Class Struggle No 103 Nov 2012-Jan 2013

7/29/2019 Class Struggle No 103 Nov 2012-Jan 2013

1/20

Class Struggle 103 November-January 2012/13

1


2/20


2

Briefs

Detox the Bratt Pack!

The NACTs Principle Health Adviser, GeneralPractitioner Dr Bratt, thinks that beneficiaries are likedrug addicts.http://www.gpcme.co.nz/pdf/GP%20CME/Friday/C1%201515%20Bratt-Hawker.pdf

Bratt says they are dependent on thedrug of welfare. Detox! Get a job! Workmakes you free!

This is the biopsychosocial model promoted in NZ by UKright wing Government Minister Ian Duncan Smith. It isa UK version of protofascist welfare like CharlesMurrays racist attack on beneficiaries in the US. Theunderclass is labelled a genetically defective layerjustifying labour camps and eugenics in the form ofcompulsory birth control.

While this is promoted as a way of helping people toovercome their addiction to non-work this is a lie. It isforcing people on invalid and sickness benefits unable towork to try to find work when they cannot work or wherethere are no suitable jobs.

This has nothing to do with the wellbeing of beneficiariesand everything to do with flooding the labour marketwith unemployed competing for work, driving downwages and conditions. The mercenary doctors who forcepeople off benefits into work when they are invalid orsick are no more than slave drivers mustering the sickand weak into forced labour.

We say expose these evil doctors; expose theirlies about drug dependency; expose their realrole to force people into work. Reject thecapitalist war on the poor! Workers, employedand unemployed, and all beneficiaries have to

unite to fight the NACTs welfare reforms asnothing less than creeping welfare fascism!

Socialise Pike River!

The release of the Royal Commission reporthttp://pikeriver.royalcommission.govt.nz/Final-Reportinto Pike River and the resulting lack of action fromgovernment is a case study of continued neglect ofworkers health & safety in the rush to restore capitalist

profits. The various responsible parties duck for cover,throw the blame elsewhere and fundamentally avoidaddressing the question of what needs to change tomake the mining industry safe?

The National Government made a token sacrifice as theminister of Labour resigned that portfolio, but stayed ingovernment leadership anyway (no loss of pay for her).They then distracted attention from their own role ofdismantling the mines inspectorate and neglecting toresource the department and instead blamed theDepartment of Labour and the under-resourced minesinspectors.

While the Labour Party could criticise the Nationalgovernment for deregulating health and safety in the firstplace (back in 1991), Labour failed to rollback thosechanges during the 2000-2009 Labour governmentyears. Damien OConnor (Labour MP for the local area)is guilty of failing to get improvements to health & safetyin mining in particular. Labour failed to reinstate themines inspectorate, failed to restore strength to role ofunion members in health & safety, (and failed to restoreunion membership). The Labour Party failed miners.

Unions have not adequately protected the health & safetyof miners either.

http://nzagainstthecurrent.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/how-modern-unionism-failed-pike-river.html In the face ofde-regulation of health & safety law, the EPMU(Engineers Union which covered many miners)officials were advocating in Wellington for legalimprovements. However this legal - political level activitywas absolutely proven ineffective. Long hours and 24hrs7 days a week shift work mean that workers are not fit toreturn to dangerous work. The EPMU strategicpartnership with employers has meant it is moreconcerned with the welfare of the company than thehealth & safety of members.

The EMPU advocated in Wellington for genuine workerinvolvement in Health & Safety. However their membersneeded to be supported to advocate health & safetyattheir workplaces. The necessary point for action fromthe EPMU which had some 70 members at Pike Riverwas to stop production at the mine on health & safetygrounds. In the absence of legal protection the minershave to protect themselves, and need effective backingfrom the union such as a strike wage. The RoyalCommissions report noted: In the last 48 days beforethe explosion there were 21 reports [from miners] ofmethane levels reaching explosive volumes, and 27reports of lesser, but potentially dangerous, volumes. A

former pike river miner Brent Forrester (At the pit face,Sunday, TVNZ December 5 2010)http://tvnz.co.nz/sunday-news/pit-face-3945350/video


3/20


3

reported that on the basis of lack of safety equipment he had shut down production. Despite all these warnings,and action from their members, the EPMU neverorganised a shut down.

We say for an end to deregulation and union control ofHealth and Safety. Workers need to demand that theEMPU supports strike action to make the mines safe.This means a union fighting fund at at the normal wage.

Such demands would prove yet again that the unionbureaucracy does not represent the interests of themembership. History shows that neither has an interestin putting workers before profits. Pike River proves thatonly the rank and file workers can fight for and defendtheir basic work rights.

Capitalism drove Pike River Company to maximise itsprofits at the expense of the basic maintenance of safetyin that mine. It had only one ventilation shaft with a fanlocated at the base put out of action by the explosion!Both Labour and National governments deregulatedhealth and safety and endanger the workers in the

pursuit of restoring profits. The sale of 49% of the stateowned Solid Energy on the stock exchange by a sharefloat will only increase the tension between workerhealth and safety and capitalist profit taking.

We demand an immediate 32 hour week andreduction of hours until everyone has work.Socialise the mines under workers controlwithout compensation! For a socialist plan todecide if and how mining carbons serves theneeds of the working people!

Labours civil warThe Labour Party is still essentially the same party thatwas formed in 1916 after a series of bloody labour battlesincluding the 1913 General Strike. It stood for moderateworkers and small farmer representation in parliamentagainst the colonial gentry and small capitalist class.

In power from 1935-49 it was able to implement a policyof economic nationalism which would reconcile thewarring classes behind protectionist barriers.

In 1951 this historic compromise was smashed by anunholy alliance between Nationals representing richfarmers and NZ compradors (living off imports andexports), Labour under fence-sitter PM Nash, and themoderate union bosses such as the vile FP Walsh whohad the biggest dairy farm in the country. This new coldwar historic compromise showed that Labour could notreform the NZ economy unless it was on the terms of theneo-colonial bourgeoisie now subordinated to the US.

