Brutal Dictators Fail to Crush Workers

Scan page 3

Pinnchet's soldiers recover the body of a victim The ree northern Andean states of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia are all ruled by military dictatorships ences in the shade of ences the their rhetoric, have practiced similarly repressive anti-working class policies.

All three have nonetheless failed to crush the will of the working class to fight.

And all three have been attempting to divert growing popular resistance to the regimes by projecting "return to democratic rule" What they are planning is an almost completely cosmetic exercise which displays very few of the forms of bourgeois democracy and not a scrap of its content.

Last week the Ecuadorean military dictatorship staged a 'referendum' to select a new constitution.

There were two to choose from-the old 1943 constitution or a new one which would have a single parliamentary assembly and would give votes to illiterate peasants.

Unspecified

As the regime had planned it was the second of these which got a majority.

The present plan, however, is not to introduce it until an unspecified number * of months after presidential elections which are supposed to take place in mid-July.

But since several of the potential presidential candidates were held under arrest for the duration of the referendum there is no assurance that the time-table for civilian rule will be followed.

Massacre A regime which two months ago was responsible assault workers in one of the most murderous events in the history of the class struggle in Ecuador cannot be expected to give up its power unless the rule of capitalists and landowners remains assured.

Democratic forms will be granted only if the regime feels certain they will not be used.

Mass action

Just the same attitude is being shown in Bolivia where dictator General Banzer has also scheduled presidential elections for this summer.

Banzer at present faces a more threatening wave of mass agitation than the generals in Ecuador.

A wave of public hunger strikes has taken place in which, by last week, about 1,500 students and workers were participating.

Attempts to break these demonstrations by force were met immediately with strikes in the factories and tin mines.

A number of the top civilians in Banzer's regime resigned in terror when faced with mobilisations.

In the middle of last week Banzer was forced into an apparent climb down.

He announced an amnesty for prisoners charged with political or trade union offences, and for political exiles and the reinstatement of workers sacked for striking.

The likely meaning of this amnesty, however, was pointed to by a comment made by Banzer that "the Street fighting in Bolivia in 197 the enemies of Bolivia unpunished."

Last year Banzer gave a sample of what he meant by "amnesty" when he invited political exiles back to Bolivia and then arrested those who took him at his word.

Latest information is that many of the hunger strikers have remembered this and are continuing their action.

'Democratic'

In neighbouring Peru where the military junta is also proposing a future return to "democratic' rule, the working class continue to show that it regards such plans as a sham.

They have not diverted workers' hostility away from the vicious programme of austerity measures which the regime last week once again stepped up by raising the prices of a number of basic foods.

The Stalinist-led General Confederation of Labour (CGTP) has been forced to call a two-day ge against the regime policy.

On the occasi previous such gei last year the regim savage repressive which have cont since against othe struggles.

At the end of four participants dispute were mu 20 injured by th the community of And on Janua shot dead two de in Chimbote duri strike in support in the steel fa have been on strik two months.

Elsewhere

America dictators under fire.

The bloody Argentina, Chile are among those had to face a popular • struggle months.

Last week one ineral strike 's economic ion of the neral strike e unleashed measures tinued ever ir individual f December in a land irdered and re police in Huacataz. iry 5 police monstrators ng a general of workers ictory who re for nearly in Latin hips are also rulers of and Brazil who have growth of in recent of the most 203!r248 grotesque of all the continent's dictatorships had to deal with tens of thousands of rioting demonstrators.

These riots took place in Managua, capital of the Central American republic of Nicaragua, dictatorially ruled for decades by the Samoza family.

Fires started e The demonstrators set fire to a number of factories owned by the Samoza family (the largest owners of land, industry and commerce in the country).

Among these was the building of Samoza company called Plasmaferesis, a factory which processes and sells blood plasma.

This is originally obtained at minimum prices from the poor and unemployed workers of Managua-a telling symbol of the vampirism of Samoza and his fellow Latin American dictatorships.

In all countries, Stalinists and reformists are attempting to hold the workers in popular frontist "opposition" alliances with "progressive" bourgeois parties.

Yet while bourgeois groups may at times opportunistically oppose dictatorial measures, their interests as a class are ultimately at one with the pro-capitalist dictatorship and totally hostile to the interests of the working class.

