Class Struggle 112 Autumn 2015

Class Struggle 112 Autumn 2015

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Cartoon Bombers "... a horrid assault was perpetrated against the French weekly Charlie Hebdo, who had published caricatures of Muhammad, by men who screamed that they had avenged the prophet. A wave of compassion followed but apparently died shortly afterward and all sorts of criticism started pouring down the web against Charlie Hebdo, who was described as Islamophobic, racist and even sexist...We are all trying to find the narrow path defending the French Republic against the twin threats of fundamentalism and fascism (and fundamentalism is a form of fascism). But I still believe that the best way to do this is to fight for our Republican ideals secular and democratic." Olivier Tonneau "On Charlie Hebdo: A letter to my British friends."

This article reveals much more than the author intends. He is right that fundamentalism is the cultural product of the failure of the ideals of the French Revolution. But his naivety shows through when he is shocked by the ban on Palestinian marches.

The ideals of the French Revolution will never by realised by the Republic so long as it is propped up by liberals with illusions in the bourgeois state. That the march in defence of free speech should have been led by dictators, torturers and mass murderers tells us that bourgeois society is bankrupt. We should all know this by now.

In the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution, the liberation of the slaves in Haiti was revoked by Napoleon because of the interests of the profits of the French bourgeoisie. For all its liberty, equality and fraternity the French state will never extend these values to the colonial and semi-colonial workers they

continue to oppress and exploit whether in former colonies such as Syria or in the banlieues at home.

The rise of Islamic fundamentalism fills the gap left by the liberals who preach liberal, secular values, but deny the need for a new social revolution to realise these values in practice. This vacuum exists because the liberal left from the Communist Party (which supported the French side in the Algerian war) to the feeble so-called revolutionary left in France today that politely protests French imperialism, has failed

to smash its powerful state at home.

The left should stop dreaming of the failed French Revolution and study the Paris Commune of 1871 which for the first time in history saw the only class that is capable of realising liberty, equality and fraternity, the proletariat, momentarily take power, only to be drowned in the blood of reaction.

Modern France is like the tragic Paris Commune recycled as a soap opera, now played out on the wider stage of the former empire kept alive only by bombs and mercenaries, but where the proletariat now plays the lead in a farce dressed up as

jihadis and adolescent cartoonists.

Such is the decrepitude of the old Empire, including its official, bought and sold liberal left, all it will take is for the jihadis and cartoonists to combine their talents and throw out the old garbage of Napoleons, dictators and warlords, smash their rotten state apparatus, and bring the international commune into life.

But for that to happen revolutionaries have to present a clear analysis of the decline and fall of capitalism, and what is needed for a new communist society to replace it.

http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/olivier-tonneauhttp://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/olivier-tonneau


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Smash the TPPA! The Editor of the left journal Redline says that Marx was for free trade as if this has anything to do with workers taking a stand on the TPPA. In Marxs day free trade was the market prevailing over pre-capitalist society to allow capitalists to compete to produce commodities and develop capitalist society. But today the TPPA has nothing to do with free trade. Marx didnt live to see capitalism become transformed from its competitive stage to in its highest, imperialist stage where the world was divided between imperialist monopolies and colonised countries. In the epoch of imperialism, free trade was replaced by monopoly state capitalism.

Lenin wrote his path-breaking book Imperialism- the Highest Stage of Capitalism in 1915. This epoch has advanced considerably for 100 years to the point where today NZ is torn between the two major imperialist blocs led by the US and by China. The US has been in decline since the end of the post-war boom and the onset of a structural by sis of falling profits in the 1970s. Its response to that was to embark on neo-liberalism to gain access to cheap labour and raw materials in the semi-colonial world and pursue its cold war with Russia and China until those countries collapsed and opened up to Western imperialism.

What the US and other Western powers did not foresee however, is that Russia and China while opening up new opportunities for massive profits to rescue the ailing capitalist system, maintained their independence and developed as new rival imperialist powers. China in particular was able to emerge as the main rival to the US, driving growth in the global economy on the back of its rapid expansion.

This has brought a major confrontation between the two blocs to a head in the Asia Pacific region contesting control over all the other Asia Pacific countries. This contest takes the immediate form of rival economic zones based on the US led TPPA and the China led FTAAP.

The TPPA is a continuation of neo-liberalism the US policy dating from the 1970s to break down national barriers to US corporations to buy up cheaply what is left of scarce global resources needed to restore profits. That policy included structural adjustment that imposed punitive deregulation on semi-colonies

including removal of tariff protection. Many of those countries, including NZ were forced to eliminate tariffs to allow the penetration of foreign capital, while the US and other big imperialist powers maintained their protectionist barriers.

So is the TPPA now about the US reciprocating by suddenly reducing its own tariff barriers? Not at all, the US is now demanding that its partners eliminate any political barriers to US corporations dictating trade and investment rules at the expense of the social needs of the populations and the destruction of

the environment of these countries.

That is why the TPPA takes the form of US bullying the weaker states in its bloc to remove all sovereign barriers to US corporations buying up all sorts of property from state assets to IP and re-colonise these weaker states as sources of cheap labour and raw materials. This prevents these states from giving equal preference to China via TPAs with China, and at the same time allowing the US corporates to piggy back into China on these TPAs.

This is what is happening to NZ today. Unlike Redline

that says that NZ is an imperialist country, NZ has gone from a settler colony with limited self-governing independence from imperialist Britain before WW2, to a servile client state of the USA, and now in the 21st century, also a neo-colony of Chinese imperialism. The FTA with China is mainly about trade, although it also allows access to Chinese capital buying up NZ land, assets and IP. The US hopes to steal a march of China by taking direct control of the NZ economy.

Therefore, the TPPA has nothing to do with comparative advantage (the basis of the theory of free trade) and everything to do with monopoly state capitalism. Were Marx alive today he would recognise that imperialism arose once the limits of market competition to develop the forces of production had been reached. In its place giant monopolies backed by their states set about destroying the forces of production, producing waste, creating a global surplus of labour, and threatening the end of human civilisation and most of the living species on earth.

Anything that mobilises the federation of international freedom fighters against this destructive death star would be actively supported by Marx.

http://thestandard.org.nz/condescending-catherine-beard-on-tpp/#comment-970555http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2014/12/usa-and-china-do-pacific-pivot.htmlhttp://www.eastasiaforum.org/2014/11/23/china-flexes-its-muscles-at-apec-with-the-revival-of-ftaap/https://rdln.wordpress.com/2014/11/13/towards-an-anti-imperialist-movement-a-manifesto/


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Treaty Solutions The difference between Tim Selwyn and Gareth Morgan over the Treaty of Waitangi is just a matter of numbers. Morgan thinks that things are moving towards wider acceptance of the Treaty settlement process, while Selwyn thinks even this wont happen because of the waves of racists migrating to NZ.

So the drama of Treaty politics is still driven by a racist horde clashing with well meaning liberals over how to administer the ongoing settlement going forward. Morgans money plus the Maori Party representing the tribal elites at the cabinet table will make sure the settlement process timeline is extended. As we said in the last issue of Class Struggle, the Tribunal lawyers claiming continuous sovereignty may mean a few more crumbs falling off the Cabinet Table into the Iwi capitalists pockets, nothing more.

Meanwhile, the naked settler capitalist colonisation of Aotearoa continues with the 1% refugees fleeing the mess they are making of their own countries to buy up coastal tracts, while working class Maori remain exploited and oppressed in their own country.

The solution to this is to recognise that Maori are not the only oppressed minority in NZ. Many migrants are

as badly off as most Maori. There are also poor whites at the arse end of colonisation. They are all thrown into the working class by capitalist globalisation. They can be united by uniting to fight against the common enemy the international corporations that are re-colonising Aotearoa to rip, drill, shit and bust the economy and destroy nature.

