"History advances
International VIEWPOINT over scepticism" 100
IN RESPONSE to moods of discouragement in the West European left, the following editorial was written for the May Day issue of Was Tun, the paper of the German section of the Fourth International. It has been somewhat shortened for space reasons. ERNEST MANDEL
The social effects of the long economic depression continue to dominate the world situation. They can be summed up in a single phrase: A worldwide offensive by capital against the working class, against all the oppressed, and against their historic gains. This involves mass unemployment, an accelerated arms race, attacks on the democratic rights of the workers' movement - especially the right to strike and organize — local attacks against the colonial revolution and stepped-up pressure on the Soviet Union. are only seeing the beginning of this
To draw a rough historical parallel, we are still in 1926-28 and not in 1932 or 1938. If the depression goes on for a lot longer, without a historic victory of the working class, without a breakthrough for socialism in decisive countries, then there is a danger of the crisis being "resolved" in a similiar way to that of the first a terrorist dictatorship of capital
At first glance, one might suppose that a grave crisis of the capitalist system could facilitate historic alternative solution, fight for socialism worldwide. That should be all the more true today because in our time the great soothing illusions that were articulated in the classic forms by social democracy and liberal intellectuals have far less credibility than either before World War I or in the 1920s.
Today, far broader circles than are worried by the great dangers that threaten human civilization and even the basic physical survival of humanity. Today, millions of people know that if things go on this way, humanity will be poisoned the pollution it produces and millions more could be plunged into and hunger, not only in the Third World but also in the West. They also know that nuclear death could finish all of us. Many millions more who do not comprehend this rationally, feel it instinctively, and they are as anxious as those who are better informed.
How is it then that despite the deepgoing doubts about the vitality and legitimacy of the bourgeois order, the fight for the socialist alternative is bringing fewer people into motion with less enthusiasm than in the 1920s
There are many aspects to this problem, and some important exceptions, first of all Nicaragua and probably also South Africa.
fundamentally, historical lag between the world crisis of capital and the fight for socialism is explained by the lack of a credible overall social alternative.
The socialist October revolution of 1917 in Russia represented such an alternative, and it was perceived as such, among other things, because the movement prepared major sections of the world working class to see such a revolution as the inevitable outcome of the contradictions of bourgeois society.
In the 1920s and 1930s, and even at the beginning of the 1940s, a large part of the international working class was convinced that the historical answer to the crisis of capital could be summed up in the demand for a "socialist planned economy." Today, confidence in this answer has been deeply shaken.
This is not primarily because of propaganda, because of the ideological offensive of capital, which has succeeded in having an effect. Such propaganda has always been present and was more rampant in the 1920s and in the 1930s than it is today.
The primary reason for the doubts that exist about the socialist answer is the lamentable practical failure of
EDITORIAL social democracy and Stalinism, shown by the real relationships that exist in social democratic and Stalinist-ruled countries.
In neither has the social question been resolved. In neither has exploitation, oppression, social inequality, alienation of labor, human isolation, discrimination against women, or destruction of the environment been radically reduced. The gains remain very limited and insecure. Alternative solutions
It is true that there is a Marxist, that is, scientific explanation for this failure of the traditional workers' organizations. It is no less true that there are alternative solutions to reformism and Stalinism - the democratic power of workers' councils based on genuine socialist democracy, with a legal opposition, with a multiparty system, free trade unions, free access to the media, with public democratic inspection and with control by the working people over the goods they produce.
However, this alternative remains on paper, in the socialist program, movements that represent only a small minority in the workers' movement.
In view of the many failures there have been, the program alone is not enough to overcome the scepticism. Therefore, while millions of people go onto the streets to fight for immediate demands, they are not consciously mobilizing for a socialist defeats just as it did in the past over successes. The fundamental tendencies of our century are the crisis of bourgeois society and the rise of the working class. They are stronger in the long run than disillusion and scepticism. There are today a billion wage workers in the world, incomparably more numerous and better educated than their predecessors 80, 50 or even 30 years ago.
We are fighting against austerity
International Viewpoint 2 June 1986
and the threat of war, against dictatorship and oppression, against women's oppression and racism, against pollution, against inhuman conditions throughout the world. Partial struggles will increasingly bring success. Out of these partial struggles, a new consciousness is growing and a new workers' vanguard emerging.
Like our brothers and sisters in Nicaragua, in Brazil, in Poland and in South Africa, in the near future we will also go onto the streets again in our hundreds of thousands to fight for self-managed socialism. We will have learned from the mistakes of our fathers and mothers and our grandfathers grandmothers. We will have learned what is to be done and what is to be avoided.
We will win this fight in order to assure a future for humanity, a breakthrough to democratic, self-managed power exercised by workers' councils, to a socialist federation of the world,•
PHILIPPINES cussions in progress have been clari-
To start with, it is necessary to revolutionary left found itself on the and the political choices it confronted.
From the standpoint of the growth revolutionary picture of the year 1985 had contra-
New People's Army (NPA) continued to gain stren-
The mass base of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) continued to widen both in the countryside and in the cities.
Although it had to work under-