3.4. The policy of the reformist leaderships induces a dangerous social and ideological decline in the workers movement, reducing further and further the social base and ability to generate demands of the unions: their priorities are to the workers as producers (in the workplace); with an inability to tackle new areas of exploitation and the sphere of reproduction;
Unitaire leaders. In other sectors these groups are confined to part-time, temporary jobs and are open to super-exploitation.
This regressive dynamic aggravates the sclerosis of the traditional workers movement:
there is a risk of reinforcing a "labour aristocracy" spirit amongst the most privileged layers of workers (male, of a certain generation, still in full-time work and with an open-ended contract, earning a relatively high salary), but who also are often the best organised and most class-conscious workers, and historically, the base of trade unionism in imperialist Europe.
the development of "new" social movements in areas forsaken by traditional trade unionism feeds the crisis of the latter, by showing up its inability to present a genuine alternative society; but these social movements do not have sufficient social force to change the unfavourable balance of forces, government or the capitalist system. If they are not, by
* The political situation in imperialist Europe definition, more progressive than the workers movement, they appear today less "integrated", and thus less compromised with capitalism.
3.5. The reorganisation of trade unionism is on the agenda
The deep discrediting of the traditional leaderships and the reduction in the socialisation of their own activist base has created a wider space for debate and action. To occupy this space means first to defen d intransigeantly the living and working conditions of the working class -a terrain abandoned by the reformist leaderships. We have to develop a radical democratic practice: "glasnost" at the heart of the union organisation; democratic organisation in times of struggle; complete information, especially concerning negotiations with the bosses; development of workers self-activity. Finally, we need a radical mutation of the programme, of the political position in society, taking responsibility for all the exploited and oppressed layers, a mutation of methods of leadership and functioning, of public activity.
Clearly, there is a double dynamic -juxtaposed- which varies from country to country, or even within one country. In practically every country, the big union federations are essential for large-scale mobilisation. This is certainly the case where they have kept a quasi-monopoly on trade union representation (in so-called Northern Europe". But even in countries where the trade union landscape is more complex, the central union bureaucracies have been forced, under pressure from the base (relayed by union tendencies or by independent unions) to take the lead in big social movements (ct. Spain, Italy).
Significant union reorganisations have taken place in certain countries. They should be studied in detail in order to advance along the path of a new trade union perspective: the struggle, defeat and current renewal of the TUC (Britain); the failure of Essere Sindacato (in the CGIL) in Italy which was on the threshold of forming a new inter-professional "mass, class trade union", but didn't make the leap; in 28 International Viewpoint
France, with the left majority split in the National Education Centre (FEN). "Class struggle" trade unions have developed outside the big confederations, minorities but with an impact and strong legitimacy in their sector, notably in Italy (COBAS, etc.) and in France (SUD, health sector, etc.). They have not so far constituted a new mass workers union.
We need an overall vision of the particular tactics combining (according to the country) a battle to straighten up the existing union organisations and the regroupment of militant forces outside them. A difficult problem to resolve remains the particular link between the battle union reorganisation and the recomposition of political currents or parties. 4. THE HISTORICAL EXHAUSTION OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AS A CURRENT OF THE WORKING CLASS: SEPARATION FROM THE ORGANISED WORKERS MOVEMENT AND THE WORKING CLASS
4.1. 1989-1992 was marked by a double turning point in the evolution of European Social Democracy.
First, between 1975 and 1990, it had an unprecedented extension of its influence in the working class, and on a scale. It succeeded marginalising, everywhere in Europe, the Cls and the revolutionary left on the electoral and institutional level, and often on the trade union level; in pulling "Gorbachevism" into its orbit, and in winning over big revolutionary or third world liberation organisations. Then, from mid-1991 on, started an unprecedented decline, beginning with the electoral level where a series of grave electoral defeats followed in several countries, revealing a wholesale crisis of orientation, an organisational sclerosis, indeed a deep identity crisis.
This historic crisis does not at all imply the linear extinction of Social Democracy. Because, as long as a big wage-earning class still has to struggle for its living conditions, to use mass trade union organisations inside a democratic capitalist system and thus brought to "cement" its on the legislative and institutional level, there will be space for a political party to organise, detached from the workers movement.
The dominant trend is for a halfspontaneous, half conscious separation between the socialdemocrat parties, on the one hand, and on the other, the trade union and workers movement and working class. This speeds up the evolution of a working class social democrat party into a democratic and progressive party, which tries as hard as it can to escape from the pressure of the working class (and its demands, its mass organisations, its social weight, at the same time as directly capturing the popular vote and staying on top of the social movement when it chooses.
4.2. This dynamic works on four levels:
its classic electoral tactic of "unfailingly" occupying, regularly and mechanically, state institutions through the "opposition cure governmental participation" pendulum has failed for 15 years. The bourgeoisie is in the position of pushing the social democratic party into opposition, or of keeping it there or even dictating severe conditions for its participation in government. Any distancing trom the bourgeois state affects the raison d'être of a "modern" social democratic party and its apparatus.
• entire sections of its popular base have disappeared on the electoral level (towards the right or extreme right); the traditional allegiance is declining, and is not compensated for by the arrival of salaried or comfortable and "modern" petty bourgeois layers, whose support is more unpredictable and limited;
• fissures and sometimes spectacular rifts at the heart of the social democratic bureaucracy, between the political and trade union sectors; have resulted in an organic weakening of the two compared to the bourgeoisie, but also in the eyes of the working class;
• a real programmatic mutation has taken place through the explicit abandoning of any notion of "changing society" and of the traditional arsenal of "left Keynesian" measures — the basic platform of Social Democracy. The latter remains voiceless before neo-liberalism
4.3. This evolution has changed the social position of Social Democracy, in the triangular "bureaucratic apparatus -working class bourgeois state apparatus".
The social democratic leadership, trying at any price to stay in or re-enter