On
17 August 2015 on the website of Solidair (the former
weekly appearing but now monthly appearing newspaper of the Workers
Party of Belgium – WPB/PTB/PVDA) the
interview of Peter Mertens (president of the WPB) and
Raoul Hedebouw (elected WPB-parliamentarian) with
KNACK-journalist Walter Pauli can be read1
(the interview is even translated in French for the French
WPB/PVDA/PTB-website2).
So the statements of Mertens and Hedebouw in that interview has to be
seen as in line with the official party-line. The interview appeared
in the KNACK the week before.
Walter
Pauli knows the WPB very well. When he was a student in Louvain he
was journalist for the student-newspaper VETO. In that
time the student-organisation of the WPB, the Marxist-Leninist
Movement (Marxistisch-Leninistische Bewegiing -MLB) was
very active, certainly at the Catholic University of Louvain
(KULeuven).VETO was in fact the newspaper of the General
Student-Council in which on different levels (yearly)chosen delegates
of the students were active in a syndical structure. In the actions,
demonstrations, meetings organised for democratisation of
university-education, against racism, against the increase of the
registration fees, .... the MLB played a vanguard-role. Although
Walter Pauli had sympathy for the MLB, he never would be a member nor
of the WPB. In fact he likes now more the “new” WPB. So his
questions are in a certain way “prepared” and “provocative”
in order to give Peter Mertens and Raoul Hedebouw the opportunity to
propagate the “new” WPB.
All
changed, also the WPB. Until in the nineties she was calling herself
official “Marxist-Leninist” and was openly flirting with Stalin.
Only
after the young generation had said it so could not continue, the
innovation was deployed in 2008 at the Eighth Party Congress. With
some success, because today has the Partij van de Arbeid / Parti du
Travail - she stands on her bilingualism - two MPs, six elected
members in the Walloon and Brussels parliament and a whole slew of
provincial, municipal and district councillors. There is even one
WPB-member with an executive mandate: in Borgerhout is Zohra Othman
councillor in the left district administration of SP.A
(social-democrats), Groen (ecologists) and WPB.
Peter
Mertens is recognised by friend and foe as the architect of that
success. On 13 June he was elected again as president of the WPB with
93,9 percent of the votes. 'A Stalinist score' the newspapers noted,
referring to the doctrinarian past of the party.(...)
Walter
Pauli: And say that the WPB ever did contemptuously about elections.
They were an instrument of bourgeois parties. A communist would never
do 'electoralism.
Peter
Mertens. Such forms of leftist childishness were our very own. We
did obstinately ignore elections because the fundamental power
relations are not resolved in this country in the polling station. Of
course, that's still true: the power of the financial world is the
day after the elections not essentially different from the day
before. But although you can not solve those fundamental injustices
in society at the ballot box, elections can have an important place
in our society. History has given our party wrong. Only from the
moment the WPB began to see elections as part of her political
strategy, we have made progress. Today we stand politically
infinitely stronger than a decade ago. And we do this without
betraying ourselves: it's not because we are in the parliament, that
we stopped thinking in a radical way.
Peter
Mertens did not correct the statements which Walter Pauli made. After
just once, in the BEGINNING of AMADA (founded in 1970 being the
predecessor of the WPB, founded in 1979) of a no-participation at
elections, the WPB always participated at elections, and very
seriously! And of course the WPB admitted always – as did Lenin
himself in “Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder”
- that elections were “an instrument of the bourgeoisie”.....
But
in 1999, after an (by a lot of cadres) as disappointed considered
electoral result, the political conclusion was made that the party
had to make a program tailored to elections with reform-demands...in
fact a “left” kind of POPULISM, which was used in an
extreme RIGHT way by....fascist parties. No energy or time had to be
invested in the renewal of the FUNDAMENTAL program (of 1979). This
was upcoming OPPORTUNISM in the WPB.
I
wrote here about “a lot of cadres”, because Ludo Martens
made a totally other political/ideological appreciation of the
elections and their results of 1999.
In
Solidair nr. 24 • 16
June 1999. Ludo
Martens: We don’t
strive after easy victories.
A short speech of Ludo Martens in Brussels on a WPB-meeting
« In 1979, by the founding of the WPB, Kabila was here. He was sought by the police of Mobuto and had to hide himself.
