Tunisian socialist: "the revolution has two pillars"

Submitted by martin on 21 March, 2011 - 12:48

Loumamba is a militant from the Trotskyist group Left Workers' League (LGO) in Tunisia.


Are PCOT [Worker-Communist Party of Tunisia, the main Stalinist party in Tunisia] making a front with with Ennahdha [the largest, hardline Islamist party in Tunisia, previously banned by Ben Ali]?

The PCOT has set up something called the Committee for the Safeguarding of the Revolution – within this committee the left has accepted the presence of Ennahdha to make liberal demands - the constituent assembly, liberty of expression, and so on. It has no social or economic foundation. But Ennahdha does not participate in the 14 January Front [a leftwing regroupment of Trotskyists, Stalinists, left-nationalists and social democrats]. The 14 January Front is another thing entirely, which makes social demands, supporting workers' demands and demands for economic equality. This is a categorical difference, which makes the difference between the progressives and the others. The Front of 14 January is a marriage of democratic and social-economic-egalitarian demands.

Even within the 14 January Front, there is a difference. We are pushing some members of the front in the direction of the logical extreme of these positions. The Front is a transitional platform. We are counting on the regroupment of a new alliance, on a more clear and more radical basis - around our politics. We cannot be partners with people who want to go only halfway. We want to go all the way. We are sincere and we have nothing to lose by going all the way.

Does the toleration of Ennahdha by the left pose a danger?

They are always a danger. They cannot be trusted. Our choice is to make no alliance with them but to defend their right to freedom of expression. That has been our position since the 1980s. We want them to have the right of freedom of speech but also we want them to expose themselves, expose their politics. We want to beat them in a political battle. No alliance, no trust in Ennahdha.

There is a risk of the relationship between PCOT and Ennahdha developing further – but it will be PCOT who lose out if it does. Ennahdha would gain. We are addressing ourselves to the population and we think there is little risk that their spirit will be broken but there is a political risk from such an alliance.

The most important mass struggle currently is the mining industry of Gafsa. Other sectors are also in struggle – textiles, state administration etc. We are demanding the opening of the books in industry, so that when employers say they cannot pay increased wages, we can check. We want to counteract the idea among workers that our demands are putting the economy at risk; and the idea that our workers' struggles are illegitimate. The strike movements' demands are around good management and increased salaries. Another demand is for capitalists to hire more people.

The situation is showing workers the correctness of our revolutionary ideas and they are coming over to us. The fact that the revolution has two pillars – democratic and social – this fact chimes with our propaganda. The position of most left parties, Stalinist parties, that the current revolution is a bourgeois revolution purely for democracy, leads them to not support the workers' movements around social demands. They say we are at the stage of democratic revolution and the workers' struggles are an 'excess of struggle'. We think that it is our task to develop the second pillar of the revolution, the social pillar. Our strength comes from there.

There is currently no centralising grassroots organisation in the UGTT, or unifying the local committees. But we are working on it. It is extremely difficult and we really need help to do it. We are doing this by basing our policy on the alliance between democratic and social demands.

The difficulty which the workers' movement is encountering is the bureaucracy of the UGTT. The second difficulty is the idea that the workers are sabotaging the economic situation through their struggles. The third difficulty is the capacity of the workers to organise themselves on a centralised, national basis. That is my impression. Personally I think we should break cleanly from the UGTT but that is not the attitude of the LGO.

The bureaucracy of the UGTT is opportunist but it is subject to mass pressure, which is why it is changing its position. It is a real enemy of the workers. It is indirectly represented in the government and it is pushing a liberal agenda, of calling for an end to social struggles so as to stabilise capitalist normality.

In Libya, we think that supporting and defending the revolution can be achieved by different means than the western military armada. No to western interests in Libya; No to Libya becoming Iraq; No to Gadaffi. Why not arm the revolutionaries? Why “defend” the revolution in precisely this manner? We have no confidence in the intervention. We cannot demand the immediate end in the bombardment because we are against the massacre of civilians. We demand the immediate end of the massacre of civilans. It is complicated. We are against the bombardment but we can't call for it to end immediately.

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