[day life in neo-colonial society. Since January religious…]

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day life in neo-colonial society.

Since January religious sources say over 7,000 people have died in the battle against the dictatorship-and yet the vast majority of these casualties are victims who never took up arms, workers and peasants who identify and organise with the left but have not embarked on armed struggle.

Thiss is the result of the massive, US-backed 'counterinsurgency' campaign unleashed by the Junta this March under the guise of an 'agrarian reform' It is now generally agreed that the level of attrition has reached a critical point and that the FDR popular front opposition is at a strategic cross-roads but it appears to be holding back from a major military offensive.

There are number of possible reasons for this.

Harvests

First, • Salvadorean society and politics are to a large degree structured around the schedule of harvests that take place in the.autumn.

The large number of landworkers' self-defence squads.

These forestalled the massacre that seemed likely when the military intervened in the major work centres, days before the stoppage was due.

Gunpoint

All workers were threatened with redundancy if they came out and soldiers raided the bus terminals, forcing drivers to take the buses out onto the streets at gunpoint.

Nevertheless, very little production took place and shops were boycotted. The power workers' union STECEL, which belongs to FAPU, did not come out but simply worked to rule and this may have proved decisive in making the strike a strike rather than a call to arms.

STECEL held back until early September when it came out in apparent coordination with a coup attempt by Majano's forces on the 8th.

This failed and a new series of postings and promotions assured the 'right' wing of the military total supremacy.

Majano is now a spent force, even in his own terms, and many of the key military orientation of the left will not lead to the overthrow of capitalism in El Salvador.

It is now clear that the military struggle is extremely fierce-the army is certainly losing large numbers of men and cannot control several areas of the countryside-but the political as well as the military position of the FDR is putting the defeat of the Junta itself in doubt.

The activities of FAPU are nothing but the leical concheother mass organisations to seek appeasement with 'moderate' elements of the bourgeoisie.

The effect has been to confuse the masses and head off the struggle. The attempt to copy Nicaragua is, in fact, proving a failure.

Extended campaign strength and the right continue This has been taken up with alacrity by the State Departmment and presented by the right as an indication of the eclipse of the left and the victory of the 'middle way'.

It is, though, the playing of a last card-the dictatorship is politically isolated and utterly dependent on . Washington, which is now training 300 army officers in Panama to 'observe human rights while practicing runtarinenrennu warfare' watta.y.

There can be little doubt that if Reagan wins the election the US intervention will take an increasingly open character and drop all pretence to defending the 'middle ground'.

In Salvador itself the right is now firmly back in control and awaiting the time to launch a huge counter-offensive.

Under these conditions we must deepen and extend our solidarity with the Salvadorean workers and peasants in their There is no inexorable logic defeated simply by virtue of its own barbarism.

Trotsky once argued vehemently against the Bolshevik military leader Frunze that there is no such thing as an inherent proletarian tendency to the offensive in military This is true. In terms of tactics and strategy one has to take account of the balance of forces and material conditions, and we cannot presume to lecture the DRU in purely military terms.

But this is not the same as political mobilisation; there remains an ever-present requirement to work for the revolutionary mobilisation of the working class.

Dictatorship

In El Salvador today this task is intrinsically bound up with the struggle to overthrow the dictatorship.

Thus, while we cannot call for an uprising on this day or that, we are obliged constantly to call for an insurrectionary mobilisation, the independence of the working class and the RG Socialist Press Pamphlet r taining analysis of the milit coup by the Bolivian gener 20g Price 32p incl. p&p from WSL, BM Box 5277, London WCIV 6XX.

Berlinguer he makes some paper concessions to the CP's "opposition" positions.

'Certainly the CP's Stalinist leaders must be fearful of the militancy which was unleashed by the CP unions' militant stand in the early days of the Fiat strike.

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