El Salvador: for a Workers' and Peasants

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Final part of a series by Don Flint Young militants in El Salvador: Trotskyists must win the best forces to a Marxist programme The formation of popular front alliance of opposition forces embracing workers' parties, "liberal"

capitalist and left wing petty bourgeois groups in El Salvador has, in recent months, taken a further step forward.

There has been an agreement of the Unified Revolutionary Leadership (DRU) that in future the DRU and the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR) are "the only two revolutionary powers"

The leaders of the FDR/ DRU have agreed that the more radical Co-ordinadora Revolucionaria de Masas (CRM) (an alliance of left wing and Stalinist forces) will cease all its public activities outside EI Salvador.

The CRM's goods and funds will now pass into the hands of the FDR which, the agreement states, is "authentically nationalist"

Censure

Indeed the entire document appears written as a censure of the excessive militancy of the CRM, stating for instance that "There must be an end to irresponsibility"

The merger of these forces into a new, more comprehensive cross-class alliance and the fight to contain the activities of its left wing is not in itself a decisive political victory for the liberal bourgeoisie.

Indeed the left wing groupings still control the DRU and constitute by far the •most powerful force on the FDR.

But the moves to discipline the most militant formations indicates a major swing towards enforcing the strategy of a "policy of alliances" between the organisations of the working class, the petty bourgeois forces, and the 'liberal' bourgeoisie that proclaims itself opposed to the ruling junta.

In this sense the new alignment represents a swifter political development than that which took place among the FSLN forces in Nicaraguawhere the political convergence and moves to suppress the left wing were only consolidated in the aftermath of the defeat of Somoza.

Political problems

The popular front leaders in El Salvador are hoping to create conditions to suppress those political forces that might have embarked on a struggle against popular frontism, and to eliminate even the organisational possibility of waging such a struggle within the framework of the CRM.

In this way, the political problems in the development of the anti-imperialist struggle in El Salvador demonstrate with utmost clarity that the experience of Nicaragua, far from being an aberration, was part of the general pattern of struggle internationally.

The fact is that petty bourgeois nationalist leaderships, no matter. how radical their rhetoric, must inevitably fail to attain either genuine national independence or full democratic rights for the oppressed masses.

Though they can win the allegiance of often broad layers of the proletariat in the anti-imperialist struggle, such leaderships lack the programme and strategy to achieve their self- proclaimed aims, and wind up stil locked in the embrace of imperialism.

Fearing the independent political mobilisation of the proletariat, eternally seeking alliances with supposed "progressive" sections of the bourgeoisie, and unable to mobilise the full strength of the peasantry for lack of a comprehensive programme, the petty bourgeois leaderships time and again resist and obstruct the necessary struggle for . the complete overthrow of the capitalist system as a whole, which alone can open the road to completing the democratic and socialist tasks of the revolution.

Trotskyists counterpose to the petty bourgeois call for a cross-class "popular democratic" government the demand for a workers' and peasants' government, with no bourgeois parties or ministers.

As the Transitional Programme pointed out . in 1938:

"When the party of the proletariat refuses : to step beyond bourgeois-democratic limits, its alliance with the peasantry is simply turned into a support for capital, as was the case with the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries in 1917, with the Chinese Communist Party in 1925-27, and is now the case with the "People's Front" in Spain, France and other countries".

To these examples could of course be added the tragic lessons of the Chilean "Popular Unity" government in which the "Marxist" Allende and his supporters tied the Chilean workers movement to an alliance with "progressive" capitalists and generals.

The Workers Socialist League, as part of the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, puts forward today a programme based on these political lessons.

Petty bourgeoisie

In El Salvador, as in Nicaragua and every country where mass movements against imperialism have fallen under the leadership of the petty bourgeoisie we raise clearly the demand for a workers' and peasants' government. As Trotsky points out:

"Of all parties and organisations which base themselves on the workers and peasants and speak in their name we demand that they break politically from the bourgeoisie and enter upon the road of struggle foi a workers' and farmers' (peasants') government.