In Zaire it was impossible for him to let the massed know of his program. He had not any possibility to mobilise the masses for his just cause. He had no public that he could convince. Mobutu and his mates had all the state power in their hands and their blind violence caused hundred of thousands of deaths. At the same time they worked with a devilish demagogy. Those elements are going together.
This is a characteristic of fascism. Hitler had Goebbels. Several months before the war, in 1939, he still organised with his Nazi-party a « peace-congress ».
Today we see how the whole imperialist world gets more and more characteristics of fascism.
With blind violence Yugoslavia has been bombed, and is presented to us as a humanitarian intervention to save the peace.
Imperialism is breaking today with all rules of the international justice. Nine year ago they attacked Iraq, in name of the international justice.
Who could imagine, twenty years ago, that the NATO, against al rules of international justice would start a most barbaric war of aggression in the heart of Europe?
The Congolese people have made innumerable sacrifices, under the 32 years of Mobutu-dictatorship, to choose finally to chase that individual with the weapons.
But before it was so far, they have seen pass al kinds of liars and demagogues. You cannot predict when the people have enough of all those lies and violence of the bourgeoisie. Those who strive for easy victories find what they want in the bourgeois parties and are doing just that what the bourgeoisie is asking them to do.
Just by the beginning Agalev3 has taken that road and today that party is a speaking-tube of the big bourgeoisie and of imperialism. Hopefully they get into the government. Everybody will see that in no way they dare to attack the fundaments of this unjust society, of capitalism and imperialism.
The WPB has led an outstanding campaign. In that spirit we have to go yet more to the masses, place ourselves on their level and convince them of the necessity to organise themselves and to fight. We have to have confidence in the fact that the masses one day will have enough experience to see the criminal nature of the economic system that is exploiting and suffocating the world. »
A short speech of Ludo Martens in Brussels on a WPB-meeting
« In 1979, by the founding of the WPB, Kabila was here. He was sought by the police of Mobuto and had to hide himself.
In Zaire it was impossible for him to let the massed know of his program. He had not any possibility to mobilise the masses for his just cause. He had no public that he could convince. Mobutu and his mates had all the state power in their hands and their blind violence caused hundred of thousands of deaths. At the same time they worked with a devilish demagogy. Those elements are going together.
This is a characteristic of fascism. Hitler had Goebbels. Several months before the war, in 1939, he still organised with his Nazi-party a « peace-congress ».
Today we see how the whole imperialist world gets more and more characteristics of fascism.
With blind violence Yugoslavia has been bombed, and is presented to us as a humanitarian intervention to save the peace.
Imperialism is breaking today with all rules of the international justice. Nine year ago they attacked Iraq, in name of the international justice.
Who could imagine, twenty years ago, that the NATO, against al rules of international justice would start a most barbaric war of aggression in the heart of Europe?
The Congolese people have made innumerable sacrifices, under the 32 years of Mobutu-dictatorship, to choose finally to chase that individual with the weapons.
But before it was so far, they have seen pass al kinds of liars and demagogues. You cannot predict when the people have enough of all those lies and violence of the bourgeoisie. Those who strive for easy victories find what they want in the bourgeois parties and are doing just that what the bourgeoisie is asking them to do.
Just by the beginning Agalev3 has taken that road and today that party is a speaking-tube of the big bourgeoisie and of imperialism. Hopefully they get into the government. Everybody will see that in no way they dare to attack the fundaments of this unjust society, of capitalism and imperialism.
The WPB has led an outstanding campaign. In that spirit we have to go yet more to the masses, place ourselves on their level and convince them of the necessity to organise themselves and to fight. We have to have confidence in the fact that the masses one day will have enough experience to see the criminal nature of the economic system that is exploiting and suffocating the world. »
In
2003 the leadership of the WPB thought that there existed a broad
public sympathy for the WPB, because of her actions she undertook and
positions she had expressed against the war in Iraq and that could
be reflected in a good election-result for a anti-war/anti-racism
electoral cartel (RESIST) certainly because -as the WPB-leadership
speculated – just in the period of the elections, the imperialist
alliance (lead by the US) would have to deal with a 'Stalingrad-like'
resistance in Bagdad, which would defeat the imperialist war-machine.
