Québec
Slow progress
The convention of Quebec's PDS marks another small step towards the construction of an anti-capitalist party. Marc Bonhomme As Canadian politics shifts to the right, Quebec's pro-independence Parti de la démocratie socialiste (PDS) faces big difficulties. Despite the most ambitious left election campaign in Quebec history, the party won only 0.6% of votes in the November 1998 election-compared to almost 1% in 1994.
However, PDS membership increased from 300 to 600 during the election campaign. Delegates to the June 1999 convention represented a relatively good mix of gender and age, with a strong presence of activists in popular social movements.
But there was a disappointing under-representation of trade union activists, Although dissident labour activists have started to regroup in Quebec in the last two years, most are reluctant to break with the bourgeois nationalist Parti Québecois (PQ), which enjoys the loyal support of most union leaders. Despite the PQs disappointing record in government, there is still little support for an independent labour party.
English speakers and immigrants are still under-represented in the PDS. These groups are uncomfortable, even hostile to the idea of an independent Quebec, and progressives from these communities prefer to be active in the cosmopolitan internationalist or ecologist movements-where they are overrepresented. Many such activists think that these activities allow them to be more internationalist than the "nationalist" Frenchspeaking indépendantistes.
Despite these real difficulties, the PDS could certainly have done more to reduce its isolation from these communities. Closer links to other anti-capitalist parties in English-speaking Canada and the USA would also have helped.
There is little love lost between the PDS and Quebec's broader (vaguer) other left party, the Rassemblement pour une alternative politique
(RAP). Many PDS members were angry that RAP made a last-minute entry into the November 1998 elections, splitting the left vote, and refusing to discuss a coalition.
The RAP seems to have considered the PDS as an agglomeration of activists plundered, rather than an
Unfortunately, the justified eginning of a sectarian attitude towards the RAP. But leaders of both parties met in July 1999, and agreed to PDS participation in the
RAP conference/ seminar on left unity later this year.
No-one knows how the relationship between the two forces will develop. Now that the RAP has adopted a somewhat anticapitalist programme, the concevably merge with them into a kind of new social democratic party, with an anticapitalist current. Another possible outcome is an electoral coalition. Then again, the RAP may decide to reposition itself as a movement rather than a party, and give (or not)
electoral support to the PDS.
Many PDS activists are frustrated with these uncertainties.
But according to one conference delegate, "whether we like it or not, the RAP reflects the state of mind of the majority of left activists."
Quebec has a sad history of bungled left attempts to create a labour or socialist party. In the 1960s the Parti socialiste du Québec (PSQ)
failed to recognise the centrality of the independence question; in the
'70s many leftists were distracted into sectarian ultra-left Marxist-Leninist experiments; and in the
1980s the
Mouvement socialiste (MS) refused to develop beyond the purely electoralist sphere of politics, despite the clear beginnings of the neoliberal counter-offensive.
The challenge
The purpose of the PDS convention was "to built the party in the social struggle"-to go from an anti-capitalist programme to an anti-capitalist practice. To do so, the party decided to propose to the social movements a campaign for an investment of at least C$10 billion in the public services, for
6I2 Canada * employment, equality and for jobs.
Cutbacks since 1994 by Canadian and Quebec governments have given rise to a vast list of demands by unions and popular groups to increase social public spending
Now that Canada has achieved balanced budgets, these social demands are being thwarted by the bosses, who insist on major tax cuts so that Quebec can compete with Ontario and the USA in the context of NAFTA and the WTO
The convention overwhelmingly backed the campaign, but showed a strong hesitation to get involved at the grass roots level. Because of the weakness of the social organisations and of the fightback movement, because of an absence of strategical debates due to the strength of the neoliberal paradigm and its correlated social partnership strategy and because of the bad memories of the 70's Marxist-Leninist practice of 'conquering the leadership' of the social movements. But the need for such a campaign is greater than ever. The PQ may even win over the public sector unions, creating a further demobilisation. Formally organised into a Front commun, the public sector unions are paralysed by bickering over the spoils of the expected budget surplus. Their leadership and even a majority of activists accept the neoliberalism paradigm.
The incapacity of the public sector unions to mobilise themselves to back the courageous and very popular "illegal" nurses strike in July 1999 is a bad omen. * • The Parti de la démocratie socialiste (PDS) severed its links with Canada's social democratic NDP in 1989,
In 1991, the party declared its support for the independence of the mainly French-speaking "province". In 1992, it democratised, allowing political currents to enter as collective members. Gauche socialiste, the Quebec section of the 4th International, joined in 1994.
In 1994 the party rejected NAFTA, and in 1996 it replaced its social-democrat programme with anti-capitalist demands, including a freeze on the interest payments on the public debt and the expropriation of the banks. The current name was adopted in 1995. In the 1998 elections the party presented 97 candidates in Quebec's 125 ridings (constituencies). [MB] * International Viewpoint #314 September 1999 9
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GOLKAP tremendous problems in rebuilding a movement destroyed by the 1965 coup, and savagely repressed for the
Uns 06 last 35 years.
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Most of today's revolutionary left grew out of the 'Marxist-
Leninist' student discussion groups which were established in the main Javan universities in the late 1980s.
The power of
The Philippine Communist
Party served as example and provided some training.
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In the 90s most of the propaganda Indonesian discussion groups moved away from Maoismin a process that involved a series of splits-and focused their energies on the urban population. Mass protests against the Suharto regime enabled these groups to test their ideas in practice, and win a new generation of militants. Most revolutionary Marxists have gravitated towards the student-based Peoples Democratic Party (PRD) Others say it is too soon to 'emerge' from clandestine labour organising work. In the following pages we present both perspectives, and an interview with recently released labour leader Dita Sari. 10 International Viewpoint #314 September 1999