This united class has one common class interest throwing out the corrupt ruling class that serves only the interests of their 1% mates and their masters in the US and China. When NZ is a socialist republic then it will be time for Maori to stop begging the settler state for handouts and win their right to self-determination by reclaiming control over land and culture, finally realising the dream of Te Whiti up against rampant settler colonialism under impossible odds all that time ago.

Yanis fake Marxist In several articles and interviews Yanis Varoufakis claims to be an erratic Marxist. Michael Roberts comments that Varoufakis is more about burying Marx and reviving keeping Keynes. Unlike Piketty, Varoufakis at least has read das Kapital, even if he got stuck on the maths in Volume 2. Yanis cannot forgive Marxs basic errors that led to dogmatism and authoritarianism. He was dogmatic and produced a closed system based on his exposition of capitalism on his Volume 2 reproduction schemas. Keynes, however, was genius because...

It was this determination to have the complete, closed story, or model, the final word, is something I cannot forgive Marx for. It proved, after all, responsible for a great deal of error and, more significantly, of authoritarianism. Errors and authoritarianism that are largely responsible for the Lefts current impotence as a force of good and as a check on the abuses of reason and liberty that the neoliberal crew are overseeing today.

Roberts is far from convinicede: This erratic Marxist, now negotiating with the neo-liberal Euro leaders aims to save European capitalism from itself so as to minimise the unnecessary human toll from this crisis; the countless lives whose prospects will be further crushed without any benefit whatsoever for

the future generations of Europeans. Apparently socialism cannot do this. YV says we are just not ready to plug the chasm that a collapsing European capitalism will open up with a functioning socialist system.

Instead, according to YV, a Marxist analysis of both European capitalism and of the Lefts current condition compels us to work towards a broad coalition, even with right-wingers, the purpose of which ought to be the resolution of the Eurozone crisis and the stabilisation of the European Union Ironically, those of us who loathe the Eurozone have a moral obligation to save it! Thus YV has campaigned for his Modest Proposal for Europe with the likes of Bloomberg and New York Times journalists, of Tory members of Parliament, of financiers who are concerned with Europes parlous state.

Lets see what the Greek people think of his attempt to save European capitalism from itself.

http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/02/08/media-watch-morgans-crusade-mau-is-less/#sthash.QABAzyMh.dpufhttp://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2014/12/treaty-politics.htmlhttps://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/yanis-varoufakis-more-erratic-than-marxist/


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State Houses for All! The NACTs (National and ACT) are making a major push to sell off the state housing stock to developers, and pretending that the private providers of social housing will meet the need for affordable housing. Rubbish. The NACTs are kicking working class communities like Tamaki out of their houses and selling off the valuable land to their property developer mates as a market solution to housing.

For the NACTs workers should pay out of their wages for housing in the market. Where slave wages mean workers cannot afford market rents the state relies on private charities and Maori trusts to step in.

Labours answer is to promise to subsidise private affordable houses for $400k that no working class family on the minimum or even median wage can afford. The Greens promise more state houses but their middle class focus is on affordable, sustainable housing which includes more private ownership.

Mana offers to build many more state houses, but it will allow tenants to buy them! It also wants government to pay for cheap $200k houses for sale. Hone Harawira seems to approve of Maori Trusts buying state houses in Tamaki and shifting them up to Kaitaia. So far this Trust has taken nine houses from Tamaki tenants. Hone got arrested for opposing the eviction of Tamaki state housing tenants. Is he now backing the selling off of state houses to Maori Trusts?

So it looks like there is no political party that stands on the principle of affordable state houses as a basic right to workers as part of a living wage. A major social gain that was won by workers in the 1930s depression is being destroyed and with it any possibility of workers achieving a living social wage.

What is the social wage?

NZs health, education, welfare and social services provided through the State are all part of the social wage. The social wage is heath, education and housing paid for out of taxation that supplements the market wage as Working for Families does.

However, none of the political parties will tell you that the social wage is really just returning to workers part of the surplus value their labour power creates which is taken off them as profits and taxes. The buying power of the market wage plus social wage equals the real wage. So the sale of state houses is

yet another cut to the social wage and therefore the real wage of NZ workers!

Social Housing providers will be picking up the deferred maintenance and development that is required (by the state) to house the NZ population. We do not accept the do gooder social housing trusts, taking over from government.

This divides the working class among those who are eligible under this trust scheme or that trust scheme, and those who miss out.

We say: No Sales! Not for $1 not for $0! No social housing take-over! No tenants buying our houses! No dividing the working class!

The capitalist state is so bankrupt National is desperate to sell state assets to prop up the profits of the rich through another round of tax cuts. The temporary tax relief for the rich comes at the long term expense of the working class.

We must fight back against this asset sale and undertake to take back all privatised state assets built by the labour of the working class. For this we need a revolutionary workers party.

Mana movement is not that party when it leads the fight for state houses on marches to parliament, diverting the energy and resources of Mana (as a flax-grass roots movement) into the hot air and dirty politics of the parliamentary talk shop.

Our fight has to be based on mobilising those who refuse to move, and need support. We need to organise occupations in state housing areas - defend each house, each street, each neighbourhood. Build Mana as a movement on the streets and neighbourhoods start with occupations of state houses.

Occupy! defend and resist evictions

Occupy! Build support for those willing to occupy against privatisation.

Occupy! Build solidarity of working class communities with trade unions ranks!

For a crash program to build state houses for rents pegged to the living wage determined by workers rent tribunals!

For the right of every working family to an affordable state house for life!

https://home.greens.org.nz/policysummary/housing-policy-summaryhttp://mana.net.nz/policy/policy-housing/


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NZ Troops Out!

Victory to the Arab Revolution! The Middle-East today is a morass of bloody revolution and counter-revolution. Despite the growing rivalry between the US-led and China-led blocs, they collaborate as a lesser evil against the greater-evil of the Arab Revolution in the name of the war on terror. The nominal target is the IS, but the real target is the Arab Revolution. So the barbarians have always been the Western powers invading and occupying the Middle East. The NACTs and Labour are both sucked into this. NACTs want to be in the US Anglo-American Club, Labour wont oppose the war, just NZ sacrificing lives. Only an Arab socialist revolution can end the US led War of Terror.

PM Keys decision to go to war against ISIS and join the coalition of killers is very unpopular in NZ. The Government doesnt have a clear majority so will not ask parliament to endorse is decision. It banks on the threat posed by the IS to the West to win support for its stand. So despite this unpopularity the ruling class of US lackeys is happy to be part of the five eyes club and hoping to be rewarded with bigger profits from the TPPA that the US wants to impose on all its client states and partners.

The Labour Party hates IS and wont openly oppose the war. Its OK with US airstrikes but doesnt want to sacrifice NZ lives for no good result. It would prefer a UN sanctioned intervention. The Greens are pacifists. They think the war resulted from the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and further intervention will do more harm.

Elsewhere on the left there is a current that thinks that IS are Islamic fascists and New Zealanders should go to fight IS like New Zealanders went to fight the Spanish fascists in the civil war in the 1930s.

The irony is that this left doesnt see that NZ was part of the British Empire then and Britain did all it could to prevent fighters joining the Republican side in that war. Just as the Key client state does all it can to prevent NZ workers joining the revolutionary side of the Syrian civil war.

In Spain a bourgeois democratic republic was attacked by a fascist army. Volunteers from the Western left of all shades joined the ranks of the republican army to defend it against the fascists.

Some mistakenly joined the bourgeois republican Governments in Madrid and Barcelona rather than forming militias independent of these regimes. The Stalinists did so because they feared an independent working class at a time when they were in alliances with the Western democracies against fascism. In Barcelona the anarchist leaders betrayed their rank and file by also joining the bourgeois Government.

The civil war was lost because the fascists were armed by Italy and Germany while the Republic was dis-armed by the Western democracies.


