THE RICH ARE GETTING RICHER
AND THE POOR
ARE GETTING •I CAN
POORER. LIVE WITH THAT! BY MAL pound would be linked to other currencies, particularly the Deutschmark, rather than allowed to float against the Yen and the Dollar.
This strategy has produced an industrial graveyard in parts of the North and a new industrial aristocracy in sections of the South East benefiting from high levels of unemployment in manufacturing industries and the super profits pouring into south-east commuter areas from the City. Behind this, needless to say, in view of the way the British electoral system operates, is the recognition that the Labour vote can rise in the North without affecting the Tory majority south of Birmin-
Yet the Tories have dug a hole they will find increasingly difficult to climb out of. Lawson has talked about interest rates going higher if necessary, knowing full well that this will altack those sections of the working class that the Tories have depended on in their promotion of a "home owning' democracy.
The mortgage payments on a semi in Peterborough have probably risen by at least €150 a month since the beginning of 1988. This spells big trouble for Thatcher on the pay front. In addition, a further increase in interest rates could throw the whole economy into recession with unemployment rising once again.
At the time this article is being written, the world stock-exchanges are beginning to lurch up and down again and the Tories are plunging in the opinion polls. Yet the Labour frontbench team have little original to say on the economy. John Smith said he wouldn't make the same "mistakes' as Nigel Lawson, and is in favour of 'credit controls' - which we assume would even affect the Labour Party's own new credit card! — and of joining the European Monetary System immediately.
While lending all possible support to those sections of workers already responding to these latest developments by taking industrial action or submitting even larger pay claims continuing escalation of wages disputes, we must combat the wretched line emerging from Labour's front bench, and elaborate some socialist answers to the economic crisis. There is an urgent need for the left around the Socialist Movement to initiate a serious debate around a socialist economic policy that goes beyond the left Keynesian Alternative Economic Strategy of the 70's.
Martin Allen
EAT UR ES cross the border to the USA to find work. beginning to be seriously challenged for the first time. political price. The one-party system is dead. cal test. brutally repressed with hundreds killed just before the Olympics of that year.
DK:It seems the new President, Salinas, is doing a bit of a Thatcher' on Mexican society. What is his programme?
First you have to understand the Salinas overall project which is backed by the dominant sectors of the ruling class and US imperialism. He sees himself leading a Mexican transition to democracy that is not so radically different to processes going on in other Latin American countries. The Spanish experience particularly inspires him and Felipe Gonzalez is his role model.
The central task he has set his govemment is nothing less than a decisive change in the old clientalist, semi-welfare state. This state was born out of the radical Mexican revolution 70 years ago. The axis of PRI political domination is the incorporation of mass trade unions and peasant organisations into the state structure via the PRI one-party system. The system did produce 60 years of political stability in a continent where political instability is more commonplace, but at the cost of low labour productivity holding back more modern industrial development. The leader of the Mexican TUC, Velasquez, physically expresses this arrangement. He has been in office for 50 years!
Thatcherite offensive
Mexico has one of the biggest debts with the imperialist countries. Its present political system was bom out of one of the greatest revolutions of the Twentieth
Century - aptly described by Adolfo Gilly as the interrupted" revolution. Although it brought some Important gains for the Mexican masses it did not decisively break the umbilical cord of dependency with Imperialism in the way Cuba and Nicaragua have done. Last month's Socialist Outlook gave a graphic account of the conse quences of that continued dependency. Millions of Mexican workers are forced to
Today Mexico is going through a political earthquake just as dramatic as the terrible natural earthquake of a few years ago. The one party system organised by the
Partido Revolucionario Institutionalista (PRI, Institutional Revolutionary Party) is
In the 1988 presidential elections the PRI candidate was defeated by Cardenas, the son of the famous 1940s populist president who gave refuge to Trotsky and made some real reforms. The PRI system had to resort to massive fraud to get their candidate, Salinas, installed as president. Protests on a scale not seen for generations were organised. Salinas and the PRi weathered the storm but have paid a big
At the same time the explosive upsurge of the Cardenista movement, now organised as the PRD (Partido de la Revolucion Democratica, Party of the Democratic
Revolution) confronted the Mexican socialist and revolutionary left with a big politi-
Socialist Outlook correspondent DAVE KELLAWAY talked to Sergio Rodriguez, Na tional Secretary of the PRT (Partido Revolucionario de los y las Trabajadores,
Revolutionary Workers Party), in Mexico City at the end of August. Sergio is one of the founder members of the PRT, Mexican section of the Trotskyist Fourth Interna tional (USFI). He was involved In the historic 1968 student movement which was
So Salinas wants to modernise politics, the economy and social relations. Hence his new deal with the IME, the closing down of 'lanie duck' state run industries, his privatisation plans, his attacks on the bureaucratic leadership of the oil workers union and his proposed electoral reforms to dilute the PRI oneparty system. The media here have coined a very apt word for the project 'charrostroika' Icharro being the colloquial term for the old style trade union bureaucrats].
