BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
OBERLIN, Ohio - When the Active Workers and International Socialist Conference ended here July 9, hundreds of participants headed back to union picket lines, activities to defend the Cuban revolution, marches to support affirmative action and immigrant rights, and other social protests. They left the gathering determined to take the necessary steps to increase the size and striking power of the communist movement.

The axis of the main reports and workshops at the conference, hosted by the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialists, was a political reorientation to qualitatively expand sales of Pathfinder books. The socialists based this move on the indispensable place of these political weapons in advancing class consciousness among workers and youth and building a proletarian party, one capable of leading working people to make a socialist revolution and take state power.

Feature presentations gave numerous examples of the hunger for revolutionary ideas among millions of toilers resisting the disastrous consequences of a world capitalist system mired in growing disorder.

Those present at the July 6-9 conference also resolved to take maximum advantage of socialist election campaigns in the United States over the next four months - the only working- class answer to the parties of war, racism, and depression - to disseminate the revolutionary program and recruit workers and youth to the Young Socialists and the SWP.

SWP branches are now planning membership conferences in every city to discuss the party-building perspectives outlined at the international gathering. At these meetings party members will also evaluate local efforts since the beginning of this year to increase sales of revolutionary literature -to win more workers to reading, thinking, and acting for themselves. They will decide how to institutionalize expanded Pathfinder sales - not as a short-lived campaign, but as a fundamental long-term change of course - and reinforce proletarian habits and norms in the process.

Nearly 600 people attended the conference. They participated in the plenary sessions as well as workshops aimed at increasing the effectiveness of political work by YS and party members and supporters. Classes were also held on a variety of political topics.

The Young Socialists, which was founded as a nationwide organization at a similar gathering here in 1994, held an international meeting during the conference.

Some 15 percent of the participants in this year's gathering were under 26 years of age. Forty-two were college and high school students.

Participants came from cities across the United States and from nine other countries. Thirty-one languages were spoken by one or more of those in attendance.

Nearly half of those present were industrial workers and members of trade unions. The political discussions throughout the gathering were marked by the practical activity of communist workers in industry and the unions.

Many were active in other political organizations. Over 100 were members of local Cuba coalitions. Others belonged to abortion rights groups, organizations in solidarity with the Irish freedom struggle, coalitions opposing the death penalty and police brutality, and committees defending affirmative action and demanding equal rights for immigrants.

Turning point for movement
Laura Garza, a member of the SWP National Committee and the party's candidate for U.S. vice-president, opened the conference by welcoming participants. She co-chaired the first session along with Brian Taylor, a member of the YS National Committee and staff writer for the Militant.

The conference took place after a series of national leadership meetings of the SWP and the Young Socialists earlier this year, unprecedented in at least half a decade, Garza said. Together they will be looked back on as a turning point in the organization of the party, its class character, and its connection to new generations, she noted.

The first such turning point in the last two decades was in 1978-79, when the party organized the big majority of its members and leaders to get jobs in industry and to be active members of industrial unions. That coincided with the overthrow of the U.S.-backed Shah in Iran and revolutions that brought workers and farmers governments to power in Nicaragua and Grenada. These victories made possible for Cuban workers and their communist leadership to take new steps forward in building socialism and advancing their proletarian internationalist course.

A second turning point occurred in 1990-91, when the party was put to the test of mounting a working-class campaign against an imperialist war - Washington's assault on Iraq.

This time, the communist movement began discussing the new challenges and opportunities in building a proletarian party as Washington intensified war preparations against the workers states in Yugoslavia and China and mounted new military threats and economic attacks on socialist Cuba.

The SWP and the YS are taking these steps as part of an international movement, Garza said. Members of the Young Socialists and communist leagues from seven other countries attended and took an active part in the conference proceedings.

Dagoberto Rodríguez, first secretary of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C., was a special conference guest representing the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba. The gathering also heard greetings from the African National Congress of South Africa, Movement of Landless Rural Workers of Brazil, Union of Young Communists of Cuba, and the Workers Party of Korea.

Taylor invited all the youth present to participate in the YS meeting. (Some 75 young people attended that gathering on July 8.) He then introduced Mary-Alice Waters, who gave the first feature presentation.

Waters, president of Pathfinder publishing and editor of the Marxist magazine New International, spoke on "Using, selling, and producing our books: Year one of the rectification process." Her talk focused on how to chart a course to reverse the decline in the size of the communist movement, and in its ability to respond timely and politically to new developments in politics, through getting books with the most powerful ideas on earth into the hands of thousands of fighters around the world. She also drew the lessons of the Cuban revolution relevant to such a political re-orientation.

SWP national secretary Jack Barnes spoke next morning on "Capitalism's world disorder: The struggle for a proletarian party today." Barnes gave the summary of the conference on the last evening as well.

James Harris, a member of the party's National Trade Union Committee and the SWP candidate for U.S. president, gave the third major talk on behalf of the NTUC. His presentation was titled "The changing face of US politics: Communism and the trade unions today." This is the first time in a decade that the party has been able to elect a national trade union leadership body made up almost entirely of SWP leaders who are currently working in industry.

"Building the Young Socialists and winning youth to the communist movement" was the title of the talk by Jack Willey, who spoke on behalf of the YS national steering committee. He said the Young Socialists has reaffirmed its goal set at the YS convention in April of doubling the size of the organization by the end of the election campaign in November.

Throughout the conference participants discussed the significance of and celebrated the release on parole of Mark Curtis, a member of the SWP National Committee who was framed up by the police in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1988 on false charges of attempted rape and burglary. After seven and a half years in prison, Curtis won release to Chicago, Illinois, and walked out of the Iowa state penitentiary June 18. He got an industrial job at a plant in Illinois as the conference was concluding.

The gathering was a working conference. Many of the themes the speakers developed at plenary sessions were discussed and debated at workshops. Those who were attending their first conference had a chance to talk about the main presentations in special daily sessions. There was lively discussion on important issues in world politics and the history of the working-class movement in many of the classes.

An upcoming issue will feature more extensive coverage of the gathering.  
 
 
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