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They did all in their power to prevent the arming of the Republic.

The only way that this war could have been won, was the formation of a popular councils and Militias independent of the bourgeoisie and the Stalinists, backed by massive workers brigades from around Europe which would have begun a revolutionary war to smash fascism right across Europe.

In Syria we have a fascist dictator, Assad, opposed by a popular democratic revolution. Some in the leadership of that revolution, the FSA for example, want to form a bourgeois republic as an alternative to Assad. But many revolutionary fighters reject these bourgeois leaders as aligned to one or other imperialist powers.

There are numerous militias that are locally organised and loosely coordinated so effectively that they have resisted Assad despite being dis-armed by the democracies, so that without SAMs Assads planes still dominate in the war.

Moreover, most of the Western left has defended Assad and parroted his line that he is being attacked by foreign terrorists (an irony since he has mercenaries from many countries including the Iranian Republican Guards) funded by the Saudis, Turkey, the CIA, you name it. Assad also released from his jails many who went on to form the ISIS in Syria.

Because of this reactionary campaign in the West the revolution and its democratic objectives has been largely ignored, and unlike Spain there has been no massive flood of left wing volunteers to join the militias.

Yet these popular militias that organised Local Coordination Committees that are run on a democratic basis have been able to survive for four years against Assad, and in the last 2 years

against the jihadists armed by the West and its local allies.

Unlike the Kurd PYG that has fought to defend Rojava from the IS with the benefit of US etc air support, the Syrian revolutionaries have been starved of military support by the US bloc (including NZ) and supported by the cringing Western left, except for a few notable exceptions.

One is the Leon Sedov Brigade made up of Trotskyists that still exists as an example how to organise independently of the FSA bourgeoisie, the imperialist powers and their local stooges, and fight on three fronts to unite the Syrian revolution with the Palestinian revolution and with the wider Arab Revolution.

The Guardian underscores that the US is now in an informal alliance with Assad to deal with IS. So sending NZ troops to fight IS and jailing (like Aussie) those who want to fight Assad, is siding with the worst enemies of

human rights the US, its convenient ally Assad, its military ally Israel, against the target, IS, that originated with the US funding the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in the 80s and 90s.

Against this coalition of the evil, perpetrators of terror, is the coalition of the masses, popular militias armed and supported by the international working class to defend and extend democracy and socialism.

No NZ troops to the US imperialist war of terror!

Build international brigades to fight on the side of the Arab Revolution!

For mass revolutionary parties to lead the fight for socialist revolution!

For a Federation of Socialist Republics of the Middle East and North Africa!

https://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com/https://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com/https://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com/2015/02/02/revolution-reaction-%E2%80%A8and-intervention-in-syria/https://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com/2015/02/02/revolution-reaction-%E2%80%A8and-intervention-in-syria/http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/10/guardian-view-bashar-al-assad-bbc-interview-lies-tyrant


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Nous ne sommes pas Charlie Hebdo Most of the Left publications we have seen identify the violent attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo as an attack on the sacrosanct free press. We do not. All historical evidence says the Free Press is a fiction in class society. CLASS WAR and the Liaison Committee of Communists see this as a reactionary attack on what the perpetrators say is blasphemy. Far from being a left publication, it is a liberal after birth of the 1968 events; Charlie Hebdos satirical viewpoint today is decidedly bourgeois and in as bad taste as the term bourgeois connotes in France.

Revolutionary workers and socialists oppose censorship. Bourgeois laws that impose censorship are always directed against the publications of and speakers for the working class, sooner or later, and usually sooner. We see tremendous hypocrisy both in calls for censorship from the Wahhabi inspired right, presumably the backers of the assailants in Paris, and from the parallel calls by French and western liberalism who routinely confuse freedom for the bourgeois press with freedom of speech.

First and foremost these attacks must be put in the context of the war on terror, in MENA which is really an attempt by U.S./EU imperialism to contain the Arab National Revolution.

To win the ideological and propaganda aspect of this war the ruling-class-owned free press reduces the class war to a clash of civilizations between the barbarian hordes and the enlightened and democratic west.

The free press wants to hide from you the fact that the war is a consequence and a cost of doing business in the region, because the subjective factor, the anti-imperialist aspirations of the masses, challenges the economic interests of declining U.S. imperialism and their comprador henchmen for control of states and aspirant states sitting atop the oil and on the geo-strategic pathways for the delivery of that oil.

We denounce individual terrorism as it is not a legitimate tactic of the revolution (democratic or proletarian). Individual terrorism, even for the most salutatory motives, permits propaganda victories for and repression by the enemy social class. We are for the effective action of the masses to wage decisive warfare against the ruling class oppressors and imperialist exploiters.

The Charlie Hebdo event was a terror attack and does not

correspond politically to any small unit action by any power of the working class. It does not advance the revolution; it pushes the masses already trapped by Social Democracy and the Stalinists forms of social

chauvinism further to the right.

Some youth mistake the terror attacks of religious zealots for defense of Islam and are drawn, by the vacuum of leadership in the revolution, to jihad. Every Islamic warlord who wants to disguise his bourgeois ambitions to become an oil magnate as a caliph who exploits the weakness of the revolutionary leadership by calling upon oppressed and unemployed young Muslim workers around the world to join the jihad against the 'West'.

Their military operations and terror attacks are then characterized by the corporate bourgeois media as asymmetric warfare initiated by the Sunni Fellahin and not as a response to the armed-to-the-teeth imperialists centuries-long history of brutal subjugation.


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Let there be no mistake, CLASS WAR takes the side of the Arab revolution. But the forces of the religious right in the Arabic speaking world are not a part of it. They are the internal enemies of the revolution and are either past or future partners with the imperialist masters.

What future could an ISIS or any Boko Harram regime hope to have while embracing the market and private property, as matters of religion and culture, without the sponsorship of some imperialist master? Each of these movements aspires to rule after the fashion of the Saudi monarchy, any of their professed republicanism not withstanding and even immaterial.

The revolution stands for the greatest religious freedom and this immediately puts revolutionaries in collision with all theocrats, each of whom seek a monolithic religious state and in this their enmity towards Iran and/or Israel is a fake. Only the greatest religious freedom can permit the organization of inter-communal militias to guarantee the safety of each and every community. The workers, as the revolutionary class, have the responsibility to organize these militias.

Right now Syria is the front line of revolutionary struggle; the working class position is for the defeat of the Assad dictatorship. Stalinism, in the form of the Syrian Communist Party and the neo-Stalinist sects (Marcyites, Castroists, etc.,) has played a reactionary role in Syria; consequent of their stageist theory of revolution, which finds progressive agency in the national bourgeoisie of semi-colonies.

When the spark of the Arab Spring ignited the Syrian masses the neo-Stalinists ignored the butchery of the Assad regime, which they cast as progressive, and placed it in a progressive bloc which they have conjured out of the Russia-China alliance.

Alongside these fakers to leadership, the faux Trotskyists (ICL, IBT, Socialist Fight, Revolutionary Tendency, etc.) see the hand of the CIA behind every anti-Assad action and so ignore, denounce or oppose the legitimate uprisings of the masses that took form in the Local Coordinating Committees (LCC.). These LCCs struggle to maintain independence from

imperialism while battling the Assad regime, the jihadists and now ISIS.

Now Washington is cozying up to Assad in its tack toward returning Iran to the pro-U.S. imperialist fold. The U.S. no longer objects to Irans building of nuclear facilities in areas under Assads control. And we hear none of the alarm we are accustomed to whenever the Geiger counter ticks in the region giving excuses for Israel to launch first strikes. Instead, Zionism is given a green light to attack anti-Assad rebels in Syria, expand settlements in East Jerusalem

and welcomed as a victim in the anti-Semitic attacks that followed the Charlie Hebdo bombing.

