups which has facilitated the ideological drift to the right by the majority of radical activists. Many have become apologists for the rightward course of the Democratic Party itself, allowing their preoccupation with the electoral health of "left" candidates in the Democratic Party to divert resources from the building of independent social movements.
Through its sponsorship of Against Through its sponsorship of Against the Current, a bimonthly Marxist magazine, as well as through its involvement in the antiwar, anti-apartheid, labor and women's movement, Solidarity will be able to have an exchange with activists and left intellectuals on the most important political questions facing the social movements.:
One of the notable features of the conference was the approval of a series of motions that were developed as a result of several meetings of the women's caucus. These motions established a five-member Feminist Commission, which is charged with providing national coordination of the local women's work groups, organizing the national women's caucus and "encouraging the development of women as full participants and as leaders within the organization, both in theoretical and practical spheres."
A motion to establish a mandatory quota of 50 per cent representation of women on all leading bodies of Solidarity within one year, which had aroused controversy both within the women's caucus and among the delegates, was tabled. A substitute motion, establishing equal represenItation of women on all leading bodies ias an important goal for the organizaition, was passed overwhelmingly. In fact, women now make up 45 per cent of the new National Committee, a somewhat higher percentage than exists in the membership as a whole.
Supporters of the Fourth International formed a Fourth International Caucus in order to continue the relationship that Socialist Unity, as a separate organization, had previously had with the world movement.
The conference heard greetings from representatives of the United Secretariat of the Fourth Interna tional, from the Mexican Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT) and from Sidney Lens, the noted author and peace activist. The
International Viewpoint 5 May 1986 attending the conference. LARRY COOPERMAN
A liaison committee for the three groups had been established in June 1985. This body had been charged with directing and attempting to expand the regroupment process. It prepared the political resolutions and organizational motions that were discussed by the conference. 'The Basis of Pol
THE POLITICAL resolution presented at the Solidarity conference established the fundamental framework of the regroupment process itself. In a section entitled, "The
Basis of Political Agreement," the draft outlines the principles upon which the efforts to unite the US revolutionary left are based. It states:
"Capitalism is an outmoded system now deep in crisis ... This system must be replaced by a rational, democratic economic system: socialism. ...The aim of this organization is to build a revolutionary socialist movement of the working class which ends the political rule of the capitalist class and private ownership of the means of production.
*The American working class needs its own independent political party as a first step toward the mass political socialist movement. We join in the fight for a labor party.
We are against support for the
Democratic Party. The trade unions must again become militant, democratic vehicles for class struggle.
We participate in the fight to rebuild the labor movement, organize the unorganized and reform the unions.
"Racial and national oppression divide the working class and create poverty and misery for millions. We join in the fight against racism, for affirmative action, and in support of movements for liberation of oppressed national minorities. We 12
In an expression of unanimity that reflected ten months of joint work and discussion on the national and local levels, the main political resolution was approved without a dissenting voice [see box].
The conference included plenary discussions on several topics, including itical Agreement' fight for women's liberation and for women's equality today. The oppression of women within the family and in society divides the working class, keeps women's wages low and burdens women unequally in the task of social reproduction. We are supporters of lesbian and gay liberation and of their struggle for civil rights.
*We are internationalists. We support movements for national liberation throughout the world and the struggles of workers for better living standards and social and political power everywhere. Whatever may be our differing theoretical analyses of the Eastern European states, we are unconditional defenders of Polish Solidarnosc and other struggles for genuine trade unionism and workers' democracy in Eastern Europe.
*We actively oppose the growing drive towards war, whether that be in the form of intervention in Central America, the Middle East or elsewhere, or the buildup of the US war machine. We fight for unilateral disarmament in the US and, at the same time, we extend our solidarity to the independent peace movements in Eastern Europe.
"Toward these ends we are committed to building an effective revolutionary socialist organization in the US, capable of acting together without presenting a monolithic face to the world or engaging in pretenses of being 'the vanguard.' "
conference was attended by observers from many organizations, including the Alliance for Socialist Action (Canada), Gauche Socialiste (Quebec), International Socialist Organization, North Star Network, Socialist Party, Revolutionary Socialist League, Palestine Human Rights Campaign, Chicago Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador and the Fourth Internationalist Tendency.
A Saturday evening rally featured Dennis Mumble, an exiled supporter of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU); Don Wagner, a representative of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign; and Ricardo Pascoe of the PRT.
The conference ended on a lively note as the name of the new organization was chosen. Spontaneously, many delegates began to sing the traditional labor song, "Solidarity Forever," indicating their preference for the name that was adopted shortly afterwards.
IN USA.
International Viewpoint 5 May 1986