Building a World Party of Socialists tenced to death. His life was saved only by organizational forms are necessary to carry
### Blanco
Death Threat
A Lima daily reported March 17 that it had received a death threat against the Trotskyist leader Hugo Blanco.
La Republica wrote: "The call came at 4:14 yesterday afternoon. It began:
'Good afternoon. This is the Commandos of the White Right.
"We have decided to take action against Sendero Luminoso (a Maoist guerrilla group that announced plans for a terrorist. campaign shortly before--IV).
"'Our first victim will be Hugo Blanco.
Blanco has nothing to do with any group like Sendero Luminoso, anyone in Peru should know. His so-called involvement in guerrilla warfare in the mid-1960s was in the context of a self-defense campaign of the peasant union he led, which was crushed by the military.
His long political career has been tied up with mass struggles of workers and peasants for a better life. That is what has made him the single most loved and respected political figure in the poor neighborhoods of Lima as well as among the rural poor. And that is what has made him the target of repeated attacks by both the police and the rightist gangs that work with them, in blatant disregard for every law.
In 1978, a rightist gang tried to kidnap him, along with two other members of FOCEP, an electoral front of socialists and anti-imperialists. Despite the fact that more than twenty persons armed with machine guns, transported in cars without license plates, took part in this attack, there was no police investigation.
Only a few months before this latest death threat, Blanco was singled out for brutal beating by the police, as he led a peaceful march of street sellers in the center of Lima. Again there was no official investigation, although Blanco is a member of Parliament. The parliamentary immunity he is entitled to was disregarded arbitrarily by a state in which the police act like gangsters, and gangsters take care of the jobs the police do not want to have to take responsibility for.
In the 1960s, under the same president who currently holds office again in Peru, Fernando Belaunde Terry, Blanco was sena worldwide campaign.
The Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT--Revolutionary Workers Party), Peruvian section of the Fourth International, issued a statement on the death threat saying:
"The defense of companero Blanco must be taken up today with the same method that has proved successful before. We are calling on the workers to mobilize actively against both official and unofficial repression....
"The PRT is calling for a mass meeting for April 7 in the Plaza 2 de Mayo. "
The PRT also issued an appeal for international protests against the threat to Hugo Blanco's life. Telegrams should be sent to President Fernando Belaunde Terry, Lima,
Toward a New
Socialist Party
in West Germany?
In an article in its March 18 issue, Was Tun, the fortnightly paper of the West German section of the Fourth International took up an attempt by leftward moving forces that have been driven out of the German Social Democracy to form a new and more authentic socialist party.
The main figure in this effort, Manfred Coppik, was expelled from the Social Democratic parliamentary fraction for opposing Chancellor Schmidt's nuclear policy. He later left the party.
Was Tun wrote:
"Those who predicted (and hoped) that Manfred Coppik would quickly disappear from politics after he left the SPD have been disappointed. He is still in politics, trying to form a new party left of the SPD, together with Karl-Heinz Hansen. March 20 in Recklinghausen. It was preceeded by an extensive series of public meetings, which stressed the need for a socialist party.
"Thus, a discussion has been opened up about what the basic points of a socialist program have to be today and what sort of out this program.
"Already today, it is fairly clear what circles are well disposed to this project-the Initiative Demokratische Sozialisten
(Democratic Socialists' Initiative Group)
and what ones are not.
"Definitively hostile are the three established parliamentary parties (the SPD,
Christian Democrats, and the liberal FDP)
and the DKP (German Communist Party), which see such a new party as a potentially dangerous rival.
"Interested in the project are the following elements: A) A layer of Social
Democrats who in recent years have been dribbling out of the party to the left. B)
A thin stratum of left activists in the factories and unions, who have been repelled by the SPD but from their practical experience have come to see the need for political action. C) Those on the left wing of the Greens (the environmentalist party)
who are clear about the limitations of the
Green program and see it only as a temporary alternative, as well as many supporters of 'alternative' slates and groups, who see the need for a national organization, a unifying structure, and a clear program.
"A lot of questions still remain open in the development of the Democratic Socialists. The programmatic theses for the Recklinghausen congress have not yet been published.
"Nonetheless, any qualitative advance over the SPD's Bad Godesberg program and the programs of the Greens and the DKP must include the following points:
"--Identification with the working class as the social force that can achieve social change up to, and including, socialist revolution. The entire program must be based on the interests of the workers.
"--An international dimension that points up the common interests of workers in all countries.
"--A rejection of German and all other imperialism and solidarity with the oppressed peoples.
"--A focus on the priorities of the class struggle, in particular on building a class-struggle alternative in the unions.
"Programmatic differentiation from the SPD and its political line is, of course, very important. But there is also a danger of a sectarian self-isolation from the processes going on in the SPD.