In 1984 Labour was faced with a new set of conditions, acombined crisis of the global economy and a crisis of theNZ economy. NZ capital (and international capital whichhad branch plants in NZ) could not grow withoutbecoming internationally competitive. These were the

new realities of global capitalism that swamped NZ andthe Labour Government under the neo-liberal wave.

While this created a huge tension between Laboursleadership and its working class base, it was relieved bythe futile split of New Labour which took the militantsout of party, and by the election of National in 1990. By1993 most former Labour supporters were voting Labouragain.

Today, the situation is far more serious. The NZ economyhas in the period since the 70s gone into decline as its

national protections have been removed and competitivesectors privatised and internationalised.

The global depression according to Michael Roberts,http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/recovery-or-recession-or-depression/has sped up theprocess as class divisions re-emerge openly and the oldcontradiction inside Labour reactivates as a fightbetween Left and Right class positions. Left means theinterests of the working class facing global capitalist

recession where workers are everywhere being forced topay for the bosses crisis. Right is the position of thecentrist petty bourgeois leadership claiming that classesdo not exist and only the centre can unite the nation.

But the contradiction is powering up and the centrecannot hold. Keys face is centre but Joyces brain is farRight. The Labour Right going to the center has toabandon the Left and the traditional working classconstituency. Yet that is the class base of opposition toneo-liberalism right that is growing around the world.Labour therefore is bound to split since it can no longersit on the widening chasm of class war without jumpingleft or right, or both as the petty bourgeois centre splitsfrom the Left base.

The current internal struggle therefore has along history in the making and is a critical sign

that Labour is about to join other SocialDemocratic Parties into the rubbish bin ofhistory.


4/20


4

The Arab Revolution vs NATO-Zionism

The current situation in the Middle East is one of a growing confrontation between

the resurgent Arab democratic revolution popularly called the Arab Spring now

two years old and imperialism represented by its military gendarme, Zionist

Israel. The US and EU imperialist powers are attempting to impose a democraticcounter-revolution, to prevent the working masses from overthrowing their national

bourgeoisies and breaking with imperialism. The global crisis means that revolution

and counter-revolution are on collision course. Gaza is the first point of impact of

the collision. The recent Israeli attack on Gaza was the imperialist gendarme testing

the reliability of the Arab bourgeois factions to impose the imperialist democratic

counter-revolution. The outcome proves that the Zionist and Arab ruling classes are

united against the mass base of the Arab Revolution.

Driving thisconfrontation isthe worseningglobal crisis ofcapitalism. Theimperialistpowers areundergoing asevere recessionbrought about byfalling profitsandoverproductionof capital. This isnot a financial

crisis but a deepstructural crisisof capitalism. Torestore profitsthe imperialisteconomies haveto destroy$trillions of capital value which is why the worldeconomy is still in a long depression. Made to pay for thecrisis are the weaker capitalist powers and the worldsworkers and peasants and that means further austerity.Between 2008 and 2010 massive attacks on workers andpeasants living standards were launched. By 2010

resistance to these attacks were reaching explosivepotential. When Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight inTunisia the masses of Middle East and North Africa(MENA) were ready to rise up. The Arab Revolution thathad been frozen and driven back by dictatorships sincethe 1950s rose up and brought down one regime afteranother in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, while in Syria theregime is approaching its downfall.

The awakening Arab Revolution destabilised the rule ofterror of the Zionist regime. Israel had reached astalemate with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas inGaza. Then came the wave of uprisings from Tunisia to

Syria which strengthened the mass support for theisolated Palestinian Revolution. The Egyptian Revolutionput the freedom of Palestine at the top of its program,

thereby declaringits anti-imperialism andinternationalism.

The armydeposed Mubarakand conceded theelection victory ofhis successorMorsi of the

MuslimBrotherhood

(MB) to put thelid on therevolution calling

for an end toMubaraks treatywith Israel. TheLibyan armedrevolt explodedand threatened tospread across the

whole Arab Revolution. It was contained by NATOintervention and bourgeois parliamentary elections.

The Syrian people began to resist al Assads dictatorshipand without imperialist support are today pushing tooverthrow the regime. Under pressure from the

Palestinian masses, Hamas broke with Iran to back theSyrian revolution against al Assad. This leaves Hezbollahas a proxy for Iran on the side of al Assad, weakened andisolated from the rest of the Arab Spring. Theweakening of Irans influence in MENA reduces thepressure for direct US intervention beyond a CIAwatching brief on 'Jihadists' in the Syrian opposition.The US is confident that it can find a pro-imperialistcoalition government to impose a democratic counter-revolution. Israel is not so confident. A revolutionwithout imperialist strings attached could develop into amortal threat to the Zionist state and to the Arabbourgeois factions who rule over the Arab masses. Israel

has lost the support of al Assad as a counterweight to thePalestinian revolution. The Palestinian Diaspora inLebanon, Syria and Jordan became embroiled in the


5/20


5

Syrian war as under pressure from the masses in thecamps the PLO and Hamas came out in support of therevolution against the Stalinist PFLF-GC who supportedal Assad. Thus it is no surprise that the Arab Revolutionthreatened to break out of the democratic counter-revolution at the major fault line, Gaza, where the Israeliand the Palestinian bourgeois factions staged anothermissile war to test the new balance of forces in MENA.

The Gaza attack has allowed the Arab and Israeliruling classes to test their relative power and re-affirm their class alliance against the Arabmasses. The result is that Israel re-affirms itsmilitary gendarme role against the armed Arabrevolution, by doing a deal with the Palestinebourgeois factions, Fatah and Hamas, taking thepressure off al Assad, and reinforcing the MBrule in Egypt. The ceasefire signals that Israelhas tested its defences and reached agreementswith the moderate Islamic regional powersTurkey and Egypt. Israel has fine-tuned itsgendarme role to play tough cop to the soft cop of

US/NATO democratic counter revolution.Imperialism has incorporated Israel into itssolution to the Arab Spring, the flowering ofmoderate Islamic regimes in a bloc with Israelagainst radical Islamic nationalism and againstpopular mass revolutions that are capable ofbreaking with imperialism.