But by the course taken by the war and because principal anti-racism
was not “popular” enough among the electors, the election-result
(for RESIST) was a “debacle” (as was formulated by the
WPB-leadership.
In
fact was the electoral-cartel RESIST a petty-bourgeois radical
initiative. This petty-bourgeois radicalism could easily be condemned
as “left-opportunism”
by the already present right-opportunism,
using in a dogmatic
way “Left-Wing Communism: an
Infantile Disorder “ from Lenin
and so formulate a “analysis” formulated in Marxist-sounding
phrases. This evolution is now re-phrased by Peter Mertens (aided by
the interviewer Walter Pauli by the way he formulate his “questions”)
in “a untrue historical MYTHE”:
"(T)he
WPB ever did contemptuously about elections. They were an instrument
of bourgeois parties. A communist would never do 'electoralism.(...)
Such forms of leftist childishness were our very own. We did
obstinately ignore elections because the fundamental power relations
are not resolved in this country in the polling station. Of course,
that's still true:(....) But (.....) elections can have an important
place in our society. History has given our party wrong. Only from
the moment the WPB began to see elections as part of her political
strategy, we have made progress. Today we stand politically
infinitely stronger than a decade ago. And we do this without
betraying ourselves"
About
“her political strategy”:
1.
The former strategy of the WPB was revolutionary, although it was
subjected to a certain dogmatism, which was the most important reason
that upcoming right-opportunism not could be detected or
recognised... could not been fought properly.
2.
The “political strategy” so finally became: “create a
good IMAGE”, “a good APPEARANCE for the WPB”.... to the
electoral public, which would result in increasingly better
election-results. The “political strategy” is not any
longer formulated in a revolutionary program but in a program of
“popular” demands of reforms.
Further
the interview, where the interviewer Walter Pauli is functioning as
the “declarant” (in the manner he formulates his
“questions”) by a comical duo, giving the other comedian
the opportunity to make his comical phrase:
W.P.
You present yourself as left and anti-establishment and you pretend
to “do politics in an anternative way”. But is what is happening
in Greece not a fundamental lesson for a party as the WPB? The left
Syriza gets one third of the votes. But still she is, in moments when
it really matters, crushed by the big powers.
Peter
Mertens. Yet it is not because Angela Merkel put a Prussian
helmet on her head and want to control whole Europe that the WPB has
to change her point of view? I learn from Greece in particular that
it remains important not to fall into the trap of social democracy:
they also thought they could change the game by playing it the first
time. Syriza, a leftist party of idealists and humanists, has tried
to take her position in a rational way. She cherished the idea that
they could convince social-democratic strongholds as the French
President Francois Hollande and the Italian Prime Minister Matteo
Renzi, as they just would use the right arguments.
When
Syriza was scoring good in the elections, she was an example to
follow for Peter Mertens: ” The WPB is Syriza at the Schelde”
(The Schelde is the river near Antwerp...) But after Syriza disown
her election-promises, Peter Mertens, and the PVDA-leadership, had to
find an explanation...”The underestimation of the relations of
power...”
W.P.
So that was a bad estimate.
Peter
Mertens. Yannis Varoufakis told afterwards that he as finance
minister has tried to build a coherent argumentation, but he got not
any substantive response to any argument. "I might as well had
sung our national anthem," said Varouflakis, "it just would
had the same effect as my elaborate explanation: not any at all."
Syriza has finally learned that these negotiations were not ordinary
conversations, but part of an economic war. One even has drained
Greek banks: it is a hard lesson for all countries from the eurozone.
At the same time, since the beginning of the euro there has never
been a government so openly taking the glove against the German
monetarism. So I have every respect for a featherweight as Syriza
which has dared to box above its weight class. Without SYRIZA there
was never a so profound debate about Europe as there is now. In every
Irish pub, in any Spanish tapas bar the talking was about the Greek
resistance against the German march-direction.
So
Peter Mertens 'explains': “The problem was that nobody
would listen to Syriza and that they want openly humiliate
Syriza”....About the critic which the KKE (a former
'sister'-party...) made IN ADVANCE ànd about the other
“strategy” (namely that of the communists!) nothing (yet) is been
said.
W.P.
Is the WPB still stimulating the reading of the famous book of Lenin
“What is to be done?”
