"The working class, its role and
its mission today.
The tasks and concrete experiences of the Communist Party in the working class
and the trade union."
Brussels, 16-18 May 2008
www.icsbrussels.org , ics@icsbrussels.org
The main challenge for the Workers' Party of Belgium: to become a party of the workers
Workers' Party of Belgium
At the end of 2007, the 8th Party Congress of the Workers' Party of Belgium was held, with as theme "A principled party, a flexible party, a party of the workers". We want to become a party of the working people, a party where workers, employees, civil servants, unemployed, intellectuals and independent workers feel at home. A party of its members, based on basic Party groups with good group dynamics. A party that embraces trade unions and does not fight them. A party that is firmly rooted in both factories and municipalities.
We are currently active in almost 120 companies and offices, and in 30 cities and municipalities throughout Belgium. The main challenge for us today is: how to turn dozens of major companies – each with more than 1000 workers and employees – into real bastions of workers struggle?
Which road we decided to take at the Party Congress?
We decided to open the Party wide for the workers and to lower thresholds.
Instead of seeking confrontation with the trade unions, we decided to strengthen them.
1. Why open the Party doors wide? Why become a party truly of its members?
In 2009, the Workers' Party of Belgium will exist 30 years. It has strong foundations, a good organisation and broad initiatives. But we had a real problem: quite some workers, employees and civil servants were not at ease with the high demands for admission to and functioning in the Party. Workers remained at a distance of the Party, because the Party all too often appeared to them as elitist, as a Party for "supermen". Common people, with their strong and weak points, didn't recognise themselves in a Party that was too much geared towards a restricted group of cadres. That is what we wanted to change.
And we opened the Party's doors wide. This new wind brought about a new growth of the Party: between December 2004 and December 2007, our membership increased by 42%. In 2006 we counted 2335 members, in March 2008 already 3115. And our objective is to reach 5000 members by 2010.
What did we change in order to make this growth possible?
We lowered the threshold and the demands. The Party now has three different levels and forms of membership:
the militant core (national cadres, intermediate cadres and militants)
the group members who are organised in basic Party groups. Conditions for their admission are: 1° participate in Party meetings and in the functioning of the basic Party group; 2° pay a monthly membership fee of 5 euro; and 3° accept that the Party functions according to its Statutes and Congress documents.
consultative members: they pay an annual membership fee of 20 euro and they are expected to defend the Party and its action.
Each level and form of membership has its rights and duties. Our objective is for the broad core of cadres and militants to be sufficiently educated in Marxism to be able to lead, coach and educate the broad basis of group members and consultative members.
Which new dynamics did this bring about?
A few concrete experiences. I myself used to be a trade union delegate (shop steward) in the Antwerp petrochemical industry, in Exxon. The port city of Antwerp has the largest concentration of chemical and oil companies in the world, after Houston, Texas, with companies such as BASF, Bayer, Degussa, Lanxess, Monsanto, Exxon, TotalFina, etc. Thanks to our new approach, but also thanks to the workers' growing disenchantment with the social-democratic parties in government, and to the general strikes of December 2005, more workers and trade unionists have entered the Party. Quite a number of main shop stewards and trade union secretaries of those companies took a WPB membership card. Before, the Party had an image of "extreme Left" and "too radical". Today these trade unionists feel at home in our Party and see for themselves that the Party has changed. A head delegate (or main shop steward) from a major company liked it so much that he himself made 13 new Party members in two months' time: 4 colleagues in the factory and 9 members of his family. That way, over the past two years the Party group in the company significantly increased its membership.
In Deurne, a municipality of the city of Antwerp, with 80,000 inhabitants, the Party made a huge step forward in its municipal work. In the course of 2006 the number of basic Party groups and the number of Party members (including consultative members) increased significantly.
Our comrades in Deurne apply the following basic rules:
Listen to your members and take their opinion seriously.
Make sure that you have good meetings with your consultative members.
Dare to allocate tasks to the members. They know a lot and they are capable of accomplishing a lot.