Obamas foreign policy setting is to stabilise MENA as asecure base to pursue its vital hegemonic interests in thepivot towards the Asia-Pacific. This requires a firmalliance between the Zionist and moderate Islamicnationalist regimes against the masses. The US will enlist

the global community to pressure Israel to re-opennegotiations with Palestine for a two state solution.Recognising Palestine as an UN observer state is a movein that direction despite US official opposition. To theextent that Irans allies on its borders weaken, Israel hasless reason to threaten war with Iran. Thus Iranssignificance will be less as a destabilising factor in MENAand more a focal point in the inter-imperialist rivalrybetween the US and China for control over the Asia-Pacific.

Permanent Revolution

This imperialist policy setting for MENA - that ofdemocratic counter-revolution - is inherently unstablenot only because behind the fig leaf of parliamentaryelections there are the naked austerity attacks on theworking masses. Fundamentally democracy in MENA isincompatible with the existence of Zionist Israel. Theborders imposed by imperialism after WW1 createdartificial states, dividing and trapping nations such as theKurds and other minorities. In the case of Israelhowever, imperialism allowed a new settler colony todrive the Palestinians off their land creating the Zionistnation at the expense of the Palestine nation. Anyclaims by the Zionist state to democracy are a lie since

its very existence is at the expense of Palestinian nationalrights. Therefore, imperialism cannot impose stability onMENA by pretending to resolve the Palestine question,

i.e. recognising Palestine and imposing a two statesolution, as long as Israel continues to exist. Just asPalestine can only be freed by the destruction of thecolonial settler state of Israel, the Arab masses cannot befreed without overthrowing the rule of imperialism andthe national bourgeoisies that serve imperialism in theMENA. This means the Arab revolution must fight tocomplete the national bourgeois revolution by means ofsocialist revolution in the whole MENA region.

We can see what progress is being made in transformingthe national into the socialist revolution. The mostadvanced front is in Syria where a popular peacefulresistance movement was transformed by defectionsfrom the military into an armed insurrection. Hereimperialism has not intervened directly to subordinatethe popular rebellion to a government in waiting. Themilitias are not controlled by the SNC or by any attemptby the US to set up a reliable alternative to al Assad.Despite the imperialist legacy of splitting up nationalitiesand the deliberate sectarian incitement by the regime toweaken the opposition, the militias are broadly

committed to an inclusive, tolerantbourgeois democracy.Any attempt by imperialism to prevent or hijack thevictory will turn the insurrection against imperialism.The Syrian revolution has already reactivated thePalestinian revolution so the two cannot be isolated. Thequestion of whether a victorious Syrian revolution andthe Palestinian revolution can be contained by ademocratic counter-revolution will depend on widerdevelopments in the Arab Revolution.

While the revolution has been driven back by force inKuwait, and so far contained by an Islamic regime inTunisia, the resistance in Jordan where the majority are

Palestinians has taken to the streets protesting againstfuel price rises and calling for the downfall of theregime. This shows that while the revolution may bestalled or pushed back in some countries, in others is itmoving ahead. Those who are being driven back or arejust beginning their struggle need to look to the mostadvanced struggles to learn the lessons of how to fight forpermanent revolution. If we look at Syria, Libya andEgypt we can see that some of the conditions forpermanent revolution exist, while others have yet to becreated.

Libya is the only other front of the Arab Revolution

where the armed struggle succeeded in overthrowing anational dictatorship. It must be remembered thatstrength of the rebel army resulted from defections fromGaddafis armed forces. This is a key development thatallowed the rebel army to win without becomingsubordinated to NATO. NATO intervened to prevent thewar of liberation from dragging on like in Syria andsparking a wider Arab war. It succeeded in installing aparliamentary regime but has not been able to disarmthe militias or form a stable government. The recentattack on the Benghazi US Consulate shows that the UShas some way to go to create a reliable client state inLibya. While the elections have been widely supported

the masses have yet to see any relief from the austerity ofthe Gaddafi dictatorship. The militias remain armed andthe potential to overturn any austerity regime exists. This


6/20


6

fact shows that it is vital for the Syrian revolution tobuild and maintain a popular militia independent ofimperialism and of any pro-imperialist national regime.

In Egypt the popular revolution did not arm itself or takepower. The military regime replaced Mubarak with Morsiof the MB as a democratic facade, but this has alreadyproven unstable. Morsi has assumed total power to rusha new constitution through that will guarantee a MB

majority in a new parliament. The MB knows that itsmiddle class support base will not survive massresistance to the austerity measures that the IMFdemands. It wants to create a constitutional front thatallows an Islamic bloc backed by the military to restore adictatorship. This has revived the revolution on thestreets but the masses do not have the power to bringdown the Government. Demands that Morsi retracts hisassumption of total power or resign cannot be enforcedas it could be in Libya by the armed militias. What islacking in Egypt is any popular power based on industrialaction or more importantly winning over the base of thearmy. Both of these essential conditions were never

seriously fought for by the revolution of the streets. Torealise them now requires a fight for a revolutionaryconstituent assembly to unite the masses and the base ofthe army to bring down Morsi and his middle class MBdictatorship.

Permanent revolution means that to win the most basicdemocratic rights, such as Palestine liberation, such as aconstitution that reflects the popular working massesand not just the middle class in Egypt, such as a popularvictory over the al Assad regime in Syria, it is necessaryto arm the popular struggle. In Palestine the resistance toIsraeli occupation has always come from the masses not

the Fatah or Hamas bourgeois leaderships. In Libya andSyria, the masses were armed when militants anddefectors from the army joined forces. In Egypt, the fightto bring down Morsi will mean winning over the base ofthe military and uniting it with armed militias based onthe organised workers. This will open the road to populardemocracy and to bourgeois democratic republics. Yet, insemi-colonies dominated and super-exploited byimperialism, the national bourgeoisies serve as agents ofimperialism to rule over the super-exploited masses. Thebourgeois democratic republic must always revert to anopen bourgeois dictatorship unless it is overthrown andturned into a proletarian dictatorship. For the working

masses to survive they must insist on retaining theirarmed independence from the bourgeois regimes andtake the fight to imperialism. We can see that this isnecessary in the whole of MENA just as the liberation ofPalestine necessitates the destruction of the Zionistimperialist enclave.

