Class Struggle 109

Class Struggle #109 April-June 2014

Iraq Blows Up The US is pointing the finger at ISIS Islamic terror to divert attention from its bloody history of war, invasion and occupation of Iraq. But we don’t suffer from amnesia. The story of modern Iraq is that of the wider Mesopotamia carved up into artificial states by Western imperialist powers to grab their oil and other resources. The Sykes Picot carve-up after WW1 drew lines in the sand to give us the modern Arab kingdoms and military dictatorships. This split nations and tribes to divide and rule them under compliant puppet regimes.

These Arab puppets allied with the Stalinists and when necessary dispensed with them causing a vacuum on the left. The Arab national revolution after WW2 was contained in this way and Zionist Israel was created as the armed gendarme of the US to suppress the only real threat of a new Arab uprising –in Palestine.

When rulers like Saddam broke with their imperialist masters they were deposed and new puppet regimes such as that of Maliki were created to suppress the masses and manage the oil. The Arab Spring changed that and shifted the balance of power towards the masses when their uprisings overthrew dictators from Tunisia t0 Egypt, and which continue to threaten others like al Sisi in Egypt, al Assad in Syria and now al Maliki in Iraq.

Imperialism is in terminal crisis and cannot survive without more wars and destruction. The rival imperialist blocs led by the US and China are behind the proxy wars to grab the diminishing oil resources. In some situations they have to collaborate to defeat the rise of the armed proletariat and oppressed. This has been the case in Iraq where the failure of the US to win the war forced it to rely

on Iran and its Russian and Chinese backers to install the sectarian Shia Maliki client regime in an attempt to stabilise the situation and restore oil production to the pre-Saddam level.

In Iraq right now, after 10 years of the US client state repressing the Sunnis, a popular uprising has begun. Since in the end the original US invasion of Iraq was about oil, both the US and China are committed to suppress the Sunni uprising which threatens their control of oil concessions.

In all situations where the masses are rising against the centuries of imperialist exploitation and oppression, it is the duty of the international working class to oppose imperialism and to actively fight for its defeat in the imperialist countries. In semi-colonies like Iraq it is our duty to fight alongside all genuine anti-imperialist forces with our own independent program and armed militias.

We do so opposing all reactionary, anti-worker petty bourgeois and bourgeois elements such as ISIL whose interests are to fight imperialism only to negotiate better terms and become the new agents of imperialism to exploit and oppress the masses. We are for the defeat of imperialism, the expropriation of all imperialist and national capitalist property and the creation of a Workers and Peasants State within an Arab federation of socialist republics!

See the article on Iraq in this issue. http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/iraq-towards-overthrow-of-american.html

Vote Labour & Internet-Mana! We will call for a party vote for Internet-Mana and constituency vote for Labour, except for the Maori seats where Mana is standing candidates; to get more IMP MPs into parliament to help form a Labour-led government. The NACTs have trampled democracy almost to death to impose the direct rule of capital; for example the extra-judicial assassination by drone of NZ citizens, and NZ backing of a new war in Iraq against ISIL. We are being rushed down the road to an authoritarian surveillance police state with few surviving democratic rights.

Yet Labour is committed to propping up capitalism in crisis at the expense of workers. Its historic role is to manage capitalism by keeping workers trapped in parliament. It was formed in 1916 in the middle of the First Imperialist War when the world’s workers were in a revolutionary ferment, to bury the threat of the Red Federation of Labour and divert workers onto the parliamentary road. Despite Labour’s repeated betrayals of workers, most workers still see Labour as the lesser evil to National. That is why we need to put it in power again and again until we prove to the majority of workers that it is treacherously anti-worker.

At the same time the Greens and IMP will discover that attempts to reform capitalism are futile. Capitalism cannot afford to concede greater equality or an end to burning carbon. So the fight for reforms will reveal that the needs of workers cannot be met by parliament and that the capitalist state is in reality the instrument of domination of workers on behalf of the ruling class.

As a result, those with illusions that the left can build a movement to legislate reforms will be smashed. The role of parliament as a facade to cover the naked power of the bosses will be exposed. Workers will fight elections only to expose their class role in blocking the building and uniting of the class struggle outside parliament. When the majority of workers are conscious of the need to use their united power to bring the system to a halt the system the bosses parliament will be retired to the museum for our children’s amusement. http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2014/03/aotearoa-mana-movement-for-reform-or.html

Christchurch: End disaster capitalism As we wrote at the time of the earthquakes, the NACT regime will use the so-called natural disaster in ChCh as a blueprint for its economic reforms to radically restructure capital and labour to raise stagnating profits in NZ. According to this analysis what is seen as a failure of Govt to deal with this disaster is actually the planned response of ‘disaster capitalism’. Govt uses a natural disaster to smash democracy and force through a plan to stimulate re-investment of capital for quick profits, while disciplining labour to drive down its cost. This is why certain favoured capitalist cronies are given rights to rebuild (Fletchers etc) on cheap land and farmers grab water rights while unionised workers are driven out of flooded homes to find jobs elsewhere in NZ, and replaced by lower paid casualised migrant workers for the rebuild. So when you hear the NACTs crow about NZ’s ‘rock star’ economy, know that this means a return to the ‘wild south blues’ of the C19th pork-barrel days when the gentry controlled the state and gerrymandered democracy to grab land and government subsidies. Nothing to do with the

‘free market’, it’s a rent grab by a new gentry. Public water rights are now a private property right in Canterbury lining the pockets of the dairy farmers at the expense of city and town workers. Examine carefully how the NACTs have used this ‘natural disaster’ to impose a profit grab for their cronies at the same time destroying working class rights and living standards. That is exactly the ‘disaster capitalist’ rock star economy that a Third NACT regime will impose on the rest of NZ for the benefit of their international bankster and crony capitalist mates!

Labour and the Greens don’t have a clue what is happening. Labour’s plan for ChCh is top down, too little and 3 years too late. The Greens ditto. They are part of the disaster not the solution. The liberal left blogosphere is similarly dealing with symptoms. What is needed is a workers’ democracy, not patronising hand-me-downs from Wellington.

We say: For a Labour-left government that will restore democracy to ChCh and Canterbury! ChCh should be rebuilt by its citizens. No asset sales! Junk CERA! For a peoples plan! Free public transport! Affordable Council rental housing for all who need it!

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2011/06/quake-city-resists.html

http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/06/18/the-moment-the-housing-crisis-in-christchurch-could-have-been-averted/

Pacific profiteering Talk about Shane Jones. Off he goes to oversee the plundering of the Pacific peoples’ resources by imperialism. The backstory to Jones new job is that the crisis of global capitalism has opened up an opportunity for both US-led imperialists and their semi-colonial lackeys to carve up the Pacific and exploit what remaining resources are not yet exhausted – fisheries, fish-farming, timber, deep sea minerals, oil etc, and their rivals China and its dependencies for the same game of plunder. Both blocs are staking out their claims for a zone of influence at the expense of their rivals, and competing for support from Pacific nations to line up behind them.

New Zealand has a foot in both camps as the initiator of the TPPA, and is the born again very good nuclear friend of Obama, with PM Key visibly excited about the prospect of military intervention in North Korea and Iraq. Key has endorsed the Obama doctrine of extrajudicial assassination of designated ‘terrorists’ borrowed from the Zionists. At the same time NZs economic eggs are increasingly in the China basket as its comprador capitalist class profits from growing exports to China, as well as Chinese FDI and ownership of NZ domestic production.