We denounce the French regime and its entire response to the attacks on Charlie Hebdo. The Hollande regime is social-imperialist in a way that is as brazen as any we have seen in the century since Social Democrats supported their bourgeoisie at the outbreak of WW I. We condemn the CP for being errand boys for Hollande and for supporting every imperialist attack going back to the days of the Algerian independence struggle.

France has played a nationalist propaganda card in support of the U.S.-led war no. 3 in Iraq, both by manipulating the mass revulsion against the political assassinations at Charlie Hebdo, the real attack on free speech of the Islamist right, and by redoubling its commitment to the U.S. war, sending the aircraft carrier and battle group Charles De Gaulle to join the U.S.-led air campaign.

Official France, of the bourgeoisie, has allowed itself to be viewed as an ally of Israel, which it is, a police force in Mali, Chad and the Central African Republic and the U.S.A.s no. 1 client for threats, bombing and logistical support against the Libyan revolution.

We call for a Lets go home movement amongst the French troops and political strikes against Obama and Hollandes wars. Revolutionary workers in the imperialist centers of the U.S., France, and the U.K. must take a defeatist position against their own bourgeoisie and advocate for their labor organizations to form up international workers brigades to support the Syrian, Kurdish and Iraqi revolutionaries that build the inter-communal fight against imperialism, Assad and ISIS.


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France has deployed 120,000 troops to augment its police in defense of Jewish institutions. France with 500,000 plus Jewish citizens has the largest concentration in Europe, but we have no confidence that this deployment will prevent real anti-Semitic attacks. Similarly we dont see the armed bodies of the bourgeois state protecting Frances Muslim population in any meaningful way.

Quite the contrary, the police particularly suffer from the same racist reactionary mindset as their brothers in blue in the U.S.A. and are anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-Roma and not incidentally anti-Semitic and belong to a variety of reactionary groups from Le Pens National Front to the Croix de Feu and latter day neo-fascist groupings.

We distinguish between real anti-Semitism and self defense by Palestinians and their supporters who stand against attacks by Zionists on the streets, as has happened numerous times over the summer of 2014, when tens of thousands in France protested Israels Mowing the lawn war on Gaza.

The police, in all capitalist countries, are the guarantors of the availability of the option for authoritarian rule. The nominal champions of democracy, the Social Democrats, have as usual enabled the state forces of repression to expand their budgets and operations and this can only be bad for the working class and its manifestations.

France is right at the center of the capitalist crisis in Europe. The World Bank has just announced their 2015 forecast for the world capitalist economy and it is flat at 3% growth. The world population is expected to grow 3% and this renders the growth fictional.

But in France there is no forecast for 3% or even a larger fraction of 1% growth, while France almost as much as Germany is the holder of the bad debts of Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece. So the bourgeois regime can be expected to attempt to take more austerity out of the life and flesh of the French workers and anti-Muslim hysteria will serve that purpose and has even begun to do so now.

Minority religious communities need to be defended and we can only entrust this task to the working class. The way to put an end to rightist violence against Muslims and Jews in France is for militant workers, their organizations and inter-communal defense guards to smash the fascists on the street, putting no faith in the troopers of the state.

Unlike the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), and not them alone, we declare the plain truth that cops are not workers but the gunslingers of capital. Their only relationship to the means of production is their role as strikebreakers.

In the U.S.A. we are calling for the expulsion of the Police Benevolent Associations from all labor movement bodies and for the formation of workers tribunals and militia exactly to begin suppression of racist violence, racist police murders, and for community prosecution of racist murderers. In this

way black, brown and immigrant communities will be defended by the working class as a whole.

Naturally this puts the LCC in collision with identity politics which we see as ultimate props under bourgeois property relations. Since each identity politics denies or subordinates the class question to their utopian project, be it feminist, nationalist, or other separatist tendencies, each of which would leave the oppressor capitalist class fundamentally unmolested in the commanding heights of the reproduction of their social order.

Liaison Committee of Communists

30 January 2015

Notes:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/01/18/french-hate-speech-laws-are-less-simplistic-than-you-think/

The specific wording of French law forbids insult, defamation, or provocation to discrimination, hatred or violencetoward a person or a group of persons because of their origin or their belonging or non-belonging to an ethnic group, a nation, a race, or a determined religion.

French citizens are perfectly free to challenge or blaspheme religious ideas, symbols, practices, and even leaders. Obnoxious, insulting, highly offensive speech is protected speech. Charlie Hebdo has been sued not only for its depictions of Muhammad, but also for caricatures of the pope. In fact, Catholic groups have sued it for anti-religious speech more often than Muslim ones. Charlie Hebdo prevailed in all of these cases, except for one (which was initiated by the Catholics).

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/nous-ne-somme-pas-charlie-hebdo_1.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/01/18/french-hate-speech-laws-are-less-simplistic-than-you-think/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/01/18/french-hate-speech-laws-are-less-simplistic-than-you-think/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/01/18/french-hate-speech-laws-are-less-simplistic-than-you-think/http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:v2mndnljfwEJ:www.charliehebdo.fr/les-proces-de-charlie.html+&cd=5&hl=fr&ct=clnk&gl=frhttp://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:v2mndnljfwEJ:www.charliehebdo.fr/les-proces-de-charlie.html+&cd=5&hl=fr&ct=clnk&gl=frhttp://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/nous-ne-somme-pas-charlie-hebdo_1.htmlhttp://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/nous-ne-somme-pas-charlie-hebdo_1.html


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The Revolutionary Crisis in Greece The January 25th parliamentary elections were a victory for SYRIZA, but is it a victory for Greek workers? It is to the extent that it opens the road, not to the utopia of an independent Greek capitalism, but rather to an independent Greek Socialist Republic as part of a Socialist United States of Europe.

SYRIZA is a social democratic coalition of mainly former Communists and Social Democrats who left the KKE and PASOK. They left the KKE because it stands for an independent Greek capitalism when that is not possible, since Greece is a semi-colony of EU imperialism. No semi-colony like Greece can win independence unless it becomes a socialist republic. They left PASOK because it did not fight austerity. SYRIZA offered the hope that Greece could fight austerity and yet stay in the EU. The January 25th electoral victory reflects the growing hope that SYRIZA could achieve this goal by negotiating a compromise with the Troika (EU, ECB and IMF). But what will it have to do to realise these hopes?

First, SYRIZA has to reject its alliance with ANEL (Independent Greeks) a rightwing bourgeois nationalist party. It is the KKE of the right with links to Russian fascism. No left government can survive an alliance with a bourgeois party that represents the shipping magnates and the high command of the military. It ties the hands of the working class and disarms them facing a fascist coup. Those on the left who claim that this choice was forced upon it by the KKE refusal to give SYRIZA support in parliament are parliamentary cretins. A popular front with ANEL will drive away KKE supporters and vindicate the KKE characterisation of Syriza as in bed with EU capital.

SYRIZA must break with ANEL and fight as a minority government on the policy of cancelling the debt to win the support of the KKE membership and win enough MPs to win an absolute majority to fight for a socialist program. Workers must be told the truth that any negotiated deal to reduce the debt will still leave generations of Greek workers as debt slaves. This is the way to prove to the workers of Greece that to survive they must be prepared to repudiate the debt and leave the EU and the Euro. Nor should the masses be fooled that Russian or Chinese imperialism will rescue the economy. For the masses to live, Greece

must become a socialist republic independent of the US/EU and Russia/China imperialist blocs!

To avoid the destructive consequences of a default and break from the EU leading to the collapse of Greek capitalism, SYRIZA has to prove to workers that

only a Workers' Government that comes to power on the back of workers councils and workers militias can turn the break with EU imperialism into a victory for the working class - a Workers Republic. Such a republic can only survive if it is based on the armed power of a workers militia that defends

the revolution from the counter-revolution.