A new revolutionary international

The Arab masses are fighting to complete their nationalrevolution against imperialism in crisis and the nationalbourgeoisies that act as its agents. Their spontaneousdemands are to reform the state so that they are not

victims of exploitation and oppression. The default

ideology of capitalism is that individual citizens are equaland that once a majority mobilise for equal rights thiscan be won. In Libya, Gaddafi was seen as the problem.In Egypt, Mubarak was seen as the problem. In Syria alAssad was seen as the problem. The revolutions againstthese dictatorships aim to create egalitarian bourgeoisdemocracies. The problem is that in the epoch ofimperialism bourgeois democracy is incompatible withthe survival of global capitalism. Once dictatorships are

overthrown, new dictatorships must arise in their place.This is particularly true of semi-colonies whereimperialism must use the national regimes to repressmass resistance to super-exploitation.

This means that to win the most fundamental bourgeoisdemocratic rights the bourgeois ruling class must beoverthrown and replaced with a socialist republic thedictatorship of the working majority over the exploitingminority. But for this to happen, the most advancedworkers must have a program to lead all working andoppressed people to socialist revolution. But in the Arabstates socialism has been repeatedly betrayed. First, by

the Western social imperialists of the rotten SecondInternational who turned their backs on nationalstruggles; second by the Stalinists of the rotten ThirdInternational who aligned themselves with the nationalbourgeoisies during the national struggles; and third thefake Trotskyists who made friends with Gaddafi and alAssad and co, and today give critical support to thenational bourgeoisies. Those who pass themselves off asrevolutionaries like the Revolutionary Socialists of Egyptvote for bourgeois governments. There is norevolutionary party embedded in the working class inany of these countries that fights for a clear transitionalprogram that lays out the road forward from the struggle

for immediate and democratic demands and shows howthese can only be won by an armed insurrection thePermanent Revolution. Building such a party as part of anew socialist international party is the most importantand urgent task facing revolutionaries.

Smash the Zionist state of Israel! For aSecular, Socialist Republic of Palestine!

Down with the Bourgeois Regimes theyserve the Imperialist master!

US/NATO/China Hands Off the MiddleEast and North Africa!

Down with the reactionary bourgeoisconstitutions of Tunisia, Libya and Egypt!

For Revolutionary ConstituentAssemblies for all from 16yrs of age!

For Workers Councils, Workers Militias,Poor Farmers Councils, and Rank andFile Military Councils!

For Workers Council Governments! For a Federation of Socialist Republics of

the Middle East and North Africa!

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2012/12/the-arab-revolution-meets-nato-zionism.html


7/20


7

Labour Party: Changing the Guard?

The global capitalist crisis and NZs perilous economic situation has activated a class

war inside the Labour Party such as not seen since the late 1980s over Rogernomics.

The onset of crisis in 2007 and Labours defeat by a right-moving National Coalition

in 2008 and 2011 has thrown the party into an internal crisis. The old guardcontinue to oppose the NACTs (National and ACT coalition) by competing for the

same middle ground, while a new guard has emerged dedicated to return Labour to

its traditional parliamentary socialism. The scene is set for Labour to split between

the right and the left. We examine the significance of this impending split for the

development of class struggle in Aotearoa/NZ.

Labour faces a right-left split

The split came into the open in the defeat of 2011. Theparty held contest for a new leader as Goff proposed to

stand down. The old guard never repudiatedRogernomics still dominate the Labour Party caucus andselected a relativenewcomer toparliament, DavidShearer, ascandidate. Themembershipoverwhelminglyrejected Shearer andpreferred DavidCunliffe who wascommitted to

returning Labour toits traditional values.They saw Cunliffe asthe champion of anew guard thatwould move left,repudiateRogernomics, andraise policiesbenefitting theworking class constituency. Nevertheless the old guardCaucus majority voted Shearer as Leader against the willof the big majority of Labour Party activists.

Those activists then got major democratic changesadopted at the recent Conference that would allow moremembership control of the MPs, the selection of Leaderand in policy making. They got the resolutioncondemning Rogernomics. They got more control overpolicy. But most threatening to the old guard was thenew provision for a leadership challenge by 40% ofCaucus that would see Caucus having only 40% of thevote for Leader, while the members had 40% and theunions 20%. This could come as early as February 2113.The old guard could see a rerun of the previousleadership contest where Caucus could not overrule themembership looming.

The Blairite old guard immediately sprang into action.Having lost the vote to resist the changes to the

Constitution, they rallied around Shearer and launched apre-emptive strike to prevent a February leadershipcontest. Shearer demanded loyalty in a caucus vote orrisk demotion. Despite 100% endorsement Shearer

demoted David Cunliffe, then ranked No 5, to thebackbench on the grounds that he was behind aleadership coup atthe Conference.This was not thecase as Cunliffeconstantly statedhis support forShearer as leader.However becausehe would notguarantee hissupport in aFebruary contest,Shearer took this tobe disloyalty.

