AROUND THE WORLD
AROUND
THE
WORLD
IRELAND Anniversary of civil rights movement The anniversary of the start of the mass movement for civil rights, marked by the march to Derry in October 1968, has been an occasion for reflecting on the experience of the twenty-year struggle in Ireland. The following article from the October 13 issue of An Phoblacht, the paper of the Irish republican movement, indicates some of the ideas that are coming to the fore. THE HIGHLIGHT of the Derry '68 Committee commemorative week's series of debates, lectures and workshops was undoubtedly the forum on the theme 19681988. The speakers, who each spoke on the way forward after 20 years, included Gerry Adams [president of Sinn Fein], Bernadette McAliskey, Michael Farrell, Eamonn McCann, Carol Coulter and John McAnulty of People's Democracy [Irish section of
Beginning the debate, Gerry Adams proposed that the building of a mass movement be formally put on the political agenda in the coming year in the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the re-introduction of British troops to the streets of the Six Counties. "The reason why conservatism in this country is so powerful is because of the failure to build a broad-based struggle which could unite all of those people with a stake in an Ireland of equality where the people themselves would gain control.
"I would like to suggest that such a movement be open, democratic, nationally organized, transcending partition and should have the capacity to fuse together all of the disparate strands of discontent in Ireland. We need to have not just a political facet to such a struggle but a movement that reflects our social, economic, cultural and political positions, because imperialism is social, economic and cultural as well
"I would argue that the central objective of such a movement should be national self-determination and that the demand for national self-determination is capable of driving a wedge between those who are leaders of what is called 'constitutional nationalism' and their supporters. We need to show the contradictions between the rhe18 toric that the leaderships of 'constitutional nationalism' use in order to placate their grass roots and the action and practice.
"We have to spend time building a struggle, and I would argue that the lessons of the last 20 years show the potential for building such a movement. A charter of sorts such as the Freedom Charter of South Africa must be built. The people must govem. The people have the right to homes, the people have the right to equality. And the people who have the most to lose and the most to gain - that's people like us, from Derry, Belfast, Dublin and Cork together - should be in the leadership of that movement, fusing together one struggle which will overthrow the conservative regimes in both parts of Ireland and start an irreversible thrust towards national self-determination and socialism."
Adams' call was welcomed by all the speakers on the platform in their speeches. Eamonn McCann wanted to explore further on what political basis such a movement would be built. He felt that if the mass movement was based solely upon the expulsion of the British and the realization of national self-determination it would fall into "all sorts of cul-de-sacs and traps". This theme was taken up by several of the other speakers who pointed out the damage that 60 years of neo-colonialist misrule had done to people in the 26 Counties, to their attitude to national unification and the uneven development in the experience of struggle between people in the North and South.
Carol Coulter said "the existing government in the South has decimated the health service, been responsible for the biggest wave of emigration in 30 years, and has stood idly by while a massive campaign has been waged against women's and trade union rights. If this is going on and we are proposing a national movement, what do we do about these questions?"
Michael Farrell explained how, because of the ferocity of the Orange backlash against the civil rights struggle, the whole energy of the anti-imperialist movement was devoted for a long time to pure physical self-preservation. Consequently, class issues and attempts to make links with the Protestant working class were pushed off the agenda.
"So far we have not achieved a type of freedom which means anything to ordinary working class people. We have only achieved a type of paper freedom, a freedom of colours and flags. We have to put socialism back on the agenda, so that when we do come near our objective, we don't find that what we have achieved turns to ashes in our hands."
Bernadette McAliskey felt that the charter Gerry Adams proposed should clearly define what was meant by freedom.
"It must include the basic freedom of women, the basic rights of workers and all the basic rights which would of themselves predetermine the type of society we are struggling for."
She said that she did not accept that posing national self-determination as the central demand in this country, along with clearly defining what we mean by the kind of country we want to build, is, in the present climate, a backward nationalist demand.
"I believe it is a progressive demand that can be related to the day-to-day living conditions of the people in the problems they are fighting.
"Not only can we, but we must, begin to build a broad movement and a vehicle which allows us to move together and to move separately, and to raise the central issues. Then we will be creating the confidence and the beginnings of an alternative." * GERMANY Protests against the IMF An interesting aspect of the recent antiIMF demonstrations in Berlin was coordination between protesters in the East Germany and West Germany. The following article from the September 29 issue of Sozialistiche Zeitung, the paper of the United Socialist Party, to which West German Fourth Internationalists belong, describes this development. IN EAST GERMANY, you have to be in the opposition in order to be able to make a thoroughgoing criticism of the capitalist world economic order. While "the capital city Berlin," in return for hard currency, declared itself willing to work together with the capitalist West and put its hotels at the disposal of the bankers, opposition groups decided to held a week of actions against the IMF.
They began on Friday with a solidarity concert. At the weekend, a seminar on a "Just world economic order," took place in the Sophia church. It closed with a religious service, in which 800 people participated. A pilgrim's march among several churches was banned, as was a vigil in front of the US embassy.