On this road we promise them full support against capitalist reaction. At the same time we indefatigably develop agitation around those transitional demands which should in our opinion form the programme of the workers' and farmers (Emphasis added)

In El Salvador it is necessary not to exclude or to ignore the political mobilisation of the radicalised petty bourgeoisie, but to accelerate their radicalisation by asserting the leading role of the working class.

Without this lead, these sectors will rapidly draw back from the revolutionary struggle and become the allies of the bourgeoisie in repressing the demands of the working class.

The forces of Trotskyism in El Salvador are, beyond any September. imperialism.

Make up PCS DRU FDR FDS CRM PSC MNR UDN opposition ERP UDN LP-28 Direccion Revolucionaria Unificada Frente Democratico Revolucionario Frente Democratico Salvadoreno Coordinadora Revolucionaria de Masas Partido Social Cristiano Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario -Union Democratica Nacionalista doubt, very weak-not least as a result of the extraordinary organisational chaos and political liquidation of the 'United', Secretariat of the Fourth International following the split over the Simon Bolivar Brigade affair in Nicaragua last Moreover the task of party building would in any event be fraught with tremendous difficulties in the present conditions of repression and civil war.

Nevertheless there exist large forces amongst the rank and file of the left wing organisations, in the trade unions and in the guerrilla groups that already see themselves as Marxists engaged in the struggle against of the FPL BPR PCS FPL FAR ERP The best of these forces can and must be won to Trotskysim and the programme of permanent revolution.

In driving a wedge between the healthy, militant forces of the oppressed on the one hand, and the 'liberal' bourgeoisie and their petty bourgeois allies on the other, a programme of transitional demands must be developed which centres on the independent role and class interests of the proletariat.

This must include the central demand for the formation of armed workers militias, based on the factories and working class neighbourhoods, to defend trade union organisation and revolutionary militants against state and right wing violence.

In this way any tendency of FARN MPLI FAPU CRA )RU LP-28 BPR FAPU MPL PCS ERP FARN workers to rely for their protection on petty bourgeois guerrilla groups can be combatted, and new blows struck at the regime.

At the same time the economic demands of both the working class and the poor peas.

antry must be given a clear-cut socialist answer.

In particular it is important to raise the demand for the opening of the books of industry, of the banks, of the large agricultural suppliers and transport concerns, to show how both the workers and the poor peasants are exploited to boost the profits not only of impers but eist or demo capitalists alists in El Salvador itself (who capitoppose the present regime because they see it as simply an obstacle to further extension of their own profit-taking).

Thus the demand for the opening of the books can assist to drive the wedge between the exploited and the exploiters in the cross-class FDR and DRU alliances-laying the basis for agitational work designed to mobilise a worker-led alliance of workers and poor peasants in the revolutionary expropriation of capitalism in El Salvador.

The demand must be raised alongside demands on wages, and demands for a programme of public works to create jobs for the mass of unemployed.

Revolutionary party And Trotskyists must insist in El Salvador as in every other struggle that such revolutionary demands can be fought out successfully. only under the leadership of an independent proletarian revolutionary party that has absorbed the lessons of betrayals under reformist, Stalinist and nationalist leaderships in the last sixty years and frmly grasped the necessity to carry through the struggle to the establishment of socialism.

It is with this in view that the Workers Socialist League and the TILC regard solidarity with the workers and peasants of El Salvador as posing Trotskyists throughout the world with the task of reconstructing the confused, crisis-ridden and divided Fourth International in order to lay the basis for the building of Trotskyist parties in every country.

MNR PSC Unio Coali FDS FDR (1980)

Ligas Populares 28 de Febrero Bloque Popular Revolucionario • Frente de Accion Popular Unificada Movimiento Popular de Liberacion Partido Communista de El Salvador Ejercito Revolucionario del Puebio. Fuerzas Armadas de Resistencia Nacional Scot