What the members like to do, they do well.
Devise a good structure to lead such a group.
2. We wanted to reinforce our links with the trade unions, instead of breaking them
In the 1998-2003 period, our Party took the road of ultra-Leftism regarding the trade unions. The Party called for a rupture with the "reformist and chauvinist trade unions". In 2004-2005 we made a summing-up of that period as being entirely opposed to the lessons that Lenin had taught us regarding the trade unions in "Left-wing communism: an infantile disorder".
What is the concrete situation in Belgium?
Out of a total population of 10 million, some 3 million people are member of a trade union: 1.6 million are member of the Christian-democratic trade union federation, 1.2 million of the social-democratic federation and another 200,000 of the liberal union. 75% of workers, employees and civil servants are unionised. The trade unions are the largest social organisations in the country, and possess the largest anti-capitalist potential.
The reformist position of the trade union leadership, "the reactionary features of the trade unions" as Lenin put it, made us decide in early 2000 to break with the trade unions and to work in the direction of new, "pure" trade unions.
That way, we copied the errors of certain Left communists in Germany 80 years earlier. Lenin at that time already demolished their position, writing: "Yet it is this very absurdity that the German "Left" Communists perpetrate when, because of the reactionary and counter-revolutionary character of the trade union top leadership, they jump to the conclusion that... we must withdraw from the trade unions." He also wrote: "You must be capable of any sacrifice, of overcoming the greatest obstacles, in order to carry on agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly, persistently and patiently in those institutions, societies and associations - even the most reactionary - in which proletarian or semi-proletarian masses are to be found."
In 2001 we went into confrontation with the trade union: together with a group of trade unionists, some 200 people occupied the headquarters of the social-democratic trade union federation FGTB, with the aim of demanding support for militant shop stewards facing a court case. In that same period, we always publicly criticised the trade union leadership, we publicly attacked them in our leaflets and papers. Whatever they did, it was never good enough, and we sometimes resorted to hollow slogans without basis among the trade unionists.
We started the fight against the so-called Pact between Generations in 2005 with a different line for our trade union work, a line to seek alliances, to support all positive things, to intensely debate inside the trade union structures. Instead of seeking a rupture with the trade unions, our purpose became to strengthen them.
It is in that period that we started with a fortnightly e-mail newsletter for trade unionists, named Syninfo. This newsletter now reaches some 4000 major trade unionists. The latter use arguments developed in our newsletter at trade union meetings or on the factory floor. In the newsletter we support trade union actions, such as the ones planned for June 9 to 13 for an increase in purchasing power. This way, we support the trade unions' resistance, and we foster links.
Over the past two weeks there have been trade union elections in the whole of Belgium, in 6000 companies where 1.4 million employees could vote for 143,000 candidates (13% more than four years ago). They chose their representatives for two organs of concertation: the enterprise council and the safety committee. We have been helping Left and militant candidates in their campaign in the companies, but without, as a Party, openly calling to vote for one or the other candidate.
Due to our positive attitude and cooperation with trade unionists during the general strikes of 2005 against the Pact between Generations, a new openness for the Party has been growing, with concrete results. In 2007, a group of Left trade unionists, together with the chairmen of the Christian-democratic and social-democratic trade union federations (CSC and FGTB) and many progressive personalities, launched the petition "Save Solidarity", for the unity of the working class in Belgium and against all tendencies to split up the country. The petition stands at 120,000 signatures. Early this year, Progress Lawyers Network, a group of lawyers' collectives, organised together with the two major trade union federations a national symposium on the protection of shop stewards. 200 prominent trade unionists participated. And on 2 March, our Party for the first time organised a public session of a Party Congress, the closing session of our 8th Congress. 35 important Left trade unionists from the CSC and the FGTB were present as guests, with among them two members of the National Bureau of the FGTB and two FGTB regional chairmen for the provinces with the biggest concentration of workers: Antwerp and Liège.
That is how we want to become a true party of the working class.