Today's Topics:
1. UK, Liverpool Solidarity Federation: Domestic Violence is a
Workplace (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
Workplace (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. France, UCL - Webdito, Health: Vaccine, whose fault is it?
(ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
(ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Czech, AFED: Igor Bancer will spend his birthday in prison
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. UK, New ACG Pamphlet - Kronstadt 100th Anniversary
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. anarkismo.net: 40 Points For Action Here by Federación
Anarquista Uruguaya - fAu (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
In the UK 1 in 3 women and 2.5% of men will experience domestic violence in their
lifetime. 1 in 5 working women have taken time off because of domestic abuse. And
yet, only 5% of employers have specific Domestic Abuse Policies to tackle the
issue and support their employees. ---- The Domestic Abuse Bill is currently
being discussed to revise the definition of abuse. It will now include economic
and financial abuse to acknowledge that the impossibility to manage resources
makes victims dependants of their abusers. The new Law might be well intended,
however, it falls short. We don't have time to see this implemented, or to wait
for the funding and resources to reach our communities. We don't have enough
paper to list everyone who will still be unprotected under this Law.
For some people, fleeing abuse could mean homelessness or even deportation. Women
with no access to public funds (asylum seekers and undocumented migrants) are
denied access to shelter when trying to flee their abusers. They have no access
to housing or benefits. The Police share information regarding migration status
of victims of abuse with the Home Office for immigration control purposes. BME,
Migrant, Disabled, LGBTQIA, Unemployed women are and will still be at higher risk
of being left behind and then blamed for their misfortune.
Moreover, the combination of poor working conditions and sexism in our workplaces
makes it harder for victims and survivors of abuse to access the resources and
support they need. If we want to create workplace solidarity we need to be aware
of the fact that our colleagues may be experiencing violence at home. But we also
can not dismiss the signs when a colleague is an abuser.
It is our responsibility to educate ourselves and organise to create safer
workplaces. If you are in a unionised workplace get involved and push for better
conditions. Ask for Domestic Abuse Policies to be put in place in line with the
VAWG (Violence Against Women and Girls) legislation. If your workplace is not
unionised you can still discuss with your colleagues and organise to improve your
conditions, create a support plan for victims and survivors and ensure that no
one gets disciplined at work as a result of being abused at home.
Supporting victims and survivors of domestic violence at work:
- Believe them.
- Respect their privacy. Confidentiality is essential, regardless of your
relationship with the person. Do not discuss their private life with other
colleagues, friends or management without their permission.
- Remember, fleeing abuse is not always an option. Listen and support, do not act
on behalf or report unless they are in immediate danger. You might make the
situation worse for them.
- Help them out with their workload, cover for them if they need time out. Do not
snitch on them if they haven't done their work.
- Change shifts or placements with them when possible so their abuser doesn't
know their working pattern.
- When possible answer the phone for them to avoid possible calls from the abuser.
- Offer to pick them up and take them home to avoid encountering their abuser.
- Be ready in case the abuser shows up at the workplace.
-Show active support accompanying them in disciplinary hearings and sickness reviews.
- If the abuser is one of your colleagues (or your boss) make sure they are never
alone with them and help by recording evidence of the abusers behaviour.
- Take collective action against unfair dismissals and disciplinary action.
Demand changes in your working conditions and workplace culture to support them
further:
- Flexible working arrangements, adjust workload maintaining full pay.
- Paid time off - specific paid leave differentiated from entitled annual leave.
- Adjust working hours, location, change telephone number/email to prevent their
abuser from contacting them or visiting the workplace.
- No disciplinary action due to absence or low performance.
- Money advances to help survivors.
- Safe access to specialist services and information.
- Staff training and awareness to ensure first response is safe and appropriate.
- Elaborate a Domestic Abuse Policy with a safety plan which establishes a
support network for victims and survivors.
Sexism and gender-based violence is everyone's responsibility. Last year alone
2.4 million adults experienced domestic abuse in the UK. Look around you and
organise to change this.
If you are interested in organising in your workplace the Solidarity Federation
run a number of training courses including a training course aimed at women who
wish to organise in their workplaces. Alternatively we would appreciate any
anonymous stories/examples about experiences of domestic abuse at work to be used
in the training. For more information email solfed.training@gmail.com
Links:
- sistersuncut.org for a direct action approached to campaigning.
- safety4sisters.org supports migrant women in the North West.
- Women'sAid
- Step Up Migrant Women Coalition
- Refuge
- Liverpool Domestic Abuse Services
- Victim Care Merseyside
- Men's Advise Line
- Merseyside Domestic Violence Services
- South Liverpool Domestic Abuse Services
- Worst Kept Secret Helpline
- RASA Merseyside
- Savera UK - honour based abuse
- Respect Phoneline - help for perpetrators.
- IDVA - Independent domestic violence advisors.
Sources:
Domestic abuse in England and Wales overview: November 2019
Domestic Violence and the workplace: a TUC survey report
Domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking: findings from the British Crime
Survey
http://liverpoolsf.org/domestic-violence-is-a-workplace-issue/
------------------------------
Message: 2
Barely after announcing effective vaccines in November, pharmaceutical companies
upped the ante by putting countries in competition. These vaccines were not even
scientifically validated yet, that it was already necessary to order doses
without guarantee on the time of their delivery, and without the slightest
transparency on the negotiations ... ---- Scientists believe that the English
variant, 50% more contagious, will become dominant in March in France and that a
successful vaccination campaign by that date could halve the peak of
hospitalizations, thus saving thousands of people. ---- The government's stated
goal is to vaccinate 6.4 million people with two doses by the end of March. At
the rate of 500,000 doses of vaccine supplied each week by Pfizer, it is obvious
that this will not be enough. We could therefore discuss the inability of
regional health agencies to organize the campaign or the use of 4 private
consulting firms to organize it, but the main concern today is the shortage of
vaccines.
Thus, the Assistance publique-Hôpitaux de Paris has decided to drastically reduce
the vaccination of caregivers to redirect the stocks to those over 75 years old.
In the poorest countries, the situation is even more dramatic since almost no
vaccine has been provided. Again, we have to make choices that we shouldn't have
to make. How to reverse this trend?
Sanofi, the profit machine
After having received several billion euros in public aid in ten years, after
having paid 4 billion euros in dividends to its shareholders for 2020, Sanofi
announced 1,000 job cuts in France, including 400 in research and development,
which are in addition to the thousands of jobs lost in ten years.
For Sanofi, research and development is not profitable enough, just like the
production of infrequent drugs. They therefore close their research labs and
relocate production to India or China, focusing on the most profitable drugs.
Consequence: drug shortages have multiplied by twenty in ten years, and Sanofi is
unable to promise a vaccine before the end of 2021.
It is the same logic in most of the large groups which are taking advantage of
the Covid crisis to liquidate their industrial research: IBM, Danone, General
Electrics, Nokia ...
To counter the shortage, let's socialize the pharmaceutical industry
This vaccine scandal perfectly illustrates the inhuman nature of the capitalist
system. To put an end to this logic of profit, the consequences of which are
heavy for our health, the Libertarian Communist Union calls for the socialization
of the pharmaceutical industries. Nationalization is indeed insufficient to
completely remove this industry from the law of the market, and has been used
several times in the past to bail out companies, before re-privatizing them.
To move towards this socialization, vaccines must now become common goods of
humanity. We must put an end to business secrecy: transparency must be complete
on negotiations, prices, scientific results, patents must be made available.
Finally, the production lines must immediately be requisitioned to produce the
vaccines. In France, this is possible via the health emergency law: the
government refuses to do so only to preserve the profits of Sanofi and its
hypothetical vaccine.
Starting today, let's self-manage our health before tomorrow self-manage all of
our lives.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Sante-Vaccin-a-qui-la-faute
------------------------------
Message: 3
The singer of the Belarusian streetpunk band Mister X is a prisoner of the
Belarusian regime. Let's support him with a birthday card. ---- A musician from
Grodno, a city on the western border of Belarus, has been in prison for four
months. Relatives had not reported on him for several weeks. On October 20, he
was taken out of his apartment by the police. Prior to that, he spent 18 days in
custody for attending protest rallies. He was held in solitary confinement and
then sent for a forced psychiatric examination. His detention was extended and,
if nothing changes, the date of the trial will be known at the end of February.
Who is Igor Bancer?
Igor is 40 years old and is known as the singer of the streetpunk band Mister X,
which some will know from concerts in the Czech Republic. In Grodno he is engaged
in cultural and social activities. He does not drink alcohol, he does not eat
meat, he is an anti-racist and an anti-fascist.
Why was he detained?
At six o'clock in the morning on October 20, police officers came to Igor's
apartment. They claimed that he was hiding here, and they wanted to take him
away. However, his wife Angelica defended Igor by saying that he walked down the
street normally, did not run from anyone or hide. His apartment was later
searched. The musician's relatives are convinced that the reason for his arrest
was one of his street performances. On September 5, he was at one of the
entertainment venues on Gorky Street, and when he saw a police car, he came out
and began exposing his genitals in front of him. It was filmed by tourists and
published on the Telegram. Criminal proceedings were initiated pursuant to
Section 339 of the Criminal Riot Act.
When Igor was detained in October, his family was at home. "The kids saw
everything," says Angelica. When the police came for him, they were asleep. There
were also tours of the apartment. While Igor is in prison, his friends and
colleagues help the family. As a sign of solidarity, they started selling
T-shirts and mugs with the symbol of his band Mister X. The #freebancer campaign
was launched in Germany. Fans of St. Pauli from Hamburg hung banners in support
of Igor and graffiti also appeared. "We are all waiting for new information and
Igor's early return home," said Bancer's friend Alexander.
Send a birthday look!
Igor is a man who never hesitated to help his surroundings when needed. Now, on
the contrary, he is the one who needs our help. Let's help him make his birthday
(February 24) more pleasant despite his detention. We'll send him a birthday
greeting. He had been receiving letters late due to control and censorship
recently. Therefore, let's really write only one word on the postcard:
(Congratulations / All the best).
https://www.afed.cz/text/7306/igor-bancer-stravi-narozeniny-ve-vezeni
------------------------------
Message: 4
The Kronstadt Revolt: The flower of the revolution crushed by the Bolsheviks.
---- This new ACG pamphlet has been published to commemorate the 100th
anniversary of the Kronstadt uprising of revolutionary sailors and workers
against the Bolshevik tyranny of Lenin and Trotsky. This edition contains Ante
Ciliga's The Kronstadt Revolt, Nestor Makhno's In Memory of the Kronstadt Revolt,
poems by Kenneth Rexroth and Tuli Kupferberg, and of course, the words of the
Kronstadters themselves. ---- Also, as Sunday 21st February happens to be the
third anniversary of the founding of the ACG, we are pleased to be publishing
this pamphlet.
Available from the ACG for £2.00 + 65p postage
Order your copy via PayPal to
londonacg@gmail.com
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2021/02/16/new-acg-pamphlet-kronstadt-100th-anniversary/
------------------------------
Message: 5
Today we present in English the FAU text "40 points for action here", a material
of balance and analysis of the social situation and the struggles of 1968. ----
The authoritarian advance in Uruguay was relevant at that time, as was the
resistance to it and the new levels of popular struggle that were developing. In
this context, the "40 points", as well as being a balance sheet, mark an
orientation of work in the trade union milieu, but are extendable to the whole
social milieu, focusing on political organisation as the decisive factor. ---- It
is a material of enormous relevance that is still valid today and can guide the
work of social insertion in the most diverse situations. It is very useful today.
The text is made up of several points that deal with the national situation at
the time, the political and ideological changes, the disastrous role of reformism
in putting the brakes on the struggles and attempting to channel them into the
electoral-institutional terrain and, finally, the approach to the method of
class-based trade union building and struggle to be deployed in the framework of
a general strategy of rupture.
We hope that this material will be of use to anarchist comrades all over the
world. Health and Up with those that Struggle!
With the year ending, the doubts were clarified:
40 POINTS FOR ACTION HERE
At the end of the year, the events that have taken place since 13 June have only
confirmed the characteristics of the regime as described above. There is,
however, a variant. The nature of the events that have taken place, the depth of
their effects and the historical density of these last few months perhaps give
them the dimension of an unprecedented experience. As a result of its rapid
development, a new, unprecedented situation has arisen in the country which
requires careful analysis by all those who aspire to bring about a change in the
heavily negative trend that has prevailed in these last stages of the national
process.