"The departure of many of its left members is not going to restore peace and quiet inside the SPD. To the contrary, new sharp clashes are on the horizon, first of all over the NATO rearmament proposal, but also over the decree that unemployed
13
workers have to accept the 'best available' offers for jobs, and over the cuts in social services.
"There are still many thousands of people in the SPD who are opposed to the Schmidt line, but think that the direction of the party can be changed.
"The possibilities for the growth of a party to the left of the SPD will be determined largely by the developments in that party itself. What the SPD leadership wants from the upcoming congress is ratification of the NATO decision, the removal of Eppler from the presidium, and a free hand for Schmidt to make further cutbacks. If it gets this, it seems likely that there will be a new wave of departures. If, on the other hand, the left wins some victories, then there will be a sharpening of the conflict within the party.
"For socialist forces outside the SPD, it is very important to be able to exert an influence in this confrontation and not to cut peals to the left in the SPD to leave the party will not help. As for the many who have already left the party, the decisive think will be their own experience in the struggle for socialist policies.
"In Germany, it is far more important than in most other countries to have a clear position on the kind of society socialists are striving for. In a part of Germany,
German Democratic Socialists
About twelve hundred people attended the conference on March 20 to discuss the founding of a party to the left of the West German Social Democratic Party.
The discussion was open, and representatives of the International Marxist Group, the GIM, German section of the Fourth International, participated.
The main debate was over proceeding to form a new party. Many supporters of the Green, or environmentalist, party argued that there was no room in West German politics for a "second protest party."
The Greens have become established as the main protest party and are in sight of getting the 5% of the vote in elections necessary for representation in parliament.
However, the Greens at the conference divided between those who were oriented toward working-class solutions and those who were essentially cultural radicals.
A large percentage of those in attendance came from formerly or still big Maoist groups
In its April I issue, Was Tun commented on the congress. It said that the initiative had raised the discussion of forming a mass left alternative to the Social Democratic Party to a qualitatively higher level. But that this assembly did not yet represent such an alternative, for the following reasons:
"--The participants were agreed only about what they did not want.
"--The Democratic Socialists are not the expression of a broader left development in the SPD itself. The bulk of critical SPD members and voters remain untouched by this initiative.
"--The Democratic Socialists is not a project of the youth. Thirty- to fifty-yearolds dominated the discussion. Moreover, it has not drawn in the most important activists and leaders of the independent mass movements (the peace and environmentalist movements). They remain outside the Democratic Socialists and the discussion in which they are involved."
The important thing, according to Was Tun, was the continuation of the discussion about how to build a mass socialist alternative:
"The GIM will take part in this discussion about the future of the Democratic Socialists, insofar as we are permitted, within the framework of the Democratic Socialists themselves. We have already proposed a common front of all those who reject the policy of the SPD and who have not wandered off into the fog of the Greens, which obscures the reality of the class there is a state that claims to embody social- that are now in the process of breaking up.
ism, and it represents everything that the
German workers don't want.
"The only thing that socialists can endorse in the East German system is the nationalization of the means of production. The political regime in East Germany has nothing in common with socialism or with actual control of production and the society
A motion calling for the founding of a new party won a considerable majority, but the discussion was dominated by the expression of hesitations about this. It is not yet clear when the proposed founding congress will be held.
struggle."
The GIM spokesperson at the conference also stressed stressed that any mass socialist alternative had to be tied to building class struggle leaderships in the factories and unions.
by the workers.
THIRD ISSUE OF POLISH INPREKOR IS NOW OUT!
"The self-organization of the workers is forcibly restrained. The workers have no independent unions to defend their immediate interests. And the Polish example has shown how necessary independent unions are in state-owned industry as well. On the political level, the East German workers can only join the single state party, in which there is no internal democracy. Over the formulation of the economic plan and its implementation, they have no real influence. And the result is that the entire economy is inflexible and marked by a low productivity.
"In contrast to this system, it is necessary to stand clearly and unequivocably for self-management of the producers on both the economic and political levels.
"The Recklinghausen congress must open up discussion on these questions. It would not hurt to do this publicly, with an invitation to all those interested in the various parties, groups, citizens' initiative committees, and unions to participate."
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The third issue of the Polish language magazine of the Fourth International has just appeared. Its small size is intended to give members of the security services in Poland a good excuse not to notice it.
The issue contains articles summarizing the facts of the resistance to the crackdown in Poland as well as solidarity actions in other countries. There are also articles detailing the lessons of the rise of Solidarnosc and of the bureaucratic attack on it.
To get copies or subscriptions or to give contributions to expanding this effort, send checks made out to PEC, to Inprekor, 2, rue Richard Lenoir, 98108, Montreuil, France. Single copies cost U.S.$I, British 50p. Yearly subscriptions by surface mail, U.S. $12, British E6.