Could you explain the explosive rise of the
Cardenista movement?
All these changes bring the Salinas team into contradiction with parts of the PRI apparatus who want to maintain much more of the old populist, clientalist system. Here is where Cardenas and his new movement fit in
-the real social basis of the Cardenas people is these disaffected bourgeois sectors of the ap paratus.
Cardenas thinks that Salinas' reforms will so fracture the traditional Mexican social fabric that it will produce dangerous social, even revolutionary, explosions. Instead Car denas wants to reproduce a modified social pact based on the old historic populism. Thus he talks loudly of defending the gains of the
500,000 live as street vendors in the vast informal economy of Mexico City Mexican people, supporting Mexican national industry and of IMF unfairness.
At the same time in the 1988 elections big sections of the masses saw Cardenas as a way of defeating what they saw as the source of all their problems, the PRI.
Now within our party there is a small number of comrades who say the vote for Cardenas was not just a vote to get rid of the PRI but also a vote for Cardenas' democratic programme, for the best features of the 1917 revolution. A concrete example which supports the majority position is provided by the recent 1989 state elections for governor in Baja California. In 1988 52% voted there for Cardenas but in 1989 the rightwing opposition party, the PAN (National Action Party), won the election and the Cardenistas (now called the PRD Democratic Revolution Party) only scored 4 percent.
If the 1988 vote had been a programmatic vote for Cardenismo then you would not have had such a big decline. It just looked to the average voter in that state that the PAN candidate had a better chance of beating the PRI. Incidentally Salinas" new look pluralism meant that for the first time a non-PRI state governor was allowed to take office.
The problem with the PRD political project is that it is basically an electoral strategy in a situation where the PRI will not allow it any room for electoral advantage. Although the PRD won a majority of town halls in the state of Michoacan, in recent elections Salinas has refused to repeat the gesture made in Baja California. Whilst Salinas is eventually looking to doing a deal with the PAN, a party fully in favour of modern capitalist restructuring, he is naturally opposed to any compromise at the present time with Cardenas who poses a much more dangerous threat to
FEATURES Sergio Rodriguez (left) with Rosario Ibarra (PRT Presidentil candidate) at a press conference the traditional PRI base. In any case the abstention rate in Michoacan was nearly 80% which refiects a certain disillusionment of the masses with electoral politics.
On top of this the PRD does not want to organise the masses despite its great popularity. You have to remember that it is a bourgeois party with many bosses in its higher ranks -they don't want militant trade unions or peasant organisations running around under the PRD banner. Even on the democratic question where it is most militant, the PRD leadership keeps within certain limits. In Michoacan the PRD base occupied over 70 town halls but nationally the leadership is taking its distance from such methods.
DK: What about all the various socialist or 'revolutionary' currents and individuals who have joined the PRD, including some of the PRT's former leading comrades and MPs like Adolfo Gilly, Ricardo Pascoe and Pedro Penaloza?
Obviously many of these socialists do have a different view of what party the PRD should be. They would like more of a movement or struggle approach. But they are not at all organised as a socialist current or opposition. There is no battle going on between the "socialists"
and the leadership. In fact our ex-
MP comrades are not even inside the same loose groupings that exist inside the PRD Adolfo Gilly is with one lot, Pascoe another and then Penaloza with another.
DK: So what is the PRT attitude towards the PRD?
Certain comrades, about 5% of our membership, have what the majority considers a slightly 'tailendist'.. approach.
They call for a antimperialist united front with the PRD. Our view in the majority is full support for a united front with the Cardenista masses but we take our own independent initiatives.
We must always clearly and publicly give our opinion on the character of the PRD. For instance recently with the Michoacan affair the PRD agreed with a compromise deal whereby they were given 6 state deputies to the PRI's 12 -despite the fact that everyone knows that the PRD won a landslide there. Indeed they had been campaigning and taking over local town halls on that basis. We denounced this compromise.