NZ has to play a double game of trying to please both camps when the rivalry between them is creating a political rift as big as the Pacific ‘ring of fire’. It is Jones mission to play this double game watching out for NZ bosses’ interests as US and China compete to plunder the South Pacific. http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2012/06/aotearoa-sold-out.html

South Africa miners’ strike ends What is the balance sheet of the five-month long platinum miners’ strike for 12.500 rand a month? The upsides are: first, the strike was staunch and united, a step forward from the Marikana massacre miners flocked from the NUM to join the AMCU. This represents a partial break

Class Struggle 109 April-June 2014

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from Cosatu and the ANC. Second, the miners won a big wage increase (for SA) rising to R8.900 after three years - though well short of the R12.500 they were demanding. The AMCU got support from other unions like the NUMSA also breaking from the ANC, although calls to generalise the miners’ strike were not acted on and miners remained isolated. See WIVP analysis here http://www.workersinternational.org.za/platinumstrikelessons22.6.2014.htm

The downsides are that first, the AMCU originated as a left bureaucratic split from NUM and the rank and file has yet to take over the leadership. Second, the level of understanding underlying the miners’ struggle is still economistic or the trade union consciousness that sees exploitation taking place at the level of exchange. Third, the owners are presented as monopolists who profit from cheating on South Africa through ‘transfer pricing’. This leads to the demand to make the foreign corporations pay the true market price as if that will solve the problem of exploitation. Even without transfer pricing the price of production in SA will be less than the average world

market price, given that the costs of production are lower in SA than in all other competing countries.

There was no serious attempt by the ‘left’ to explain to workers that capitalist exploitation takes place at the point of production and that the answer must be the expropriation of the mines under workers’ control. Information that can prove the need for this is evident. The platinum miners are still semi-slaves compared to miners in other countries. The new wage increase works out at R108.600 a year compared to the R2.2 million paid to Australian mine workers! This difference is not due only to productivity rates. Owners keep their costs down in SA by forcing down wage costs by means of high unemployment to below subsistence living standards. This cannot be fought by appealing to the ANC to tax the owners more, or by nationalising the mines. Only by breaking with the ANC and its slavish COSATU and SACP partners will SA workers be able to unite in a general strike and bring down the ANC regime, expropriating the mines and the farms under workers control. This must be accomplished by a Workers and working Farmers Government that abolishes capitalism and puts a socialist plan in place.

A Marxist review of Capitalism and Drug UseA Marxist review of Capitalism and Drug UseA Marxist review of Capitalism and Drug UseA Marxist review of Capitalism and Drug Use Recent news coverage has been a typical example of journalistic activism promoting a moral panic about an issue –in this case psychoactive drugs. Headlines about psychoactive substances, (synthetic cannabinoids) raised the issue of the legal status of new drugs, and called into question the legal status of old drugs. Dramatic case studies showed huge numbers of people lining up outside one of the limited (to 250) stores. Various local newspapers gave plenty of space for anti-synthetic drug campaigners, amounting to free support for the anti-drug campaign. These were frequently parents distressed by their sons or daughters deterioration from addiction to “legal highs”. After a period when NZ Govts decided to experiment with legal cannabis as a progressive step away from the ‘war on drugs’, a public backlash now forced an about turn from legalisation to wholesale ban. Legal highs were put on the back burner. Momentum swung back to the ‘war on drugs’.

War on Drugs vs Regulation

For decades the approach to drug use by the ruling class was to ban some drugs and regulate others. The current conventional approach to drugs: is the US led “war on drugs” or “narcotics”. This is contrasted with the right to sell other equally or more damaging drugs such as alcohol and tobacco. The lessons of prohibition of alcohol in many countries led to organised crime, and the same is true of the prohibition on narcotics.

There is a growing recognition that the social costs of prohibition of cannabis vastly outweigh its benefits. This has seen a swing away from prohibition towards the introduction of legalised and regulated synthetic cannabis. After years of playing catch up with organised crime in drugs, NZ Govts took the step to allow the sale of ‘legal highs’ that have been tested for safety and under strict controls.

From being sold in thousands of dairies and convenience stores and little control over the distribution the Interim

Agreement allowed for a trial of no more than 50 chemicals sold from up to 200 stores with R18 rules.

A new frontier of capitalism was opened with this new set of commodities: production, packaging and marketing

companies for these chemicals taking home super-profits. The newly synthesised psychoactive substances were capitalised by a taxable, profitable, urban cowboy capitalism. They fitted a market segment – cheaper than cannabis, and thought to be a way to avoid police harassment and beat workplace drug screening.

‘Legal highs’ were not tested on animals or humans: It was a grand

scale experiment with the NZ population. A few chemicals failed the safety test by causing direct harm that was reported to the ministry of health, and were removed from the ‘legal’ (regulated) regime. There are many other things we don’t know about the impact of the availability of legal highs; e.g. if alcohol sales were reduced by the introduction of ‘legal highs’; if cannabis consumption fell; if the corresponding legal or illegal markets were under profit


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squeeze? We don’t know if drug (& alcohol) related traffic crashes were reduced during the period of legality.

Capitalism has failed to measure the damage or risk of drugs. Instead drugs like alcohol & tobacco which are profitable and taxed hugely and create massive damage; cancers, etc, are legal. An illegal drug like cannabis creates less damage on an active component comparison. When a technical expert such as (UK) Professor David Nutt said this, the conservative government did not like his advice. He was dumped from his role on an “independent” government advisory panel. He went on to found an “independent scientific committee on drugs” now on www.drugscience.org.uk He complains that illegal drugs are much more difficult to conduct research on since the bureaucracy required to obtain the drug for research purposes creates a barrier to research.

NZ Drug classifications have followed the worldwide trend – US driven “war on drugs”. While other addictive problems such as gambling was legalised (regulated and taxed), alcohol remains legalised (loosely regulated), but those regulations are clearly unable to stop the social problems related to alcohol. Tobacco regulation has followed the Australian trend and introduced stricter controls on advertising and marketing. Warning signs on packaging have grown from small to bigger and more graphic.

Cannabis being illegal left the door open to the new technology of synthetic cannabinoids – chemicals not yet identified and banned by the governments, and not yet detectable in standard drug screens.

Workplace Drug Testing

In the name of “health & safety” the employers banned detectable psychoactive substances. Workplace “health & safety” has been an excuse for drug testing. So a drug testing industry has developed in the last 15 years. “Health & Safety” avoids addressing the real risk issues and labels occasional substance users as risks in the workplace.

Workers (& soldiers) have been trying the new chemicals “synthetic cannabis”, because it cannot be detected in workplace drug testing. The ranks of the US military have been high users of synthetic cannabis – exactly because they are not detectable in standard tests. Synthetic Cannabinoids became another product to market to avoid detection by those tests. Synthetics were a good option if workers wish to avoid being sacked or dumped into unemployment.

But for what reason – if cannabis detected in drug testing it may have been used a month ago and not affect the worker at work. So the Capitalist reaction was an over–reaction, and made some workers unemployed for no good reason.

Drug testing makes a mockery of real concern for the health and safety of workers. The greater threat to the health & safety of the working class is worker fatigue due to extreme long hours of work – where a 6 day 10hr days (60hr) working week has now become common in many NZ industries. Coal mines with malfunctioning gas testing equipment and extreme long working hours are the failures of capitalism.

Only a united working class can fight these employers and these employment practices. For fighting democratic unions; for living wages set by workers committees and achievable in a 40hrs working week!

Capitalism puts profits before people and this is true in drug law. Short term profits for the alcohol, tobacco and gambling “industries” (capitalists) have been more important than the damage done to people, their families and communities. The tax the government takes from these commodities is more important to the government than the long term human and health costs.

Government funding for treatment is pitiful, and so treatment resources are pathetic, not at all near the level of need. Really treatment consists of individual assessment and if you are really motivated to change maybe some treatment. Talking therapy is a poor substitute for lack of community; family/friends workmates – involvement in what you really need.

A public health or education model treats the population like farm animals: Keep enough people alive enough to work, reproducing capitalist class relations.

The “illegal” drugs provide excuses for police to criminalise the working class, with poor, Maori and Pacific Islanders most likely to end up with drug convictions and rich and white most likely to be let off with a slap on the wrist.

The NZ state now taxes illegal drug profits through seizing assets under “proceeds of crime” laws. A family caught with illegal drugs could lose their family home, i.e. be made homeless, while the state auctions off this and pockets the money.

Regulate/ criminalise - decriminalise

Radical youth may call for the legalisation of all psychoactive substances – perhaps in a reaction to police state control. The “war on drugs” turns possession and use of some drugs into criminal activities. Drug related oppression across racial and class lines, is state oppression.

In a previous statement on drugs Class Struggle called to support legalisation, however this was mistaken. Marxists have no confidence in any of capitalisms laws. The whole system is biased in favour of the rich while the working class are controlled by the state forces = police, courts, prison system, etc.