Raoull
Hedebouw. (sighing) I've got my hands full with all those things
I still have to do. And then I allow myself to be inspired by every
interesting thinker, from Marx to Piketty. It should not always be
about economics. I've also taken a lot of inspiration from the
biography of Nelson Mandela.
Walter
Pauli, who had close and “friendly” contacts with WPB-members and
who was at least sympathising with the WPB in his time as student at
the Catholic University of Louvain is not “just” referring
to a book “What is to be done?”, but is asking if
the WPB is still stimulating her members to study Lenin and the
October-revolution, the history of the Bolsheviks and the analysis of
actual imperialism (as highest stage of capitalism ...as Lenin
analysed) and if the WPB-position is still, to use Marxist analysis
for “an analysis of the concrete actual situation in order to come
to a strategical acting to change the society” ... and of
course Raoul IS KNOWING THIS. So, in fact Raoul is answering: “Lenin?
We are not any longer basing ourselves on him. Marx? Is 'just' an
interesting thinker....about economy as there are a lot other
“interesting thinkers”....about economy”. About a view on
the whole actual (but apparently not imperialist?) society ...but a
view which is “more than only economy”, for Raoul
Hedebouw, the biography of Nelson Mandela is a source of inspiration.
Here Raoul Hedebouw is provocative! Every party-member from BEFORE -
say- 2004, knows, that Ludo Martens has written the “biographies”
of African anti-imperialist revolutionaries: Thomas
Sankara, Pierre Mulélé and
Laurent Kabila. But for Raoul Hedebouw ... not a
source of inspiration!. Apparently, even a biography of, ...say,
Ernesto 'Chè' Guevara or of Fidel Castro
could not inspire him.
....In
fact, as we will see, Raoul gives the opportunity to Walter Pauli to
chose a formulation for a question, in order to give Peter Mertens
the opportunity to disown anti-imperialism, the
(former)revolutionary character of the WPB ànd the
legacy of Ludo Martens in ONE stroke, and DEFINITIVELY.
W.P.
Ludo Martens, predecessor of Peter Mertens as president of the WPB
has written that Mandela was an agent of American imperialism.
Peter
Mertens. Today you will never again read such an absurd analysis
in any publication of the WPB. With sectarianism like that, we have
broken definitively.
This
time offers more than ever opportunities for progressives who want to
colour outside the lines. Even in academic circles there is
refreshing critique on German liberalism. I devour the books of
Rutger Bregman. Not that I agree with everything he posits in The
History of Progress or Free Money for Everyone, but it is superbly
written.
In
fact he says that anti-imperialist analyses as Ludo Martens made are
no longer permitted in the WPB, because it is “absurd” and
“sectarian”.
So
it will not be anymore allowed for EPO (the printing
and publishing office of the WPB, in fact the former non-profit
association “Proletarian Education”) to publish anti-imperialist
and revolutionary analyses as:
Sankara,
Compaoré et la révolution Burkinabè
Pierre
Mulele, ou la seconde vie de Patrice Lumumba
Kabila
et la révolution congolaise: panafricanisme ou
néocolonialisme?
Only
petty-bourgeois litany of Peter Mertens as “How dare they”
can by published
Also
in Solidair, never can be published an article as was
done in Solidair no 22 of 21 May1997 (red-fat by me):
Long
live Kabila! Long live the free Congo!
After
37 years of tyranny imposed by the West finally new hope
With
the intake of Kinshasa, Kabila has completed a remarkable campaign.
The story thus takes revenge. Thirty-seven years, the Mobutu regime
hunted down and killed the partisans of Lumumba and Mulele. He wanted
to delete all knowledge about their work out of the memory of the
people. The victory of Kabila is the historical revenge of Lumumba
and Mulele.
(...)
The
Americans wanted to use Kabila to shake interlacing the Mobutu regime
and to create a “legal transition" by the assembled
opposition.
The
Americans have used Kabila, a man they distrusted otherwise. After
all, he represents the popular uprising of the sixties against the
Belgo-American interference. Kabila has so far avoided all the traps
which the imperialists conspired to him. As of March, there was
constant pressure so that the Alliance would accept a cease-fire,
that a political 'dialogue' would take on, would be part of a
'transitional regime' and would accept 'free' elections. The goal was
clear: to save as much as possible the pro-imperialist forces in the
vicinity of Mobutu, to organize the continuation of imperialist
domination.
