Alan Woods went to Paris in May 1968 seeking contact with revolutionary workers and youth. He describes here what he encountered, the mood, and the discussions with workers and students. He explains how the workers were looking for leadership but never found it, neither in the ultra-left groups, nor in the Stalinist leadership that betrayed them.
Over the weekend of May 2-4 a conference was held in Berlin on the theme of "1968 - We shall win the last battle", organised by the youth and students of the German Left Party (Die Linke). There were 1600 people taking part in the conference and the Marxists of Der Funke intervened in the debates, organised a stall with literature, provided international speakers from Spain and Pakistan and one of the Der Funke supporters, and member of the national council of the youth wing of the party, made one of the concluding speeches.
From the very beginning of the crisis in the Balkans back in 1992 In Defence of Marxism has maintained a firm internationalist approach.
The different imperialist powers and the local former Stalinist bureacrats used the poison of nationalism to gain power and spheres of influence. Their manouevres had nothing to do with the rights of the people's of the Balkans but with naked self interest.
We have insisted that the poison of nationalism (be it Albanian, Serbian, Bosnia, Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Greek, Turkish, or whatever) offers nothing to the peoples of the Balkans but a future of fratricidal war, ethnic cleansing, economic ruin, poverty and despair.
The entirely artificial frontiers that divide the living body of the Balkans have long since ceased to play any progressive role, if they ever did. Reactionary nationalism divides brother from brother, and sister from sister, creating ethnic hatreds and never-ending strife.
We think that only a policy of internationalism and class solidarity between the workers in the different countries in the Balkans would provide a lasting solution to this conflict. Only a Socialist Federation of the Balkans could actually guarantee full democratic rights for all national groups.
Many will say that this is an utopian policy and demand a more "practical" solution. But since the start of the conflict back in 1992 the "practical" policies have solved nothing and in fact have increased the amount of combustible material in the area. Maybe it is time that a genuine socialist internationalist approach is adopted.
Here we offer a collection of our material relating to this question. We think that these texts should be studied by all labour movement activists in the region and worldwide and we hope they will help open a fruitful discussion.