The legalisation of drugs could not necessarily reduce the harmful effects of drug use. The legal cannabis experiment proved that regulation did not prevent more harm than criminalisation. People actually died from legal highs. Would legalisation really assist the strength and organisation of working class? No!

Calls to regulate, decriminalise or to legalise drugs all rely on parliament to change laws. This fails to increase the power of the working class. Instead diverts the struggle for freedom from police oppression (the state) back into the capitalist state at another level: - parliament and law making. It limits the debate to legal status.


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Many states have legalised (e.g. Portugal) or decriminalised drugs. Cannabis is available in cafes in the Netherlands. Now the UK and several states of Australia have decriminalised possession of small amounts of cannabis. Western Australia runs a “Cannabis infringement notice” system, which hits people caught with small amounts with $100 fines. Several states of the US have decriminalised medicinal use of cannabis. So legalising drugs is possible within capitalism. And does not necessarily increase the power of the working class

Even a decriminalised drug regime is unfair; the poor would clock up fines that the rich could avoid or easily pay off. The poor are more likely to fail to pay their fines and end up under increased court pressure over this.

The Legal status of a drug does not address the real driving forces behind consumption of drugs. Nor does it necessarily allow the working class more organising potential like democratic freedoms and union rights do.

A useful historic and psychological perspective from Bruce Alexander identifies a dislocation or “poverty of spirit” as the underlying cause of addiction. He particularly blames the “free-market economy”. www.globalizationofaddiction.ca

Alexander’s definition of free-market economy is one and the same as capitalism. He locates all addiction problems as driven by individual doing their best to cope in this “dislocating” society. Effectively his definition of dislocation is the same as Marx’s alienation. But Alexander does not locate alienation at the point of production, instead at the surface appearance of our relationship to things (culture, place, people, etc). In spite of his limitations, Bruce Alexander gets further down to the roots of the problems than others from the field of psychology.

Alienation

Drawing the Marxist lesson from Bruce Alexander’s research; capitalism is alienating and alienation drives drug consumption and dangerous addictions more generally. “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm. Marx put drug addiction on the same level as devotion to religion, and most significant this is all in the context of experience of alienation (oppression, heartlessness and soulless conditions). Marx was commenting about addictive devotion and alienation.

To legalise drugs disregards the alienating processes of work under capitalist production and other harms of social abuse and exploitation within capitalist society all that need to be changed. So legalising does not develop unity of working class in common consciousness of the experience of alienation. Instead it distracts the working class by offering more “legal” options for “self-medicating” (drug

use) to cope with life under capitalism. The drug regulation debate ignores the need for revolutionary change.

Many societies have used music (drumming chants), dance, and rituals to alter states of consciousness and transition members or whole communities from child to adult, from season to season, and in many societies psychoactive substances were used in these ceremonies. Prior to capitalism there is little evidence from history of

problem drug use – except the final years of the Greek and Roman civilisations (see Bruce Alexander).

Freedom from enslavement by drugs will be more possible when alienation through capitalism is overthrown.

Workers’ Control

We support working class control over all drugs! Instead of a ‘no control’ situation of full legalisation there needs to be some level of social control – but the power should be held by the working class, not capitalist forces.

Working class control is not possible under capitalism: the current example of alcohol regulation shows this. In theory

NZ “communities” have a say about alcohol premises / outlets, however the capitalist alcohol lobby has alcohol wholesale outlets spread like corner dairies in poor areas, and less wholesalers, more “on licence” premises (restaurants, cafés, bars) in affluent areas. The distribution of alcohol outlets follows the typical pattern of most profitable to the capitalist; and most dangerous or harmful to the poor.

When the working class is in control of assessment of safety of each drug then we may decide the level of control needed. Medicinal use should be allowed – and production could control quality (dose) and find safer ways to take some drugs (such as cannabis). Legalisation does not address harm related to substances, such as tobacco and lung cancer, alcohol and liver cancer, caffeine and kidney cancer.

The Russian revolution was an important example of workers’ social control of drugs: The Bolsheviks needed to throw out alcohol. In 1917–1918 the revolution was under attack from the White army. Counter-revolutionaries had been supplying alcohol to soldiers to create problems for the Bolsheviks. John Reed “Ten Days That Shook The World” p244, “Wine Pogroms”; counter-revolutionaries were promoting drunkenness and rioting through raiding wine cellars to give freely to the soldiers. The revolutionary council of people’s commissars appointed a “commissar for the fight against drunkenness”. They blew up cellars and destroyed thousands of bottles of wine.

Trotsky commented on alcohol and drug problems after the revolution, in “The problems of Everyday Life”. The theme following the revolution being workers control by means of the (workers) state, and then as the state withers away, a corresponding increase in more direct community control. Ultimately, the need for drugs as opiates would end with the elimination of class society and social alienation.


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For workers’ control over all drugs!

For workers’ control of health & safety in the workplace!

Reduce the hours of the “fulltime” working week until there is employment for all!

For workers committees to set living wages in a “fulltime” (40hrs) week!

We make these calls in the knowledge that true workers control will only be possible with the overthrow of capitalism. This shows that the solution to capitalisms problems cannot be found within capitalism.

The Moral Statistics of Thomas PickettyThe Moral Statistics of Thomas PickettyThe Moral Statistics of Thomas PickettyThe Moral Statistics of Thomas Picketty Picketty’s ideas in their C19th form were demolished by Karl Marx himself. But Picketty couldn’t be bothered reading Marx so he wouldn’t know this. Had he bothered he would have discovered that capitalist inequality is inherent in the fact that the class that owns the means of production forces the other class that is dispossessed of such means to produce surplus-value as the basis of profits. The distribution of income that results is a mere symptom of these unequal relations of production.

We will leave Picketty’s data and the conclusions he draws from this date to the criticism of the bourgeois mice (an in- joke reference to the Young Marx – Picketty could start with Early Writings which are much less ‘boring’ than Capital). Because anyone can prove that capitalism creates income inequality. The point is whether inequality is good or bad. The only thing that separates Picketty from Ann Rand is not statistics but morality.

Picketty thinks it is bad because the widening income gap is accompanied by increasing profitability. Those bosses are truly bloody minded bastards. Marx had anticipated his mistake because it was common in his day. Marx refers to a fixation on the symptoms rather than causes of inequality as “The Trinity Formula” as in the father, son and Holy Ghost.

This semi-religious fetishism of appearances has its materialist roots in the alienation of human labour as the value of the commodity which is explained in the first part of Capital Vol 1. This is the best rendition of the adage that we know the price of everything but the value of nothing.

Ironically, it was the French translation of Capital that Marx thought the best since he had the chance to edit it and since it was serialised and thus accessible to the ordinary worker (and even the odd bourgeois intellectual). Even so Marx had misgivings that the French reader would be impatient to pass quickly from the difficult analysis to “immediate questions that aroused their passions”.

Picketty has the disadvantage of writing a 600 page book that instead of illuminating the causes of inequality, buries the truth under a false theory. He whips up a moral outrage because the bosses profits rise at the expense of falling wages.

Marxist economist Michael Roberts http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1013/unpicking-piketty/ shows that Picketty measures profits to include

‘wealth’ as in property and housing values. Such ‘wealth’ is not counted in profits as by and large it does not directly contribute to production. Land is a source of rent which is deducted from wages or profits. But even using Picketty’s measure of wealth to include land, Roberts argues that this

has been declining as land becomes less valuable in relation to financial assets, also increasingly unrelated to the production of profits. Perhaps Picketty should have read Marx on ‘fictitious capital’.

So Picketty’s moral statistics leads to rising profits and a falling share of wages where the political solution that presents itself is a moral condemnation of capitalism, combined with a practical push for the

poor to rise up and demand their ‘fair share’ of income, even though their production of profits was never fair.

In Aotearoa/New Zealand a strong advocate for a redistribution of wealth is Gareth Morgan, a maverick entrepreneur capitalist. His method is a UBI paid for by what is effectively a new 25% flat tax on wealth including assets and income. See his book The Big Kahuna. http://www.bigkahuna.org.nz/universal-basic-income.aspx

However writing an academic text of 600 pages over a number of years means Picketty doesn't have the excuse of passion which leads him to condemn Capitalism or French impatience like the German moral socialists that Marx excoriated in the Critique of the Gotha Program for forgetting that capitalism leads to falling profits and that any equalising of income requires a socialist revolution. His language is bourgeois morality and statistics.