The
3000 US, French and Belgian soldiers in Brazzaville were primarily
aimed to intimidate the Alliance and to force the 'dialogue'. Kabila
has not capitulate for this.. Then
the Americans sent their South African stooges Mandela et Mbeki to
increase the moral pressure on Kabila.
But he coped with them. Both the Americans and the French have had
the opportunity to wait to send their troops to Kinshasa and so
influence events. There were two possible pretexts for this
aggression 'from strictly humanitarian considerations': save or
rescue the 'endangered' whites or the Hutu refugees "who were
planned to be killed". Kabila has deftly managed to manoeuvre to
avoid such an operation.
Then
Walter Pauli gives, with his question, opportunity to Peter Mertens
to confirm again this orientation of the WPB.
W.P.
Ten years ago, the PTB still swore by the reading of Marx, Engels and
Lenin, which would be the basis of the so-called "scientific
socialism."
Peter
Mertens. I've never liked that term. It gave the impression that
Marxism was a matter of formulas. Who just is busy with books from
almost two hundred years ago, does not understand what is happening
today and soon has no message for the people of today. But I hasten
to add: who just only is surfing on the waves of the daily news,
misses a fundamental analysis. So I remain to recommend the reading
of Marx and Engels. But also that of Owen Jones, the young British
sociologist who takes Cameron's government under fire and want pull
Labour more to the left. Whether he will succeed is another question.
So
Peter Mertens “recommend (still) the reading of Marx and
Engels” ....but not anymore that of Lenin (he is silent about
it although Lenin was mentioned in the question)
But
Marx and Engels for Peter Mertens and Raoul Hedebouw (and so been
propagated to the rest of the WPB-members) are 'just' “interesting
thinkers”..about “economy”....but because from
“almost two hundred years ago” there are perhaps MORE
interesting “economic thinkers” today.
To
study Lenin is NOT recommended, because Peter Mertens en Raoul
Hedebouw could be unmasked, and sleeping dogs (drugged by dogmatism)
be wakened.
Lenin
about Marx and Marxism and unmasking revisionism and revisionists
In
his “State and Revolution” (the book which study in
the WPB also was recommended in earlier days) Lenin let explain Marx
himself that he was NOT 'just' an “interesting thinker about
economy”:
In
1907, Mehring, in the magazine Neue Zeit[4] (Vol.XXV, 2, p.164),
published extracts from Marx's letter to Weydemeyer dated March 5,
1852. This letter, among other things, contains the following
remarkable observation:
"And
now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the
existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them.
Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical
development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the
economic anatomy of classes. What I did that was new was to prove:
(1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with the
particular, historical phases in the development of production
(historische Entwicklungsphasen der Produktion), (2) that the class
struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat,
(3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to
the abolition of all classes and to a classless society."
In
these words, Marx succeeded in expressing with striking clarity,
first, the chief and radical difference between his theory and that
of the foremost and most profound thinkers of the bourgeoisie; and,
secondly, the essence of his theory of the state.4
And
Lenin unmasking revisionists -as Peter Mertens and Raoul Hedebouw –
here by the example of ...Karl Kautsky (italic-fat by
me):
“Kautsky,
the leading authority in the Second International, is a most typical
and striking example of how a
verbal recognition of Marxism has led in practice
to its conversion into ‘Struvism’, or into ‘Brentanoism’
[i.e., into
a bourgeois-liberal theory recognising the non-revolutionary “class”
struggle of the proletariat,
which was expressed most clearly by Struve, the Russian writer, and
Brentano, the German economist]. Another example is Plekhanov. By
means of patent sophistry, Marxism is stripped of its revolutionary
living spirit; everything is recognised in Marxism except the
revolutionary methods of struggle, the propaganda and preparation of
those methods, and the education of the masses in this direction.
Kautsky reconciles in an unprincipled way the fundamental idea of
social-chauvinism, recognition of defence of the fatherland in the
present war, with a diplomatic sham
concession to the Lefts—his
abstention from voting for war credits, his
verbal claim to be in the opposition,
etc. Kautsky,
who in 1909 wrote a book on the approaching epoch of revolutions and
on the connection between war and revolution,
Kautsky, who in
1912 signed the Basle Manifesto on taking revolutionary advantage of
the impending war,
is outdoing himself in justifying and embellishing social-chauvinism
and, like Plekhanov, joins
the bourgeoisie in ridiculing any thought of revolution and all steps
towards the immediate revolutionary struggle.
