Catalan Communists regroup
The two main groups of Catalan Commu- component of the coalition, preventing
Agreement on Investment and President
Clinton's "fast-track" trade negotiating authority.
If the Washington Consensus is in obvious retreat intellectually, practically and politically, are we at the stage where in polite company we can finally discuss nists have joined with Trotskyists, anar- left opposition to their increasingly social strategies concerned less with inflation, and more with full employment? Less aimed at international competitiveness at all costs, more at meeting basic needs through intelligent subsidies and crosssubsidies? Less with selling the family silver, more with strategic state interventions in areas such as infrastructure, housing and land reform where markets
A worrying sign is the limited discourse on defending the rand from hot money speculators. were three courses of action open to the Bank when the rand came under pressure... 1) leave the rand to find its own level... 2) hike interest rates to squeeze arbitrage gaps and draw in new foreign
3) intervene in the currency
But a fourth option -- capital and exchange controls to guard against speculators while reflation begins - is now more sensible than ever. After the 1994-95 Mexican meltdown, the IMF acknowledged the desirability of controls on inward financial flows (these have also protected Chile and Taiwan). Moreover, as recently as 1990, 35 countries (including South Africa) had a dual exchange rate (although the apartheid-era Reserve Bank did not seem to take enforcement seriously). At the global scale, Nobel Laureate James Tobin has proposed a 0,5% tax on buying and selling foreign exchange.
By all accounts, the biggest threat to global economic order is now the spectre of deflation. In a few months, South Africans taking leadership in the Non-Aligned Movement and a Director's chair at the IMF/World Bank (while retaining the presidency of UNCTAD) should be working feverishly against global financial fragility, in part by promoting the Tobin Tax, global reregulation of finance, and Third World debt cancellation (including apartheid debt).
The historic opportunity for South African global leadership at the end of the 1990s parallels the opportunities for domestic reform witnessed at the decade's outset. The question, then and now is, will we grasp the moment? * © the author, and Business Day, Thursday I1 June. Patrick Bond lectures at Wits University, South Africa.
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR
RESEARCH AND EDUCATION
• 48 bed conference centre with six channel interpretation system, library and television room, ten minutes from the centre of Amsterdam.
tel. (+31) 20/671 7263 fax 673 2106
PO Box 53290, 1007 RG Amsterdam
Netherlands. e-mail <iire @ antenna.ni> chists, radicals and independents in a new organisation, expected to be a close, but sovereign partner of the all-state United Left, headed by Julio Anguita.
The founding conference at the end of May defined Esquerra Unida i Alternativa (EUiA - United and Alternative Left) as a "Catalan, republican, federal, anti-capitalist, internationalist and pro-solidarity political and social movement". It is open to left political parties, organisations and individuals, although membership is always on an individual basis. The 800 delegates represented more than 4,000
Catalonia, a country of six million inhabitants, forming the North-Eastern corner of the Spanish State, regained its autonomous government after the death of the dictator General Franco in 1975. But the Generalitat has always been headed by a bourgeois nationalist coalition. As everywhere else in the Spanish State over the last 20 years, working people in Catalonia have suffered defeat after defeat, retreat after retreat.
The backbone of EUiA is made up of two dissident groups with roots in the strong Communist tradition in Catalonia. The Catalan Communist Party (PCC) was formed in the early 80s in opposition to the "EuroCommunist" development of the PSUC, the "official" Communist
The second ex-CP group, PSUC viu (Living PSUC) was created under a different name about a year ago, in protest at the rightward drift of the Communist-led coalition Iniciativa per Catalunya (IpC). Rafael Ribó and other PSUC leaders
"mothballed" the Communist democratic policies.
The final split came when IU formally broke its links with IpC in protest at its consistently different political line, and open opposition to IU policy.
The Fourth Internationalist group Col.lectiu per una Esquerra Alternativa, (Collective for an Alternative Left) has earned widespread recognition for its commitment and contribution to the project well beyond its numerical strength. From the beginning, the Collectiu, which is based in the SEAT car plant and among public sector workers, saw this project as a chance to create a broad-based organisation capable of beginning to turn the tide. FI supporters won ten of the 90 National Committee seats elected at the conference. Because of the parity list system, half of these are women.
The conference confirmed a number of trends already visible on the Catalan left. Although there is broad programmatic agreement (at least on paper), the various components of the new coalition have different conceptions of the relationship the Catalan coalition should have with IU. This debate influenced the choice of name, with members of all groups (except PSUC viu) divided between supporters of "United and Alternative Left," and "Left Unity," (preferred by those who wanted a greater distance from the Madrid-based United Left.) With only 27 votes dividing the two names, the autonomy of the new organisation remains a prickly question.
There is also a (justified) groundswell of dissatisfaction, cutting across almost all groups, with behind the scenes dealing and a lack of transparency in the way negotiations with IU were handled.
Áware of potential difficulties, the Fl group has insisted on an internal regime based on democracy and participation, an approach to political differences that seeks consensus or compromise wherever possible, the presence of minority currents and independents on all leadership bodies
Most importantly, the Collectiu has argued that the new coalition must set itself the task of re-weaving the social fabric of resistance and re-mobilising the workers, unemployed, marginalised, excluded and downtrodden, rather than confining itself to electoral politics. * 15