The old guard, akathe ABC (Anyonebut Cunliffe) cabalthink that they havewon the loyalty of

Cunliffessupporters in

Caucus so that he will not get the 13 MPs he needs(including himself) to trigger a leadership contest. Thismay be true as the old guard controls the parliamentary

wing and can pressure, bully and bribe to get the 22 MPsthat Shearer needs to avoid a contest. Second, Shearercan probably manipulate the 20% union vote throughcontrol of the top officials in the Council of TradesUnions (CTU). Shearer has the support of Andrew Littleex CTU President, and has promoted him to replaceCunliffe as economic development spokesperson. HelenKelly, current CTU President, has publicly taken aposition in support of Shearer, clearly advocating for the20% CTU vote for him over Cunliffe. Third, the oldguard has the machinery to use Parliamentary Servicesto put pressure on the local LECs so that pro-Shearerresolutions are passed and delegates mandated to vote

for Shearer. Some MPs, some union officials and manymembers however are prepared to fight to challengeShearer in February. It remains to be seen if these MPs,


8/20


8

unionists and party members allow the old guard partymachine to walk all over the new rules voted atConference.

For Marxists this impending split in the party is a classicillustration of the fact that the Labour Party like all SocialDemocratic parties in the Western capitalist countriesfunction to suppress a class contradiction in theirinternal organisation between worker members and

bourgeois program. They are led by a professional labourbureaucracy of union officials and MPs to impose abourgeois program dressed up as parliamentarysocialism onto a working class constituency. The classicline of the Labour Party leadership is that they arecommitted to unity a dead giveaway for thesubordination of the working class constituency to thebourgeois program. Such parties arose historically todivert the militant labour movement of the late 19 th andearly 20th centuries away from industrial action onto theparliamentary road to socialism.

The Birth and Death of Labourism

The NZLP wasformed in 1916as part of areactionarywave againstthe militantunions of thetime. The RedFed formed in1908 built amilitant unionmovement in

the mines,railways,ships, timberand flaxindustries.Militant strikeaction culminated in the 1913 General Strike which wasdefeated. The war began soon afterwards. Industrialdefeat and wartime jingoism saw a reactionary anti-militant sentiment sweep over the country creating theconditions for a Labour Party to be formed by moderateworkers to corral socialists and syndicalists intoparliament. Many militant union leaders of the pre-war

period became NZLP leaders.

The NZ economy was stagnant during the twenties andthen plunged into depression in the 1930s. Growingsupport for the NZLP among workers, unemployed andpoor farmers saw it elected in 1935 and stay in poweruntil 1949. The myth of Social Democracy, or Labourism,in NZ is based on this First Labour Government thatsupposedly regulated and tamed the worst aspects ofcapitalism. Coming out of the depression and war intothe post-war boom clinched this myth. In reality, Labourserved to pacify the rising labour movement by takingover the management of the economy including the wareffort in support of British and US imperialism. WithoutLabour (and the tame Communist Party) in powerworkers would have become much more of a threat to thesocial order.

The depression created widespread socialist movementsthat only failed because the Social Democracy andStalinist parties tied their supporters to popular frontunity with the democratic bourgeoisie and therevolutionary movement was too weak to break workersfrom the popular front. The war itself produced powerfulpartisan forces that would have taken power when thewar ended without military occupations and thetreachery of the Stalinist parties in Europe and the

colonies were the imperialist powers continued the warto smash the partisans. Finally, the post-war boom thatfollowed was not a progressive result of SocialDemocratic policy but the revival of capitalism due to themass destruction of plant and machinery, and repressionof the workers in war and in industry.

In other workers capitalism survived WW2 not becauseof any victory for democracy, but because SocialDemocracy and Stalinism tied workers to the imperialistruling classes. Instead of uniting as one internationalworking class to smash their own ruling classes, workersfought each other on behalf of their ruling classes. When

they finallybroke free tofight for classpower, theywere dividedand repressedby theircapitalist rulingclass masters.

The mythologyof Labourism inNZ continued

into the post-war period untilthe Fourth

LabourGovernment

elected in 1984undermined the basis of the myth by deregulating andopening up the economy to neo-liberal policies. Suchwas the working class anger towards Labour around athird of its membership split to form the New LabourParty (NLP) in 1989. This was a major tactical error sinceit removed the sharp contradiction within Labour andleft the rump of the Rogernomes in charge of the party.

Most of Labours defectors returned by 1993 and eventhe NLP stalwarts (now in the Alliance) entered intocoalition with Labour in 1999. The net effect is that theFifth Labour Government under Helen Clark failed torepudiate its Rogernomic history and made only minorchanges to reverse the rising social inequality. The ClarkLabour Government became widely seen as a Blairitegovernment that continued the neo-liberal (moremarket) policies dressed up as a new form of socialdemocracy. The old guard that has survived aroundGoff, Mallard, King, etc. are the survivors of the 1980sand the hard core of Labours Blairite legacy.

Crisis of Social DemocracyThe onset of crisis and defeat in 2008 by a right movingNACT regime has opened up a class war inside the


9/20


9

Labour Party. It lost the 2008 and 2011 elections underthe leadership of the old guard steering the Partytowards the centre or middle class, abandoning itstraditional working class constituency. In 2011 over800,000 voters in strong working class Labour seats didnot vote bringing a massive defeat for Labour in bothconstituency and party votes. The new guard in the LParose out of these defeats fighting for a program toreturn to party to its core constituency. The defeat of

their leader David Cunliffe at the hands of the old guardmeans that despite the NACTs facing a worsening globalcrisis and rising unemployment, the Labour Party willlose again in 2014 since competing with the NACTs forthe middle ground will mean once more ignoring itsmass power base among the workers who are paying theprice of the global crisis.

What is at stake inthe fight for theLabour leadership isnot just the future ofthe party but of the

working class itself.While workerscontinue to besucked into unitywith the capitalistprogram they willnot be able toorganise on anindependentworking classprogram. Many willopt for Mana or theGreens but these

parties alsosubordinate workers to alien class agendas and theparliamentary system. The Greens are a middle class (orpetty bourgeois) party committed to Green Capitalism.Mana as yet has not overcome an historic differencebetween pakeha and Maori workers. They wont do itwhile championing for Maori in parliament alone. Mana,as we have said before, needs to fight outside parliamentuniting Maori and non-Maori workers in struggle.