Whether this can happen depends on the ability of the revolutionary left inside and outside of SYRIZA to overcome its reformist illusions and its sectarian practices. The majority on the left are reformists who think that socialism will come through a process of peaceful transformation via parliament. Most ignore the popular front as a necessary evil or realpolitik to form a government. Those like Left Unity who still think of the bourgeoisie as the enemy and attempt to justify the popular front with ANEL are complicit in tying the hands of workers on behalf of the Greek bourgeoisie.

Those who saw SYRIZA as another cynical manoeuvre to fool the masses, and refuse it critical support or even call for its overthrow, are anti-parliamentary cretins. SYRIZA is a coalition that contains the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. That is a bourgeois program and a proletarian mass base. It is necessary for the revolutionary left to put proletarian demands on SYRIZA to explode this contradiction from below so that the majority of workers who have hopes in SYRIZA will now see that a mass revolutionary party can only be built, not on electoral lists, but on the basis of workers councils and militias.

The popular front will not solve the problem of unemployment. The alliance with ANEL would not

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survive concrete measures to provide full employment. These would be seen as a provocation by the whole bourgeoisie and the EU, NATO and U.S. imperialism. Consequently the working class vanguard, while calling for the destruction of the popular front must not rely on parliament to lead in providing full employment. This will come from the workers own actions: factory occupations and sit down strikes and nationalizations under workers control that result from work-ins and the reorganization of production to employ the unemployed. Work site occupations will require armed pickets because they will be subject to violent attack by the fascist Golden Dawn and the police. The legitimacy and legality of the workers reorganization of production will derive from the support of the workers councils not the bourgeois parliament.

Now is not a moment too soon for worker militants to begin wholesale fraternization with the enlisted ranks of the armed forces, the workers in uniform. It is time to begin the organization of soldiers, sailors, and air forces councils and to coordinate their actions with those of the organized workers. It is time to sort out and replace the defenders of the popular front in the trade union movement, as well as the treacherous leaders of PASOK and KKE, insofar as they support capitalist solutions that are based on pipedreams that capitalism can resolve its crisis without putting workers through many more years of life on the rack of IMF austerity.

So while it is urgent that to open the road to a socialist republic, SYRIZA must break with ANEL, at the same time it is even more urgent that the membership of SYRIZA mobilise mass support for the party to fight as a Workers Party on a Socialist Program based on the demand to 'cancel the debt'. This mass support has to be based on building workers councils to mobilise action on the streets, building to a political general strike, and workers militias to defeat the fascists and defend the strike, leading to the seizure of power and installation of a Workers Government.

Break with the popular front now and for good!

Class political independence is the first prerequisite for the survival of the working class. And class independence requires adoption of a revolutionary socialist program.

Abrogation of the repayment agreements with the Troika. Repudiate the debt!

Guaranteed union wages and benefits for all! For a thirty hour work week and forty hours pay with a sliding scale of wages and hours so that all able bodied persons can be employed. The right to employment is the last right the workers have before the complete triumph of tyranny. For billions to

employ workers in environmental remediation.

Not one cent for the French and German bankers! For free quality socialized medicine/health care for all. An immediate investigation and national dialogue on womens health care needs. End denial of access of birth control and abortion. For full free abortion on demand. For free 24-hour child care!

Equal pay for equal work! Free quality education for all. No tuition and open admissions. Living wage stipends for students!

Greece to quit NATO! Publication of all government secret treaties! Withdraw all Greek troops from all NATO military adventures!

For Greek solidarity with the Syrian and Arab revolutions! For military support for the Local Coordinating Committees in Syria and for their proliferation across the MENA!

Defend the immigrant populations and support their rights to self-determination! For workers tribunals which investigate, try and sentence those who are guilty of racist, ethnic, homophobic and misogynist crimes of violence!

Defense of minority and alternative sexuality populations and neighbourhoods! For LGBTQ democratic rights now! These rights will only find their fullest development when guaranteed by workers democracy!

For labor defense of minority populations and neighbourhoods! For the immediate organization of inter-communal workers militias. For the suppression of the counter-revolution!

Organize a Marxist revolutionary workers party that has as its principal activity the advancement of the working class to power and the consolidation of a workers state with an internationalist revolutionary program!

For a new revolutionary workers international based on the program and method of Trotskys 1938 Transitional Program, the first four congresses of Lenins Third International and the resolve to accomplish all the revolutionary tasks of the completion of democracy, socialism and the march of civilization to communism!

For a Socialist United States of Europe!

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Syriza: Revolutionary lessons from

Russia to Greece! Mike Treen, National Director of Unite!, the NZ union, argues that Syrizas success in Greece may vindicate those who claim that bourgeois parliament can open the road to socialist revolution in the 21st century. He attempts to justify this political conviction by illustrating how history proves him right. Of course we reserve the same right. We follow him through his historical examples from the Russian October to the Greek March and prove him wrong!

Mike Treen states: The SYRIZA victory and the electoral victories of left-wing governments in Latin America over the past 15 years have placed on the political agenda the issue of whether socialists can use elections in capitalist society as springboards to a deeper revolutionary socialist transformation of society in the interests of the majority of working people.

The Russian Revolution

We agree that this is an important question. But the examples Mike Treen uses dont prove his point. The political tendency he once belonged to, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP-US), in the 1980s revised their view of the Bolshevik revolution claiming that although Lenin called for soviets to power he was actually for a democratic dictatorship in which workers and poor peasants shared power with rich capitalist peasants. This shared power was necessary because Russia still had to complete the bourgeois tasks of national independence and overthrow the feudal landlords. The bourgeois revolution had to be completed before the socialist revolution was possible.

Yet Lenin famously rejected the workers sharing power with rich peasants. In his April Theses he stated: The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolutionwhich, owing to the insufficient class-consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisieto its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest

sections of the peasants.

Yet, the SWP now claimed that Lenin, despite the April Theses, never abandoned power sharing with rich peasants in April 1917 and that the Bolshevik program remained the Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Peasantry. The implication must be that the Bolsheviks made a mistake and were premature in sending the Cossacks (rich peasant soldiers) to disband the Constituent Assembly (parliament) for which elections had already been held, and replacing this bourgeois parliament with a Workers and Poor Peasants Government' based on soviets of workers, poor peasants and soldiers and sailors.

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Mike Treen may no longer subscribe to the SWP (US) theory today, however in his blog post he infers that in practice, the Bolsheviks realised their mistake and encouraged the rich peasants to enrich themselves in a desperate attempt to bolster the economy (the New Economic Program or NEP). Stalins dictatorship, in reversing these market reforms and collectivising everything, led ultimately to the decline and fall of the Soviet Union.

What the SWP was actually trying to do in its revised version of the Bolshevik Revolution was to return to the pre-April Theses position that workers would share power with the capitalist peasants in a democratic dictatorship; that is, a bourgeois parliament that would destroy the remnants of feudalism and develop capitalism sufficiently to allow the majority of workers and working peasants to make a socialist revolution.

This was an open attack on Trotskys theory of Permanent Revolution, which argued that such democratic tasks could not be completed in a power-sharing alliance with any capitalist class whose interests firmly aligned it to imperialism. In the epoch of imperialism all democratic tasks could only be completed under the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Lenin in the April Theses endorsed this theory. It meant that henceforth, only the workers and poor peasants in power could complete the outstanding tasks of the bourgeois revolution such as national independence and the end to landlordism. It excluded all power sharing, later known as popular fronts, with the bourgeoisie, including the rich peasants.

But the SWP needed to revise the history of the Bolshevik revolution and the theory of Permanent Revolution so as to legitimate the power-sharing popular front parliamentary road as the correct revolutionary strategy for socialists today.

