wrongfooted by the recent spate of extional (whose British co-thinkers support the paper Socialist Action) has for the past tew years seen the world class strugale through the narrow
events in Central America. This USFI focus on Central America respnse to the courage and tenacity
Sandinistas and the FMLN fighters: it is also an inverted reflection of the political counteroffensive being waged
Though motivated from largely healthy "anti-imperialist" in-
this method of response is a
Concentration of attention energy apeared to have reached its peak with the uncritical support for the politics and leadership of the Castro bureaucracy in Cuba extended in recent years by the USFI's main American sympathising organisation, the SWP: but more recently the USFI's European leadership have become equally slavish adherents of the Sandinista leadership in Nicaragua.
The result of this fixation with Central America has been to distract the USFI from any serious analysis or discussion on other major arenas of the class struggle international t At
recent World Congress the USFI, the only detailed resolutions tabled for debate were on Poland and Central America. There were no documents or debate on South America, Africa, Asia or Western Europe.
To priorities for action on the basis of simply reacting against imperialist priorities misleading. At worst it can lead — as in the case of the American SWP into the same type of crass division of the world into camps" not dissimilar from the assessment of Castro or the Kremlin leaders. The SWP still includes the brutal Khomeini regime in the "anti-imperialist" camp. Yet from essentially the same starting point, General Jaruzelski or "our" camp
Gorbachev could be said to be in because they "oppose Reagan irrespective of their brutal opposition to any independent organisations of the working class in Poland or the USSR!
In opposition to such crude "camp" analysis, Marxism must start from the independent needs and struggles of the working ciass in the international fight against imperialist exploitation and Stalinist bureaucracy.
The other danger of a world-view based simply "anti-imperialist' gut response is that it means that Marxists in the imperialist contries
Gorbachev - "opposed" to Reagan, but a ruthless enemy of independent workers' struggles. tend to perspectives which follow the public actions perialists themselves. cent months have shown it can be the more peripheral countries less subject to the immediate plans and involvement of imperialism which can produce the most explosive events. Alternatively - as in Denmark -there can be a sudden escalation of class struggle in countries where the workers' movement has long been presumed - by employers and by many Marxists — to be both placid and tigntly controlled by the labour bureaucracy.
One more disadvantage of the USFI's impressionist and subjective view of the world is that in tending to follow the lines of the most direct imperialist involvement it tends also like imperialism - to neglect whole regions much of Africa and Asia. A failure of Marxists to discuss and analyse the particular forms political problems in these countries produces a lasting weakness of programme and perspective which in turn makes it less likely that militants from Africa or Asia find sufficient to attract them to the banner of Marxism. The problem therefore feeds on
Despite the acreage of print in the USFI sections' publications devoted to coverage on Nicaragua and El reprints of official handouts from the FSLN and FMLN; little has been done to analyse the situation or present an independent Marxist point of view. While the USFI has declared its unSocialist Viewpoint, No. 5, April 1985. Page 18
critical support for the Salvadorean FMLN/FDR liberation front, for example, there has been virtually no systematic political examination of the various extremely heterogenous groupings wnich comprise the front, and no critical evaluation of the decisive role now being played within it by the Salvadorean Communist Party.
It also heavily underplays the involvement in the FDR of international social democracy, and fails to examine the far-from healthy motives of the Mexican bourgeoisie and other forces promoting the "Contadora" peace talks - which the USFI
So while throwing extensive emphasis upon Central America, the USFI approach fails to Marxist light on events, and largely relegates itself to the role of international cheer-leaders for the guerrilla struggle in El Salvador reconstruction work of dinistas in Nicaragua.
The obsessive focus on Nicaragua where, ironically, the USFI is opposed to building Marxist parties) meant that the Congress offered effectively no preparation for the main struggles that have erupted since: the schema of Nicaragua and its leadership some king dar model, high pointent revolving around the Central America has shown itself to be thoroughly disorientating for this, the largest international current of
Finally, if the attention of Marxists in the advanced imperialist countries is focussed so heavily on expected events in one particular part of the world — such as Central America they can find themselves politically
organisationally unprepared to act decisively over sharp turns in
"own" countries.
Nobody would expect a relatively Marxists correctly to predict every foresee the sequences of events. But to anyone not dazzled by ecstatic accounts of events in Nicaragua, the
Tin Bolivia, Sudan and predictable. Even the capitalist press predicted them — and had been giving background coverage.
Potential eruptions continue to simmer in Peru (where there have been powerful strikes), Philippines, and of course the Middle East and the
Less dramatic, but equally signifi. cant tests for the left are on the horizon in France, with the crisis of the Mitterand government and the rise of the extreme right wing.
The longer the USFI clings to its inappropriate schema of development and fails to recognise that Central America is simply one (admittedly sharp) expression of the unstable balance of class forces internationally, the more confused its supporters will become.
Or how not to build a fight
The Great ALONE of all the London Labour Authorities the GLC collapsed immediately without a fight and passed a ratecapped budget at less than even the maximum allowed by the government. This abject surrender was the worst possible start to the campaign against the Tory Rates Act and doubly destructive because of the "left credentials" of the GLC.
The Line-up
Why did this