With the participation of 55 delegates from 33 countries (out of 42 expected)¹, the constitutive session of the International Committee for liaison and exchange (Icle) took place in Paris on June 8 and 9, 2018, in conformity with the decision of the 9th Open World Conference held in Algiers on December 8-10, 2017. It was the coordination of the International Liaison Committee, designated in 2010 at the 8th Open World Conference, and which met the previous day, June 7, which convened this first constitutive session of the Icle.

Download the PDF with the information of the constitution of the CIEI and the proposals and conclusions that were taken there

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Proposal and conclusions

This session came at a time when all the discussions that we opened in Algiers take on a particular shape and form.

All the consequences of the turnabout in the world situation, which the election of Trump as US president represents, are in the course of materializing in spectacular fashion.

The economic war launched by Trump in an attempt to loosen the vise-grip which, under the pressure of the crisis of the world system of imperialism, is breaking up the very bases of the American economy, is causing the whole system for the maintenance of the world order established after World War II to fly apart.

Under the guise of ‘restoring the balance’ of trade relations between the United States and China, Trump is exercising un unbearable pressure on his ‘European allies’ and also on his ‘Asian allies’ South Korea and Japan.

By withdrawing from the nuclear treaty signed with Iran, he not only deprives the European multinationals of a market vital for them, not only is he issuing a death-threat to banks which do business with Iran, but he is also upsetting the whole system of alliances – already shaken by the war in Syria – in the Middle East. By cranking up the military pressure on Iran a notch, Trump is mobilizing on his side the Gulf monarchies and assigning to them the task of taking a direct role alongside Israel in crushing the Palestinian people.

In this context of unleashed trade war, American imperialism and its rivals are fighting each other, as never before, for the control of raw materials. A new struggle for the sharing-out of zones of influence is raging, in particular on the African continent where the ‘economic war’ is giving way to fabricated real wars, feeding the arms trade and throwing millions of refugees on to the road of exodus, while imperialism seeks to incite against these refugees the populations of the countries in which they seek asylum.

Capital, fighting to conserve the conditions of its reproduction, is demanding a rate of exploitation which is incompatible with the conquests won by the working class in the imperialist countries and won by the working class and the peoples under domination in their fight for national emancipation.

Everything must go, everything… Labor codes, retirement schemes, health and education systems, everything…

In the imperialist countries, the old workers’ parties subsisted – along with the trade union federations, which they influenced – through the management of these conquests. By subordinating themselves to the new demands of imperialism in crisis, they have entered into a process of collapse, rejected by the workers in whose name they claimed to speak.

In the countries dominated by imperialism, the parties and movements which for decades incarnated the aspiration of peoples for national sovereignty, and which have sought an accommodation with the demands of the violent reaction of imperialism, have also entered into crisis.

There nevertheless exist in certain countries mass workers’ or anti-imperialist parties, in which the workers and peoples recognize themselves, even if these parties too are riven by the crisis of representation of the working class or suffer from its consequences.

The question of reconstruction of authentic bodies representative of the working class is acutely posed on a world scale. Quite obviously, this quest takes into account the history and traditions of the workers’ movement in each country and their particular nature.

A vast political space is opening up. A political space, which is not without contradictions. How could it be otherwise in a situation whose balance sheet of experiences is so diverse?

At a time when the evidence indicates that gigantic class struggles are on the horizon, it seems indispensable to have an exchange on the basis of our respective experiences. Thus the delegates of 14 European countries, meeting this morning of June 8, among other things stressed:

“The political crisis which has just opened up in Italy” – they wrote – “and which is shaking the fragile construction of institutions of the European Union, is not a thunder claps in a clear sky. It is the Italian expression of a vast movement of ‘rejection’, which across the whole of Europe is rising up against the counter-reform policies imposed by finance capital via the EU. It is part and parcel of the chain of political events, which have shaken governments in the recent past, in Great Britain (Brexit), in France (election of Macron by default), in Germany (collapse of the SPD), in Spain… A ‘rejection’, which is developing and gaining strength in the whole of Europe and which, as consequences, concerns all of us.