In Chile, for instance, Allende's Popular Front government paved the way for the dictatorship of Pinochet.

Alliance

But in spite of this the Stalinists and reformists now say that Pinochet can be removed by an alliance between the workers' parties and the Christian Democrats who openly supported the establishment of the military dictatorship.

The Latin American dictators will not be defeated by class collaboration in support of fraudulent processes of 'democratisation' They will only be defeated through the application by a conscious leadership of the Trotskyist strategy of permanent revolution and the fight for revolutionary parties based firmly on the organised working class.

L'Unita, the daily was "certain sectors of the Christian Democracy" who had invited the United States' public attempt to veto CP participation _ In the But it is the Stalinist leaders themselves. who have immediately taken advantage of Carter's latest imperialist outburst.

The American statement has given the CP just what it was looking for-an opportunity to put up a smokescreen of nationalist rhetoric behind which it can beat a retreat from its demands for seats in the Cabinet.

The CP leaders, though for a time they hoped to establish a "historic compromise" coalition government with Italy's Tories now see that this would itself provoke a new instability for capitalist rule in Italy.

Manoeuvres

That is exactly what the Stalinists are out to avoid. The whole reason behind their recent manoeuvres, which led Andreotti to resign as Premier, is their fear that without some formal change in their role in the government they would be unable to control the growing discontent of the working class.

In recent demonstrations this spontaneous of slogans on wages and jobs which plainly rejected the Stalinist shameful class collaboration.

Fascists

It shows itself too in the growth of independent working class defence against the growth of fascist violence.

This involves a rejection of the CP's reactionary policy of attacking "extremists of right and left" through strengthening the repressive state apparatus.

Despite a warning from the CP leadership last week that there was a majority in parliament without the Christian Democrats (they meant CP, Socialist Party and the smaller capitalist parties), they clearly have no other perspective than some new form of coalition formula with the Christian Democrats.

Once more it is Andreotti who has been charged by the capitalists with producing some governmental formula.

It is reported that since last November 26 Ethiopia has received gigantic supplies of Soviet arms via an "air bridge" in which 225 transport planes (12% of the whole Soviet air fleet) have taken part.

Eritrean liberation forces have claimed that they have been regularly bombarded from the Red Sea by Soviet ships-a claim which the USSR has denied.

Notwithstanding overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the Ethiopian DERG (the ruling military junta) says that "the only Soviet and Cuban citizens in Ethiopia are diplomats and doctors and there are in total only 350 of them."

The imperialists have complained that the Soviet arms build up is "excessive"' but the USA still gives aid to Ethiopia.

Carter stands alongside the Berlingu The one thing whi included in advanc Andreotti's mandate fro party is the presence ‹ ministers in the governm He will be trying, hor to get the CP leader's boration in imposing c working class a reacti programme of aul! measures designed to he recomer of crisis torn !

anxious to agret but appear to hesitate in the of securing a formula wi can sell to its member supporters as an advanc The problem for unprincipled traitors! working class is that th of the working cli showing itself less all willing to buy class col tion at any price.

Crumbling It looks unlikely, thi that any government f satisfactory to cap exists within the cru framework of parliam democracy.

The present govel crisis looks certain to 1 and drawn out. None possible outcomes-a undeclared coalition ministers or parlian elections are capable o the most fleeting respit the crisis of bourgeois Italy reactionary Ethiopian ship and the Soviet bur against the Eritrean al Somalian right to natio determination.

Carter is worried no about the rise of Soviet strength in the Horn of A Though he has diplo refused to supply arms to which now claims a Soviet-backed Ethiopian is imminent, Carter af have given á freo han reactionary allies, the Saudi Arabia and the Persia to intervene on Somalia if necessary.

Then last week Ethiopia's rejection of 1 from Carter for negotia American government si a meeting of the main i countries to discuss the General Mengistu's reportedly unleashed a l of street executions. o oppositionists mostty of

Scan page 4

SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesd 25 January, lage "So long as all goes well for the capitalists) Marx *rote in Capital competiof the 1930s when after a war of protectionism between the capitalist countries "everyone queues would look short.

In pointing to this as a possibility Fukuda is plaincountry against "foreign" workers, the chauvinist trade union and labour leaders

----- pull-quotes -----

newspaper of the Italian Communist Party, com- plained last week that it