A REPRESSIVE MODEL FOR URUGUAY
Although the goals pursued by reaction are continental in scope and correspond to
a global policy drawn up by US imperialism, the specific procedures for applying
them in each country are adapted, as good as bad, to national peculiarities. That
is why in Uruguay, a country with a civil and legalist tradition, the first thing
that was done was to create, through the "orange" reform, broader legal means for
repression. Then, now, they began to use these new legal powers.
1) It is clear that in Uruguay, the best formula for reaction and imperialism is
not, at this stage, the classic type of gorilla dictatorship, but the
constitutional dictatorship enabled by the current text. This provides a "strong"
Executive and a legally subordinated Parliament that has also proved to be in
fact pressuriseable and complacent.
This operational formula enables the manipulation, for the benefit of the
oligarchy, of the deep-rooted legalistic myths so eagerly spread by our
traditional political liberalism. There is nothing better than institutional,
"democratic" clothing to dress up the essential gorilla reality of the regime.
Never before has the crude reality of violence and oppression inherent in the
bourgeois regime become so evident, the role of mere and deceptive appearance to
which the most expensive and famous institutions of democracy are relegated, when
the demands for the preservation of the socio-economic foundation of the system
impose the need to resort to open violence.
The most salient feature of the present moment is that, for the first time in
many years, the reaction seems ready to come to an end. Long months of persistent
repression, developed according to a coherent plan of gradual implementation,
bear witness to this. It is useful, at this point, when the situation appears to
be entering a new stage, to assess some characteristics of this immediate
unprecedented escalation.
2) Repression is intense but measured. It does not close off all possibilities,
while it unloads the criminal rage of the police against the student and labourer
fighters. But it always leaves something that "can be lost", that is at risk if
"disorder" continues: the constitution and "legality" with whose suppression
liberals and reformists are blackmailed; "autonomies" that are violated and
restricted but not suppressed, to be used as hostages against "responsible
leaders"; trade unions that are "regulated" but not suppressed. This gives the
sell-outs, who have played such an important role in the repressive plans,
reasons of "principle" to co-contemplate their retreat or betrayal. They are
provided with a field of possible collaboration, more or less express or
conscious, with the regime. In defence of the preservation of legality or
autonomy, it is more justifiable to stop the struggle and divide it.
3) With the help of the media apparatus, for the first time almost unanimously
regimented, public attention was focused on the area that was most convenient for
the government: the repression of "student disorders". The generally spontaneous
characteristics of these, and the isolation in which they were often left, were
used to encourage the hostile reactions that these mobilisations could eventually
provoke in certain sectors of the population. The aim was to present, as a simple
problem of "public order", the application of security measures which, in
reality, concealed an unprecedented attack on the standard of living and freedom
of the vast majority of the population, through the freezing of wages and
salaries, and various repressive measures. Some sectors of employees and workers,
whose incomes were frozen, whose work was endangered, were convinced that the
whole problem consisted of the student "riots". The already agonizing
"stabilization" by decree of the prices, which was painfully endured for a short
time, pointed to the same confusing result. The less spectacular nature of the
trade union mobilisations, which were more effectively blocked by the reformist
apparatus, favoured this misunderstanding, which has allowed so many people to
see the confrontation posed as being outside their own and personal interests.
4) Repression was focused, selectively and progressively (militarization,
discounts, suspensions, imprisonment, dismissals), seeking to isolate and defeat
separately the key or more radicalized sectors within the autonomous entities;
banks, Ancap, Ute were the centre of this selective repression of a union type.
The persistent lack of a global plan of struggle by the popular movement, left
practically without a central direction by the defection, perplexity and
hesitations of the reformist leaderships, facilitated this policy.
5) The repression was complemented by the promotion of yellow unionism as a
diversionary technique and an attempt to capitalise on the disbelief and fear
generated by the repression in the less combative sectors. The difficulties
suffered by the workers do not, however, bode well for the long-term success of
these attempts, in which the dollars and training of the US IUES act in
coordination with the employers and the government.
6) The state regulation of trade unions and university elections is the
"institutional" balance that the government intends to leave as a permanent
repressive form with the security measures. What they had not yet been encouraged
to include in the "orange" constitution is now being introduced. The aim is to
subdue two fundamental centres of resistance and, in the process, to blackmail
the hesitant of all kinds. With the trade union regulation (included in COPRIN),
it is a question of conquering an old, repeatedly frustrated aspiration of the
reaction: to get hold of the unions, to control them, by transforming them into
appendages of the state.
The provisions of the regulations are clear in the sense of slowing down and
rendering less effective any trade union mobilisation that may be developed in
the future. The aim is to create more favourable conditions for the surrender and
divisive action of the yellow organisations and then to invest them as "genuine"
workers' representatives. Control to paralyse and divide the trade union movement
appear to be the clearest aims of this law. Of course, the plebiscitary
mechanisms that it establishes to take any measure of struggle try to give weight
to the less conscious and more pressurized sectors, which are expected to be
influenced more easily, by avoiding the discussion in assemblies and by properly
using the action of the publicity and repression apparatus. A similar
significance is given by the so-called University Law which, through the control
of the Electoral Court and the parliamentary imposition of procedures for the
appointment of authorities, enshrines a principle of subordination to the
government. In both cases the purposes are similar. It is not a question of
suppressing the unions or making the university disappear. It is a matter of
dominating them, of limiting them to the role that the reaction wants them to
play within the system.
7) Schematically, the trade unions are reserved the function of a docile computer
element, disciplining the workforce; with which they can negotiate responsibly,
without conflict. In times of economic difficulties, the bourgeoisie does not
refuse to dialogue. What it wants is to dialogue with a sufficiently complacent
interlocutor; always understanding the "needs of the country" interpreted
according to the interests of the bourgeoisie, of course.
For the university, the aim is to give it the role of training technicians, or
technocrats, aseptically unaware of any problem that is not strictly
professional. Who do not want to see beyond the limits that the bourgeoisie
considers acceptable at every moment. It is the castration of the political
projection of the sciences that is sought. A university that is more coherent
with the bourgeois order in crisis, more obligingly functional for the
preservation of the status quo.
Trade union regulation and university law tend to re-establish the oligarchy's
control over two vital centres of social power which, due to the peculiarities of
our historical process, have become too autonomous. When their situation starts
to become critical, the bourgeoisie has to centralise all power.
8) Constitutional reform, trade union regulation, university law, are all
successive steps in the same direction. As the causes of the deterioration of the
system are still in place, there will surely be further steps. The current
dynamics of the process cannot but lead the regime to increasingly authoritarian
political formulas. The typical liberal forms are now not very functional for the
interests of the dominant classes. This is the meaning of security measures. They
necessarily lead to a kind of historical frustration insofar as they attempt to
solve, with political means of power, problems whose roots lie in the very
economic and social structure of the system. The price and wage freeze attacks
the symptoms of a disease that is deeper. But the ruling classes do not want the
"cure" of the country because that cure is their death. Therein lies the
contradiction that they will never be able to solve: their domination is opposed
to the real solution of the problems that determine the uninterrupted
deterioration of the economic-social situation. Repression only postpones, in the
immediate future, the outcome that will be fatal to them. But at the same time,
it brings that outcome closer in the long term. That is why there will be no more
lasting normality. The situation will demand ever greater doses of repression
that will create conditions in the long term for more forceful popular responses.
9) In short, it is the national version of the gradual collapse of the capitalist
system on a continental and world level. Here, as in another dimension in
Vietnam, imperialism and its acolytes need ever greater doses of repression to
postpone their definitive death for historical minutes.
It is from this perspective that what is happening in a "liberal" country that on
13 December 1967 dawned upon the dissolution of six political organisations and
the closure of two publications and which now - one year later - has been living
under an extraordinary regime for six months, makes sense.
There are so many other characteristics that give the tone of the process and
explain the security measures.
-absolute and almost total foreignisation of private banking
-unimpeded domination of economic life by that same bank and related sectors of
traders and speculators, several of whom personally hold key government positions.
-accented subordination of all the powers (the Legislative, the Judicial and the
"fourth power" of the media), to the Executive, establishing a legal dictatorship
that does not formally end with the other "powers", but rather instrumentalises
them as coverage of the Executive's dictatorship, which is in turn an instrument
of the oligarchy.
-Small contacts, plans for complementarity, exchange and economic, political,
territorial and military integration, under the patronage of the dictatorships of
Argentina and Brazil and of economic groups controlled by American and European
capital.
-Strengthening and technification under US leadership of repression apparatuses,
especially political police and shock forces.
PAST AND PRESENT
In order to understand the evolution of these six months of turmoil, we must take
into account the concepts and working methods that, over the previous years,
helped to shape some characteristics of the trade union and popular movement.
Special consideration should be given to certain weaknesses of the one who
recognises its origin in the hegemonic role that reformism has played in its
direction during the previous stage. Even at the risk of biasing the approach,
let us point out some of the aspects of current incidence. It goes without saying
that the verifications we make also affect future possibilities and powerfully
condition any strategic forecast that is drawn up.
10) The trade union and student movement has been the main force of resistance to
the reactionary policy of the government.
Neither political parties, nor parliament, nor institutions or personalities with
their well-known statements, have been major obstacles to government action. The
effective resistance has taken the form of strikes, occupations and street
actions by workers and students, through which the spirit of struggle that exists
in a vast sector of the people has been shown.
The extent of the process of aggregation that has been taking place in our
country, driven by the need to defend the economy against inflation, demonstrated
on this occasion its potential value as a factor of change. However, the
accumulated forces did not have the opportunity to express themselves fully, due
to harmful labour criteria, which are rooted in easier times and constitute the
core of the reformist style of union action. It was demonstrated once again that
the need to accumulate forces is only one of the important aspects within the
task at hand. No less important than that is, obviously, knowing what those
forces are wanted for and how they should be employed. This implies outlining a
strategy that goes beyond empiricism and improvisation.
11) The outbreaks of proletarian resistance occurred spontaneously, as the
various unions were directly hit by the repressive measures, and in each case,
they became more or less isolated. The solidarity actions were biased and
entangled by the inaction of the "official" apparatuses, permanently concerned
that things would not get any worse, that the situation would not become
uncontrollable. In this they were consistent with a strategy that they still
apply today: to delimit resistance and protest, to contain it within limits that
do not prevent from looking for a negotiated solution. The basic thing, for this,
is not to give "excuse" to the reaction to hit. This approach is based on the
assumption, which experience has shown to be wrong, that repression is a mere
"political" episode on the surface. From this, the theory of "isolating the
government" was developed, seeking the alliance of politically opposing bourgeois
sectors (which, in order to be possible, requires not "scaring" allies with
"excesses" of resistance to repression). The uninterrupted succession of coups
applied by the government in the last two months, in which that line has
prevailed, proves the error of its assumptions and the ruin of its methods.
12) The lack of an overall plan of struggle, with coordinated actions of
progressive development, deprived the popular movement of a generalized and
profoundly demonstrative experience of the extent to which the thesis of
reserving forces for the most difficult battles was fallacious. These combats
have arrived and the theories of containment, of parsimonious and miserly use of
these forces have continued to be applied.
It is clear that the lack of a plan of struggle in offensive when there were
conditions for it, allowed the reaction to choose the moment and the way of
striking, by virtue precisely of the paralyzing theory of "avoiding pretexts to
repression". The real reasons for this are to be found in the economic-social
deterioration of the regime and not in the popular mobilisations. Until today, it
has never been seen that retreat is the best way to confront reaction, which does
not imply that always and in any condition one must "go forward". The strategy
can and must be offensive. Tactics can require retreats.
13) Faced with the escalation of repression, certain sectors of the "left" have
once again appealed to the traditional dossier: taking refuge under the wing of
the old and typical Uruguayan liberalism, more or less tinged with populism or
utopian developmentalism.
Middle class nuclei, the weak "national bourgeoisie" (entrepreneurs dependent on
the domestic market, small and medium sized industrialists and traders) form the
social base of these sectors, promoted by some as the natural allies of the trade
union movement. Added to this is the still broad ideological clientele of those
who dream of a return to the "happy Uruguay" of the so-called Batllista cycle.
These liberal sectors are adopting the left variant of the middle class, which is
materialised in the "legalistic" desire to return to "normality" by making a pact
with the trade union movement if necessary. Convincing it, through dialogue, to
agree to make sacrifices to "save the country".
Of course, the persistent adoption of that tessitura by the reformist left
implies admitting a weakness for the popular movement that they do not perceive
in their desirable "allies". Alliance policy in itself is not reprehensible, and
can be useful when faced with it.