The 60 participants in the seminar, who came from all over East Germany, criticized the role of the IMF and World Bank, which organized poverty for the peoples." They had invited representatives of the liberation movements and experts from the East bloc countries. The latter, many of whom were university professors, expressed a position close to the goverment — the IMF and the World Bank were "ob-
jective technical enforcers" of a world economic order that for the moment could be superceded. Moreover, the developing countries had no chance to take a socialist road. Radical criticism of the IMF was, therefore, "Luddism."
This was not an ideological dispute. The debate was potentially explosive for the Eastern countries, since the participants criticized countries like Poland, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, China (all members of the IMF, and entry of USSR is also being discussed), which are trying to escape from economic bungling by reintroducing a market economy. Instead of this, the participants demanded that the "countries of actually existing socialism" offer proposals for a world economic order based on solidarity.
Likewise, they expressed criticism of the reform course in the Soviet Union and demanded that control of the social means of production in "actually existing socialism" be fundamentally transformed on the basis of socialist planned economy ("democracy of workers' councils with self-management).
The organizers drew up the following statement: "We oppose the capitalist social system, along with its laws and institutions, which currently govern the world economic order. This system is based on exploitation, and widens the gap between the poor and the rich. We oppose also the structures in the countries of actually existing socialism, which expose the peoples of this part of the world to the effects of the capitalist world economy, and prevent the development of alternative international economic relations.
"We have common interests, but we are very well aware of the fact that achieving these interests in East and West poses quite different tasks. We firmly oppose any attempt to falsely present our criticism of our own system as advocacy of the other." * INTERNATIONAL Symposium on Bukharin BETWEEN October 10 and 13 an international symposium was held on the thought of Nikolai Bukharin in Wuppertal, West Germany, under the auspices of the town's university. It was an exceptional event, first of all because of its composition. The hundred or so academics present brought together official representatives from the Soviet Union, such as Professor V.A. Koslov from the Marxist-Leninist Institute, as well as from "informal" groupings. Chinese scholars were present, including the director-on-leave of the Peking Institute of Marxism-Leninism/Mao Zedong Thought, Professor Su Shaozhi. Also at the symposium were important experts on the Soviet Union from Britain, America, France, Italy, Scandinavia, Germany, Portugal and Austria. These included Professor Moshe Lewin, Theodore Shanin, Sidney Heitman and Michal Reiman.
In addition there were representatives of the Prague Spring; scholars from Yugoslavia, Hungary and Bulgaria; leaders of the DKP (West German Communist Party) and left wing social democrats from West Germany and Britain; Bukharin's daughter, Dr. Gurvich-Bukharina; and several representatives from the revolutionary Marxist current, including Pierre Broué and Emest Mandel.
The event was also extraordinary because of the freedom and tolerance of the discussions, with all points of view being expressed without no exceptions. All the aspects of Bukharin's activity were examined objectively and critically, with no sacred cows and no reticence about pointing up the contradictions of his thought and po-
It would be no exaggeration to say that such a clash of different opinions, with Soviet and Chinese scholars freely discussing with each other and often at loggerheads, and with the participation of Trotskyists and left social democrats, would have been impossible in at least the last 60 years, if not longer. It is a measure of the progress — certainly still too limited to the academic/intellectual sphere — of workers' democracy and scientific freedom achieved on an international scale over the past few
Towards the end of the symposium, we proposed that a similar event be held soon on the thought of Leon Trotsky, a proposal that was warmly applauded by the hall.
The high scientific level of the contributions, whether specialized or generalized, also made this an exceptional meeting. New information came to light on Bukharin's writings: an until now unknown exchange of letters between Lenin and Bukharin; equally unknown aspects of his
AROUND THE WORLD activity at the head of the Comintern; some of his little known criticisms, written in Aesopian language, of the Stalin regime durthe last years of his life. Some interesting exchanges and discussions took place touching the work of Bukharin as a philosopher (and notably his relations with Bogdanov), and his intervention in the literary debates of the 1920s and 1930s.
But the discussion, inevitably, centred around Bukharin's conception of the New Economic Policy and the relations between the market economy and planned economy, or more exactly the place of market mechanisms in building socialism. Here also, the very rich debates were entirely unrestricted, in spite of the pressure of historical and existentialist pressure that incontestably bore down on the participants from the postcapitalist countries.
In fact, between them, those at the symposium represented hundreds of years in Nazi concentration camps, in Stalin's gulags, in the jails of the "cultural revolution" and in imperialist prisons. In a way, they also represented the survivors of the wave of demoralization/privatization after May '68 (or, more precisely, after 1975) - including on a more modest scale young
In these conditions, it is even more remarkable that the prevailing spirit among the overwhelming majority of participants was turned towards the future and not the past, optimistic in terms of the possibilities for human progress. And a good number of those at the symposium were optimistic about a socialist future for humanity too.
The symposium's organizers should be thanked — in particular comrade Theodore Bergmann, an ex-militant of the Brandler group in Germany - for having made such an exceptional event possible. * 19
Zhao Ziyang's new clothes — II