In reality, the Russian Revolution did not succumb to a wrong strategy on the part of the Bolsheviks. Russia faced either a workers revolution where workers led the poor peasants to power, or a Tsarist counter-revolution supported by the rich peasants. The rich peasants could only become part of the revolution if the counter-revolution was defeated and their petty capitalist interests were subordinated to the workers state.

This was proved when the Provisional Government under Kerensky allied itself to the Tsarist General Kornilov in an attempt to smash the soviets and was defeated when his troops were won over to the soviets. The October Revolution took power and incorporated the rich peasants into the socialist plan but never shared power with them.

As to the degeneration (bureaucratisation) of the revolution, this was due not to the mistaken revolutionary program of the Bolsheviks, but rather the capitalist counter-revolution that surrounded, invaded and isolated it, and defeated the revolution

in Germany. One of the results of this setback was the reliance upon the rich peasantry in the New Economic Policy (NEP).

The German revolution

In Germany, the soviets were, as Treen says, defeated by social democracy committed to bourgeois parliamentary elections. This was inevitable because the Spartacists (the German Bolsheviks) were too weak to win a majority in the workers councils (soviets) and make a proletarian revolution. Therefore the new bourgeois republic had to go through a stage of sharing power with the bourgeoisie in preparing the working class for socialist revolution. However, in fact, the conditions for proletarian revolution did exist as the soldiers and sailors mutinied and formed armed soviets all over Germany. What was lacking was the revolutionary leadership to guide the armed workers towards revolution.

The Spartacists led by Luxemburg and Liebknecht had only recently broken from the United Social Democratic Party (USPD) of Kautsky (which advocated a parliamentary transition) and the old Social Democratic Party (SDP - the Second International Party that voted to go to war in August 4, 1914), and did not have the influence of the Bolsheviks to win majorities in the soviets and lead an insurrection. The USPD and SPD were able to persuade the majority of workers to vote them into power in the new capitalist republic. Ebert, the SPD leader became the Chancellor.

Yet, instead of ushering in a progressive transition to socialism, these capitalist elections became the front for a counter-revolution in which the SPD, USPD led Government allied to the bourgeoisie, the aristocracy (Junkers) and the fascists smashed the armed soviets, and assassinated its leaders, including Luxemburg and Liebknecht, ushering in a long period of fascist reaction in Europe that culminated in the rise of Hitler to power. As mentioned above, the defeat of the German revolution isolated the Soviet Union. So it was German social democracy in league with fascism that led directly to the bureaucratic degeneration of the Russian Revolution under Stalin.

Revolution in Yugoslavia, China, Vietnam, Cuba...

The revolutions that followed in China, Cuba, Vietnam etc all followed more or less the Russian model of workers and poor peasants governments replacing capitalist governments. While the leaders of these revolutions were Stalinists or petty bourgeois nationalists who attempted to share power with the bourgeoisie (including the rich peasants), as in the bloc of four classes of Stalins famous popular front in China in the 1920s, they were always faced with armed counter-revolution, and survived only because the mass pressure from below of workers and poor peasants forced them to go all the way to socialist insurrection.


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Events proved that the bourgeoisie will never share power in parliaments with the working class when that class is armed and fighting a civil war. We saw it in Germany in 1923, in China in 1927, in Italy and Germany when the fascists staged parliamentary coups. In Spain during the civil war the Republican parliaments trapped the workers in the popular fronts in Madrid and Barcelona where they were disarmed and slaughtered by the fascist army.

History shows that bourgeois parliaments are death traps disarming workers in the face of fascism, and so must be overthrown and replaced with Workers and Peasants Governments.

The defeat of the fascist regimes in Europe (mainly by the sacrifices of the Soviet Union) created the conditions for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. In Eastern Europe the Red Army kicked out the capitalists. In Yugoslavia Titos partisans took power. In China the long March led to a peasant uprising in 1949 which became a Government of poor peasants allied to the workers. In Vietnam a war of independence against the French liberated the North but was met by the armed intervention of US imperialism in the South. Cuba threw out the US mafia

bourgeoisie in 1959 and despite attempts to remain on good terms with the US was attacked militarily and forced into the arms of the Soviet Union.

In each of these cases, these revolutions fell short of the Russian Revolution because the armed workers and soldiers were not in command. Such was the total blockade by imperialism, their isolation and dependence on the Stalinist Soviet Union that these revolutions were born as bureaucratised deformed workers states.

So it was not any failure to follow the parliamentary road in these countries that led to the eventual collapse of their revolutions and the restoration of capitalism. It was armed counter-revolution, encirclement, cold war and imperialist propaganda that resulted in their bureaucratisation and ultimately to the restoration of capitalism.

In fact, the strategy of the imperialists to destroy the workers states was one of democratic counter-revolution. The capitalists sucked in most of the left including all those who long held illusions in the parliamentary road, to propagandise the parliamentary road back to capitalism. The evils of

communism were portrayed as godless collectivism counter-posed the righteous capitalist democracy and free market. The bureaucratic elites in the workers states played along with reforms ushering in democracy and market freedoms.

In most cases the restoration of capitalism was via the democratic road of replacing One Party States with bourgeois democracies. However, these democracies arose as the result of bloody invasions as in Vietnam, or of murderous ethnic cleansing as in Yugoslavia. Only where imperialist intervention failed to create a democratic faction within the Stalinist bureaucracy to take control of the party, did restoration take the form of market socialism as in China and Cuba.

All this proves, contrary to the ideology of the parliamentary road opening the road to socialism, that it has proved to be either a barrier to socialist revolution, or, a counter-revolutionary means of opening the door to the restoration of capitalism under the guise of bourgeois democracy.

The Bolivarian Revolution

The Bolivarian Revolution that Treen speaks of has so far failed to build soviets based on workers and poor peasants capable of taking power from the popular front capitalist governments of the Chavistas in Venezuela and the MAS (Movement for Socialism) in Bolivia. This is because there is no vanguard party in Venezuela or Bolivia capable of breaking workers out of their popular front parties, as Trotsky called them, the PSUV and the MAS. These are the more commonly called populist parties which combine workers and petty bourgeoisie sharing power with the so-called progressive national bourgeoisie, in one political party.

When Trotsky was exiled to Mexico in 1936 he was in the box seat to observe the nationalisation of the Anglo-American oil companies in 1938 by the regime of General Cardenas. He said that while workers should support these nationalisations they did not amount to the socialisation of capitalist property. The state in essence remained the state of the capitalist class and would have to be overthrown and state property turned into workers property. Failing that, it was easy for the capitalists, especially a coup backed by the US, to privatise state property back into the hands of privately owned companies. Therefore, the task for revolutionaries was to break from the populist parties and their regimes, seize power, and install Workers and Peasants governments with the armed workers, peasants and soldiers in command.

These lessons were written into the Transitional Program that Trotsky drafted in 1938, two years before his assassination by an agent of Stalin. The first major test of this program in Latin America was in 1952 when the miners in Bolivia staged an armed insurrection against the Bolivian ruling class. Instead of taking power and installing a Workers and Peasants government, the miners abandoned their

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program (Theses of Pulacayo) and shared power with progressive capitalist Caudillo Paz Estenssoro in the petty bourgeois MNR government. This allowed the ruling class to rally, arm its own supporters, and defeat the revolution.

A revolution that finishes in a half-way house power sharing government with the bourgeoisie is already half dead. Many such betrayals of workers in Latin America including that of Peron in Argentina, and Allende in Chile, right up to the populist party/regimes in Venezuela and Bolivia today, follow the same pattern of revolutions strangled by workers sharing power with the bourgeoisie in popular fronts.

Therefore it is defeatist to wait for the populist leaders like Allende, Maduro or Morales to call for communes when they actively suppress independent workers and peasants armed mobilisations. Not until armed soviets are built from below and workers split from the popular front parties will the bourgeoisie be thrown out of power and replaced by workers and peasants governments that advance the revolutionary transformation.