The negative is the abdication at the hands of these bourgeois allies of all
possibilities, of all hopes. The vanguard role that only corresponds to the
workers' and popular movement is given to the representatives of the liberal
bourgeoisie and petite-bourgeoisie who, as was to be expected, have given the
most exhaustive demonstration of their impotence. The fact is that the liberals,
the developmentalists, sometimes become bold insofar as there are (or they
believe there can be) people on the street, and they become hesitant and timid
when this does not happen. In any case, their help does not go beyond
parliamentary speeches and frustrated attempts to carry out public acts, which
have never prevented the establishment of any dictatorship, either constitutional
or otherwise. The containment of the people's struggles is condemned to failure
as the crisis of the system deepens. The reformist apparatuses are finding it
increasingly difficult to curb or channel it. When the official apparatus does
not channel the disconformities, they seek channels outside the apparatus. In the
present circumstances the struggle has developed within more or less spontaneous
characteristics. From this derives its intensity, but also, inevitably, its
weaknesses.
14) In fact, the reformist apparatus is conceived and built as an element of
framing the mass, to use it as a mere pressure group, to represent it in
negotiations, much more than to lead it in the struggle. When the struggle takes
the form of hard confrontations, the "central leaderships" in fact cease to lead.
Classic trade union measures (strikes, actions) alone are not enough.
Repeated strikes, without being part of an overall plan, wear down the unions
exposed to repression. Stoppages, sometimes lasting a few minutes, do not stop
the repression from taking place because of their brevity. Acts are forbidden.
The reformists' arsenal rapidly exhausted their resources and very soon they were
at the limits of their possibilities. From that moment on everything becomes a
search for openings that allow for honourable withdrawal.
For that, it is necessary to be forgiven, to pose as a victim before the middle
class and the liberal bourgeoisie in order to get their support. And to seek the
cooperation of entities as characterized as, real example, the Chamber of
Industries; to lower the level and tone of complaints; to adapt to the
possibilities that are becoming less and less demanded. At the end of the day, a
"great triumph" can be proclaimed on the basis of whatever small thing is finally
granted.
15) The struggle for immediate objectives is not in itself wrong; quite the
contrary. The more precise, more concrete and more understandable by the people
are the issues of struggle (the immediate platform) the more possible it will be
to promote popular and trade union action and thus create awareness on the issues
of substance (the programme).
It all depends on the objective and therefore on the method applied. It is not
reformism to fight for immediate objectives. As it is not a revolutionary tactic
to "prepare" without acting on everyday things, to neutralize oneself until "the
revolution comes" (which will never "come"). On the other hand, it is possible to
verbally postulate the most complete programme, national and international, and
be a stubborn reformer, if it is believed and taught that the method to conquer
this programme is a legalist, parliamentary, electoral method.
What differentiates a reformer from a revolutionary is fundamentally the method,
basically related to what each one wants. The reformer, reformism, has a strategy
to endure within the system, constituting a pressure group to obtain peaceful and
legal changes within the system. The revolutionary by the direct action of the
people processes struggles, fights the ideological battle, in order to create the
conditions for the revolutionary forging of the people's power.
WHAT PROGRESS HAS BEEN MADE IN THESE SIX MONTHS
The experience of the security measures, as a kind of dress rehearsal of
dictatorial recipes, has allowed to accumulate experiences and to detect, with
more precision, the weaknesses of the popular movement. From this, a strategy for
the future and political guidelines have been quite clearly outlined, which have
the merit of having withstood an initial general confrontation on the tactical plane.
16) The despotic essence of the regime was more than ever in evidence. The image
of an exceptional Uruguay, long elaborated by the bourgeoisie, was gradually
blackened until it disappeared. Our belonging to oppressed and convulsed Latin
America began to be, instead, palpable. The violence acquired a Uruguayan
citizenship card. Vast contingents of workers and students prepared themselves
for the confrontation and in the action they proved and showed that the security
measures and the gorilla violence of the legal dictatorship were not the end of
the world. It is negative and dangerous that broad layers of so-called public
opinion are starting to get used to living under extraordinary detention. But the
antithesis of this, which is both positive and dangerous (but for the oligarchy),
is that broad sectors of the population are beginning to get used to fighting and
organising in the semi-clandestinity imposed on them by the regime.
In the student centres, in many unions, determined groups were formed and
strengthened. Temperate in the hard solidarity of the struggle, they learned to
recognize each other, beyond the borders of the unions, and to think and apply
together new forms of resistance and protest. Everywhere, daring fighters, many
with no previous experience, and without means, had in check trained police,
armed with repressive means proven abroad, who had not only vast logistic
resources, but also the greatest impunity for their organised rage.
The struggle led by young workers and students has played an important role in
the political life of the country. In front of it, the regime showed its
repressive nature, its hard criminal face. Suddenly, it is no longer the codes,
the parliament or other fetishes of the Western and Christian civilisation that
appear to consecrate the authority. It is no longer compliance with the rules
theoretically agreed upon by all, which constitutes the so-called "rule of law",
the means to govern. Between the government and the people, the intermediaries
(politicians, editorialists, lawyers) have almost disappeared. The regime becomes
laconic: it speaks through the mouth of its shotguns, its revolvers.
The government may be trying to restore the traditional image; it may still be
ridding itself of some of the most hated figures. For a growing number of
Uruguayans, however, the veil will surely have fallen. This is one of the
positive balances achieved by the struggle of these months.
17) The powerlessness of the reformers has been evident throughout the process.
The thunderous proclamations of elements of that current as to their disposition
to resist, with the most extreme means, including the violation of university
autonomy or with the revolutionary general strike the hypothetical gorilla
strike, have demonstrated their emptiness and their character of smoke curtain.
In the places where the most serious clashes took place, these were promoted by
militants of revolutionary or independent organisations. Whoever reviews their
history will see that in them the guiding and leading role was not given to the
reformist leaders. This was not an obstacle for honest and militant militants
affiliated to reformist guidance and leadership parties to participate actively
in their upswing.
18) There is a whole new and broad class of militants, emerging in the course of
these struggles, who are now joining free of the reformist blinkers.
This development, the fruit of concrete practice, has not been the work of any
ideological current or preaching. It is the situation itself that places every
honest and combative militant who acts without artificially created prejudices,
in the revolutionary camp. A united action among several unions, some of them of
recent appearance in the vanguard of the trade union struggles, was outlined.
Faced with the powerlessness of the central organs to lead the struggle, the most
combative unions and militants gathered as a tendency to push the struggle forward.
Such is the case of the six unions that on 17 July proposed a global plan of
struggle to the CNT.
In this incorporation of new unions and militant workers ready to face the
hardest repressive measures, lies the most positive and real accumulation of forces.
A similar phenomenon occurred in the student camp, where, together with Medicine,
Architecture, Fine Arts and other university centres, sectors that until now have
had little relative gravitation played a very important role, such as Teaching,
Secondary Education and UTU. New forms of struggle appeared. Especially the
street mobilization of the students acquired unprecedented levels of militancy.
19) The incalculable potential of struggle shown by the masses in the face of
repression has destroyed the myth of the "passivity" of our people.
The occupations of the factories and the organisation of the resistance against
the foreseeable police attack and the so-called "open occupations" of the
students testified this militancy and made contact with the neighbourhoods and
other striking sectors possible.
In some cases, original modalities were used, in the student CAMP, such as the
so-called counter courses, which inaugurated a common area with other sectors.
The conditions have been created for a revolutionary line to have, for the first
time potentially, forces to make an important impact.
SOME LIMITATIONS OF THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT
20) The fundamental shortcoming has been the lack of an overall strategic
concept. The response to the security measures has basically been spontaneous.
Reformism, which holds key positions, has not driven the struggle or coordinated
it. The lack of a revolutionary political centre with the gravitas and strength
to fulfil this role led to the struggle being unleashed and sustained "union by
union" without a sufficiently coherent and forward-looking overall perspective.
For this reason, a counterattack was made, leaving the initiative almost always
in the hands of reaction. The dilatory and "moderating" attitude of the reformist
apparatus, the only one existing on a general scale, contributed to accentuating
these difficulties, which still remain. Developing coordination mechanisms, in
the midst of the struggle and the difficulties created by repression, without a
long period of prior work, is a difficult but inevitable task in the current
conditions. It is vital to persevere in this direction since its lack has clearly
emerged as one of the most negative factors.
21) The subsistence of spontaneous "localist" inclinations that contribute to
bias the struggles, hindering their coordination. This is closely linked to the
above. It is still difficult to mobilise masses far from their respective
factories, banks or study centres. This situation favours repressive action and
hinders the possibility of carrying out bigger activities that give a basis for
an integration of all efforts.
22) The elementary nature of organisational methods. The information, the
organisational work, continues to be carried out mainly in the places where
people naturally connect: workplaces or study centres. The effects of the closure
of the university and of the lycées and industrial schools showed the
precariousness of the organisation set up on these bases. In any future struggle,
the conditions must be created to continue to operate outside the usual places of
study or work. The above-mentioned modality is certainly the most consistent with
the spontaneous level of work. But in overcoming this lies the possibility of
bypassing some of the most effective repressive dossiers that have been applied.
23) The inadequacy of mobilisation on the streets, within certain modalities, as
a permanent and exclusive resource. Its repeated use over a long period of time
has negative effects on public opinion. It seems appropriate to alternate it with
activities that help to create links with the less active sectors of the
population. The lack of sufficient work in this direction by the student movement
facilitated the task of isolating it and turning it into a "scapegoat" for
repression.
Naturally, posing the problem and facing solutions requires overcoming the stage
of spontaneity in which, to a large extent, the student body moved.
The positive aspects, but also the limitations of international student
mobilisations, must be correctly assessed. These are powerful stimulants for a
mass mobilisation that cannot be limited to the student body itself. If methods
are not developed to integrate student action with that of other popular sectors,
it can be relegated to a sacrificial and even heroic but socially superficial
agitation, marginal and without a future.
24)The still insufficient participation of the trade union movement to actively
and publicly mobilise the masses to support it. The workers are on strike, in the
most combative unions factory occupations. It is more difficult to carry out
important street demonstrations. It is the school of a long state paternalism and
its counterpart, the reformist methods of work.
The successes obtained in the period of the "fat cows", applying those methods;
the vast organisational work developed in times when the reformist policy was
viable, gave prestige to their procedures. This is why it is insisted on
continuing to apply them when this reformism no longer fits in with reality, when
it only survives as a paralysing ideology.
25) The raising of the political level of the working class is in fact still
spontaneous, in contradiction with the reformist line. That is why it is not
possible to contribute to the development of a relatively revolutionary practice
and consciousness without destroying the ideological obstacle constituted by the
reformist conceptions. These are not defined only by the membership in this or
that group or political party, but by the application or not, in facts, of
revolutionary methods of action and organisation. Of course, the reformist
practices are coherently applied by the Communist Party, which inscribes its
political line in an international strategic conception that, as we know, is not
revolutionary. That is why the development of a revolutionary action and
consciousness leads in fact to the confrontation with the orientation, the
leadership and the apparatus of that party. This is proven by the facts.
REFORMISM DRAWS RIGHT-WING CONCLUSIONS
As well as positive aspects, in these six months the popular movement has shown
limitations and shortcomings. For many, this creates scepticism or pessimism
about the possibilities of trade union action as an important factor in the
struggle against government policy. As well as no methodology of a revolutionary
type is being put forward, at the level of mass work or at other levels, certain
currents that, while continuing to proclaim themselves as supporters of Che,
Fidel and Olas, draw right-wing conclusions from the situation they are experiencing.
The real shortcomings of the trade union and popular movement demand efforts to
overcome them: through struggle, through processing facts that create awareness,
through inseparable ideological and organisational work. This will make the
strengthening of the people's movement and its vanguard detachments possible.
But those who draw conclusions from this process from the "left", from the right,
think otherwise; perhaps what they have always thought coherently and which,
given that the situation was not yet so defined, was concealed until now.
26) One of these right-wing conclusions, which is at the root of others, is the
lack of faith in the people, in the unions, in the struggle, in direct action.
From this derives a practice focused on management, conciliation, dialogue. Less
dialogue and more struggle to confront the government, has been proclaimed from
the revolutionary left. More dialogue and less struggle is concluded from these
claudicating theses.
The security measures; the reactionary escalation against the freedom and the
living standards of the people; the conspiracy of the bankers, the ranchers and
the bourgeoisie against Uruguay, do not promote among those who think this way a
radicalization of actions and concepts. On the contrary.