So like all those who think that climate catastrophe can be managed by the ‘adaptation’ of capitalism, Picketty may “throw statistics” capitalism but he doesn’t even entertain the idea of overthrowing it.


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China: China: China: China: SSSSocialists ocialists ocialists ocialists at odds over at odds over at odds over at odds over the the the the Yue YYue YYue YYue Yuen uen uen uen strikestrikestrikestrike It’s one thing to say socialists all agree that the self-activity of the working class is the true basis of the march for socialism, but what is the road map? Disagreements over the character of Chinese society as socialist, capitalist, or imperialist, make all the difference to whether the road map leads the marchers to socialism or not. This question was raised specifically during the Yue Yuen strike. We reprint here an expanded version of an exchange which took place on the facebook page ‘Trotskyism is Alive and Kicking’.

First, there are the ‘state caps’ or ‘third camp’ like the Cliffites (SWP-Britain) who claim that China since 1919 has been capitalist if not imperialist, Tell that to striking Yue Yuen workers who see themselves locked in a struggle to defend their ‘socialist’ pension rights against the return of capitalism. The fact is that while the ‘third camp’ judged the Chinese revolution from afar was a bourgeois revolution where the bourgeoisie were expropriated, the Chinese masses knew they had been in a social revolution and the bourgeoisie had disappeared off the stage of history. The Chinese bureaucracy of the CCP has cleverly staged a capitalist counter-revolution by posing as the defenders of the revolution in the apparent absence of a new Chinese bourgeoisie. It is necessary to explain to workers who struggle against the return of wage labour, to see the need to overthrow the CCP as the bourgeois defenders of capitalism and not its destruction. Then there are the dogmatic Trots like the Sparts and the CWI who say China became a bureaucratically Deformed Workers State after 1949 and remains one today. They reverse the ‘third camp’ position and insist that the bourgeoisie who were cast off the stage of history by the revolution, cannot re-enter that stage except in the guise of individual capitalists. Incredibly they explain China’s rise to No 2 world economy as the responsibility of the CCP bureaucracy thereby crediting a degenerate workers state with the capacity to develop the forces of production ahead of the imperialist powers. Tell that to the striking Yue Yuen workers who see the CCP in bed with capitalist corporations, super-exploiting them and getting superrich in the name of ‘market socialism’.

Then there are the ‘Trotskyists” like the FLTI who claim China has restored capitalism but is not or cannot become imperialist since it is oppressed by the existing imperialist powers. For them, China serves the interests of imperialism as a capitalist semi-colony which allows super-profits to be extracted from cheap Chinese labor and raw materials. Tell that to striking Yue Yuen workers who see their labor and lives pay for China’s rise to the No 1 world economy which is super-exploiting workers in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The FLTI is wrong on China. China is not a ‘maquiladora’ of the US. Today China and the US are rapidly converging as the major imperialist rivals. China has moved very fast since it opened up its SEZs to FDI 20 years ago. Even 10

years ago it was hard to see it emerging as a new imperialist power.

All three positions on China have been debated at length by the LCC in a number or articles. Most recently we have taken up a critique of the roots of these different positions in our article: “Why are Russia and China Imperialist Powers and not Capitalist Semi-Colonies?”

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/why-are-russia-and-china-imperialist.html

Yet today the US and China are the two largest economies and invest in each other where the costs of production are nearly equal. We are facing escalating trade, political and military rivalry between the two. Not to acknowledge this fact means you lack the clinching argument against the Bolivarian's popular front with China for 'market socialism' in Latin America.

Worse it is a call for the defence of China in wars with other imperialist powers. Here is recent data on comparative costs of production of 25 countries including China and the US: "The country with the lowest manufacturing costs, we found, is not China. It’s Indonesia, then India, Mexico, and Thailand. China comes next—with Taiwan’s costs just a tad higher and the U.S.’s a bit more than that, ranking America No. 7 in our study. As Chinese labor costs rise, American productivity improves, and U.S. energy expenses fall, the difference in manufacturing costs between China and the U.S. has narrowed to such a degree that it’s almost negligible. For every dollar required to manufacture in the U.S., it now costs 96¢ to manufacture in China, before considering the cost of transportation to the U.S. and other factors. For many companies, that’s hardly worth it when product quality, intellectual property rights, and long-distance supply chain issues are added to the equation."


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The response of David Walters on facebook to the above is typical of the FLTI and others trapped in a dogmatic time-warp:

“China plays both roles, as a developing national state capitalist country and as a HUGE repository of maquiladora...basically all of the maquiladora industries have departed Mexico for China. This occurred almost 10 years ago. It is still going on. It's a great sucking hole for low wage 'repetitive injury' jobs and capital.”

CWG replies: “That China plays both roles is not in dispute. Their relative weight and role in the direction of China's capitalist development is. Since restoring capitalism China has re-entered the global capitalist economy without subordinating itself as a semi-colony.

Unlike normal capitalist semi-colonies, China's maquiladora role was not a means of sucking out China's surplus into the imperialist countries, but a means of getting a trade surplus and R&D transfer. Thus as the Businessweek article above shows China has gone up the value chain and is no longer the world's cheap labour factory. As the most recent OECD survey shows, China has taken off so it is no longer so dependent on manufactured exports of Foreign Investor Enterprises to maintain its dynamism. "Total FDI peaked at 17.1% of fixed capital formation in China in 1993 and has declined since then to 2.8% in 2010, even though it has risen markedly in absolute terms."

And consider that North America has a tiny share of the FDI stock compared with other Asian countries. It is China's emergence as a new imperialist power that explains the rising competition between the US and China that we are seeing in every continent.

Walters replies: “All you are saying is that regular monopoly capital equals state monopoly capital. I'm not disagreeing for the sake of this discussion. I'm saying that for a state to be imperialist, that finance capital has to be THE dominant form of economy within the mode of production. I see zero evidence for this. I see the domination of manufacturing capital, both SOEs and IO/private forms, dominant. That such export of capital from either private sources or, SOE is a small percentage of the overall GDP. China looks essentially like a state capitalist form of the U.S. circa 1898. BTW...I have zero political stake in this discussion. I'm really here to learn and discuss. For China to really be Imperialist, it would have to do its investments, first, in terms of quick return of the dollar (they do use dollars, not their own currency, another issue in terms of being Imperialist but not decisive) and secondly with a rising tendency for speculative investment in finance. China is doing neither. None of its foreign investments, at least not significantly, are designed to return a thing except raw materials which would be more profitable to use domestic resources in many instances. Instead they are building up huge stockpiles in raw materials for further use down the road.

This is totally unheard if investments were actually based on profit.”

CWG replies: You make a fundamental and unfortunately common mistake. Lenin defined finance capital as the fusion of banking and productive capital. Productive capital means productive of commodities. “State monopoly capital” was used by Lenin to characterise the form of finance capital at the more concrete level of international relations and the global market where finance capital was fused also with the state. Unlike the prevailing use of the

term, capital that quits the productive circuit to speculate in non-productive existing assets is not finance capital but money capital. “Manufacturing capital” is a meaningless term unless you are using it as a non-Marxist proxy for productive capital. If you use Lenin’s conception of finance capital it is immediately obvious that

the Chinese state is fused with finance capital devoted entirely to its reproduction.

As for "quick return". Since when has that been a criterion for imperialism? Super-profits will obviously increase as turnover time increases. But super-profits do not derive from turnover time. "Speculative investment"? No. Export of capital is driven by the need to counter the TRPF with cheap raw materials and labour power. When this fails due to rival state monopoly capitals, surplus capital is driven into speculation. Therefore speculation is a symptom of surplus capital being diverted from unprofitable production into speculation in existing values as money capital.