Our principled position in no way affects our ability to participate in united actions with the PRD. Cardenas himself has a very positive attitude. Recently at a meeting in Mexico City concerning Michoacan he congratulated our party on its systematic defence of democratic rights. We also speak on the same platform in all the big mobilisations.
Of course a crunch question is whether to
Dave Kellaway Page 10 SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 19, November 1989
have an electoral pact with the PRD. This was the basis for the exit of some of our
MPs and other comrades in the lead up to the July
88 elections. An overwhelming majority of the PRT are op posed to such an agreement.
DK:Nonetheless it has been a very testing time for the party over the last year or so, don't you agree?
Certainly a big test, one of the biggest since we founded the party after 1968. There was enormous pressure for us to join the stampede of the left into the arms of Cardenas. Advertisements were paid for in the newspapers calling on the PRT to join in.
You have to understand before the July 88 elections we were dominant on the
Mexican left. Two months before the
Cardenas phenomenon took off we were sitting here in this very headquarters with the whole spectrum of the Mexican left.
They were here to discuss an electoral front and eventual revolutionary unity.
This situation has totally changed. We are in a new period requiring different tactics.
Before, we could take the initiative for a lot of actions and draw other political forces in.
Now as I explained before our crucial tactic is the united front with Cardenista masses. We confidently expect a crisis in the PRD - not between the 'socialistas' and the leadership but between its overall line and strategy and whole sectors of the masses, precisely because the PRD does not have an answer to the burning social problems.
Our great advantage is that the PRT is known nationally. We get a good reception in
PRD-led mass meetings. For many PRD supporters the PRT is the second option. Furthermore the relationship of forces between the
PRD and the PRT is not so unfavourable since the masses who support the PRD have not joined in great numbers. We believe they have around 40,000 members -a long way from
Gilly's forecast of 5 million! [the PRT has several thousand members, Eds]
Obviously the fact we lost our repre sentatives in parliament due to the Cardenas effect is a real blow since it also automatically means we lose our legal registration as a party. Our real score in 1988 was 180,000 compared to 450,000 previously. Legal registration means your party's name is placed on the ballot paper wherever you want to stand candidates. It also provides state funds.
But we must not exaggerate the effects of this change. Recently there was a successful
FEATURES strike by the teachers' union. It is the biggest trade union in the whole of Latin America with 1,200,000 members. The PRT played a key role in the strike and holds more leadership positions than the PRD so we can still intervene without legal registration. Many of us have been in the situation before.
In fact electoral politics can take up too much of our members' time. We have found that our work in the mass sectors has improved since the loss of registration. We pay more attention to recruitment. Participation is still possible in elections either in alliance with other parties or as write-in candidates. In the Oaxaca region recently, where our peasant support is good, we won seats and then occupied four town halls when the PRI cheated us out of the victory.
We have many cadres in our trade union work but much of it has to be done without identifying ourselves as PRT because of vic timisation and repression. Our work is mostly among the oil workers, teachers, car workers, textile workers and telecommunications. The recent case of the Ford comrades sacked because they criticised the PRI trade union bos ses is a case in point.
Our most important mass work is still among the peasants where we lead a peasant organisation, the UGOCEP of around 200.000 members. Our comrades and sympathisers suffer the worst repression in this sector just the other day a UGOCEP leader was assas sinated. During the 1988 election campaign 4 comrades were killed and 2 women comrades raped.
President Salinas (left) and opponent Cardenas: debating the way forward for the bourgeoisie
Another area of mass work is the urban movement organising tenants and shantytown dwellers. You probably saw the central area of Mexico City while you have been here. Well just around the National Palace we are the major force in organising a neighbourhood of 5000 families under threat from urban renewal. Our comrades were very active in the struggle of the earthquake victims helping to win then proper rebuilt housing. [there was a recent British TV documentary on this movement]
DR:Can you win back legal registration?
To win back the registration we have to prove we have 65,000 members. The membership lists have to be perused and certified by a notary so it is a tall order. We aim to hold 150 district meetings with between 150 and 300 persons at each. Hopefully we can register many of these supporters into membership. The deadline is July 1990 and although it will be very tough the campaign is necessary and the objective is not impossible.
One last thing comrades in Europe can do for us at the moment is to campaign for the appearance of Jose Ramon Garcia. He is a state leader of the PRT who was kidnapped nearly a year ago now. We have made many initiatives on this case but the Mexican government is very vulnerable to internationat pressure so even quite a small effort by you in Europe can make a difference. Amnesty International have already taken up his case [see recent article in Labour Briefing, September, for more details].
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 19, November 1989 Page 11