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The complete article on wich we discuss can be found, in French, on the Ecuadorian webzine of 
of EMLCP. 

Open letter to the comrades of the
Communist Party of the Workers of
France on the situation in Ecuador

 Dear comrades, 

I read with interest your paper on the popular Ecuadorian insurrection, which you had the kindness to send to our webzine Eveything to displease ! Although I tried to follow the evolution of the situation by the means, often vague, of the mailing-list, I have only a fuzzy idea of the problems. The revolutionary situation in Ecuador of course caused the attention and the solidarity of the militants of the hyperleft, but lasted too little to allow the installation of a really effective international support. 

Only allow me, on the basis of your file, to make to some "revolutionnary-worldists" comments, first on the positions of the comrades of the Ecuadorian Marxist-Leninist Communist Party on the one hand, then on the decentralization and the military question.

The official statement of the EMLCP contains a "transition program" for the Ecuador,
adapted to the situation and the level of politicization of the population. I speak about transition
insofar as, if it puts forward obvious measures for mobilized and conscious workers, its application involves a rupture with capitalism. The trotskist origin of this formulation does not invalidate its
practical clearness. However, two essential points of this program make it dangerous, because
they take part of the maintenance of certain illusions in the Ecuadorian workers. 

      - "Defense of national sovereignty, outside bases and North-American troops of our country."

It is right that the American troops must leave the country, not because they are American, but
because they threaten the Revolution. On the other hand, speech of defense of national
sovereignty, it is to maintain the nationalism, which benefits ultimately only the armed forces, in particular in the territorial dispute with Peru. It is interesting to note that this declaration does not make any call, even symbolically, with the international support, and more particularly with that of the workers of the close countries. 

      - " Against privatizations of the economic sectors which form part of the national heritage."

Same manner maintains the statist illusion here. Whereas the workers spontaneously decide
to use their instruments of work to the service of the insurrection (as the attitude of the drivers
shows it), it is possible to invite to take in hand the production in an autonomous way. At the same time, the claims (right) on the currency, the debt or the wages, would take a much more extreme direction. Here, the call is a step behind lived reality of the workers... what is not normally the role of a "vanguard party ".

These two points also testify to a fight strictly conceived within a national framework. However,
much today than yesterday, the fact that capitalism is a world system is an obvious fact, easy to
show. The fact that the problem of the debt of the Third World is managed by the international
organs of capitalism (the IMF, the World Bank) and that the exploitation of the Third World is
installation by world organizations (WTO, UNO) constant militarily by the United States and NATO, are simple things, much more visible perhaps than was to it the imperialism at the beginning of
this century. Under these conditions, the setting in front of the world character of the fights is not
any more one formal "internationalist" clause, but a quite alive reality. 

The last fights of Seattle and Davos, where the cops "played the big game", using gas or firing against  was demonstrators apparently less determined and armed that the
Ecuadorians workers, show the attention which the capitalists pay to the defense of this world
system. It is this acute awakening of the world character of the fight of classes which melts, in my
eyes, the revolutionary worldism which I defend. Today, any fight which does not claim to test,
in one way or another, to propose its world character, is condemned to perish. The revolution will
not be, like one could believe it during the colonial and post-colonial time, the national
accumulation of fights (one, two, three Vietnam...) , but really a world revolution. 

I do not know the exact matter of the plan of decentralization in Ecuador, but I rebounded on the
passage denouncing it ("This decentralization can only dig, with the fall, the differences in
development between the areas" ). I entirely approve this type of analysis, while recalling that the
decentralization of the world capitalist system functions exactly in the same way : the United Statesof America tends to constitute itself in world super-state, i.e. in "gang of men with weapons" able tointervene in defense of capitalism throughout the world. The other states, especially in the Third World countries play especially a significant economic role insofar as, thanks to the differences in development ratified by the legal and social systems, they maintain the workers in a total economic dependence and support the social dumping on a world level. If they are unable to
repress a revolutionary movement, the super-state takes over. 

But one should not neglect an essential element, which joined the question of decentralization. Thestate is not, contrary to its ideological claims, the top of the economy. He is a capitalist, an owner who has a territorial monopoly. From a certain manner, the feudalism, which coexisted with capitalism since millenia, did not disappear with the modern time. It was integrated in the state,
and the relation between states reproduces the relation between feudal. The state, according to
the model of feudal or of the Mafioso, perceives a tax in exchange of a protection. From this point of view, it is a simple service company, and it is what do not cease pointing out to
him the capitalist liberals. This protection exists in the form of a certain number of clauses stated
in the constitution, the right and the real situation of each state (in particular out of repressive and
social matter). The capitalist can choose with his own way where to be established, by finding a
balance between establishment of the raw materials and production costs suggested by each state(this cost including at the same time the total price of the labour and the financing necessary to the maintenance of law and order). One saw this system functioning in a very brutal way with
Totalfina or Nike in Burma. 

The corollary essential, it is that the state, capitalist like the others (or post-feudal),
has a framing, make up by its senior officials and, if necessary, its elected officials. Those - as
good bureaucrats - benefit from the situation. Although they are not officially owners of the state, they really profit from it. There is a long time that the capitalists, or at least the most
lucid part of them, demolished fetishism of the property. They know that expressed in a too visible
way, the property is a danger to them, whereas only imports the real pleasure. The state masks
particularly well by its ideological construction the profit of the capitalists. 