As yet China's capital export is countering the TRPF but the increasing value composition as China develops will bring this to an end before long. This is part of the law of capitalist accumulation. Your argument rests upon voluntarist policies of the CCP able somehow to override the determination of the LOV where China is forced by its need to accumulate capital to enter into a growing rivalry with the US-led imperialist bloc. Not only that, you have to explain the US encirclement of China as a voluntarist response to China's voluntarist expansion. The result is a position like Kautsky's ultra imperialism where the fate of nations hinges not on the law of accumulation but the respective policies of imperialist elites. Thus imperialist war is an aberration and parliamentary socialism can correct for it by ensuring that capital is invested productively so it continues its historic mission to prepare the conditions for socialism in the never-never.

The Chinese revolution which created a degenerate workers state has not survived capitalist restoration by the CCP. Yet many of the workers still believe they are fighting to defend socialism, but in truth they only way they can do that is to fight for a socialist revolution against the new capitalist ruling class that is today responsible for China’s emergence as a new imperialist power.


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Iraq: Towards the Overthrow of the AmericanIraq: Towards the Overthrow of the AmericanIraq: Towards the Overthrow of the AmericanIraq: Towards the Overthrow of the American----Iranian ProjectIranian ProjectIranian ProjectIranian Project Here we re-blog this statement from on the situation in Syria from the Syrian Left Coalition, Yasar Movement and Iraqi Leftists. We do not necessarily agree with all its positions but agree that there exists an independent non-sectarian working class resistance in Iraq that extends into Syria; that a radical left must intervene in this struggle; that the ISIS is a counter-revolutionary force; that we defend an independent Kurdistan; and that the US and Iran (for us in alliance with Russia and China) have installed a sectarian regime to divide and rule Iraq that has to be overthrown and its imperialist backers kicked out of Iraq. We would add that this requires the building of a revolutionary workers movement in Iraq and Syria that extends throughout the MENA under the leadership of a Leninist-Trotskyist Party with a program for permanent revolution.

“We should not separate the latest events in Iraq, where Al-Maliki regime is losing control over many areas, from the historical context that preceded this and especially since the U.S-British invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the nature of the new regime and forces involved in the political process under the patronage of the occupation on one side, nor from the historical context of the Arab revolutions on the other side.

As radical leftists emerging from the womb of the Arab revolutions, we certainly stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the revolution of the Iraqi people. We seek with our Iraqi comrades to protect this movement from external penetrations and derailment. We struggle together to radicalize it, to realize freedom and liberation of the Iraqi people and their direct control over their own destiny and wealth.

The U.S. imperialism worked together with the Iranian regime, since the beginning of the occupation of Iraq in 2003, and through their puppets of Iraqi politicians and organizations that participated in the so-called "political process", to establish a corrupt sectarian and ethnic system. The Arab regions have been tightly controlled by sectarian forces loyal to the Iranian regime. These forces have worked to marginalize and distort the representation of popular groups from different denominations including the Shiite community, in the regime. This appeared as retaliation against the pre-occupation Iraqi state which was an obstacle to the expansion the dominance of Iranian regime in Iraq and the Middle East region.

Since the beginning of the American occupation in 2003, the Iraqis have been living under difficult economic, social and political crises, suffering from unemployment, poverty and lack of essential services. This situation has

encompassed all sects of the Iraqi society, including the poor Shiite classes.

On this basis, resistance and protests appeared as a unifying factor of the majority of the Iraqi population, struggling against the occupation and the foreign domination as well as against the client regime. This was shown by the harmony between the resistance of Fallujah and Najaf, and both were subjected separately to the U.S. attacks. This resistance was driven by the major socio-economic and political grievance, and has gained a broad comprehensive popular support.

So the American occupation and Iranian hegemony built, through the so-called "political process", a sectarian regime to consolidate their authority, to assure their plunder of Iraq, and to prevent the development of this resistance politically. Moreover, they sought to dismantle and divide the social structure of Iraq through broad and

arbitrary detentions, and through fabricating daily bombings that killed tens of thousands of Iraqi people. As a result of this aggravating situation, all cities and regions in Iraq witnessed widespread protest movements. Although these protests were not coordinated, they expressed the discontent and the anger of the people.

Just like the other Arab regimes, the forces of the regime faced brutally the peaceful protests and sit-ins in Al Anbar, which called for economic and political rights and ending the sectarian domination. Along with the intensification of the military brutality against these protests and neglecting the demands of the people, the popular and the political dimensions of the revolution were developing. The popular dimension is shown by the widespread support and integration in the revolution, and the political dimension is shown by the formation of political structures that are


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organizing this movement. The speed of the extension of the revolutionary movement is a clear sign of the active involvement of the people in the revolutionary factions.

Consequently, the military, third dimension did not come in contradiction with the popular dimension, because it emerged from the Iraqi people and not from a political force hostile to them, nor from fundamentalist forces (as ISIS), as the Maliki and the Gulf and the imperialist hypocritical media claim. This is a popular revolution, and there is no fertile ground for the ISIS in it or in the Iraqi society in general. The ISIS is a counter-revolutionary force that is being used in an attempt to penetrate and degenerate the revolution. Hence, this force should be marginalized, fought and eradicated by the revolutionary forces as soon as it appears.

With the collapse of the official military and security forces of the regime, the mafia regime in Iran has been working through its puppets in Iraq, together with the religious authorities under its control, to form sectarian militias, and through their fabricated propaganda are urging the poor Shiite youth to “Jihad”, as an attempt to use them to fight the revolution. At the same time, both the Iranian and Gulf hypocritical media are trying to show the revolution as a terrorist invasion of the Iraqi cities by fundamentalist forces, using fabricated materials to threaten the people and push the situation into a sectarian war, to protect the interests of the ruling mafias. By this, they are working to derail the situation towards a devastating sectarian war. Therefore, it is also necessary to be aware of any sectarian practice which is counter-revolutionary.

We call all Iraqi people, who are crushed under the regime's policies, in all the provinces (including Baghdad and the cities of the South in particular) to be involved in

this revolution, in order to overthrow this client sectarian regime, as well as the terrorist sectarian militias.

While many “leftist” parties are analyzing the situation of Iraq from their offices, relying on the hypocritical media, the Iraqi people are advancing their struggle. Now, while the Iraqi cities are being liberated by their own revolutionaries, successive statements are being published by the different political organizations and community groups involved in the revolution, confirming that the main aim of the revolution is the elimination of the sectarian regime and the liberation of Iraq from external domination, as two interrelated entities, and to build a democratic national regime that meets the interests of the whole Iraqi people.

Because the main title of the revolution is the realization of freedom, democracy and social justice, this revolution meets the interests of the impoverished classes in the Iraqi Kurdistan. Thus, we call them to support the revolution.

Under this revolutionary situation in Iraq with the wide involvement of the popular classes in it, all the forces of the radical left are called to play an active role in it. Involvement of the radical left is a necessity to radicalize the revolution and prevent its degeneration or derailing, and to open up horizons for the working class to hold power and control the wealth.”

The Syrian Left Coalition The Left Movement (Yasar Movement) Iraqi Leftists

https://www.facebook.com/Syrian.Leftist.Coalition

On the historical context since 2003 see http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175860/tomgram%3A_michael_schwartz%2C_the_new_oil_wars_in_iraq/

UkraineUkraineUkraineUkraine: Defeat the neo: Defeat the neo: Defeat the neo: Defeat the neo----ffffascist attack of the Kiev ascist attack of the Kiev ascist attack of the Kiev ascist attack of the Kiev Regime on the antiRegime on the antiRegime on the antiRegime on the anti----Kiev resistance!Kiev resistance!Kiev resistance!Kiev resistance! The Liaison Committee of Communists stands alongside Borotba and its call for an International Day of Solidarity against Fascism on 8 May (elsewhere on May 9th). At the same time we have no confidence in Borotba’s program for self-defence against neo-fascism as independent of extreme pro-Russian forces. Proletarian anti-fascists must march and fight separately from petty bourgeois and bourgeois nationalists even while striking at neo-fascist forces.

We oppose those on the left who see Russia as a degenerated workers state, a capitalist semi-colony, or a 'lesser evil' great power to the U.S. and EU, and therefore as a progressive force against Western imperialism and fascism. We have pointed out before that Russia is imperialist and is therefore driven in crisis to resort to

fascism to smash the Russian working class. We also oppose self-proclaimed Trotskyists who say that because there are neo-fascist elements on both sides in Ukraine we should support neither side in the war that is breaking out. Instead, therefore, projecting a picture of an idealised proletariat that does not exist in the real world, rather than the actual proletariat being


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subjected to bloody terror and one capable of choosing sides.