“The
working class cannot play its world-revolutionary role unless it
wages a ruthless struggle against this backsliding, spinelessness,
subservience to opportunism, and unparalleled vulgarisation of the
theories of Marxism. Kautskyism is not fortuitous; it
is the social product of the contradictions within the Second
International, a blend of loyalty to Marxism in word and
subordination to opportunism in deed” (G. Zinoviev and N.
Lenin, Socialism and War, Geneva, 1915, pp. 13–14).5
Where
on the 8th WPB-congress
in 2008, Marxism was - in a very formal way – was called as
the base for her view to the world, and where then, there was 'some”
superficial reference to Lenin, now the degeneration is
complete. And the rest of the party, which lost more and more their
vigilance (overwhelmed by the influence of dogmatism), was completely
sleeping after the 8th congress, is now not anymore
alarmed by this ANTI-Marxist and PRO-reformist position.
I
reported since 1999, the evolution I noticed in the party towards a
very formal “engagement” by a lot of cadres, who
were apparently not anymore focused on raising consciousness by the
workers in the factories and in the moments of class-struggle and who
were, in the best cases, just promoting a “radical”
syndicalism....Since 2001, while studying the documents of the 7th
congress in 2001, I reported elements of revisionism, against
which I wanted to warn the cadres. Not any report was
answered!....And in 2005 I was expelled. (This I will elaborate and
document later...some documentation or reference to it, but mostly
still in Dutch, can be found on my (Google-)site Cultural
Revolution.)
The
actual development goes quicker than the analysis...Peter Mertens let
enter Trotskyite-ideology enter the WPB/PVDA/PTB
(I
made already a reaction (but in Duth) on the latest evolutions: 02-10-15 Peter Mertens haalt trotskisme binnen in PVDA, laat Lenin afzweren, hoopt zo smet “stalinisme” te verliezen en zo “Syriza aan de Schelde” te vestigen)
My analysis
is that Peter Mertens is preparing to be in the next elections in the
role of “Syriza at the Schelde”. On the “left”
news-website De Wereld Morgen (The World Tomorrow) were
made a lot of “analyses” about the WPB (and Peter Mertens)
with “advices” and “critics” to the WPB-cadres,
written by people who are situated in what earlier days was called,
“the Trotskyites”. Well, Peter Mertens has studied well
all those articles and has used those “advices” and
“critics”.
First he
named a “party-ideologue”, Marc Vandepitte, someone who is
situated in “left to the Belgian (...O no, Flamish)
social-democrats (Spa)” and who, in his student-time (I know
him from there) never pronounced himself in those days, in favour for
“the Trotskyism” of the SAP nor the LSP (the 2 Trotskyite
organisations) but NEITHER for the “Marxism-Leninism” of
the WPB/PVDA/PTB.
Secondly was
the order to Herwig Lerouge to “abjure” Lenin, and to
focus from now on Gramsci in Marxist Studies6.
Herwig Lerouge has to use Gramsci in order to promote and to praise
Syriza again (where he, in former analyses he put Syriza away as
“incorrigible reformists”.
To become
“Syriza at the Schelde” (Schelde is a river flowing in the
Flanders an through Antwerp), Marxism is abjured and Trotskyism is
introduced. With Marc Vandepitte, Peter Mertens is also hoping to get
rid of the label “Stalinists”, coming out of the
anti-communist (“left” social-democratic) corner.
In his
article (on the WPB-website) Marc Vandepitte is first repeating the
reformism-protecting “protest” to the “latest
austerity-measures”.
He describes
(and is protecting, not unmasking) how since the begin of the
austerity-measures, the actual government the united union-leadership
is focusing the anger of the workers on “Against the BLIND
austerity-measures and for a JUST tax-shit (with a tax on fortunes)”,
as did the WPB already before in 2014. I commented this in 06-12-14 Kapitalistische belangen ideologisch en politiek beschermd door OBJECTIEVE burgerlijke alliantie van uiterst rechts tot uiterst (reformistisch) links.
There was
only indignation for what “the last austerity-measures” cost to
the workers.