"Defending the constitution", "returning the country to normal", is the
watchword, the idea-force, the line of these currents. This is the way to go -
and we are going - very far. For the time being it means sticking to the
legitimacy of the "orange" constitution. But...didn't we agree that the "orange"
was an appropriate text for the crudest oligarchic domination? To accept this
legitimacy is to give up essential positions. The bourgeois constitution and
legality end up being accepted as a natural and immovable order, outside of which
it is not even possible to reflect. This is precisely giving the battle on the
ground chosen by the enemy, accepting its basic assumptions, the mechanisms that
it has deemed necessary to constitutionalise, and then trying to breathe through
its loopholes, objecting that such "excesses" are illegal. As if he forgot that
the "orange" constitution was drafted by the Uruguayan oligarchy and promoted by
the empire, precisely for that purpose: to curtail freedoms, freeze salaries,
apply the Monetary Fund line and impose order.
27) The reformist orientation is an orientation of restoration of something that
existed before; it is a return to the 13th of June, to the moment that gave rise
to what we now have; it is a conservative orientation. That in the first place.
But in addition, this "return to normality", this return to 13 June is-as we have
seen-impossible, it is utopian.
And to make the "struggle" for these conservative objectives, for this utopian
restoration, viable, what is logical, what is coherent? To postulate
conservative, not revolutionary methods, what are these methods? Reformist
methods. They are expressed in theses such as: It is necessary to stop the
struggle in order not to give excuses to the repression and thus isolate the
government; it is vital to defend the privileges of the parliament, where a great
battle for freedoms must take place; it is necessary to open up to the alliance
with the bosses of industries and Freemasonry. And in parallel: to create "broad"
movements, not with the aim of promoting and deepening the trade union struggle
(which would be correct), but to dilute the trade union struggle, relegating it
to a secondary level. And later, for all tastes: to support the progressive wing
of some traditional party; or to increase the electoral front of the left (the
current one or another that is invented); or to create a third party for the 1971
elections. As we can see, all the same, regardless of intentions and labels. The
reformist path, the path that history has shown to be the dead end. It leads to
trying to perfect and increase not the revolutionary methods of work, but the
reformist methods. Those who are thinking in this way are stubbornly evaluating
the possibility of realising "fronts" with politicians and sectors that have
repeatedly shown their hesitations and extreme weakness. (Many of them did not
even dare to vote against the COPRIN project in the Senate).
When the repression questions the most elementary rights, the reformists are
clinging to an electoralist perspective, in the service of which they intend to
put all the mobilization , the real fight of the masses. Thus a new derivative
for popular energies is attempted.
Those who draw the right-wing conclusions from the experience of security
measures believe that it is because of too much struggling and not too much
retreat that the current situation has been reached.
In the background of all this there is an ideological conception, which is at the
root of the analysis they make of the reality of the country, and of the methods
they use in common , the so-called "left wings" that continue to plan within the
right wing parties; and the right wing leaderships of "left parties". Together
they constitute a kind of "His Majesty's Opposition", an increasingly harmless
backdrop to the regime's growing despotism.
GROW, IN ORGANIZATION, IN EXPERIENCE FOR A PROLONGED STRUGGLE
1. The resistance movement has not weakened due to the lack of popular support
and "the lack of politicisation of the masses"; if the struggle has not reached
higher forms in extension and depth, it is not because the people have
spontaneously chosen to "tame". 2. It is not the trade union organisation that is
questioned by the absence of a growing and planned resistance. 3. The political
conceptions transplanted by reformism are not attributable to the popular
movement or to trade unionism.
28) What fails is a certain conception of the trade union movement: the union
conceived as a mere organisation for negotiation and pressure; the union used for
simple ministerial or parliamentary procedures; the union that only lives
actively when there are wage conflicts.
Of course, lobbying is inherent to the union and must remain so. But the way in
which it is carried out, the dimensions attributed to it, is what circumstances
themselves require to be changed.
The demands and levels of struggle imposed by the crisis raise the need to use
new methods of trade union action or, if you want, to adapt to our days the best
of the tradition of revolutionary trade unionism. The period of the "fat cows",
of the more or less easy things, created favourable conditions for a methodology
of procedure, conversation, management and dialogue. Now the reality is very
different, also the methods must be.
29) There are several things that are already clear, which have been evidenced by
practice. No single union can achieve major successes. Developing concrete
solidarity mechanisms and actions on a large scale is decisive.
Not isolating oneself means taking into account the spread and public impact of
the conflict or mobilisation. Union support, support in the neighbourhood,
support in the population. The reaction begins by isolating before openly repressing.
From this we can conclude on the one hand the importance in the clarity of the
objectives of any union struggle; concrete objectives related to the general
interests of the working class and the country are a fundamental element. On the
other hand, the aspects of enlightenment, propaganda and agitation around
mobilisation or conflict. In the present conditions of regimentation of the
publicity apparatus, this forces an intense, original and direct agitation and
propaganda work. Hand in hand with the above, the verification of the importance
of the facts, as the best form of propaganda. The main thing is never the
negotiations, but the measures of struggle that make possible a propaganda that
is attended to and a favourable "negotiation". The spreading of the method of
occupations and the willingness to resist violent unemployment mark this
dignified and effective way, through which the trade union is and can be more and
more a useful weapon of action.
30) The disintegration of the reformist ideology is beginning to take place among
the most conscious and combative sectors. But reformism, which is weak when it is
fought, recovers and appears as soon as the struggle weakens or ends.
This raises important problems because every union groups indiscriminately
developed sectors ready to fight, hesitant sectors that support it
circumstantially and weak sectors that never support it. These elements are
combined in different ways depending on the circumstances, to the point that very
often it is difficult to recognise in a trade union in conflict its own peacetime
physiognomy. The aim is to involve as many workers as possible and with as much
intensity as possible in trade union action. The closest contact with the
broadest base is vital at all times. From that point on, the decisive thing is
not to have the formal leadership of the union, the majority of the executive
committee, which does not mean ignoring the usefulness that this often has. But
what is decisive, in all cases and in any union, is the leadership of the active
sector, of the one that weighs when there are mobilisations, of the one that is
able to create the conditions for the struggle. The work at the base of the
union, among the militants, in the assemblies, in the mobilisations, on the
streets, is the central work; the participation in the more or less
administrative life of the institution must be developed according to the other work.
31) For all these reasons, it is essential that each union should have a grouping
that brings together the most combative part. Its action must be permanent: to
organise the comrades with methods in accordance with the present times; to
promote actions; to train; to guide. The grouping of the most combative to act
together within the union and the union, not isolated from it, ensures the
continuity of the work. The ups and downs of the life of any union, the victory
or defeat in any vote, do not interrupt its work or frustrate it. The new times
make groups of this type nuclei of basic action; the experience of these six
months shows it.
32) The absence of grassroots momentum is a feature of reformist working methods.
Verticalism and bureaucratism are an expression of this. At their root is the
fear of "excesses" and "overflow" from the masses and their active and
protagonist participation. This is how the union is kept uninformed, passive,
with the feeling that the issues of the union are the property of the leaders.
This often leaves the organisations in the air. That's where the yellowness comes
in. The trade union must have continuity in its action, the more active and
permanent participation of the whole union must be promoted, and opinions and
initiatives must be encouraged. This must be one of the basic objectives of the
advanced trend within each trade.
33) For a large sector, especially young workers and students, these security
measures constitute an enlightening and definitive political experience. The
police bullets that killed three comrades have mortally wounded the old and
deep-rooted image of the liberal Uruguay. Nobody can honestly believe anymore
that we live in a "country of freedom". It is a whole historical cycle that is
coming to an end and which many are already evoking, almost unconsciously, as a
kind of "lost paradise". That normality that so many want to recover, without
recognizing that the only true alternative that the future offers us is crude
regression or revolution. Without recognising that, finally, the already
indissoluble, very Latin American reality of our backwardness and
underdevelopment has emerged to the surface of our political and social
coexistence. A large part of the people, somewhat perplexed, refuse to recognise
themselves in that image. Many want to avoid confronting this reality. But the
ruling classes, who know it well because they have benefited from it, know that
they have only one way out to postpone its collapse, to gain time: repression.
This situation results in de facto dictatorship, which is not incompatible with
"constitutional legality".
Does it signal the end of the struggle? Does the enemy hold the key to the
situation? No. The last few months of security measures show it. The struggle
changes in form, in terrain, in methods, it grows or decreases, but it continues.
To search at each juncture, at each moment, for the appropriate levels and
methods, assimilating the experiences that the process leaves behind, that is the
function of the vanguard elements. A function that only an organisation can fulfil.
34) This raises issues that are closely linked to the best form of trade union
action, but which necessarily go beyond the realm of trade unionism. The regime
does not act only through its trade union apparatus (Chamber of Industry and
Commerce, Rural Federation, Bankers' Association, etc.). Nor does it act solely
through the political apparatus provided by government posts and party
structures. Nor only by spreading propaganda and bourgeois ideology through its
press, radio and television. Nor only through its police and military apparatus.
The oligarchy, the current regime, acts against the people, with a policy, an
ideology, a bosses' action, a military action. All this is part of the
continental strategy of imperialism.
When it comes to drawing conclusions from the current situation, it is important
to be clear about the impossibility of separating these factors. Those who were
the protagonists of the resistance against the oligarchy in these six months, the
young workers and students, the old fighters, the groupings and advanced
tendencies of the unions, are the ones who have to lead the resistance and the
advance in the periods that are coming. It will be them and the vast contingents
that will be integrated into this already powerful force in action and
ideological struggle.
We think that it is important to define some criteria in this sense:
35) It is essential to develop a political centre in a position to promote,
coordinate and lead struggles on a general scale. Most of the existing
leaderships are predominantly reformist. They do not adapt to the new situation,
and consequently with positions of backwardness they do not lead or promote the
struggle.
36) The structuring of this political centre is initiated by the most conscious
and concerned sectors. The effort is focused on clarifying and organising these
sectors first. They form the skeleton that will backbone a broader movement. They
are its little engine. Efforts cannot be wasted. The basic thing, at this stage,
is not to mount a vast, amorphous, soft mass movement vulnerable to repression.
What is fundamental is to build an organisation of cadres, capable of operating
under the conditions of widespread and lasting repression.
37) The organisation needed must be adapted to the activity in times of severe
repression. This imposes certain criteria of structure and method that can
immediately hinder its effectiveness in public propaganda. This is the inevitable
price that must be paid to ensure the durability of work conceived in terms of
prolonged struggle as imposed by the reality of our country.
38) The concreteness and development of the political centre is processed in the
struggle. Within the struggle, the militants are selected and developed,
experience is accumulated, and strategy is refined.
The path towards the concretion of the political centre passes, at this stage,
through the formation of tendencies at the union level (groups, lists, etc.) of
stable and coordinated functioning.
39) A strategy for the prolonged struggle, in our country and now, implies
staggering, in parallel or successively, the different types of actions, at the
different levels.
40) The main thing is the wear and tear of the enemy's forces and the
accumulation of one's own forces. At the organisational level, as at any level
where the confrontation takes place, according to the levels it has acquired.
Since the struggle must be predictably hard and prolonged, intense action must be
taken from now on. And to act lasting longer than the enemy.
This process is not only experienced by our country, of course. It has here, as
it had everywhere, its own characteristics. But it is Latin American, and it is
universal. Nowhere has it been His Majesty's opposition, parliamentary
opposition, reformism, that carried out the resistance and thus created the
conditions for social change in the interest of the people and the country.
The opposition that matters, the opposition that makes resistance, the opposition
that creates conditions for change, is an extra-parliamentary opposition, a
popular opposition, an opposition that has direct action as its method.
In Russia in 1917; in Spain in 1936; then in China, in Algeria, in Cuba, now in
Vietnam, by the direct action of the people, of their vanguards, they have
confronted the oligarchy and imperialism, the conditions for revolutionary change
have been created.
They have never been effective to resist oppression, to stop fascism, to make
revolution, methods that are essentially conservative. The "broad fronts" of the
electoral type, with a practice that reserves a role for the people as a group,
which seeks to constrain them to the indirect action of mere support for the
central task, reserved for minorities of professional politicians dedicated to
creating the parliamentary opposition to the regime, have never decided the
course of history.
The experience of the revolutions of our time, the experience of the guerrilla
struggle in the Third World, the experience of the European students and the
American black movement all indicate that there is only one solution. And only
one method. Adapting itself, no doubt, to the characteristics and the situation
of each country.
The path of direct action is also our path. Direct action by the whole people,
which thus acquires a real measure of its power, becomes stronger every day,
forges its political consciousness and its organisation. Direct action of the
vanguard detachments, acting within the people, promoting the processing of
social facts, waging ideological battle, dynamising. The great engine of the
struggle of all the people, the small engine of its vanguard detachments,
inseparable aspects of the same path to create the conditions for freedom and
socialism in Uruguay.