Syriza and the Greek Revolution

Syriza and Podemos have arisen to replace the betrayals of PASOK and the Socialist Party but are modelled on the Latin American popular front of class collaboration between workers and the bourgeoisie. Syriza has formed a popular front with ANEL a rightwing nationalist party and is talking about nominating a former minister in the bourgeois New Democracy party as its Presidential candidate. As with all popular fronts, its purpose is to contain the demands of the masses within what is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. In this case the Germany imperialist bourgeoisie.

Thus the Syriza leadership has turned its back on the rank and file demand to repudiate the debt and end austerity and is negotiating with the banks for more favourable terms. All of the left in Syriza with the exception of the Communist Tendency accepted the bloc with the rightwing ANEL, and none have protested the appointment of its leader as Minister of Defence. So much for parliamentary democracy opening the road to revolution!

Syrizas parliamentary strategy immediately came to grief. The EU as part of the world capitalist economy is in trouble. German imperialism if facing decline as its economy stagnates and is in no position to grant Greece even minor favours. Letting Greece off even part of its debt repayment would send a message all the bankrupt fellow PIIGS. So Syriza has already betrayed its supporters in doing a deal that recycles Greek debt and delays the implementation of its anti-austerity program.

The reaction of the left of Syriza however, does not question the parliamentary road only that Syriza must

get off the highway and take the byway in renouncing the debt and leaving the Euro.

Apart from the Communist Tendency It does not even call for a break from ANEL or for mass popular organisation to defend it against a rightwing coup! Thus the left version of the popular front is still a death trap. The Minister of Defence can stage a coup

from inside cabinet! The revolutionary left in Syriza must draw the historical lessons. Workers participation in bourgeois parliaments cannot be progressive in the epoch of imperialism. This is true of workers parties forming governments which are powerless in the face of the institutions of the state including the armed forces, the bureaucracy and its paramilitaries. It is even worse when workers are trapped in popular front parties like the PSUV and the MAS, or workers parties enter parliamentary blocs with open bourgeois parties like ANEL. They are no more than fascist fodder. As we saw above, Bolivia, 1952, tells the truth about the popular front!

The next step towards the Greek revolution is for workers to split Syriza from its bourgeois partners in Greece, and from its imperialist masters in the EU, to unite to build a mass workers party and to form independent workers councils and militias to defend the class from the state and its fascist paramilitaries. Only then can it open the road to a victorious socialist revolution the formation of a Greek socialist republic within a wider Federations of Socialist Republics of Europe.

Forward to the Revolution!

Bourgeois elections can only advance the revolutionary transformation by default. That is by dashing the hopes of the masses that support them and in the process exposing bourgeois parliaments, as in Germany 1920 and 2015, as no more than a democratic front for the counter-revolution.

That is why it is a matter of urgency to build revolutionary parties with a program for armed soviets of workers and the oppressed in every country to resist the inevitable reactionary fascist movements that will be unleashed by the bourgeoisie to smash the revolutionary mobilisation of the masses.

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U.S.A. became Imperialist, what about NZ,

South Africa and Australia? Arising out of our analysis of the reasons for the emergence of China and Russia as new imperialist powers, a few other questions have arisen. If China and Russia can, why not Brazil, India, even South Africa? The answer is that semi-colonies cannot accumulate enough surplus value to become economically independent of existing imperialist powers. However, there may be one category of semi-colonies that could break out of this trap, or so some of the left thinks. These are the European settler colonies. We think we can prove them wrong.

The epoch of imperialism arose in the late 19th century as the main European powers expanded beyond their borders to embark on colonial exploitation to escape the limits to capital accumulation. Marx in Vol 3 of Capital explained the need to find cheaper land, raw materials, and labour power to escape the limits of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall (TRPF).

At the time Lenin wrote his pamphlet, Imperialism The Highest Stage of Capitalism, in 1915 he envisaged a world economy in the process of being divided among all the imperialist powers into rival spheres of interest. Competition to expand further would mean more wars unless the workers of the world rose up and overthrow their imperialist ruling classes.

Given this battle to re-divide the world by the imperialist powers, none of the colonies would be able to break free of dependency upon imperialism short of socialist revolutions. Failing that, they would remain colonies, semi-colonies or neo-colonies. Their political independence was rendered inoperative because of their economic dependence.

European Settler Colonies

One category of colonies, European Settler colonies, may be the exception to this rule. They seem to have more real political sovereignty and control over the economy than other semi-colonies. Thus the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Brazil and Israel are often held up as countries that were able to make the transition from settler colony to imperialist powers (if relatively small), while the vast majority of colonies that were not settled by Europeans, remained trapped in neo-colonial dependency.

Yet if we look at these countries, only the US was able to become a major imperialist power. The fate of the others is less clear cut. The reason for this is that the US had a complete national revolution where it broke its ties of political and economic dependence on its former colonial master, Britain. It could impose tariffs on British goods and protect local manufacturers until they were big enough to compete. It also had a Civil War that eliminated backward pre-capitalist modes of production.

All the other countries settled by Europeans, however, did not have wars of independence against their colonial masters (except in Latin America where the wars of independence fell short of economic independence from European capitalist powers). While they had a limited self-government that enabled them to protect their domestic economies, this was insufficient to prevent imperialism from retaining a large share of national surplus-value and limiting national capital accumulation. Nevertheless, some argue that they were sufficiently decolonised in the 20th Century to achieve economic independence and become minor imperialist powers.

We can test the proposition that political decolonisation in the 30 years between the Great Depression and end of the post war boom enabled the former settler colonies to resist economic recolonisation during the neo-liberal years from the 1970s to the present. To what extent did national economic development enable these countries to become sufficiently independent so as to resist neo-liberal recolonisation?

We can test this fairly easily in the case of the weakest states, New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. These settler colonies very early became part of an imperial division-of-labour where they produced raw materials for export and imported finished goods from the imperialist motherland. Tariff protection enabled a degree of domestic manufacturing but this always remained relatively limited mainly based on branch plants owned by imperialist capital and financed by imperialist banks. In other words, the decolonisation process was largely illusory as surplus value was siphoned off by imperialism leaving these countries relatively underdeveloped and economically dependent.

NZ, South Africa and Australia

There is no question that NZ was very quickly recolonised from the early 1970s as domestic capital sought to modernise and compete internationally. The neo-liberal counter-revolution during the Fourth Labour Government 1984-89, virtually destroyed the basis of economic protectionism built up over 40 years

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in 5 years. The fake left in NZ say that NZ is mini-imperialist on the basis usually of its predatory role in the South Pacific and historic high living standards.

In the case of South Africa, we have written about its dependence on imperialism, Anglo-American historically, but now increasingly that of China. We reject any notion that South Africa is imperialist by any conception. Nor is it sub-imperialist in the terms of the BRIC intelligentsia which adds to South Africas semi-colonial dependence, measure of independence earned by a share of the surplus for performing a subcontracted role as manager of imperialist affairs in the whole of Africa.

Australia, however, is viewed by many on the left as a minor imperialism. This includes ourselves (CWG NZ) since the 1990s. Australias protected manufacturing allowed a weak national bourgeois fraction to emerge, alongside the traditional pastoral and mining bourgeoisie. Australia was more resilient than NZ to neo-liberal deregulation as it was not dependent on protected manufacturing alone and could sustain growth in the late 80s and 90s due to its booming mining industry.

However, the neo-liberalisation of Australia under Hawke and Howard saw this national bourgeoisie largely swallowed up by international finance capital. And while NZ banks were all Australian owned, the big four Australian banks became controlled by HSBC, JPMorgan, Citigroup and BNP Paridas as the shareholders. As one commentator puts it: Both commercial and mining companies ownership are dominated by HSBC Nominees, JP Morgan Nominees, and Citibank Nominees as the top three shareholders of most companies. If one examines company directorships there is a tight cross-linking across commerce, banking and mining in Australia today. Commerce, banking and mining are now part of an oligopoly.