 In a certain number of cases, the state is brought to carry out nationalizations. Those make pass
 the profit of the hands of capitalists "private" to "public" capitalists without anything to change
 in the living conditions of the workers. This operation makes it possible companies in perdition to
 survive by the contribution of public funds. As soon as they became profitable, they are again
 claimed by the "private" sector, with more or less of success. The clash of interests between
 private and public capitalists thus does not concern the workers. You consequently
 include/understand better my mistrust when with the watchword of defense of the nationalized
 sector. 

These long premises enable me to arrive at decentralization, such as I perceive it in the light of
the French situation. In addition to its aspect, obvious, of reproduction in miniature of the world
system of inequalities, they make it possible to extend the number of stations of being able for the
middle-class of state (or rather the post-feudal ones), and to extend the scope from it, therefore
prestige and profitability. This search for stations to be provided seems to me an inevitable
consequence of the role of the state in world capitalism. The obligation to reward the supports for
the system, that they are soldiers, big functionaries or elected officials, implies this permanent expansion of the number of stations to be provided, to follow the natural demographic expansion
of the clans of the middle-classes of state and their protected. Moreover, that makes it possible to
stabilize the capacity by making it share by the whole of the rival clans. In France, it is particularly
verifiable: one passed by the decentralization of the monopoly of the central capacity, with the
hands of only one party, myriad of local authorities to the hands of the whole of the groups of
influence. Correlatively, the political debate is largely consensual, since the stake disappeared. I do not know the Ecuadorian situation, but I would be curious to have the opinion of Ecuadorians comrades on this point. 

In any revolution, the question of the armed forces is as of more delicate, because on its behavior can depend the exit on the situation. There is thus, in all the cases, to very analyze it close and to
multiply the calls with the soldiers, to avoid repression. More than any civil servant, the soldier is
pulled about between his situation of worker (it does not possess its tool for "production") and his
role of defender of the state and capitalism. He to point out the first obviousness is essential to
move away it from the second. 

You underline, extremely precisely, the vague character of the claims of the armed forces, in particular on the defense of the fatherland, and the anger caused by peace with Peru. The nationalist ideology distilled in armed forces to increase its unit and its combativeness vis-a-vis with a designated enemy is expressed here in a particular context: the alignment marked more and more on the US diplomacy, which tries to maintain peace in its South American sphere of influence. The trap created by the mode is closed again on him, as it already did in many semi-colonial countries. Thearmed forces, which is by definition heart even of state (famous "gang of men with weapons" that I evoked above), constitutes the ideal leaven for a periodic replacement of the middle-class woman "post-feudal" of state. In a crisis, exacerbated by the merchants of weapons of which they constitute the outlet for trade, the soldiers - officers, mainly - are tempted to reeplace the capacity in place. It is what occurs to each military putsch in a Third World country, since that does not disturb too the interests of the trusts or the American diplomacy. 

The extreme spatialization of the world production tends to specialize to make workers of the
Third World countries the working class of the Western countries, while gradually transforming the workers of the latter into frameworks. Paradoxically, this situation protects the inhabitants from the Western countries of the military dictatorship (of "left" or "right") because the
principle even of capitalist hierarchisation, it is to provide to a fringe workers (executives) of the
softer those, living conditions nearer to the capitalists, in exchange of their participation in the
system maintenance, and possibly, by the means of the election to political loads, input in the high
public office or of the shareholding, in short to be integrated into this system. The necessary
brutality of a military mode is there much less favourable with this illusion than a "democratic"
mode. 

The purpose of this short analysis of the role of the armed forces, sight from a revolutionary-worldist point of view, is to indicate my extreme mistrust to you on the role that this one can play. Indeed, it is easy for him to use the revolutionary situation to arrive to their ends, either by repressing it ("right" putsch), or by taking the head of the movement (" left" putsch). In both cases, them arriving to their ends... without that face to advance of a step the situation of the workers, since the condition of survival of the new mode is integration with the imperialist system.
To recall the privates systematically their real situation of workers is a significant element in the
fight against this risk, with the proviso of fighting against any form of nationalism, ideology of the
armed forces and the state bourgeoisie. 

 You clearly showed that the Ecuadorian population had arrived at a high degree of political
 answers to its daily problems. But the program suggested by the comrades of the EMLCP is in
 withdrawal of this politization. The role of a revolutionary political organization is to support this
 conscience, while placing "a step ahead", i.e. while remaining close to the concrete problems,
 while giving a widened prospect, a deepened analysis, and by supporting the unit of the fights. 

The virulent denunciation of the role of the state (and nationalism, its ideological double) and of
the world institutions of capitalism are today particularly accessible for the large majority from the
Ecuadorians, which not only live with the daily newspaper this pressure, but especially which
consciously feels it like such. On this basis, it is possible to take part in the formulation of the
questions, to inform and clarify on the operation of current capitalism and the existing fights on a
world level. That could be the current role of the revolutionary organization in Ecuador. It is high
time to give up the watchwords hollow like that of defense of the nationalized sector and the
national sovereignty, which do nothing but reinforce one fraction of the middle-class against
another, and to propose the idea of catch in hand of the production by the workers themselves and of real world democracy in economy as in policy. It is high time also, under penalty of fossilization, to organize itself according to the reality current of capitalism, i.e. to organize a political response on a world level, and either only national. At present, the world unit of the fights is the only way towards the leveling and libertarian revolution. 

These some pages, written hot in reaction to your file on Ecuador, are concise and probably
insufficient in their drafting, and contains more theoretical developments than concrete analyses of the situation in this country. They deliver to you nevertheless, I believe, a position
revolutionnary-worldist on the fight of the Ecuadorians workers. 
Dear comrades, I can only invite you to discuss it. 

Nicolas (09/02/00)