Related Link: http://federacionanarquistauruguaya.uy/40-puntos-para-la-accion-aqui/
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/32171
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Anarquista Uruguaya - fAu (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
In the UK 1 in 3 women and 2.5% of men will experience domestic violence in their
lifetime. 1 in 5 working women have taken time off because of domestic abuse. And
yet, only 5% of employers have specific Domestic Abuse Policies to tackle the
issue and support their employees. ---- The Domestic Abuse Bill is currently
being discussed to revise the definition of abuse. It will now include economic
and financial abuse to acknowledge that the impossibility to manage resources
makes victims dependants of their abusers. The new Law might be well intended,
however, it falls short. We don't have time to see this implemented, or to wait
for the funding and resources to reach our communities. We don't have enough
paper to list everyone who will still be unprotected under this Law.
For some people, fleeing abuse could mean homelessness or even deportation. Women
with no access to public funds (asylum seekers and undocumented migrants) are
denied access to shelter when trying to flee their abusers. They have no access
to housing or benefits. The Police share information regarding migration status
of victims of abuse with the Home Office for immigration control purposes. BME,
Migrant, Disabled, LGBTQIA, Unemployed women are and will still be at higher risk
of being left behind and then blamed for their misfortune.
Moreover, the combination of poor working conditions and sexism in our workplaces
makes it harder for victims and survivors of abuse to access the resources and
support they need. If we want to create workplace solidarity we need to be aware
of the fact that our colleagues may be experiencing violence at home. But we also
can not dismiss the signs when a colleague is an abuser.
It is our responsibility to educate ourselves and organise to create safer
workplaces. If you are in a unionised workplace get involved and push for better
conditions. Ask for Domestic Abuse Policies to be put in place in line with the
VAWG (Violence Against Women and Girls) legislation. If your workplace is not
unionised you can still discuss with your colleagues and organise to improve your
conditions, create a support plan for victims and survivors and ensure that no
one gets disciplined at work as a result of being abused at home.
Supporting victims and survivors of domestic violence at work:
- Believe them.
- Respect their privacy. Confidentiality is essential, regardless of your
relationship with the person. Do not discuss their private life with other
colleagues, friends or management without their permission.
- Remember, fleeing abuse is not always an option. Listen and support, do not act
on behalf or report unless they are in immediate danger. You might make the
situation worse for them.
- Help them out with their workload, cover for them if they need time out. Do not
snitch on them if they haven't done their work.
- Change shifts or placements with them when possible so their abuser doesn't
know their working pattern.
- When possible answer the phone for them to avoid possible calls from the abuser.
- Offer to pick them up and take them home to avoid encountering their abuser.
- Be ready in case the abuser shows up at the workplace.
-Show active support accompanying them in disciplinary hearings and sickness reviews.
- If the abuser is one of your colleagues (or your boss) make sure they are never
alone with them and help by recording evidence of the abusers behaviour.
- Take collective action against unfair dismissals and disciplinary action.
Demand changes in your working conditions and workplace culture to support them
further:
- Flexible working arrangements, adjust workload maintaining full pay.
- Paid time off - specific paid leave differentiated from entitled annual leave.
- Adjust working hours, location, change telephone number/email to prevent their
abuser from contacting them or visiting the workplace.
- No disciplinary action due to absence or low performance.
- Money advances to help survivors.
- Safe access to specialist services and information.
- Staff training and awareness to ensure first response is safe and appropriate.
- Elaborate a Domestic Abuse Policy with a safety plan which establishes a
support network for victims and survivors.
Sexism and gender-based violence is everyone's responsibility. Last year alone
2.4 million adults experienced domestic abuse in the UK. Look around you and
organise to change this.
If you are interested in organising in your workplace the Solidarity Federation
run a number of training courses including a training course aimed at women who
wish to organise in their workplaces. Alternatively we would appreciate any
anonymous stories/examples about experiences of domestic abuse at work to be used
in the training. For more information email solfed.training@gmail.com
Links:
- sistersuncut.org for a direct action approached to campaigning.
- safety4sisters.org supports migrant women in the North West.
- Women'sAid
- Step Up Migrant Women Coalition
- Refuge
- Liverpool Domestic Abuse Services
- Victim Care Merseyside
- Men's Advise Line
- Merseyside Domestic Violence Services
- South Liverpool Domestic Abuse Services
- Worst Kept Secret Helpline
- RASA Merseyside
- Savera UK - honour based abuse
- Respect Phoneline - help for perpetrators.
- IDVA - Independent domestic violence advisors.
Sources:
Domestic abuse in England and Wales overview: November 2019
Domestic Violence and the workplace: a TUC survey report
Domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking: findings from the British Crime
Survey
http://liverpoolsf.org/domestic-violence-is-a-workplace-issue/
------------------------------
Message: 2
Barely after announcing effective vaccines in November, pharmaceutical companies
upped the ante by putting countries in competition. These vaccines were not even
scientifically validated yet, that it was already necessary to order doses
without guarantee on the time of their delivery, and without the slightest
transparency on the negotiations ... ---- Scientists believe that the English
variant, 50% more contagious, will become dominant in March in France and that a
successful vaccination campaign by that date could halve the peak of
hospitalizations, thus saving thousands of people. ---- The government's stated
goal is to vaccinate 6.4 million people with two doses by the end of March. At
the rate of 500,000 doses of vaccine supplied each week by Pfizer, it is obvious
that this will not be enough. We could therefore discuss the inability of
regional health agencies to organize the campaign or the use of 4 private
consulting firms to organize it, but the main concern today is the shortage of
vaccines.
Thus, the Assistance publique-Hôpitaux de Paris has decided to drastically reduce
the vaccination of caregivers to redirect the stocks to those over 75 years old.
In the poorest countries, the situation is even more dramatic since almost no
vaccine has been provided. Again, we have to make choices that we shouldn't have
to make. How to reverse this trend?
Sanofi, the profit machine
After having received several billion euros in public aid in ten years, after
having paid 4 billion euros in dividends to its shareholders for 2020, Sanofi
announced 1,000 job cuts in France, including 400 in research and development,
which are in addition to the thousands of jobs lost in ten years.
For Sanofi, research and development is not profitable enough, just like the
production of infrequent drugs. They therefore close their research labs and
relocate production to India or China, focusing on the most profitable drugs.
Consequence: drug shortages have multiplied by twenty in ten years, and Sanofi is
unable to promise a vaccine before the end of 2021.
It is the same logic in most of the large groups which are taking advantage of
the Covid crisis to liquidate their industrial research: IBM, Danone, General
Electrics, Nokia ...
To counter the shortage, let's socialize the pharmaceutical industry
This vaccine scandal perfectly illustrates the inhuman nature of the capitalist
system. To put an end to this logic of profit, the consequences of which are
heavy for our health, the Libertarian Communist Union calls for the socialization
of the pharmaceutical industries. Nationalization is indeed insufficient to
completely remove this industry from the law of the market, and has been used
several times in the past to bail out companies, before re-privatizing them.
To move towards this socialization, vaccines must now become common goods of
humanity. We must put an end to business secrecy: transparency must be complete
on negotiations, prices, scientific results, patents must be made available.
Finally, the production lines must immediately be requisitioned to produce the
vaccines. In France, this is possible via the health emergency law: the
government refuses to do so only to preserve the profits of Sanofi and its
hypothetical vaccine.
Starting today, let's self-manage our health before tomorrow self-manage all of
our lives.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Sante-Vaccin-a-qui-la-faute
------------------------------
Message: 3
The singer of the Belarusian streetpunk band Mister X is a prisoner of the
Belarusian regime. Let's support him with a birthday card. ---- A musician from
Grodno, a city on the western border of Belarus, has been in prison for four
months. Relatives had not reported on him for several weeks. On October 20, he
was taken out of his apartment by the police. Prior to that, he spent 18 days in
custody for attending protest rallies. He was held in solitary confinement and
then sent for a forced psychiatric examination. His detention was extended and,
if nothing changes, the date of the trial will be known at the end of February.
Who is Igor Bancer?
Igor is 40 years old and is known as the singer of the streetpunk band Mister X,
which some will know from concerts in the Czech Republic. In Grodno he is engaged
in cultural and social activities. He does not drink alcohol, he does not eat
meat, he is an anti-racist and an anti-fascist.
Why was he detained?
At six o'clock in the morning on October 20, police officers came to Igor's
apartment. They claimed that he was hiding here, and they wanted to take him
away. However, his wife Angelica defended Igor by saying that he walked down the
street normally, did not run from anyone or hide. His apartment was later
searched. The musician's relatives are convinced that the reason for his arrest
was one of his street performances. On September 5, he was at one of the
entertainment venues on Gorky Street, and when he saw a police car, he came out
and began exposing his genitals in front of him. It was filmed by tourists and
published on the Telegram. Criminal proceedings were initiated pursuant to
Section 339 of the Criminal Riot Act.
When Igor was detained in October, his family was at home. "The kids saw
everything," says Angelica. When the police came for him, they were asleep. There
were also tours of the apartment. While Igor is in prison, his friends and
colleagues help the family. As a sign of solidarity, they started selling
T-shirts and mugs with the symbol of his band Mister X. The #freebancer campaign
was launched in Germany. Fans of St. Pauli from Hamburg hung banners in support
of Igor and graffiti also appeared. "We are all waiting for new information and
Igor's early return home," said Bancer's friend Alexander.
Send a birthday look!
Igor is a man who never hesitated to help his surroundings when needed. Now, on
the contrary, he is the one who needs our help. Let's help him make his birthday
(February 24) more pleasant despite his detention. We'll send him a birthday
greeting. He had been receiving letters late due to control and censorship
recently. Therefore, let's really write only one word on the postcard:
(Congratulations / All the best).
https://www.afed.cz/text/7306/igor-bancer-stravi-narozeniny-ve-vezeni
------------------------------
Message: 4
The Kronstadt Revolt: The flower of the revolution crushed by the Bolsheviks.
---- This new ACG pamphlet has been published to commemorate the 100th
anniversary of the Kronstadt uprising of revolutionary sailors and workers
against the Bolshevik tyranny of Lenin and Trotsky. This edition contains Ante
Ciliga's The Kronstadt Revolt, Nestor Makhno's In Memory of the Kronstadt Revolt,
poems by Kenneth Rexroth and Tuli Kupferberg, and of course, the words of the
Kronstadters themselves. ---- Also, as Sunday 21st February happens to be the
third anniversary of the founding of the ACG, we are pleased to be publishing
this pamphlet.
Available from the ACG for £2.00 + 65p postage
Order your copy via PayPal to
londonacg@gmail.com
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2021/02/16/new-acg-pamphlet-kronstadt-100th-anniversary/
------------------------------
Message: 5
Today we present in English the FAU text "40 points for action here", a material
of balance and analysis of the social situation and the struggles of 1968. ----
The authoritarian advance in Uruguay was relevant at that time, as was the
resistance to it and the new levels of popular struggle that were developing. In
this context, the "40 points", as well as being a balance sheet, mark an
orientation of work in the trade union milieu, but are extendable to the whole
social milieu, focusing on political organisation as the decisive factor. ---- It
is a material of enormous relevance that is still valid today and can guide the
work of social insertion in the most diverse situations. It is very useful today.
The text is made up of several points that deal with the national situation at
the time, the political and ideological changes, the disastrous role of reformism
in putting the brakes on the struggles and attempting to channel them into the
electoral-institutional terrain and, finally, the approach to the method of
class-based trade union building and struggle to be deployed in the framework of
a general strategy of rupture.
We hope that this material will be of use to anarchist comrades all over the
world. Health and Up with those that Struggle!
With the year ending, the doubts were clarified:
40 POINTS FOR ACTION HERE
At the end of the year, the events that have taken place since 13 June have only
confirmed the characteristics of the regime as described above. There is,
however, a variant. The nature of the events that have taken place, the depth of
their effects and the historical density of these last few months perhaps give
them the dimension of an unprecedented experience. As a result of its rapid
development, a new, unprecedented situation has arisen in the country which
requires careful analysis by all those who aspire to bring about a change in the
heavily negative trend that has prevailed in these last stages of the national
process.
A REPRESSIVE MODEL FOR URUGUAY
Although the goals pursued by reaction are continental in scope and correspond to
a global policy drawn up by US imperialism, the specific procedures for applying
them in each country are adapted, as good as bad, to national peculiarities. That
is why in Uruguay, a country with a civil and legalist tradition, the first thing
that was done was to create, through the "orange" reform, broader legal means for
repression. Then, now, they began to use these new legal powers.