We conclude that Australia developed behind protectionist barriers for the period from the 1930s to 1980s yet failed to achieve economic independence. Its national bourgeoisie remained weak and dependent on international finance capital. The hallmark of imperialism is the over-accumulation of capital that must be exported to gain access to cheap land, raw materials and labour power. Australia has failed to do this on its own account. Its national finance capital is dominated by EU, US and increasingly Chinese finance capital. In the key growth sector of mining, the three largest Australian corporations, BHP Billiton is 75%, Rio Tinto 80%, and Xtrata 100% foreign owned. The monopoly rent from mining has therefore been largely siphoned off by international finance capital.

So the flow of FDI into Australia and OFDI out of Australia does not represent super-profits accruing to

an Australian imperialist class but rather to international finance capital of the major banks and corporations. This control was demonstrated by the defeat of the Rudd Resource Super Profits tax that gifted $billions to the foreign owners of the mining industry.

The OECD says that Australian federal revenue from mining profits is the lowest in the world. The foreign shareholders get about half of the value added: For every $100 in value added by the mining industry, state governments get $6 and employees get $20. This leaves a profit of $74. Of that amount, the federal government gets $14, foreign shareholders get $48, and Australian resident shareholders get $12. It seems then that far from breaking out of semi-colonial dependency into mini-imperialism, Australia has been taken over by international finance capital and Chinese monopolies.

Australia as sub-imperialist

Various left groups call Australia small, minor, mini, regional, or junior imperialism. Their method is empirical in toting up the foreign investment figures and pointing to Australias policing role in partnership with Britain or the US.

Ashley Lavelle, in Who Owns Australia, writing in 2001, argues against the radical nationalist line that Australia is being taken over by foreign investors. Australia is an advanced capitalist economy as only 25% of Australian firms are owned and controlled by foreign capital. This means that the main enemy is not

foreign capital, but the Australian ruling class. In the two main sectors of the economy we find 9% penetration in mining and 30% penetration in finance. Even in 2000 this is enough concentration of finance capital to dominate the Australian economy.

The Democratic Socialist Party joins the pack yapping at the nationalists

heels. It claims that Australia is a small, regional imperialist power, a junior partner of Washington with its own sphere of influence such as Melanesia and East Timor. Sandra Bloodworth of the International Socialist Organisation, writing in 2004 says Australia is a minor but regional imperialist power. Australia joined the war on terror in support of the USA and acted to fulfil its regional policing role in the South Pacific, for example in the Solomons. Australia profits from investments in this region, e.g. in Papua New Guinea mining and owns 50% of Fijian business. Another left outfit accuses Australia of mini-imperialism in exploiting and oppressing East Timor and seizing its oil resources in the Timor Sea.

Tom Bramble of Socialist Alternative writing in the Marxist Left Review Australian Imperialism and the

http://socialistvoice.org.nz/2014/06/new-zealands-quandary-in-the-asia-pacific/http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2012/10/beware-falling-brics-south-africa-and.htmlhttp://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2014/11/brics-around-neck-of-proletariat_2.htmlhttps://livingmarxism.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/brics-around-the-neck-of-the-proletariat/http://blog.creditcardcompare.com.au/big-four-ownership.phphttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-07/china-holds-key-to-glasenberg-s-designs-on-rio-tintohttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-07/china-holds-key-to-glasenberg-s-designs-on-rio-tinto.%20http:/www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2013/09/05/Foreign-investment-Lets-talk-about-mining-not-agriculture.aspx.%20%20http:/www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2013/09/05/Foreign-investment-Lets-talk-about-mining-not-agriculture.aspxhttp://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2014/07/04/Australia-economic-growth-secret-not-mining-not-micro-reform.aspxhttp://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/interventions/foreign.htmhttp://links.org.au/node/116http://links.org.au/node/116http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Islands/Imperialist_SouthPacific.htmlhttp://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2006-10-01/shifting-spheres-the-redivision-of-imperialist-power-in-east-timorhttp://marxistleftreview.org/index.php/component/content/article?id=65


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rise of China aligns himself with other left academics who speak of Australia and Canada as secondary imperialisms. Bramble recognises the rise of imperialist China has consequences for Australian trade and its relationship with the US. But China has been imperialist for some time according to the Cliffites.

Yet Australias dependence on the US and increasingly China, does not cause him to challenge the prevailing Australian Cliffite and DSP view on Australian junior imperialism. He does not question Australias obvious subordinate role to UK and US finance capital and as an exporter of minerals to China. He fails to notice that the Australian mining industry is largely foreign owned, increasingly favouring China. And that Australias regional policing role has been overtaken by its integration under Gillard and Abbott as a forward base for the US military.

The Northite ICFI (WSWS) writing in 2014 sees Australia as imperialist despite its political subservience to US imperialism. WSWS argues that after the Global Financial Crisis and the 2010 coup to remove Labour Prime Minister Rudd (because he was in favour of US and China friendship and the resource tax), Australia has been drawn completely into the US pivot to Asia.

The Abbott Govt is even closer to the US. The result is Australia coming under direct domination by the US dictating a militarist foreign policy and an austerity domestic policy which it calls a counter-revolution. The Shorten Labor Party is also committed to war and austerity. But for the WSWS Russia and China are not imperialist, and Australia despite its dependence on the US remains a minor imperialist power.

Its clear that while the case made for Australias economic independence is weak, most of the left regard Australia as a junior partner of US (and increasingly) Chinese capital on the strength of its imperialist policing role. Therefore, we can file the various labels for Australian junior imperialism under sub-imperialist which is the vogue term on the BRIC left to mean a small power that serves imperialism and is paid in a share of the subcontracted colonial tribute.

We have argued that the label sub-imperialist is meaningless since it represents a distributional definition of oppression which looks at shareholdings on stock markets and living standards but ignores the

fundamental reality that the bulk of surplus-value produced is expropriated by international finance capital at its source, even if some of it flows back as kickbacks to the Australian capitalist class. A good example of a kickback for Australias military bloc with the US is Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton licence to mine public land in the US.

Reviewing the evidence of takeover we think that we were wrong to get taken in by the flash statistics of economic independence when foreign ownership of the key economic sectors has always been British and increasingly US. With China being welcomed to buy up mining interests and privatised state assets by the Rudd Government it seems that Australias economic dependence must increase. While some of the left have noted the growing influence of China and US, this

influence is not taken to its logical conclusions.

Australias political sovereignty is up for sale with the US FTA and the impending TPPA. China now has a TPA and is also ready to invest heavily. Australias

independent policing role has been overtaken by US bases in Darwin and suborning its navy to RIMPAC in the military containment of China. It is the sausage in the sandwich as the hegemonic US and

the rapidly rising China flex their muscles to contest control of the Asia Pacific region.

Our conclusion is that for all Australias so-called sub-imperialist role as South Pacific partner of Britain and US has always been a form of dependency and is now clearly exposed by the growing rivalry between China and US imperialism. Even hard bitten liberal journos can see that this rips Australia apart as its ruling class tries to serve two imperialist masters at the same time.

The political consequences of this reality are that Australian workers have the task of kicking out their ruling class and taking the leadership of the struggle to win national independence from both US and Chinese imperialism, creating a Socialist Republic of Australia within a Socialist United States of Asia Pacific!

Next Issue: Canada and the USA.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/05/14/sepa-m14.htmlhttp://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/05/15/sepa-m15.htmlhttp://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29182-did-the-gop-just-give-away-130-billion-of-public-propertyhttp://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e0fd5a90-f835-11e3-baf5-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3TC9FnCxM


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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 capitalisms 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

Class Struggle 112 Autumn 2015

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