As the crisis gets deeper, so will the resistance of theworking class get stronger. Inevitably it will come intoviolent collision with the bourgeois austerity program

and the capitalist state. Either workers in the LabourParty will kick out the old guard and rebuild the party asa real Labour Party representing the workers who aresuffering, or they will split from the NZLP to form a newparty alongside those who are frustrated by the Greensand Mana programs. There are big debates taking placearound the world over the form and structure of such abroad working class party. The ructions in the NZLPsignal the arrival of that crucial debate in Aotearoa.

Labours parting gift

The Labour Party will play a role in death that reversesthat of if birth in 1916. In 1916 Labour was formed todivert workers from strikes and industrial actions into

parliament. The global crisis of capitalism combined withthe looming climate catastrophe, means that we need areal Labour Party that unites workers and oppressedpeople in a struggle to overthrow capitalism. The LabourParty has exhausted its historic mission. It took settlercapitalism beyond the farm gate and modernised itbehind protective barriers in the name of economicnationalism and social democracy. It then betrayed thatmission and deregulated the economy when global

capitalism in crisis imposed its neo-liberal solution.Today it is a relic without any reason to exist. It trapsworkers inside a neo-liberal Blairite party as long as itremains controlled by the Labour bureaucracy. The oldLabour Party can perform its final act in life whenworkers break from its bourgeois program and formgenuine party of the working class that fights for asocialist revolution.

We can see Laboursfuture already in thecollapse ofEuropean Social

Democracy, themost dramatic beingthat of PASOK inGreece. Driven tothe right andrejected by growingnumbers of workers,PASOK is now arightwing rump thatshares power withother centre and far-right parties. Theworkers who left it

moved to join a newleft party Syriza http://links.org.au/node/3109that is afusion of old socialists from the Communist Party,Greens, feminists and other left parties. It came within afew votes of winning the last election. Syriza is not aparty that can expropriate capitalism but it has beenforced to take a stand against the neoliberal austeritymeasures because of its mass working class base. Once inpower it will prove impotent against the powerfulGerman, French and British imperialism, destroyingworkers illusions in Social Democracy, and opening theroad for a revolutionary mass movement to put aWorkers Government in power.

A similar scenario will pan out in Aotearoa. Labour leftsupporters will force a split from the right wingleadership. The Labour Left will form a Coalition withGreens and Mana to try to deal with the global crisis andclimate catastrophe. In the process it will mobilise apowerful working class movement that realises thatsocialism is on the agenda and only a WorkersGovernment in power, aligned to Workers Governmentsin other countries can stop the collapse of the globaleconomy and the risk of the extinction of humanity.

That will be Labours final act to free its working classsupporters from the grip of a dying capitalism so theycan fight to save humanity and nature.


10/20


10

Down with Frances Colonial War in Mali!

Solidarity with the Resistance! Lets transform Mail into another defeatfor imperialism! Fight for a workers government based on the peasantsand poor! For socialist revolution in North Africa and the Middle East!

1. French imperialism has started a new war in Mali one of its former colonies in Western Africa. Since10.1.2013 the socialist government of FranoisHollande has ordered its army to bombard the North ofMali and deployed 750 soldiers. The French interventionforce should increase soon to 2.500 soldiers. Britishimperialism hasalreadyannounced itsreadiness tosupport theFrench troops

with its air forceand the US willassist them toowith itsmurderousdrones. TheMerkelgovernment hascommittedspecial forcesand tanks to theeffort. Spain hascommitted

troops we wouldsay the EU hasjumped in withboth feetwithout polling the masses who they hope to distractfrom privations of record unemployment and austeritywith humanitarian war hoopla! In addition, the bloc ofWestern African states, ECOWAS, plans to send 3.300soldiers. Together with the Mali governments army theywant to crush the Tuareg and Islamist rebels and re-conquer the North of the country.

2. Let us spell out the truth: This is no humanitarian

war this is a reactionary colonial war! The real goal ofFrench imperialism and its allies is to strengthen itscontrol over Mali and the Western African region and tosuppress the revolution which is sweeping through NorthAfrica.

3. Mali and most of its 14.5 million people are living inextreme poverty which is mainly the result ofimperialisms control over the world economy and thesuper-exploitation by the multinational corporations.However, monopoly capital and imperialist power aregreedy for the rich raw materials of Mali. The country isAfricas third largest gold producer. It is also believed to

be filled with oil and gas as well as uranium andphosphate. French imperialism already depends onUranium from Tuareg populated areas in Niger, to

sustain its clean energy solution while the local peoplemust scrounge for cooking fuel/fire wood.

4. The Uprising of the Tuareg people in the North of Maliwho are fighting for their own state Azawad has addedanother rebellion to the wave of revolutions in North

Africa and theMiddle East.Socialists supportthe struggle of theTuareg people fornational self-

determination.We combine thesupport for theTuaregs nationalliberationstruggle with theperspective of aSocialistAzawad.

5. Both in Mali aswell as in theTuareg areas, the

way forward forthe workers andpeasants is totake power and to

expropriate the multinational corporations (likeAngloGold) and local capitalists without compensation.For the control of all natural resources by the workers,expel the multinationals and their greedy managers! Formassive wage rise for the miners!

6. We oppose bourgeois and petty-bourgeois forces likethe Islamist Ansar al Din, Al-Qaeda in the IslamicMaghreb (AQIM) and MUJAO (Movement for Unity andJihad in West Africa) as well as the bourgeois nationalistMNLA (National Movement for the Liberation ofAzawad) and the FLNA (National Front for theLiberation of Azawad). We call on the exploited of Maliand West Africa to militarily defend ALL factions in theTuareg nationalist struggle against imperialism, thedictatorship and their African including Arab proxies.We also defend Asawad and the main Tuaregorganisation MNLA from attack by the Islamist/Jihadistfactions that seek to impose Sharia law in Asawad andthe whole of North Africa.