1) It is clear that in Uruguay, the best formula for reaction and imperialism is
not, at this stage, the classic type of gorilla dictatorship, but the
constitutional dictatorship enabled by the current text. This provides a "strong"
Executive and a legally subordinated Parliament that has also proved to be in
fact pressuriseable and complacent.
This operational formula enables the manipulation, for the benefit of the
oligarchy, of the deep-rooted legalistic myths so eagerly spread by our
traditional political liberalism. There is nothing better than institutional,
"democratic" clothing to dress up the essential gorilla reality of the regime.
Never before has the crude reality of violence and oppression inherent in the
bourgeois regime become so evident, the role of mere and deceptive appearance to
which the most expensive and famous institutions of democracy are relegated, when
the demands for the preservation of the socio-economic foundation of the system
impose the need to resort to open violence.
The most salient feature of the present moment is that, for the first time in
many years, the reaction seems ready to come to an end. Long months of persistent
repression, developed according to a coherent plan of gradual implementation,
bear witness to this. It is useful, at this point, when the situation appears to
be entering a new stage, to assess some characteristics of this immediate
unprecedented escalation.
2) Repression is intense but measured. It does not close off all possibilities,
while it unloads the criminal rage of the police against the student and labourer
fighters. But it always leaves something that "can be lost", that is at risk if
"disorder" continues: the constitution and "legality" with whose suppression
liberals and reformists are blackmailed; "autonomies" that are violated and
restricted but not suppressed, to be used as hostages against "responsible
leaders"; trade unions that are "regulated" but not suppressed. This gives the
sell-outs, who have played such an important role in the repressive plans,
reasons of "principle" to co-contemplate their retreat or betrayal. They are
provided with a field of possible collaboration, more or less express or
conscious, with the regime. In defence of the preservation of legality or
autonomy, it is more justifiable to stop the struggle and divide it.
3) With the help of the media apparatus, for the first time almost unanimously
regimented, public attention was focused on the area that was most convenient for
the government: the repression of "student disorders". The generally spontaneous
characteristics of these, and the isolation in which they were often left, were
used to encourage the hostile reactions that these mobilisations could eventually
provoke in certain sectors of the population. The aim was to present, as a simple
problem of "public order", the application of security measures which, in
reality, concealed an unprecedented attack on the standard of living and freedom
of the vast majority of the population, through the freezing of wages and
salaries, and various repressive measures. Some sectors of employees and workers,
whose incomes were frozen, whose work was endangered, were convinced that the
whole problem consisted of the student "riots". The already agonizing
"stabilization" by decree of the prices, which was painfully endured for a short
time, pointed to the same confusing result. The less spectacular nature of the
trade union mobilisations, which were more effectively blocked by the reformist
apparatus, favoured this misunderstanding, which has allowed so many people to
see the confrontation posed as being outside their own and personal interests.
4) Repression was focused, selectively and progressively (militarization,
discounts, suspensions, imprisonment, dismissals), seeking to isolate and defeat
separately the key or more radicalized sectors within the autonomous entities;
banks, Ancap, Ute were the centre of this selective repression of a union type.
The persistent lack of a global plan of struggle by the popular movement, left
practically without a central direction by the defection, perplexity and
hesitations of the reformist leaderships, facilitated this policy.
5) The repression was complemented by the promotion of yellow unionism as a
diversionary technique and an attempt to capitalise on the disbelief and fear
generated by the repression in the less combative sectors. The difficulties
suffered by the workers do not, however, bode well for the long-term success of
these attempts, in which the dollars and training of the US IUES act in
coordination with the employers and the government.
6) The state regulation of trade unions and university elections is the
"institutional" balance that the government intends to leave as a permanent
repressive form with the security measures. What they had not yet been encouraged
to include in the "orange" constitution is now being introduced. The aim is to
subdue two fundamental centres of resistance and, in the process, to blackmail
the hesitant of all kinds. With the trade union regulation (included in COPRIN),
it is a question of conquering an old, repeatedly frustrated aspiration of the
reaction: to get hold of the unions, to control them, by transforming them into
appendages of the state.
The provisions of the regulations are clear in the sense of slowing down and
rendering less effective any trade union mobilisation that may be developed in
the future. The aim is to create more favourable conditions for the surrender and
divisive action of the yellow organisations and then to invest them as "genuine"
workers' representatives. Control to paralyse and divide the trade union movement
appear to be the clearest aims of this law. Of course, the plebiscitary
mechanisms that it establishes to take any measure of struggle try to give weight
to the less conscious and more pressurized sectors, which are expected to be
influenced more easily, by avoiding the discussion in assemblies and by properly
using the action of the publicity and repression apparatus. A similar
significance is given by the so-called University Law which, through the control
of the Electoral Court and the parliamentary imposition of procedures for the
appointment of authorities, enshrines a principle of subordination to the
government. In both cases the purposes are similar. It is not a question of
suppressing the unions or making the university disappear. It is a matter of
dominating them, of limiting them to the role that the reaction wants them to
play within the system.
7) Schematically, the trade unions are reserved the function of a docile computer
element, disciplining the workforce; with which they can negotiate responsibly,
without conflict. In times of economic difficulties, the bourgeoisie does not
refuse to dialogue. What it wants is to dialogue with a sufficiently complacent
interlocutor; always understanding the "needs of the country" interpreted
according to the interests of the bourgeoisie, of course.
For the university, the aim is to give it the role of training technicians, or
technocrats, aseptically unaware of any problem that is not strictly
professional. Who do not want to see beyond the limits that the bourgeoisie
considers acceptable at every moment. It is the castration of the political
projection of the sciences that is sought. A university that is more coherent
with the bourgeois order in crisis, more obligingly functional for the
preservation of the status quo.
Trade union regulation and university law tend to re-establish the oligarchy's
control over two vital centres of social power which, due to the peculiarities of
our historical process, have become too autonomous. When their situation starts
to become critical, the bourgeoisie has to centralise all power.
8) Constitutional reform, trade union regulation, university law, are all
successive steps in the same direction. As the causes of the deterioration of the
system are still in place, there will surely be further steps. The current
dynamics of the process cannot but lead the regime to increasingly authoritarian
political formulas. The typical liberal forms are now not very functional for the
interests of the dominant classes. This is the meaning of security measures. They
necessarily lead to a kind of historical frustration insofar as they attempt to
solve, with political means of power, problems whose roots lie in the very
economic and social structure of the system. The price and wage freeze attacks
the symptoms of a disease that is deeper. But the ruling classes do not want the
"cure" of the country because that cure is their death. Therein lies the
contradiction that they will never be able to solve: their domination is opposed
to the real solution of the problems that determine the uninterrupted
deterioration of the economic-social situation. Repression only postpones, in the
immediate future, the outcome that will be fatal to them. But at the same time,
it brings that outcome closer in the long term. That is why there will be no more
lasting normality. The situation will demand ever greater doses of repression
that will create conditions in the long term for more forceful popular responses.
9) In short, it is the national version of the gradual collapse of the capitalist
system on a continental and world level. Here, as in another dimension in
Vietnam, imperialism and its acolytes need ever greater doses of repression to
postpone their definitive death for historical minutes.
It is from this perspective that what is happening in a "liberal" country that on
13 December 1967 dawned upon the dissolution of six political organisations and
the closure of two publications and which now - one year later - has been living
under an extraordinary regime for six months, makes sense.
There are so many other characteristics that give the tone of the process and
explain the security measures.
-absolute and almost total foreignisation of private banking
-unimpeded domination of economic life by that same bank and related sectors of
traders and speculators, several of whom personally hold key government positions.
-accented subordination of all the powers (the Legislative, the Judicial and the
"fourth power" of the media), to the Executive, establishing a legal dictatorship
that does not formally end with the other "powers", but rather instrumentalises
them as coverage of the Executive's dictatorship, which is in turn an instrument
of the oligarchy.
-Small contacts, plans for complementarity, exchange and economic, political,
territorial and military integration, under the patronage of the dictatorships of
Argentina and Brazil and of economic groups controlled by American and European
capital.
-Strengthening and technification under US leadership of repression apparatuses,
especially political police and shock forces.
PAST AND PRESENT
In order to understand the evolution of these six months of turmoil, we must take
into account the concepts and working methods that, over the previous years,
helped to shape some characteristics of the trade union and popular movement.
Special consideration should be given to certain weaknesses of the one who
recognises its origin in the hegemonic role that reformism has played in its
direction during the previous stage. Even at the risk of biasing the approach,
let us point out some of the aspects of current incidence. It goes without saying
that the verifications we make also affect future possibilities and powerfully
condition any strategic forecast that is drawn up.
10) The trade union and student movement has been the main force of resistance to
the reactionary policy of the government.
Neither political parties, nor parliament, nor institutions or personalities with
their well-known statements, have been major obstacles to government action. The
effective resistance has taken the form of strikes, occupations and street
actions by workers and students, through which the spirit of struggle that exists
in a vast sector of the people has been shown.
The extent of the process of aggregation that has been taking place in our
country, driven by the need to defend the economy against inflation, demonstrated
on this occasion its potential value as a factor of change. However, the
accumulated forces did not have the opportunity to express themselves fully, due
to harmful labour criteria, which are rooted in easier times and constitute the
core of the reformist style of union action. It was demonstrated once again that
the need to accumulate forces is only one of the important aspects within the
task at hand. No less important than that is, obviously, knowing what those
forces are wanted for and how they should be employed. This implies outlining a
strategy that goes beyond empiricism and improvisation.
11) The outbreaks of proletarian resistance occurred spontaneously, as the
various unions were directly hit by the repressive measures, and in each case,
they became more or less isolated. The solidarity actions were biased and
entangled by the inaction of the "official" apparatuses, permanently concerned
that things would not get any worse, that the situation would not become
uncontrollable. In this they were consistent with a strategy that they still
apply today: to delimit resistance and protest, to contain it within limits that
do not prevent from looking for a negotiated solution. The basic thing, for this,
is not to give "excuse" to the reaction to hit. This approach is based on the
assumption, which experience has shown to be wrong, that repression is a mere
"political" episode on the surface. From this, the theory of "isolating the
government" was developed, seeking the alliance of politically opposing bourgeois
sectors (which, in order to be possible, requires not "scaring" allies with
"excesses" of resistance to repression). The uninterrupted succession of coups
applied by the government in the last two months, in which that line has
prevailed, proves the error of its assumptions and the ruin of its methods.
12) The lack of an overall plan of struggle, with coordinated actions of
progressive development, deprived the popular movement of a generalized and
profoundly demonstrative experience of the extent to which the thesis of
reserving forces for the most difficult battles was fallacious. These combats
have arrived and the theories of containment, of parsimonious and miserly use of
these forces have continued to be applied.
It is clear that the lack of a plan of struggle in offensive when there were
conditions for it, allowed the reaction to choose the moment and the way of
striking, by virtue precisely of the paralyzing theory of "avoiding pretexts to
repression". The real reasons for this are to be found in the economic-social
deterioration of the regime and not in the popular mobilisations. Until today, it
has never been seen that retreat is the best way to confront reaction, which does
not imply that always and in any condition one must "go forward". The strategy
can and must be offensive. Tactics can require retreats.
13) Faced with the escalation of repression, certain sectors of the "left" have
once again appealed to the traditional dossier: taking refuge under the wing of
the old and typical Uruguayan liberalism, more or less tinged with populism or
utopian developmentalism.
Middle class nuclei, the weak "national bourgeoisie" (entrepreneurs dependent on
the domestic market, small and medium sized industrialists and traders) form the
social base of these sectors, promoted by some as the natural allies of the trade
union movement. Added to this is the still broad ideological clientele of those
who dream of a return to the "happy Uruguay" of the so-called Batllista cycle.
These liberal sectors are adopting the left variant of the middle class, which is
materialised in the "legalistic" desire to return to "normality" by making a pact
with the trade union movement if necessary. Convincing it, through dialogue, to
agree to make sacrifices to "save the country".
Of course, the persistent adoption of that tessitura by the reformist left
implies admitting a weakness for the popular movement that they do not perceive
in their desirable "allies". Alliance policy in itself is not reprehensible, and
can be useful when faced with it.