Because the two sides are not equal! It is clear that the ultra-right U.S./EU stooge bourgeoisie is in control in Kiev, and that the Maidan workers make no effort to stop its neo-fascist attacks on Eastern workers, while in the East the anti-regime workers are for unity with all Ukraine workers against the illegitimate Kiev regime and are not subordinated to the Russian xenophobes! While Russian imperialism has a clear interest in the outcome of this struggle in Ukraine, its main interest is to prevent a war on its border that would jeopardise its economic investments in Ukraine. Therefore it collaborates with the NATO powers to prevent a proletarian revolution breaking out on its border that would spread quickly into Russia. Its annexation of Crimea was an exception given its strategic position in Russia's defence against the encroachments of NATO. The key factor at the moment is that the Maidan forces are being led by the radical right/neo-fascists. The proletarian elements in the West are supporting this illegitimate regime as it attacks the anti-Maidan forces as 'terrorists'. They look for excuses to blame the anti-Maidan forces for the killings in Odessa and towns under occupation. But they cannot hide the fact of deliberately planned provocations and open killings of unarmed protesters initiated by neo-fascist thugs of the Right Sector. In the East while the anti-regime leadership includes extreme pro-Russian elements, there is a popular majority to stay in Ukraine but against the Kiev regime. This is a clear proletarian class position that fights to defend a united Ukraine working class against a U.S./EU backed ultra-right regime with open fascists in top positions. We support the demands for a referendum on self-determination taking the form of federalism aimed at protecting the national and cultural rights of those in the East from anti-Russian chauvinism and neo-fascist attacks. They take into account the rights of other minorities, and unlike the Crimea, do not force any minority into a secession or annexation by Russia. In this situation of a neo-fascist Kiev regime attacking a mainly proletarian South East as 'terrorists' we are for a workers united anti-fascist front with NO political support to any ultra nationalist petty bourgeois or bourgeois forces siding with either imperialist bloc. At this point it seems that the big majority in the East are still for autonomy, or federalism, and not secession. They

are for the unity of the Ukraine workers against the Kiev regime. Only a small minority are for joining Russia. However it will be difficult to hold to this position when

workers in the West allow the army to invade the East with fascist shock troops. This will drive the workers in the East into the arms of pro-Russian fascists! We can stop the split in the Ukrainian working class and the division of Ukraine only by taking a strong international stand in support of defence of South and East Ukraine occupations, and calling on West Ukraine workers and peasants to rally

to remove the Kiev regime and its neo-fascist forces.

We must call on the army conscripts attacking the East to turn their guns on the officers and neo-fascist militias!

NO political support to the white Russian or Slav xenophobes in the East attempting to incite secession to Russia!

For workers East and West to unite to build their councils and militias against the open fascists of the West and Russian xenophobes of the East!

For revolutionaries in the U.S., EU and Russian imperialist states fight the main enemy, the capitalist class at home!

For the ranks in the military to mutiny and turn their guns on the officers and the ruling class!

For a Workers and Peasants Government and a program of expropriation of capitalist property and a socialist plan! For workers self-management!

For a Socialist Republic of Ukraine!

For a Socialist Federation of Eurasia!

For a new World Party of Socialism!

Read our analysis of the crisis in Ukraine http://cwgusa.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/usanato-hands-off-the-ukraine-russia-out-of-the-crimea-workers-smash-the-useu-backed-putschist-government/ and the wider implications of growing inter-imperialist rivalry between the US-led and China-led imperialist blocs http://cwgusa.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/from-bosnia-to-venezuela-flashpoints-between-the-us-eu-and-russia-china-imperialist-blocs/

Links in text http://borotba.org/a_call_for_solidarity.html

http://links.org.au/node/3838

http://vimeo.com/89018452

http://borotba.org/neo-nazi_terror_in_odessa-_more_than_40_killed-_hundreds_injured.html http://links.org.au/node/3832


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Thailand: Defeat the Coup Thailand: Defeat the Coup Thailand: Defeat the Coup Thailand: Defeat the Coup d’étatd’étatd’étatd’état! Polemic and ! Polemic and ! Polemic and ! Polemic and Program Program Program Program ---- A Response to the RCITA Response to the RCITA Response to the RCITA Response to the RCIT

The RCIT analysis of the pro-Thaksin government overthrown by the Thai military invests bourgeois democracy with real democracy it never had and this is methodologically of one piece with their previous errors. See also the follow up ‘Open letter to the RCIT’ “Forward to Permanent Revolution in Thailand’. http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/forward-to-permanent-revolution-in.html

The RCIT (Revolutionary Communist Internationalist Tendency) never tires of displaying their semi-Cliffite understanding of the actual democratic content of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. Everywhere they invest elected governments with a democratic legitimacy. It is no accident that they have never been able to bring themselves to criticize the Workers Power (L5I) position of support for Yeltsin in 1991. In Yeltsin they saw the promise of greater democratic rights and opportunities for self organization of the working class, completely misunderstanding the true obtaining situation as a contest between two capitalist restorationist forces for the leadership of the counter-revolution against all survivals of the October revolution.

More recently we have seen the RCIT invest the Mursi government of Egypt with a similar democratic legitimacy based on a popular vote. That this election was a set up and that the real power was the deep state that has ruled Egypt at all times since 1952 makes no impression on our Viennese semi-Cliffites. The reassertion of direct control by the Egyptian Army high command (SCAF) was for the RCIT a military coup of the character of the Greek Colonels of 1967 or the Pinochet coup of 1973. The RCIT initially called for a United Front with the Muslim Brotherhood in defense of the Mursi government. Shortening their jib after this gaffe, they still continued to call for the restoration of the Mursi government claiming it was democratically elected and called for a united front to accomplish this restoration, and failing that called for a constituent assembly to assemble democratic forces to fight the “coup.”

The May 20th coup by the commanders of the Thai army is indeed a military coup by any classical criteria. Nevertheless, we are not champions of the kind of “democratic elections” that bring pro-Thaksin Pheu Thai party politicians to power, anymore than elections that lead to Democratic Party governments. It is not permissible for socialists to call upon the workers to shed their own blood for the defense or the restoration of any of these “democratically elected” governments! You cannot pass off any such call as a Leninist United Front tactic. This has nothing to do with Lenin and everything to do with Menshevism, Kautskyism and even Stalinism. We reject the agency of alien class forces and institutions as the necessary precondition for entry of the masses onto the revolutionary road.

It is non-dialectical and it is schematic in the extreme to keep repeating this idea that the workers movement must pass through a stage of bourgeois parliamentary when

concrete conditions show that the bourgeoisie has no especial confidence in or patience for bourgeois parliamentarism. Not only will they not fight for it themselves, but in the general world crisis of capitalism they find “democracy” unnecessarily expensive and dispense with it at their earliest opportunity. Trotsky in 1938 thought bourgeois democracy might prove too expensive even for the bourgeoisie of the U.S.A. In the concrete circumstance of the masses own discontent with the Thaksin dynasty to call for the restoration of the status-quo ante is to pronounce a retreat in a revolutionary advance.

To make this criticism does not mean we reject correct slogans which are easy enough to raise. In this case where a real military coup d’état has taken place it is correct to organize a revolutionary constituent assembly for the defense and extension of real democratic rights and based in the real organizations of the working class and the peasant masses.

The coup shows that bourgeois democracy demobilizes the workers while the ruling class factions do deals over their heads. The interests of workers are to fight for workers democracy by mobilizing for a Revolutionary Constituent Assembly (RCA) and Workers and Peasant Government.

Still we wonder why the RCIT raises a special slogan for the establishment of a republic. What would the class character of such a republic be? And what does the establishment of a republic have to do with the permanent revolution the world has seen many dictatorships that have been republics. The whole history of the west is littered with them. Connelly’s program for a workers republic in Ireland and the Socialist Republics of the USSR were qualitatively different than any republic established by capitalists. The five republics of French history have solved none of the problems of humankind’s future existence. So this is not an idle question for us. We wonder while reading the RCIT’s program how many stages the workers must endure before they can establish their own state.