The workers, peasants and poor in Mali need to organizeindependently in action councils (like the Soviets inRussia in 1917) and armed militias to fight for their owninterests. The recent heroic workers struggle in Marikana


11/20


11

in South Africa as well as the bold struggle of the armedworkers and peasants in Syria fighting against the jackalAssad are inspiring examples of how we need to fight.

7. The French colonial war has again exposed the truereactionary character of the main forces of the Frenchleft. Hollandes Social Democratic government wasted notime showing its classical social imperialist colorscomplete with its humanitarian subterfuge, an oldracist story the SP has been peddling since the 1890s.The Communist Party (PCF) a constituent party of thereformist European Left Party as well as of the Front deGauche in France expressed in their public statementsto date that they share the goals of the Mali governmentto defeat the Jihadist terrorists in the North. Thesesocial-democratised Stalinists are cynically worried thatthe French intervention might risk a war, so theyrequest that the French authorities respond to questionsposed by heavy military intervention (Statement from12.1.). In other words, they are true social-imperialistswho implicitly support the war goals of its ruling class.The New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) adopts the classic

centrist line of social-pacifism. They verbally denouncethis imperialist military intervention decided byHollande. (Statement from 11.1.) However, they fail tosupport the rebels, i.e. those who are actually fightingagainst this imperialist intervention, nor do they call forthe defeat of the French army.

8. We call upon the international workers movement tomobilize against the imperialist intervention in Mali! Wecall for the defeat of the imperialist troops and the alliedMali government army!In the tradition of theCommunist International in Lenins time and TrotskysFourth International we support the military struggle ofthe colonial people against the imperialist forces andtheir allies without supporting in any way the politics ofthe Islamists and bourgeois nationalists.

Lets transform Mail into another defeat for imperialism!

9. We call the international workers movement especially in France to mobilize for protest actionsagainst the colonial war in order to undermine thegovernments war efforts. For demonstrations andstrikes against the imperialist war! Transport workers:refuse to do any work which supports the French military

efforts!

10. The activists of the Revolution in North Africa andthe Middle East must see the struggle against theimperialist intervention in Mali as part of their struggle.The workers and popular struggles in Tunisia against theEnnahda government and in Egypt against presidentMursi, the heroic Palestinian resistance against thecolonial settler state Israel, the heroic Revolution of theSyrian workers and peasants against the murderousAssad regime they must be combined with the anti-imperialist resistance in Mali into a single wave ofpermanent revolution leading to working class power

and the establishment of a Socialist Federation ofWorkers and Peasant Republics in North Africa and theMiddle East. To succeed in this task we need to build new

revolutionary workers parties and a new World Party ofSocialist Revolution.

Down with Frances colonial war inMali! The wealth of the Sahara mustbe made to serve the people notimperialism its corporations or theIMF.

For the defeat of the imperialisttroops and the allied Maligovernment army!

For the military victory of the rebelsagainst the French/government and-coalition troops!

For the right of national self-determination of the Tuareg peoplein the North of Mali including theright to form their own state! Tuaregpeople live and migrate acrossmodern borders. We defend Tuaregnational rights over those of thenation states carved out byimperialism and the Tuaregs right tomigrate freely.

No political support for Islamism andbourgeois nationalism!

Break with imperialism for theexpropriation of AngloGold withoutcompensation! For nationalization ofthe mines and all natural resourcesunder control of the working class!

For massive wage rise of the miners!For a joint fight with the miners ofLonmin against the imperialists andfor workers control!

For international solidarity againstthe imperialist intervention! For anti-war actions by the French, Europeanand US workers movement! Defendclass war prisoners and those whotake direct action against ofimperialisms war machine.

For a workers and peasantgovernment in Mali! Forexpropriation of the multinationalcorporations and the local capitalistswithout any compensation! Forsocialist revolution in Mali and thewhole of North Africa and the MiddleEast!

Resolution by theRevolutionary Communist

International Tendency (RCIT), 19.1.2013

http://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa/no-

to-france-s-war-in-mali/

Reproduced with minor modifications.


12/20


12

Marikana Solidarity up against Centrism

and modern Menshevism

In periods of working class upheaval (like those most starkly exhibited today in

MENA, Greece, Southern Africa, Spain, and China) the working class struggles tofree itself ideologically, politically and organizationally from the shackles imposed

by generations of reformers, class collaborationist workers and bourgeois-workers

parties which, when given the opportunity, willingly administer capitalisms

austerities against the workers in the name of labor. Alongside these reformist

layers, the economist union bureaucracy and the labor aristocracy gathers a gaggle

of socialist leaders, professors and academics who willingly reinforce ruling class

hegemony by mis-educating, stratifying, separating, localizing, limiting,

demobilizing, and turning our class toward individualist and national solutions.

The labor fakers guide us to bloc with or directly entercapitalist political formations (e.g., the ANC in SouthAfrica, the Democratic Party in the USA); as regardsimperialism these fakers pragmatically adopt social-chauvinist campaigns (buy American, British jobs forBritish workers,often supportinganti-immigrantlaws,) ignoring ourinternationalistduties and shamingour class credo,An injury to one is

an injury to all! Intimes of counter-revolution andimperialist warthese do-goodreformists canquickly adapt andcapitulate to themost backward andvile racist, jingoistand nationalistideologies, theyshow their true

colors and abandonany pretense torepresenting working class ascendancy.

Social Democrats voted for war credits in August 1914allowing WWI to commence rather than leadinginternationalist working class strikes to stop the war.Socialists became fascists in 1920s Italy, the CPUSArestrained the working class with no-strike pledges, thusbacking US imperialism in WW II, and third campstate department socialists refused to unconditionallydefend North

Vietnam and the National Liberation Front during thedevastating conventional and chemical warfare which leftthe Democratic and Republican Parties with the blood ofthree million dead Vietnamese on their hands. These

reformist individuals and parties still dominate theleadership of the working class and the so-called left.They are a major impediment on the road to socialismbut not the only one.