The negative is the abdication at the hands of these bourgeois allies of all
possibilities, of all hopes. The vanguard role that only corresponds to the
workers' and popular movement is given to the representatives of the liberal
bourgeoisie and petite-bourgeoisie who, as was to be expected, have given the
most exhaustive demonstration of their impotence. The fact is that the liberals,
the developmentalists, sometimes become bold insofar as there are (or they
believe there can be) people on the street, and they become hesitant and timid
when this does not happen. In any case, their help does not go beyond
parliamentary speeches and frustrated attempts to carry out public acts, which
have never prevented the establishment of any dictatorship, either constitutional
or otherwise. The containment of the people's struggles is condemned to failure
as the crisis of the system deepens. The reformist apparatuses are finding it
increasingly difficult to curb or channel it. When the official apparatus does
not channel the disconformities, they seek channels outside the apparatus. In the
present circumstances the struggle has developed within more or less spontaneous
characteristics. From this derives its intensity, but also, inevitably, its
weaknesses.
14) In fact, the reformist apparatus is conceived and built as an element of
framing the mass, to use it as a mere pressure group, to represent it in
negotiations, much more than to lead it in the struggle. When the struggle takes
the form of hard confrontations, the "central leaderships" in fact cease to lead.
Classic trade union measures (strikes, actions) alone are not enough.
Repeated strikes, without being part of an overall plan, wear down the unions
exposed to repression. Stoppages, sometimes lasting a few minutes, do not stop
the repression from taking place because of their brevity. Acts are forbidden.
The reformists' arsenal rapidly exhausted their resources and very soon they were
at the limits of their possibilities. From that moment on everything becomes a
search for openings that allow for honourable withdrawal.
For that, it is necessary to be forgiven, to pose as a victim before the middle
class and the liberal bourgeoisie in order to get their support. And to seek the
cooperation of entities as characterized as, real example, the Chamber of
Industries; to lower the level and tone of complaints; to adapt to the
possibilities that are becoming less and less demanded. At the end of the day, a
"great triumph" can be proclaimed on the basis of whatever small thing is finally
granted.
15) The struggle for immediate objectives is not in itself wrong; quite the
contrary. The more precise, more concrete and more understandable by the people
are the issues of struggle (the immediate platform) the more possible it will be
to promote popular and trade union action and thus create awareness on the issues
of substance (the programme).
It all depends on the objective and therefore on the method applied. It is not
reformism to fight for immediate objectives. As it is not a revolutionary tactic
to "prepare" without acting on everyday things, to neutralize oneself until "the
revolution comes" (which will never "come"). On the other hand, it is possible to
verbally postulate the most complete programme, national and international, and
be a stubborn reformer, if it is believed and taught that the method to conquer
this programme is a legalist, parliamentary, electoral method.
What differentiates a reformer from a revolutionary is fundamentally the method,
basically related to what each one wants. The reformer, reformism, has a strategy
to endure within the system, constituting a pressure group to obtain peaceful and
legal changes within the system. The revolutionary by the direct action of the
people processes struggles, fights the ideological battle, in order to create the
conditions for the revolutionary forging of the people's power.
WHAT PROGRESS HAS BEEN MADE IN THESE SIX MONTHS
The experience of the security measures, as a kind of dress rehearsal of
dictatorial recipes, has allowed to accumulate experiences and to detect, with
more precision, the weaknesses of the popular movement. From this, a strategy for
the future and political guidelines have been quite clearly outlined, which have
the merit of having withstood an initial general confrontation on the tactical plane.
16) The despotic essence of the regime was more than ever in evidence. The image
of an exceptional Uruguay, long elaborated by the bourgeoisie, was gradually
blackened until it disappeared. Our belonging to oppressed and convulsed Latin
America began to be, instead, palpable. The violence acquired a Uruguayan
citizenship card. Vast contingents of workers and students prepared themselves
for the confrontation and in the action they proved and showed that the security
measures and the gorilla violence of the legal dictatorship were not the end of
the world. It is negative and dangerous that broad layers of so-called public
opinion are starting to get used to living under extraordinary detention. But the
antithesis of this, which is both positive and dangerous (but for the oligarchy),
is that broad sectors of the population are beginning to get used to fighting and
organising in the semi-clandestinity imposed on them by the regime.
In the student centres, in many unions, determined groups were formed and
strengthened. Temperate in the hard solidarity of the struggle, they learned to
recognize each other, beyond the borders of the unions, and to think and apply
together new forms of resistance and protest. Everywhere, daring fighters, many
with no previous experience, and without means, had in check trained police,
armed with repressive means proven abroad, who had not only vast logistic
resources, but also the greatest impunity for their organised rage.
The struggle led by young workers and students has played an important role in
the political life of the country. In front of it, the regime showed its
repressive nature, its hard criminal face. Suddenly, it is no longer the codes,
the parliament or other fetishes of the Western and Christian civilisation that
appear to consecrate the authority. It is no longer compliance with the rules
theoretically agreed upon by all, which constitutes the so-called "rule of law",
the means to govern. Between the government and the people, the intermediaries
(politicians, editorialists, lawyers) have almost disappeared. The regime becomes
laconic: it speaks through the mouth of its shotguns, its revolvers.
The government may be trying to restore the traditional image; it may still be
ridding itself of some of the most hated figures. For a growing number of
Uruguayans, however, the veil will surely have fallen. This is one of the
positive balances achieved by the struggle of these months.
17) The powerlessness of the reformers has been evident throughout the process.
The thunderous proclamations of elements of that current as to their disposition
to resist, with the most extreme means, including the violation of university
autonomy or with the revolutionary general strike the hypothetical gorilla
strike, have demonstrated their emptiness and their character of smoke curtain.
In the places where the most serious clashes took place, these were promoted by
militants of revolutionary or independent organisations. Whoever reviews their
history will see that in them the guiding and leading role was not given to the
reformist leaders. This was not an obstacle for honest and militant militants
affiliated to reformist guidance and leadership parties to participate actively
in their upswing.
18) There is a whole new and broad class of militants, emerging in the course of
these struggles, who are now joining free of the reformist blinkers.
This development, the fruit of concrete practice, has not been the work of any
ideological current or preaching. It is the situation itself that places every
honest and combative militant who acts without artificially created prejudices,
in the revolutionary camp. A united action among several unions, some of them of
recent appearance in the vanguard of the trade union struggles, was outlined.
Faced with the powerlessness of the central organs to lead the struggle, the most
combative unions and militants gathered as a tendency to push the struggle forward.
Such is the case of the six unions that on 17 July proposed a global plan of
struggle to the CNT.
In this incorporation of new unions and militant workers ready to face the
hardest repressive measures, lies the most positive and real accumulation of forces.
A similar phenomenon occurred in the student camp, where, together with Medicine,
Architecture, Fine Arts and other university centres, sectors that until now have
had little relative gravitation played a very important role, such as Teaching,
Secondary Education and UTU. New forms of struggle appeared. Especially the
street mobilization of the students acquired unprecedented levels of militancy.
19) The incalculable potential of struggle shown by the masses in the face of
repression has destroyed the myth of the "passivity" of our people.
The occupations of the factories and the organisation of the resistance against
the foreseeable police attack and the so-called "open occupations" of the
students testified this militancy and made contact with the neighbourhoods and
other striking sectors possible.
In some cases, original modalities were used, in the student CAMP, such as the
so-called counter courses, which inaugurated a common area with other sectors.
The conditions have been created for a revolutionary line to have, for the first
time potentially, forces to make an important impact.
SOME LIMITATIONS OF THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT
20) The fundamental shortcoming has been the lack of an overall strategic
concept. The response to the security measures has basically been spontaneous.
Reformism, which holds key positions, has not driven the struggle or coordinated
it. The lack of a revolutionary political centre with the gravitas and strength
to fulfil this role led to the struggle being unleashed and sustained "union by
union" without a sufficiently coherent and forward-looking overall perspective.
For this reason, a counterattack was made, leaving the initiative almost always
in the hands of reaction. The dilatory and "moderating" attitude of the reformist
apparatus, the only one existing on a general scale, contributed to accentuating
these difficulties, which still remain. Developing coordination mechanisms, in
the midst of the struggle and the difficulties created by repression, without a
long period of prior work, is a difficult but inevitable task in the current
conditions. It is vital to persevere in this direction since its lack has clearly
emerged as one of the most negative factors.
21) The subsistence of spontaneous "localist" inclinations that contribute to
bias the struggles, hindering their coordination. This is closely linked to the
above. It is still difficult to mobilise masses far from their respective
factories, banks or study centres. This situation favours repressive action and
hinders the possibility of carrying out bigger activities that give a basis for
an integration of all efforts.
22) The elementary nature of organisational methods. The information, the
organisational work, continues to be carried out mainly in the places where
people naturally connect: workplaces or study centres. The effects of the closure
of the university and of the lycées and industrial schools showed the
precariousness of the organisation set up on these bases. In any future struggle,
the conditions must be created to continue to operate outside the usual places of
study or work. The above-mentioned modality is certainly the most consistent with
the spontaneous level of work. But in overcoming this lies the possibility of
bypassing some of the most effective repressive dossiers that have been applied.
23) The inadequacy of mobilisation on the streets, within certain modalities, as
a permanent and exclusive resource. Its repeated use over a long period of time
has negative effects on public opinion. It seems appropriate to alternate it with
activities that help to create links with the less active sectors of the
population. The lack of sufficient work in this direction by the student movement
facilitated the task of isolating it and turning it into a "scapegoat" for
repression.
Naturally, posing the problem and facing solutions requires overcoming the stage
of spontaneity in which, to a large extent, the student body moved.
The positive aspects, but also the limitations of international student
mobilisations, must be correctly assessed. These are powerful stimulants for a
mass mobilisation that cannot be limited to the student body itself. If methods
are not developed to integrate student action with that of other popular sectors,
it can be relegated to a sacrificial and even heroic but socially superficial
agitation, marginal and without a future.
24)The still insufficient participation of the trade union movement to actively
and publicly mobilise the masses to support it. The workers are on strike, in the
most combative unions factory occupations. It is more difficult to carry out
important street demonstrations. It is the school of a long state paternalism and
its counterpart, the reformist methods of work.
The successes obtained in the period of the "fat cows", applying those methods;
the vast organisational work developed in times when the reformist policy was
viable, gave prestige to their procedures. This is why it is insisted on
continuing to apply them when this reformism no longer fits in with reality, when
it only survives as a paralysing ideology.
25) The raising of the political level of the working class is in fact still
spontaneous, in contradiction with the reformist line. That is why it is not
possible to contribute to the development of a relatively revolutionary practice
and consciousness without destroying the ideological obstacle constituted by the
reformist conceptions. These are not defined only by the membership in this or
that group or political party, but by the application or not, in facts, of
revolutionary methods of action and organisation. Of course, the reformist
practices are coherently applied by the Communist Party, which inscribes its
political line in an international strategic conception that, as we know, is not
revolutionary. That is why the development of a revolutionary action and
consciousness leads in fact to the confrontation with the orientation, the
leadership and the apparatus of that party. This is proven by the facts.
REFORMISM DRAWS RIGHT-WING CONCLUSIONS
As well as positive aspects, in these six months the popular movement has shown
limitations and shortcomings. For many, this creates scepticism or pessimism
about the possibilities of trade union action as an important factor in the
struggle against government policy. As well as no methodology of a revolutionary
type is being put forward, at the level of mass work or at other levels, certain
currents that, while continuing to proclaim themselves as supporters of Che,
Fidel and Olas, draw right-wing conclusions from the situation they are experiencing.
The real shortcomings of the trade union and popular movement demand efforts to
overcome them: through struggle, through processing facts that create awareness,
through inseparable ideological and organisational work. This will make the
strengthening of the people's movement and its vanguard detachments possible.
But those who draw conclusions from this process from the "left", from the right,
think otherwise; perhaps what they have always thought coherently and which,
given that the situation was not yet so defined, was concealed until now.
26) One of these right-wing conclusions, which is at the root of others, is the
lack of faith in the people, in the unions, in the struggle, in direct action.
From this derives a practice focused on management, conciliation, dialogue. Less
dialogue and more struggle to confront the government, has been proclaimed from
the revolutionary left. More dialogue and less struggle is concluded from these
claudicating theses.
The security measures; the reactionary escalation against the freedom and the
living standards of the people; the conspiracy of the bankers, the ranchers and
the bourgeoisie against Uruguay, do not promote among those who think this way a
radicalization of actions and concepts. On the contrary.