In place of this call for an abstract republic we suggest that what is needed right now are military blocs with anti-coup d’état forces to defeat the coup. We say this with the understanding that it is only the socialist revolution that will suppress the power not only of the army command but of those who organized the coup and for whom the army works at all times. Until bourgeois power is suppressed by socialist revolution another military coup is always possible as demonstrated in the modern history of Thailand. What are required above all are the organization


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of worker and peasant councils and militia and a convening of their delegates in a Revolutionary Constituent Assembly and an indefinite general strike to pull the economic rug out from under the military coup.

• Defeat the reactionary coup d’état! Prepare for mass demonstrations and an indefinite general strike!

• Organize workers and peasants councils.

• Form up soldiers councils elect your own officers and abolish the authority of the army command and the constitutional court!

• For a Revolutionary Constitutional Assembly controlled by armed, mass organizations of the workers and peasants!

• Repudiate the reactionary constitution! Publish all secret treaties. The Thaksin government has a

worldwide reputation for corruption; open the government’s books.

• For the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a workers’ and peasants’ republic!

• Expropriate big business and nationalize the banks! Place large industrial and service enterprises under workers’ control! Nationalize the media under workers’ control!

• Expropriate the big landowners and distribute the land to the poor peasants!

• Unconditional support for the right of national self-determination for the Muslim people of Patani in the south of Thailand

• For a Workers’ and Peasants’ Government!

• For a Federation of Socialist Republics in South-East Asia!

• For a World Party of Socialism!

Brazil! Brazil! Brazil! Brazil! Stop the World CupStop the World CupStop the World CupStop the World Cup! Break the Popular Front!! Break the Popular Front!! Break the Popular Front!! Break the Popular Front!

This is the workers big fight against the capitalist crisis in Brazil! Down with the popular front of the PSTU etc. with the PT and the bourgeoisie! Build Working class councils and militias to defend the class from the state forces! For the General Strike to unite the proletariat and to fight for a Workers and Peasants Government!

Since the opening of the new world crisis in 2007 Brazil experienced a big hit to its economic growth shared by all the other BRICS except China and Russia which are rising imperialist powers and making the other BRICS semi-colonies. Facing the crisis the workers began to fight against paying for the crisis with loss of their wages and mass sackings. All workers began to see the need for unity, but how would that happen? Fearing that workers would unite from below, the reformist and centrist left parties and left bureaucrats in the unions met the new militancy and the demand for unity with a strategy of containment, the “tactical unity of action” which means unity with the ruling bureaucracy. But they did not expect that a mass movement would rise up against the World Cup, at the very heart of the plan of the imperialists and Workers’ Party (PT) popular front regime to make the Brazilian workers and peasants pay for the global capitalist crisis! The bureaucrats try to trap workers into the popular front “Tactical unity of action”

The PSOL (Party of Socialism and Liberation) has long demonstrated their capitulation to the popular front government with their unity with the ruling bureaucracy in the unions and bourgeois parties in the elections. The PSTU (United Socialist Workers Party) unity with the ruling bureaucracy began 6 years ago in the teachers union of Rio Grande do Sul, through the “Tactical Unity of Action” strategy of containment. It was implemented in several union elections across the country. The experiences of this tactic are showing that it serves to strengthen the bureaucracy and promotes the PSTU version of the popular front government. The PSTU went further with the “Tactical unity of action” with the ruling bureaucracy and extended this tactic for a national front in the unions, the “space of unity of action” (“espaço de unidade de ação”). This national popular front

was formed 2 years ago and has won support in several workshops and meetings, including that which raised the demand against the Cup “In the Cup, we will be fighting” (“Na copa, vai te Luta”). The leadership of PSTU argued that this tactic was important to unite the left. Despite the name, this is not unity for a specific action, but rather an organised popular front where the groups shared a common program of reforms tying workers to the CUT and PT. The Marxist ‘left’ in Brazil, as everywhere, remains very fragmented, but they see no problem in uniting behind the flags of CUT (Federation of Workers Unions). For example, in education, while the government applied its privatisation plan, the PNE (The National Education Plan), teachers were striking in almost every state of the country and taking the fight nationwide was a need perceived by all. But the bureaucracy failed to call for the unification of strikes. The CUT ended up calling a strike for the PNE, so


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the workers were trapped again in the “tactical unity of action” sponsored by the left of the popular front. As the class struggle intensified over this period, the more did the treacherous left bureaucracy try to trap it in the popular front behind the CUT and the PT. This tactic begun by the PSTU in the union movement, eventually led to an electoral front with the ruling party, Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) in bourgeois elections in 2012 in the city of Belem. Now the MES-PSOL (Movimento esquerda socialista) has joined the left union federation CSP CONLUTAS to promote the “space for unity of action.”

The World Cup: a plan by imperialism and the national bourgeoisie to make the workers pay for the crisis

The World Cup brought the class struggle to a head. The Cup has deepened the class contradictions in Brazil as the bosses use the Cup to violently resolve the crisis by pouring investments into here-today-gone-tomorrow infrastructure jobs for some while smashing down working class resistance to attacks on their neighbourhoods, their basic rights and their lives. No organisation could bring itself to fight for the slogan of the masses as the main slogan of the movement in action. The UIT–(PSOL/CST) (Unidade Internacional de losTrabajadores) supports a general strike to stop the cup, “Nao vai ter copa” (We will not have the Cup), but from inside the “space for unity of action” where it is on the extreme left of the popular front. Most of the left bureaucracy raised the slogan “In the cup, we will be fighting” against the masses demand “We will not have the cup”. This proves that the masses are far ahead of the left bureaucrats who now struggle to contain the uprising. It affirms that fighting “in the cup” means aimless activity that leaves workers with no concrete tasks. It means defeat for workers when the World Cup expresses all that is rotten and destructive about capitalism in crisis. But the fight to stop the cup is already happening and the whole class is demonstrating its support for this demand. Our task is to raise this slogan and to make it politically profound.

Fighting the World Cup is part of the global workers uprising against paying for the bosses’ crisis

Joining in the world uprisings in the new period of crisis, the mass movement appeared against the World Cup in Brazil last June. Before it, there were some signs of the transitional situation: teacher, construction workers strikes all over the country, port, oil workers’ strike, homeless struggle, the Rio de Janeiro firefighters’ uprising, etc. In early 2013, the youth movement against rising fares

for public transportation grew into the “Copa das confederacoes” (FIFA confederations cup) which saw a big surge of street demonstrations. The social media was the key to building the demonstrations. The uprising was a surprise to everybody, and nobody was prepared for it. The slogan “Nao vai ter copa” came spontaneously from the mass movement. No organisation gave the slogan to the movement. After the national demonstration on June 20th came a call for a General strike on July 1st. The union bureaucracy quickly united to say that this general strike was called by the “right” and “fascists” and only they could call a general strike. The central unions, CSP Conlutas (controlled by the PSTU) and Intersindical (controlled by PSOL) “united in action” with CUT (controlled by the government/PT), and other unions linked to the employers and the bourgeois (FS, UGT, Nova central, etc), boycotted the general strike, calling for a “National day of struggle” on July 11th. The general strike on July 1st didn’t happen. But on the 11th, the masses left the bureaucracy alone to stage its fake manifestations and made a general strike. Rio Grande do Sul was completely stopped. Many cities in the country stopped. After the June uprising the movement just grew. Homeless, youth, poor people from “favelas”, proletariat,

teachers, and bus drivers began strikes. The strikes of Rio de Janeiro teachers and street-sweepers, and Porto Alegre bus drivers proved to Brazilian workers that the main gains have been won against the policies of the union bureaucracy.