Not is fought
“the necessarily of austerity-measures” in general, only
is fought the “unjust and unfair character” of these
austerity-measures.
And then Marc
Vandepitte (as “left-social-democrat”? Or by the
Trotskyist strategy of “enterism”?) will make the WPB
apply not anymore Marxism.
To
understand what we are experiencing today and what is at stake, you
should look at the broader historical picture. The distribution of
wealth is the socio-economic key issue of any society. At the time of
Daens, just over a hundred years ago, the gap between rich and poor
was revolting. Prolonged and sustained social struggles of the
nascent labour-movement then made it a gradual improvement in the
extremely unequal distribution. It reached its peak after World War
II. Fascism was defeated, (extreme) right was severely discredited
and the labor movement was stronger than ever. Fearing Communism were
the elites when too many concessions made. (...)
It
was in those circumstances that the social welfare state has
expanded.
But
that was not to the liking of the top layer in the society. They saw
their share of the wealth decrease sensitively7
They were seeking revenge. (...) Neoliberalism. (...) Economic and
social policies characterized by less tax on capital, cuts in social
benefits, reducing government spending, privatization, deregulation
and free trade. (....) The condition for the deployment of their
policy input consisted in neutralising the guards of the welfare
state: the unions. Thus these socio-economic ideology got also an
anti-democratic component.
(Since)
... the severe economic crisis of 1973. (...) the high unemployment
meant(...) a significant weakening of the unions. The neoliberal
ideology, which was marginally after World War II, was now fully
launched, this time successfully. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989
gave this ideological offensive an extra boost. Gradually this
extreme antisocial neoliberal ideology got its prevalence in the
public opinion. At the same time the labour-movement became more and
more on the defensive.
It
is in this context that you need to insert the current taxshift and
the dismantling of the welfare state. It is part of an offensive that
takes place in all developed countries. It is a well-camouflaged
attempt by the elites to their 'lost wealth "recapture. The
right-wing populists are emerging more and more as masters of
camouflage. They play cunning in on insecurities and fears among the
public and divert attention to another issue: a (whipped) terrorist
threat, a (self- organized) refugee crisis ... Their antisocial
offensive is wholly in line with the neoliberal theory, coupled with
attacks on unions and putting at the sidelines of the civil society.
(...)
The
current course is based on the law of the jungle. The policy is
cruel, heartless and unacceptable. Another policy is urgently needed
and possible.8
Imperialism
as highest stage of capitalism? Never heard off! ....Off course,
because you abjured Lenin!
The
capitalist relations of production, with the capitalist exploitation
as base... are disappeared!... Imperialism as highest stage? ...Is
not existing! Colonies? Never heard of! So, the “de-colonisation”
and afterwards the neo-colonisation with the plundering of the Third
World, the extra-exploitation of the people there, has not to be a
part of the analyses of the anti-Marxist, the anti-Leninist (but NOT
the anti-imperialist) Marc Vandepitte.
The same
imperialism which divide the world and re-divide the world, first by
colonisation, afterwards by “neo-colonisation”, by war and
plundering and which is laying at the base of the need that big
groups of people feel to migrate/flee of the created poverty, of the
hunger, of the theft of all possibilities to build a liveable
existence, thàt same imperialism produced the funds, out of
its piled extra-profits coming of the extra-exploitation of the
“neo-colonised” part of the world, for having in Europe
(certainly Europe because laying just beside the “communist world”)
the possibilities to bribe the union-leadership and the
social-democratic parties and to give the governments of the European
countries the means in order to take away all revolutionary
inclinations with social security, cheap housing, health care,... and
also to give at the “refugees” of Eastern Europe, full
citizenship to prove that it was a right choice to flee to the
capitalist world
But it would
be also the reformist leadership of the unions who after 1980 each
time again could shutdown the struggle against austerity-measures (in
fact the step by step increase of the level of exploitation) and
based on certain concessions make accept each time the essence of the
austerity-measures and the decreases of the relative height of the
wages.
