International Viewpoint
http://www.3bh.org.uk/IV/
International Viewpoint, issue 346, december 2002
Letter to readers
This is the first issue of 'International Viewpoint' to appear since the momentous European Social Forum (ESF) held in Florence, Italy from
November 6-10, 2002. All commentators have agreed that the ESF constituted a major political event, with nearly 60,000 people in attendance.
In the first of two articles devoted to the Florence event, Francois Vercammen hails the birth of a new European social movement and argues that the success of the ESF means that 'the battle between a radical left, strengthened, and a social liberal left with weakened hegemony, is put on the public agenda at a European level'.
In his second article, Vercammen reports on a meeting organized by Italy's Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (PRC) just prior to the ESF, which marks the first step on the road towards a European party which can reflect that radical left.
Finally on this subject we reprint an interview with two representatives of the new generations centrally involved in the ESF project: Flavia d'Angeli from the national leadership of the Italian PRC and Olivier Besancenot of France's Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR).
Shortly before the ESF met, the candidate of Brazil's Workers' Party (PT), Lula, was finally successful in his long campaign to be elected president of his country. A resolution from the national coordination of the Socialist Democracy tendency of the PT says that the result represents a great shift in the relationship of forces in Brazilian society.
In a triumph of no less a scale in terms of its impact for the country
concerned, former army colonel Lucio Gutierrez was elected as president of Ecuador on November 24, 2002. In a statement we reproduce here, Ecuadorian supporters of the Fourth International say that the event 'has placed at the forefront the demands for which the popular movement has been fighting in recent decades'.
In a recent issue of IV we focused on the spread of the crisis in the
southern cone of Latin America to Uruguay. Here we publish a document
adopted by Uruguay's 'Corriente de Izquierda' on "a period whose outcome is open".
A major theme emerging from the European Social Forum was the need to
refound the European workers' movement around its best traditions of
militancy and internationalism; we present here an interview with an
activist in the French trade union, SUD-PTT, which in many respects
embodies the underlying principles of such a refoundation.
Finally, we report on the implications of the general elections in Germany and a potentially terminal crisis for the Good Friday Agreement in the north of Ireland.
Please note that the next issue of 'International Viewpoint' will appear at the beginning of February.