In the month before the World Cup we are experiencing a wave of strikes and the “Nao vai ter copa”

movement is growing For the popular movement, which is taking the lead in most protests, the slogan “there will be no cup” reflects the needs of the people who are losing their homes and being suppressed because of the Cup. For the labour movement there is rising indignation and anger as the R$billions spent on the World Cup go into the pockets of the rich while toilers conditions of life and work only worsen. The growing mass movement will not be limited to the Cup but will also create a lot of popular protest in the upcoming elections. For example, radicalised youth like the self-proclaimed FIP (Independent Popular Front) that emerged in the Rio de Janeiro demonstrations last June (2013), raised the slogan, “there will be no cup or election!” The left bureaucracy is forced to join the “there will be no Cup” movement, proposing instead of the masses agitation, slogans that have no tasks for the class and divert the fight away from the Cup. “Cup for who?”, “if we have no rights there will be no Cup”, “in the world cup we will fight”, etc. Such is the pressure from below that the left bureaucracy, in its “space for united action,” will be forced to call a general strike, but they have already shown that they will try to contain it.


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The bureaucracy is already preparing to do so. The CSP Conlutas (PSTU) in “space for unity in action” with the “left” of the CUT (CUT Pode Mais) has had a national meeting to discuss the World Cup. As we have said, they oppose the masses’ slogan “nao vai ter copa” and call for “Na copa, vai ter luta” (In the world cup, will be fight) to fight against the “injustices” of the World Cup. They want a clean Cup without attacks on workers and with no corruption! They argue that the masses slogan is too crude. But the slogan came from the masses’ movement and expresses clearly their needs. No organisation or program could raise this slogan because it knows it cannot control such a movement inside the popular front. Now it wants to weaken and contain it in a struggle to legislate for reform of the ‘injustices’ in the next elections!

Prepare for a General Strike! We must raise the masses’ slogan and politicise it. The general strike is the way to unite the workers with the popular movement and the youth. It should be linked to repudiating the national debt and the debt for the Cup. It should be united with the strikes in industry, auto, education, construction, etc. A general strike against the Cup can be the means to unite all the isolated struggles. The general strike is the way to unite the working class on the road to socialist revolution. It makes possible raising transitional demands which will allow workers to unite and organise to expropriate i.e. take back capitalist property, expropriated from generations of exploited workers and peasants. Within the currents strikes, the general strike is already being debated. The IWU-FI (UIT Unidad internacional de los trabajadores) is the first organization that has called for a general strike. Even the organizations linked with the government have been obligated to adhere to the “nao vai ter copa” movement, like the MST, despite the government having created the “Vai ter copa” movement! Only centrist organizations like PCO (Partido da Causa Oparária) which acts as a left cover for the PT have not adhered to the “nao vai ter copa” movement. Unfortunately, those who call for the current strikes to be united and fight for a general strike do not base this unity on stopping the Cup “nao vai ter copa” but on the reformists’ slogan “in the cup, we will fight,” so they continue to operate in the left bureaucratic “space for unity of action” and do not break from the popular front. This is why isolating the strikes from the movement to stop the Cup serves only the unity of the popular front! For example, the campaign of the CCR (Revolutionary Communist Current) in the teachers union in Sao Paulo

calls for all the teachers to unite for a general strike, but ignores the fight against the cup that can extend this unity to the whole working class and make a general strike possible. Already the ranks of all those who are on strike, and there are many, shout “we will not have the cup” and threaten the government. Similarly, the FLTI (International Leninist-Trotskyist Fraction), calling for unity of all struggles, focuses on the auto industry, and ignores the mass movement against the Cup as the key to uniting the whole working class behind a general strike. The movement against the Cup is what unites workers to the popular movement and the youth, against the highest expression of the alliance of the popular front government with big business and imperialism – that is the World Cup! The purpose of the “bureaucratic left” is to divert the masses into aimless “fights” that go nowhere except into the upcoming elections, where they will install their

popular front in the unions as a popular front with the government and PT. Revolutionaries have a duty to expose the left wings of the popular front and replace their treacherous leaders with a Party and Program capable of leading the way to socialist revolution!

Stop the World Cup!

Break from the Popular Front! Repudiate the national debt! Repudiate the Cup Debt!

For a living wage, free education, health, housing and social security! Down with the popular front of the PSTU with the CUT and PT government! Unite all the workers and peasants in struggle in a national conference to prepare for a general strike! Build working class councils and self-defence militias! For a mass Revolutionary Party and Revolutionary Program! For a New World Party of Socialist Revolution! Expropriate all imperialist and national capitalist property! Institute workers control of the means of production. For a national plan of production for need not profit! For a Workers’ and Peasants’ Government and a Socialist United States of the Americas! Online http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2014/05/brazil-stop-world-cup-break-popular.html By a Brazilian LCC sympathizer


16

What We Fight For

Overthrow Capitalism Historically, capitalism expanded world-wide to free much of humanity from the bonds of feudal or tribal society, and developed the economy, society and culture to a new higher level. But it could only do this by exploiting the labour of the productive classes to make its profits. To survive, capitalism became increasingly destructive of "nature" and humanity. In the early 20th century it entered the epoch of imperialism in which successive crises unleashed wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions. Today we fight to end capitalism’s wars, famine, oppression and injustice, by mobilising workers to overthrow their own ruling classes and bring to an end the rotten, exploitative and oppressive society that has exceeded its use-by date.

Fight for Socialism By the 20th century, capitalism had created the pre-conditions for socialism –a world-wide working class and modern industry capable of meeting all our basic needs. The potential to eliminate poverty, starvation, disease and war has long existed. The October Revolution proved this to be true, bringing peace, bread and land to millions. But it became the victim of the combined assault of imperialism and Stalinism. After 1924 the USSR, along with its deformed offspring in Europe, degenerated back towards capitalism. In the absence of a workers political revolution, capitalism was restored between 1990 and 1992. Vietnam and China then followed. In the 21sst century only Cuba and North Korea survive as degenerate workers states. We unconditionally defend these states against capitalism and fight for political revolution to overthrow the bureaucracy as part of world socialism.

Defend Marxism While the economic conditions for socialism exist today, standing between the working class and socialism are political, social and cultural barriers. They are the capitalist state and bourgeois ideology and its agents. These agents claim that Marxism is dead and capitalism need not be exploitative. We say that Marxism is a living science that explains both capitalism’s continued exploitation and its attempts to hide class exploitation behind the appearance of individual "freedom" and

"equality". It reveals how and why the reformist, Stalinist and centrist misleaders of the working class tie workers to bourgeois ideas of nationalism, racism, sexism and equality. Such false beliefs will be exploded when the struggle against the inequality, injustice, anarchy and barbarism of capitalism in crisis, led by a revolutionary Marxist party, produces a revolutionary class-consciousness.

For a Revolutionary Party

The bourgeois and its agents condemn the Marxist party as totalitarian. We say that without a democratic and a centrally organised party there can be no revolution. We base our beliefs on the revolutionary tradition of Bolshevism and Trotskyism. Such a party, armed with a transitional program, forms a bridge that joins the daily fight to defend all the past and present gains won from capitalism, to the victorious socialist revolution. Defensive struggles for bourgeois rights and freedoms, for decent wages and conditions, will link up the struggles of workers of all nationalities, genders, ethnicities and sexual orientations, bringing about movements for workers control, political strikes and the arming of the working class, as necessary steps to workers' power and the smashing of the bourgeois state. Along the way, workers will learn that each new step is one of many in a long march to revolutionise every barrier put in the path to the victorious revolution.

Fight for Communism

Communism stands for the creation of a classless, stateless society beyond socialism that is capable of meeting all human needs. Against the ruling class lies that capitalism can be made "fair" for all; that nature can be "conserved"; that socialism and communism are "dead"; we raise the red flag of communism to keep alive the revolutionary tradition of the' Communist Manifesto of 1848, the Bolshevik-led October Revolution; the Third Communist International until 1924, the revolutionary Fourth International up to 1940 before its collapse into centrism. We fight to build a new, Fifth, Communist International, as a world party of socialism capable of leading workers to a victorious struggle for socialism.

Class Struggle is the bi-Monthly paper of the Communist Workers’ Group of New Zealand/Aotearoa, in a Liaison Committee of Communists with Communist Workers’ Group (USA) and Revolutionary Workers’ Group (Zimbabwe)

Class Struggle and most articles are online at http://redrave.blogspot.com Phone +64 0272800080 Email [email protected]

Archive of publications before 2006 http://communistworker.blogspot.com/

Class Struggle 109

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Transcript of Class Struggle 109