BY JORGE JORQUERA
Latin America has emerged as the frontline of struggle against neoliberalism. This year alone: two mass uprisings have swept through Bolivia; trade union struggles have intensified in Peru and Chile; political opposition has grown in Paraguay; leftists were elected to important government posts in both El Salvador and Colombia; in Brazil and Uruguay the ruling elites have had no choice but to make the most of "left" parties in governments or potential government: and in Venezuela a revolution is unfolding.
These struggles are provoking debates about strategy and tactics for progressive struggle. As in the 1960s, leaders of the Cuban Revolution are in the forefront of these debates. In a statement in Cuba Socialista, the theoretical journal of the Cuban Communist Party, Jose Ramon Balaguer Cabrera, member of the party's political bureau, critiques "Third Way" politics, locates the working class at the heart of political strategy and argues for the centrality of Marxist regroupment.
The article,"The Marxist left's politics of alliances at the beginning of the 21st Century", discusses building alliances between not just communist parties, but "all contemporary Marxist organisations" in a "difficult but unavoidable road to unity".
He argues the politics of such an alliance could cover "a broad radius of action on themes like defence of sovereignty, independence and national self-determination, the promotion of a true regional integration and unity with respect to the interests of the peoples, the reversal of [neoliberal] deregulation and privatisation ..., opposition to war and the attempts to criminalise popular struggles.
"A good starting point for the building of our alliances is the battle against the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, which embodies the worst annexationist designs of US imperialism".
Cabrera argues left alliances should be based on an understanding of the political leadership role of the working class: "... to refute some of the principal pseudo-theories in vogue, let us remember that: 1) the working class continues to be the producer of almost the entire social wealth upon which not only development, but also humanity's survival itself are based, and thus its role in the class struggle continues to be decisive; and 2) contrary to what happened during the expansive growth of the post-war world capitalist economy, the process of increasing the value of capital within the main imperialist powers is no longer compatible with the general increase of employment, wages and other forms of social redistribution...
"The formula the Communist Party of Cuba proposes ... is the conception of the alliances as a first step toward convergence, unity, fusion and synthesis of the demands, needs, aspirations and interests of all the oppressed and exploited social class sectors... not as mere and circumstantial electoral coalitions in which the different factions 'negotiate' the exchange of reciprocal support ... but as the beginning of a strategic [long-term] process ... of building consensus and elaborating a common program of government that not only confronts but reverses the consequences of neoliberalism."
From Green Left Weekly, December 10, 2003.
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