"Defending the constitution", "returning the country to normal", is the
watchword, the idea-force, the line of these currents. This is the way to go -
and we are going - very far. For the time being it means sticking to the
legitimacy of the "orange" constitution. But...didn't we agree that the "orange"
was an appropriate text for the crudest oligarchic domination? To accept this
legitimacy is to give up essential positions. The bourgeois constitution and
legality end up being accepted as a natural and immovable order, outside of which
it is not even possible to reflect. This is precisely giving the battle on the
ground chosen by the enemy, accepting its basic assumptions, the mechanisms that
it has deemed necessary to constitutionalise, and then trying to breathe through
its loopholes, objecting that such "excesses" are illegal. As if he forgot that
the "orange" constitution was drafted by the Uruguayan oligarchy and promoted by
the empire, precisely for that purpose: to curtail freedoms, freeze salaries,
apply the Monetary Fund line and impose order.
27) The reformist orientation is an orientation of restoration of something that
existed before; it is a return to the 13th of June, to the moment that gave rise
to what we now have; it is a conservative orientation. That in the first place.
But in addition, this "return to normality", this return to 13 June is-as we have
seen-impossible, it is utopian.
And to make the "struggle" for these conservative objectives, for this utopian
restoration, viable, what is logical, what is coherent? To postulate
conservative, not revolutionary methods, what are these methods? Reformist
methods. They are expressed in theses such as: It is necessary to stop the
struggle in order not to give excuses to the repression and thus isolate the
government; it is vital to defend the privileges of the parliament, where a great
battle for freedoms must take place; it is necessary to open up to the alliance
with the bosses of industries and Freemasonry. And in parallel: to create "broad"
movements, not with the aim of promoting and deepening the trade union struggle
(which would be correct), but to dilute the trade union struggle, relegating it
to a secondary level. And later, for all tastes: to support the progressive wing
of some traditional party; or to increase the electoral front of the left (the
current one or another that is invented); or to create a third party for the 1971
elections. As we can see, all the same, regardless of intentions and labels. The
reformist path, the path that history has shown to be the dead end. It leads to
trying to perfect and increase not the revolutionary methods of work, but the
reformist methods. Those who are thinking in this way are stubbornly evaluating
the possibility of realising "fronts" with politicians and sectors that have
repeatedly shown their hesitations and extreme weakness. (Many of them did not
even dare to vote against the COPRIN project in the Senate).
When the repression questions the most elementary rights, the reformists are
clinging to an electoralist perspective, in the service of which they intend to
put all the mobilization , the real fight of the masses. Thus a new derivative
for popular energies is attempted.
Those who draw the right-wing conclusions from the experience of security
measures believe that it is because of too much struggling and not too much
retreat that the current situation has been reached.
In the background of all this there is an ideological conception, which is at the
root of the analysis they make of the reality of the country, and of the methods
they use in common , the so-called "left wings" that continue to plan within the
right wing parties; and the right wing leaderships of "left parties". Together
they constitute a kind of "His Majesty's Opposition", an increasingly harmless
backdrop to the regime's growing despotism.
GROW, IN ORGANIZATION, IN EXPERIENCE FOR A PROLONGED STRUGGLE
1. The resistance movement has not weakened due to the lack of popular support
and "the lack of politicisation of the masses"; if the struggle has not reached
higher forms in extension and depth, it is not because the people have
spontaneously chosen to "tame". 2. It is not the trade union organisation that is
questioned by the absence of a growing and planned resistance. 3. The political
conceptions transplanted by reformism are not attributable to the popular
movement or to trade unionism.
28) What fails is a certain conception of the trade union movement: the union
conceived as a mere organisation for negotiation and pressure; the union used for
simple ministerial or parliamentary procedures; the union that only lives
actively when there are wage conflicts.
Of course, lobbying is inherent to the union and must remain so. But the way in
which it is carried out, the dimensions attributed to it, is what circumstances
themselves require to be changed.
The demands and levels of struggle imposed by the crisis raise the need to use
new methods of trade union action or, if you want, to adapt to our days the best
of the tradition of revolutionary trade unionism. The period of the "fat cows",
of the more or less easy things, created favourable conditions for a methodology
of procedure, conversation, management and dialogue. Now the reality is very
different, also the methods must be.
29) There are several things that are already clear, which have been evidenced by
practice. No single union can achieve major successes. Developing concrete
solidarity mechanisms and actions on a large scale is decisive.
Not isolating oneself means taking into account the spread and public impact of
the conflict or mobilisation. Union support, support in the neighbourhood,
support in the population. The reaction begins by isolating before openly repressing.
From this we can conclude on the one hand the importance in the clarity of the
objectives of any union struggle; concrete objectives related to the general
interests of the working class and the country are a fundamental element. On the
other hand, the aspects of enlightenment, propaganda and agitation around
mobilisation or conflict. In the present conditions of regimentation of the
publicity apparatus, this forces an intense, original and direct agitation and
propaganda work. Hand in hand with the above, the verification of the importance
of the facts, as the best form of propaganda. The main thing is never the
negotiations, but the measures of struggle that make possible a propaganda that
is attended to and a favourable "negotiation". The spreading of the method of
occupations and the willingness to resist violent unemployment mark this
dignified and effective way, through which the trade union is and can be more and
more a useful weapon of action.
30) The disintegration of the reformist ideology is beginning to take place among
the most conscious and combative sectors. But reformism, which is weak when it is
fought, recovers and appears as soon as the struggle weakens or ends.
This raises important problems because every union groups indiscriminately
developed sectors ready to fight, hesitant sectors that support it
circumstantially and weak sectors that never support it. These elements are
combined in different ways depending on the circumstances, to the point that very
often it is difficult to recognise in a trade union in conflict its own peacetime
physiognomy. The aim is to involve as many workers as possible and with as much
intensity as possible in trade union action. The closest contact with the
broadest base is vital at all times. From that point on, the decisive thing is
not to have the formal leadership of the union, the majority of the executive
committee, which does not mean ignoring the usefulness that this often has. But
what is decisive, in all cases and in any union, is the leadership of the active
sector, of the one that weighs when there are mobilisations, of the one that is
able to create the conditions for the struggle. The work at the base of the
union, among the militants, in the assemblies, in the mobilisations, on the
streets, is the central work; the participation in the more or less
administrative life of the institution must be developed according to the other work.
31) For all these reasons, it is essential that each union should have a grouping
that brings together the most combative part. Its action must be permanent: to
organise the comrades with methods in accordance with the present times; to
promote actions; to train; to guide. The grouping of the most combative to act
together within the union and the union, not isolated from it, ensures the
continuity of the work. The ups and downs of the life of any union, the victory
or defeat in any vote, do not interrupt its work or frustrate it. The new times
make groups of this type nuclei of basic action; the experience of these six
months shows it.
32) The absence of grassroots momentum is a feature of reformist working methods.
Verticalism and bureaucratism are an expression of this. At their root is the
fear of "excesses" and "overflow" from the masses and their active and
protagonist participation. This is how the union is kept uninformed, passive,
with the feeling that the issues of the union are the property of the leaders.
This often leaves the organisations in the air. That's where the yellowness comes
in. The trade union must have continuity in its action, the more active and
permanent participation of the whole union must be promoted, and opinions and
initiatives must be encouraged. This must be one of the basic objectives of the
advanced trend within each trade.
33) For a large sector, especially young workers and students, these security
measures constitute an enlightening and definitive political experience. The
police bullets that killed three comrades have mortally wounded the old and
deep-rooted image of the liberal Uruguay. Nobody can honestly believe anymore
that we live in a "country of freedom". It is a whole historical cycle that is
coming to an end and which many are already evoking, almost unconsciously, as a
kind of "lost paradise". That normality that so many want to recover, without
recognizing that the only true alternative that the future offers us is crude
regression or revolution. Without recognising that, finally, the already
indissoluble, very Latin American reality of our backwardness and
underdevelopment has emerged to the surface of our political and social
coexistence. A large part of the people, somewhat perplexed, refuse to recognise
themselves in that image. Many want to avoid confronting this reality. But the
ruling classes, who know it well because they have benefited from it, know that
they have only one way out to postpone its collapse, to gain time: repression.
This situation results in de facto dictatorship, which is not incompatible with
"constitutional legality".
Does it signal the end of the struggle? Does the enemy hold the key to the
situation? No. The last few months of security measures show it. The struggle
changes in form, in terrain, in methods, it grows or decreases, but it continues.
To search at each juncture, at each moment, for the appropriate levels and
methods, assimilating the experiences that the process leaves behind, that is the
function of the vanguard elements. A function that only an organisation can fulfil.
34) This raises issues that are closely linked to the best form of trade union
action, but which necessarily go beyond the realm of trade unionism. The regime
does not act only through its trade union apparatus (Chamber of Industry and
Commerce, Rural Federation, Bankers' Association, etc.). Nor does it act solely
through the political apparatus provided by government posts and party
structures. Nor only by spreading propaganda and bourgeois ideology through its
press, radio and television. Nor only through its police and military apparatus.
The oligarchy, the current regime, acts against the people, with a policy, an
ideology, a bosses' action, a military action. All this is part of the
continental strategy of imperialism.
When it comes to drawing conclusions from the current situation, it is important
to be clear about the impossibility of separating these factors. Those who were
the protagonists of the resistance against the oligarchy in these six months, the
young workers and students, the old fighters, the groupings and advanced
tendencies of the unions, are the ones who have to lead the resistance and the
advance in the periods that are coming. It will be them and the vast contingents
that will be integrated into this already powerful force in action and
ideological struggle.
We think that it is important to define some criteria in this sense:
35) It is essential to develop a political centre in a position to promote,
coordinate and lead struggles on a general scale. Most of the existing
leaderships are predominantly reformist. They do not adapt to the new situation,
and consequently with positions of backwardness they do not lead or promote the
struggle.
36) The structuring of this political centre is initiated by the most conscious
and concerned sectors. The effort is focused on clarifying and organising these
sectors first. They form the skeleton that will backbone a broader movement. They
are its little engine. Efforts cannot be wasted. The basic thing, at this stage,
is not to mount a vast, amorphous, soft mass movement vulnerable to repression.
What is fundamental is to build an organisation of cadres, capable of operating
under the conditions of widespread and lasting repression.
37) The organisation needed must be adapted to the activity in times of severe
repression. This imposes certain criteria of structure and method that can
immediately hinder its effectiveness in public propaganda. This is the inevitable
price that must be paid to ensure the durability of work conceived in terms of
prolonged struggle as imposed by the reality of our country.
38) The concreteness and development of the political centre is processed in the
struggle. Within the struggle, the militants are selected and developed,
experience is accumulated, and strategy is refined.
The path towards the concretion of the political centre passes, at this stage,
through the formation of tendencies at the union level (groups, lists, etc.) of
stable and coordinated functioning.
39) A strategy for the prolonged struggle, in our country and now, implies
staggering, in parallel or successively, the different types of actions, at the
different levels.
40) The main thing is the wear and tear of the enemy's forces and the
accumulation of one's own forces. At the organisational level, as at any level
where the confrontation takes place, according to the levels it has acquired.
Since the struggle must be predictably hard and prolonged, intense action must be
taken from now on. And to act lasting longer than the enemy.
This process is not only experienced by our country, of course. It has here, as
it had everywhere, its own characteristics. But it is Latin American, and it is
universal. Nowhere has it been His Majesty's opposition, parliamentary
opposition, reformism, that carried out the resistance and thus created the
conditions for social change in the interest of the people and the country.
The opposition that matters, the opposition that makes resistance, the opposition
that creates conditions for change, is an extra-parliamentary opposition, a
popular opposition, an opposition that has direct action as its method.
In Russia in 1917; in Spain in 1936; then in China, in Algeria, in Cuba, now in
Vietnam, by the direct action of the people, of their vanguards, they have
confronted the oligarchy and imperialism, the conditions for revolutionary change
have been created.
They have never been effective to resist oppression, to stop fascism, to make
revolution, methods that are essentially conservative. The "broad fronts" of the
electoral type, with a practice that reserves a role for the people as a group,
which seeks to constrain them to the indirect action of mere support for the
central task, reserved for minorities of professional politicians dedicated to
creating the parliamentary opposition to the regime, have never decided the
course of history.
The experience of the revolutions of our time, the experience of the guerrilla
struggle in the Third World, the experience of the European students and the
American black movement all indicate that there is only one solution. And only
one method. Adapting itself, no doubt, to the characteristics and the situation
of each country.
The path of direct action is also our path. Direct action by the whole people,
which thus acquires a real measure of its power, becomes stronger every day,
forges its political consciousness and its organisation. Direct action of the
vanguard detachments, acting within the people, promoting the processing of
social facts, waging ideological battle, dynamising. The great engine of the
struggle of all the people, the small engine of its vanguard detachments,
inseparable aspects of the same path to create the conditions for freedom and
socialism in Uruguay.
Related Link: http://federacionanarquistauruguaya.uy/40-puntos-para-la-accion-aqui/
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/32171
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