donderdag 8 april 2010

Kris Merckx (PVDA/WPB), reformist since 1968: “OK, as long as my voters BELIEVE I am communist.”

Kris Merckx in “De Morgen” (a Belgian daily), Saturday 23 February 2008, in an interview:

“We (he speaks about the PVDA/WPB[1], Nico) stay on striving for a real socialist social alternative. We will never accept the capitalist system; otherwise the PVDA (WPB, Nico) has no reason of existence anymore. But it is getting urgent to become more flexible as a party. We have to dare to admit that our discourse was indeed very pure, but at the same time it had been floating to high above the heads of the working people: that cost the WPB in efficiency....
The WPB will always have her own identity and character; we may not hide our communist identity. But I am very well aware of the fact that the youth of today have not anymore an ear for Stalin or Mao. What we can accomplish here and now, that is what we bring to the people....
... (I have).... learned a lot ... of Mao, of his idea of “serving the people”. But that means also that recognizing that he has also made mistakes. It is the same for the Soviet-Union ... has unbelievable merits. But again, I admit that the repression under Stalin was too broad. And even when they are provoked by ruthless opponents, then he had the responsibility not to fall in the same trap. Let’s recognise at the same time the positive aspects as the negative aspects of Leninism and Maoism and pull the lessons out of them.....
.....Nobody can deny the merits of “Medicine For The People”. On this way we have to go further: concrete solutions for concrete points, action on the field instead of big theories.”
In fact, Kris Merckx is saying:
“The WPB has to stick to an “anti-capitalist” and “communist” profile, otherwise she can not profile herself next to other parties and above all, next to al what is so-called “left”. But in order to take care for having a voting public (in elections) for the WPB, we have to let go our van-guard character. Therefore we have to “revise” Marxism.Let’s recognise at the same time the positive aspects as the negative aspects of Leninism and Maoism and pull the lessons out of them”.And please let’s not try to work on revolution anymore! Because that is not attracting and interesting people. We have to become reformist, “movement is all, the objective is nothing” ....; so a social movement....” Medicine For The People”. “Concrete solutions for concrete points, action on the field instead of big theories.” ...”
Forty years ago Kris Merckx and Ludo Martens[2] were opposing each other with each THEIR answer on the question: How should we now organise us?
.....and Kris Merckx has NEVER given up his conceptions and convictions of forty years ago. With the help of Boudewijn Deckers and Peter Mertens and the complicity of “comrades of 1968” as Jo Cottenier and Herwig Lerouge (and helped by the “Gods-given” physical and psychical problems by Ludo Martens that made it impossible for him to react in a right way) it became possible to transform the WPB into an kind of organisation AGAINST which Ludo Martens OPPOSED already then in 1968!
Kris Merckx in Rerum nr 1, 7 September ’68:
“It is clear that revolutionaries (of what is presenting itself as such), and “reformers” impossible can cooperate from the beginning, to do study-work together: their interests but above all there point of departure and tactics are differing too much. That is the reason for my personal choice for a progressive reformist party. SVB (Studenten Vak Beweging – Student Union Movement, Nico) is in the consequence of her actual ideology revolutionary.
So there exist a need for the organisation of a party, which is trying in the same efficient and attractive way as SVB (openness, engagement, study-work and open discussion, forming of militants, action) to work out a universitary and social alternative, based on a progressive reformist attitude. Copies of our pillared Belgian political parties ... are not in any circumstances coming in question.”
Ludo Martens in Rerum nr 3:
“Comrade Merckx turns himself in the former Free Tribune into the spokesman of the silent amaze about the ardour, the activity, the study of the student-union-movement.
Some would like to transpose that same ardour and activity in a reformers-movement.
But they are forgetting that our ardour and activity are just and solely coming forth of our insight of the revolution.
Without belief in the working class and the revolution we would not in the possibility to work as we do now.
1.       We feel as our duty to make a good worked-out analyse of the late-capitalist society. An analyse made for, and on the side of, the struggling workers!
2.       We know of ourselves that we are raised and educated in a bourgeois environment. We have to transform ourselves totally – ideas, method of thinking and attitude – so that we are capable to struggle effectively together with the workers. This transformation can only come based on practice, by permanent engagement.
3.       Only scientific knowledge of the revolution can help the workers to victory. Therefore our concern to make permanently critic on our own attitude and our own theoretic analyse.
4.       Who wants to struggle at the side of the workers, has made a choice for decades. We know that we have to abdicate of all successes and prestige of the bourgeois society. We will prove in 10 years that we are worth the trust or the workers in the class-struggle.
Who are considering these four statements, has not to worry about ardour and activity. He has to choose. There exist two possible ways. He can try to walk along on the way of the workers and the people. But he can also advance to the shining glowing parliamentary seat rising high above the flock.”
…After 10 years indeed the PVDA/WPB was founded, with revolutionary ambition… and indeed with some mistakes to correct but with a majority of militants that tried to put those four statements into practice. (And were trying to correct things in a more real Marxist way than before – the contributions to this of Ludo Martens are many) Those militants are now put in minority IN the PVDA/PVDA with the flood of “new members” who are addicted to the ideology formulated here by Kris Merckx …. or were silenced as happen with Ludo Martens … or they were EXPELLED … like me.


[1] Partij Van De Arbeid van België - Workers Party of Belgium – pvda.be wpb.be.
[2]    They were, together with Boudewijn Deckers, Jo Cottenier, Herwig Lerouge and others, the founders of AMADA in 1970(“All Power To The Workers” communist party in preparation – founding in 1979 the WPB). It were mostly the former militants of the SVB that left the universitary environment and became workers on shipyards, in mines, in steel-factories and other big factories.

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