Now is
expressed by the leadership of the unions and also by the WPB (here
by Marc Vandepitte) what is costing to an average family, just “the
last austerity-measures”. But what it has cost the workers in
general and since 1980, nothing is said. All the actual existing
poverty, the actual unemployment,
all the
actual benefits which do not accrue, the actual existing exclusions,
the actual suspensions,the actual reductions, the already
long-standing problems in many families for education costs, housing
costs, health costs, energy and water costs (EVEN if "only"
6% tax will be levied), the actual costs for the residents in
retirement and nursing homes, the actual inadequate pensions for
a"quality of life" .... are a result of all those savings,
all those employer contributions reductions, for which the trade
union leadership have already capitulated before, and for which they
already in earlier times make stop the workers with striking, and for
which they have already in earlier days sanctioned combative
union-stewards in their own unions. (The WPB has forgotten the
manner by which THE communist union-stewards are sanctioned,
sometimes expelled out of their unions by the union-leadership and
were sometimes “sacrificed” by allowing that they were
fired,...like as it happened by me!)
It is THE
SAME anticommunism ànd THE SAME possibilities of economic
growth in Europe after the Second World War (and the necessity to
compete with the US) that resulted in the Social Security
as well as in the Convention of Geneva for the
displaced, after WWII, coming out of those regions from BEHIND the
“Iron Curtain” (as Churchill called it) ànd “the
refugees from communism” (like the 200.000 Hungarians in 1956.
And it is the
same capitalist/imperialist “urge” in the by the crisis sharpened
struggle of competition, to increase the level of exploitation for
which has to be abolished as well the Social Security
as well as the Convention of Geneva.
Marc
Vandepitte is now lancing the Trotskyite analysis of “neo-liberalism”
IN the WPB, which was fought by the WPB herself in earlier days
in Marxist Studies.9
10
1http://solidair.org/artikels/knack-peter-mertens-bart-de-wever-laat-graag-uitschijnen-dat-antwerpen-een-rechtse-stad,
Knack | Peter Mertens: “Bart De Wever laat graag uitschijnen dat
Antwerpen een rechtse stad is, maar dat is helemaal niet zo”,
BELGIË17 augustus 2015 PVDA
2http://solidaire.org/articles/knack-peter-mertens-ptb-bart-de-wever-fait-croire-qu-anvers-est-une-ville-de-droite-mais-ce,
Knack | Peter Mertens (PTB) : « Bart De Wever fait croire
qu’Anvers est une ville de droite, mais ce n’est pas vrai »
3Agalev
- Anders GAan LEVen,
‘to live in an alternative way’ was the name of the ecologist
party in the Dutch-spoken part of Belgium.. Her name is now GROEN
(GREEN)
4https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch02.htm#s3,
In Lenin's "State and Revolution": 3. The Presentation of
the Question by Marx in 1852.
5https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/index.htm,
The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky. Written:
October—November, 1918.. First Published 1918 in pamphlet form by
Kommunist Publishers, Moscow. Published according to the pamphlet
checked with the manuscript.. Source: Lenin’s Collected Works,
Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 28, 1974, pages 227-325.
Translated (and edited): Jim Riordan. Transcription/HTML Markup:
David Walters & Robert Cymbala, Online Version: V. I. Lenin
Internet Archive, 2002.Second proofreading: Steve Iverson, 2014
6http://marx.be/nl/content/gramsci-en-de-griekse-crisis,
“Gramsci en de Griekse crisis” in Marxistische Studies nr. 111,
Auteur: Herwig Lerouge
7
Piketty
T., Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Londen 2014, p. 324.
8http://solidair.org/artikels/7-oktober-en-de-wraak-van-de-rijken-0,
7 oktober en de wraak van de rijken, Marc Vandepitte
9http://marx.be/fr/content/%C3%A9tudes-marxistes?action=get_doc&id=40&doc_id=156,
Études marxistes, Revue n° 44, date de publication:
1998-11-30 Copyright © EPO, Études marxistes et auteurs
— La reprise, la publication et la traduction sont autorisées
pour des buts strictements non lucratifs,"Quelle
réponse à l’offensive néo-libérale?",
par Thomas Gounet
10http://marx.be/fr/content/%C3%A9tudes-marxistes?action=get_doc&id=40&doc_id=157,
Études marxistes, Revue n° 44, date de publication:
1998-11-30 Copyright © EPO, Études marxistes et auteurs
— La reprise, la publication et la traduction sont autorisées
pour des buts strictements non lucratifs, "La
théorie sur le néo-libéralisme n’est-elle pas
´néo-réformiste'?",
par Thomas Gounet
