Contribution to the 15^th International Communist Seminar
"Present and past experiences in the international communist movement".

Brussels, 5- 7 May 2006

www.icsbrussels.org , ics[at]icsbrussels.org

The Workers Party of Belgium and the struggle against the liberal-socialist government's "generations pact" (October-December 2005)

(abridged version)

Workers' Party of Belgium

The mass struggle which occurred in Belgium during the second half of 2005 was a dreamed opportunity for the Workers Party of Belgium to focus intensively on the working class and on the work in the trade-unions. The Party's leadership seized this opportunity and the central committee's assessment about the struggle was very positive and contained important lessons for our future work. Here are some of them.

The first lesson was the importance to study and analyse the European Union's orientations and directives. Today, most of the big struggles in Europe are defensive struggles against the economic and social attacks, which are ordered, directed and coordinated by the European Union. These attacks follow the Lisbon protocol of 2000 and target three main domains of the social configuration: social security, judged as too costly, the labour market, judged as too rigid, and education, judged as badly suited to the demands of the employers.

The European Union set itself the objective of becoming the most dynamic and competitive economy in the world by 2010. This implies outperforming the USA. In the fields of social security and labour market, the USA are "far ahead", at least from the point of view of European big capital.

We have always paid careful attention to the European directives. The process of Lisbon was the topic of three issues of our theoretical journal "Marxist studies" in 2002, 2004 and May 2005. Since the beginning of 2004, we have put the Party into alert. In September 2004, the Belgian government announced its intention to launch a plan to extend the duration of the career, to restrict early retirement schemes (mainly the pre-retirement) and to put elderly unemployed people back to work. The Party seized the opportunity and, from that moment, prepared itself for a large-scale national struggle.

Aware of the explosive character of the issue, the government led an ideological campaign to prepare the minds and to get the support of the trade-union leaders. For one year, we led a counter-offensive based on arguments. At that step, we addressed mainly the trade-union circles to build a resistance front inside the trade-union structures. We provided a precise and Marxist analysis of the plans while the government was paralyzing the trade-union leaders with secret negotiations.

A second great lesson, is that it is not only important to have a good analysis, it must above all be understood by the public. The aspect of communication also plays an important role. We launched our counter-campaign as soon as the end of 2004. To lead it, we used various aspects of the mass line. The campaign was centred around 1° a general profile, 2° a specific slogan and 3° a popular demand.

1° The Party adopted as general profile the slogan : "People before profit". It is a slogan, which was set by the central committee as the Party's banner slogan for five years.

2° The specific slogan which we have chosen for this campaign is : « 600 000 unemployed people, why work longer ? » (One must note that there are 600 000 unemployed people in Belgium). In the first place, this slogan has the merit to gather into one single struggle the young and the elderly, the ones who have a job and the ones who don’t. Moreover, it points at an obvious contradiction in the plan and opens the debate on the hidden motivations of the government. Finally, one tackles a problem of society  in an advantageous way: some are working to death while others are condemned to unemployment. The choice of this slogan revealed itself as very judicious. With this slogan, we struck a point and reinforced the spirit of resistance in the trade-unions and with the masses.

3° The Party also decided to propagate a popular demand. We have demanded the right to early retirement at the age of 55, with a compulsory hiring of a young unemployed. This demand also expresses the same concern of uniting young and old in a common rejection of postponing retirement.

Armed with these two weapons, we confronted the many studies that the governmental and employers' institutes had provided to prove that it was unavoidable to work more.

The government exerted every effort to get the support of the trade-union leadership for a pact to lengthen the career. In October 2005, after months of secret and semi-secret negotiations, it finally unveiled its plan, aimed at liquidating in the long-run the possibility of early retirement before the age of 60. At that moment, the Party threw all its energy and militant force into the balance to ensure the plan would be rejected. On October 8, the social-democrat trade-union declared a general strike. On October 23, the two big trade-unions declared a general strike and held a national demonstration. At this demonstration, 100,000 participants walked in the streets of Brussels.

The third fundamental lesson, is the simultaneity and the balance between the three important tasks of the Party in the class struggle. We have conceived our tasks in the movement according to the triangular model MOM: mobilise – organise – make aware. These three tasks may not be separated. 1° Mobilise. To not take one’s responsibilities in the tasks of leadership of the struggle leads to intellectualism and to an isolated position outside the struggle. 2° To make aware. To forget the in-depth political work, is to run into spontaneism and economism. 3° To organise. To neglect the task of organisation leads to a blind activism which is paid for with an organisational stagnation of the Party and a bitter disappointment after the struggle.

From the point of view of MOM, we led one of the best campaign in the history of the Party. In four months, we were able to recruit some 500 new members of the Party. We would never have succeeded in this task without taking control of the class struggle, without a right political and tactical demarcation and without a sense for organisation.

A central goal of this campaign was to recruit a great number of trade-unionists and of workers in the course of the struggle. It is the first time in the history of the Party that a recruitment campaign was waged on such a large scale. In the beginning, it was mainly the middle cadres of the Party that took that campaign into their hands. But progressively, more and more workers and trade-unionists made themselves new members among their colleagues and acquaintances. The result is that we have more than 500 new members since October 15, 2005, almost half of them are trade-unionists. The great challenge is now to guide this new reserve and to make a maximum number of them pass from consultative members to members of the basic Party cells.

The fourth great lesson, is the importance of the work in the trade-unions. In the past, the Party had adopted a sectarian attitude towards the trade-unions. We made a critical assessment of this period when we went against the teachings of Lenin in "Left-wing communism, an infantile disorder?". We had made up many arguments to go around these teachings. But none of these arguments withstood the test of time. In the struggle against the "pact of generations" we adopted another political line towards the trade-unions: We considered the trade-unions as the mass organisations of the workers, looked for alliances, supported everything which is positive, discussed intensively within the unions, led the struggle as far as possible against the tendency to capitulation. Instead of having an approach towards a breakaway, we want to reinforce and conquer the trade-unions. This created a huge openness in the trade-unions and many trade-unionists congratulated us for this change.

Now, this trade-union strategy is borne by all the structures of the Party, from bottom to top. This opens great perspectives for the social elections, which are to come in 2008.

Conclusion

The movement against the « generations pact » in Belgium strikingly showed that the working class is and stays the engine of a change in society. This movement, like those in the other European countries, refutes in practice the theories of liquidation, which preach defeatism for the class struggle after the fall of the Berlin wall. It proves in a positive way the importance of work in the trade-unions. The Party has just published an issue of "Marxist studies", written by Peter Mertens, member of the Political Bureau, which theoretically supports these statements and refutes the currents of liquidation, from left as well as from right. The Party is preparing a congress, which will mainly centralise the rich experiences in the campaigns led by the Party. This congress should draw all the lessons in order to be more Marxist-Leninist inside the Party and more tactical towards the outside.