There has been no lurch by the Italian people toward the far right, any more than in Eastern Europe, whose peoples have paid dearly for their countries’ entry into the EU and who have suffered 25 years of structural adjustment policies.”

In Africa, the question of the fight for national sovereignty in the face of pillage from abroad, imperialist military interventions and new dictates by the IMF is posed very acutely.

The political regimes in place, including those representing some kind of alternance, implement the policies, which are dictated to them by the imperialist powers and institutions. It is a simple question of the survival of peoples, which is at stake, as of the survival of the most elementary gains and freedoms.

Major resistance movements are developing within the working class, the youth, all the exploited layers, while the continent threatens to lurch into chaos.

This underlines the need for all the militants and organizations engaged in these struggles to open debate on the strategic policy to follow in order to win full national sovereignty and the construction of an authentic political representation of the workers and oppressed layers.

In Latin America, a region which imperialism has always considered its ‘own backyard’, the resistance of workers and peoples against the destructive pressure exercised by Trump has expressed itself in Venezuela with the re-election of Nicolas Maduro as president, in a context of blockade and economic sabotage aimed at causing chaos and justifying external interference.

This resistance is also showing itself in Brazil where, two years after the pro-imperialist putsch, and two months after the imprisonment of Lula, the Workers Party on June 8 officially launched Lula as its candidate for president. And this as an instrument for the centralization of the struggle of the workers and popular layers for the abrogation of measures taken by the putschists against their rights and conquests, against national sovereignty.

In Palestine, the Grand March for the right of refugees to return home, structured in popular committees, affirms week after week its determination, which is that of the whole Palestinian people, in struggle for its national emancipation. Within the Israeli apartheid State, in the Gaza Strip, in several parts of the West Bank, the same watchwords surge up out of the demonstrations: we are one people, we have the same blood, the same destiny, and we want to return home! As in the whole world, in Palestine the mobilization against oppression and the policies of imperialism pose the question of obstacles, raised notably by those linked with the snare of the Oslo accords.

On a world scale, what is panicking the representatives of finance capital is the vast wave, which is gathering on all continents. Millions of men and women are engaged in a battle to group together with their class organizations in order to overcome the policies of destruction of all the political and social conquests won since World War II or wrested in the framework of national independence.

In so far as we can judge, this will to resist first expressed itself, in all our countries, under forms peculiar to each of them, by a collapse of the old parties which traditionally claimed to defend the interests of the working class and democracy, and which have now been rejected because of their subordination to the demands of finance capital, with all the consequences which that has had for the trade union movement.

A collapse which, of itself, opens no political way forward in line with the interests of the laboring masses and democracy.

All this poses the question of reconstruction, on the basis of a complete break with the policy of accompanying the policies of capital, of an authentic political representation of the working class, working for the gathering together of the working class as a class, in the unity of its class organizations, in the face of finance capital and the governments which represent it.

The Icle has decided that it is more than ever necessary to pursue and deepen the exchange of information, integrating the respective place of parties and trade unions in each of our countries, an exchange of the experiences that we are undergoing in our countries.

This present declaration, adopted by the Icle, is intended to be a contribution to the debate necessary in order to progress toward resolution of the crisis of political representation of the working class. We therefore propose to distribute this document, in order to deepen this debate in each of our countries, to broaden it on the international level, as it would constitute an excellent passport for making contact with all the regroupings, which are taking place for the reconstruction of the political bases of an authentic representation of the working class.

¹ Algeria, Azania, Belarus, Benin, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroun, Chad, Congo, Djibouti, Federation of Russia, France, Gabon, Gambia, Germany, Great Britain, Guadeloupe, Guinea, Haiti, Italy, Ivory Coast, Latvia, Lebanon, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, Martinique, Niger, Palestine, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Senegal, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Togo, Tunisia, Ukraine, Venezuela. (Some delegates were absent due to being unable to obtain a visa, others for reasons of trade union obligations. This included delegates of Brazil, Chad, Gambia, Guinea, Haiti, Italy, Mali, Morocco, Mexico, and Tunisia.)