Sometimes out infront, alwaysclaiming to marchalongside yet mostoften tailing justbehind andholding back themost militant and

revolutionaryworkers is a layerof subjectivelyrevolutionary yetobjectively centristindividuals andorganizations whospare no effort intelling us, anotherworld is possible,that 21st centurysocialism is on theagenda. In the

post-capitalisteconomies many ofthe same centrists adapt to the pressures of bourgeoisdemocratic forces and shamelessly maintain that marketreforms are necessary for the growth of productive forcesand thus advance the historic interest of the workingclass ina period while capitalist markets dominate theglobal economy.

On the plane of theory centrists gather to themselves alayer of academics who squeeze Marxism intounderconsumptionist crisis theory and at times putforward aspects of program they can emphatically pointtowards, despite ultimately balking at classindependence. If drawn as a Venn diagram, the centristlayer would span the gamut intersecting theoretically,organizationally and programmatically with reformism


13/20


13

on the right, with anarchism, situationism and councilcommunists in the middle, and revolutionary Marxismon the left. Their common sense, pragmatic and ofteneclectic method traps them in a tug of war between therevolutionary aspirations of the most oppressed workersand adaptation to capitalist exploitation made tolerablevia material benefits doled out to ever-thinning strata ofworkers. In periods of pre-revolutionary andrevolutionary uprisings the centrist layers, despite their

best intentions, objectively act to hold back the class anddisarm it in the face of counter-revolution, capitalistrestoration, fascist reaction and inter-imperialist war.

During this period, like others in the past, this dangerousand contradictory phenomenon - centrism traps theworking class in its own conundrum - despite having itshands on the levers of production, layers of the classmost closely linked to the labor aristocracy and smallproprietors embrace the logic of centrism which looksas if it intends to give capitalism its death blow but holdsback the historical and theoretical lessons which the classneeds to derive the political and organizational forms

and programmatic direction necessary for victory.

In the face of what may be the working class last chanceto save the planet from the environmentally destructiveanarchy of capitalist production, centrism plays possiblythe most dangerous role blocking the working class fromits self-liberation. Objective conditions force workers tofight capitalism (the polls show a disaffection from abjectsupport for capitalism especially among young workersand even in the USA,) Social Democratic treachery willdrive the workers from the Reformists (Greece andSpain,) and there with open arms stand the full spectrumof centrism awaiting the disaffected workers looking for

their road to power (instead, Synapismos draggedSYRIZA to the right.)

Epoch of Wars and Revolutions

In our epoch-that of capitalist crisis, of revolutions andcounter-revolutions, of inter-imperialist wars and proxy-wars which often begin as currency or trade wars, theresolution of the contradictions driving society from onetragic episode of imperialist war and counter-revolutionary bloodletting to the next, while testing thelife-sustaining limits of the planet lies only with theworking class leading their allies the poor peasants, the

dispossessed, the unemployed, the youth, the retirees,those dependent on social services and oppressedpeoples and nations across the planet, to remake theworld according to their own plan and in their owninterests. History reveals that class consciousness moreoften than not lags behind objective necessity and thatthe class as a whole is only episodically drawn into self-activity, therefore the theoretical, organizational andprogrammatic preparations for the working class comingto power can only be made by the class-consciousrevolutionary workers--the leadership of the workingclass organizes into its own international combat party.

Internationally productive forces stagnate. Financecapital trapped in the contradictions between the need toengage labor in order to produce surplus value (and thusadd to the available reservoir of profit derived from

goods production from which the biggest capitalistoverlords drink) and the negative incentive, the tendencyof the rate of profit to decline, inexorably places limits onproductive investment as opposed to speculativeinvestment in financial instruments (which, while theymay gather profit to their investors from the reservoir ofproductively produced surplus they do not add to thevolume of industrial or agriculturally produced goodsavailable for consumption.)

In turn internationally the workers share of the availableproduce of their own labors effort must be diminishedfor capital to rationalize the vast reservoir of fictitiouscapital accumulated in the speculative bubbles chasedaround the world markets by the big capitalists lookingfor investment opportunity for vast quantities ofstagnating and fictitious capital. To diminish the workersshare, the austerity must be imposed for profitability toreturn to productive investment. Workers conditions areattacked today by the bosses gendarme layers ofenforcers of austerity, the economic hit men of the IMFand World bank, the politicians promoting free trade

nightmares like NAFTA and TPPA, the corporate media,the political agents of the ruling class in the workersorganizations, and when the workers push back; by thearmed body of the state, i.e. the police and nationalguard, citizen-council-thugs, scab herders, and as a lastresort fascist gangs drawn from the most alienated of thecriminal element, from the lumpenproletariat and theruined petty bourgeoisie.

In its struggle for ascendancy the task of building anindependent international revolutionary working classparty that stands above limited national programs, thatunites the workers of the world programmatically and

organizationally is the primary task facing the workingclass today. A revolutionary international is required tounite workers across borders to mobilize, educate itselfand prepare the working classes of all nations for ourhistoric task; the formation of class-wide shop-floor/office/factory/mine and farm organs of workerspower, service and domestic workers committees, theirnetworking, the building of popular assemblies(cordones industriales) and delegated councils intentupon building socialism via the transitional tool of aworkers government which will take action, putcapitalism out of our misery by expropriating the bigcapitalist enterprises (the extraction industries, the

major manufacturing industries, the distribution,communications, pharmaceutical, medical and financialhouses including banks, credit and investment firms)and placing them under workers self-management andrunning them according to plans developed by theworkers representatives attuned to the environmental,and redistributive requirements for remediating theenvironmental destruction as well as the historic toll onthe billions kept in devastating poverty by capitalism.

Holding back the advance of the working class towardthe realization of its own independent and revolutionaryparty, the centrists across the board unite behind thework of various academics whose crisis theory befuddlesthe workers into the mistaken idea that radical yetmodest and reasonable structural adjustments tocapitalism can be accomplished transforming the


14/20


14

workers conditions. Underconsumptionist theory placesthe crisis of over-accumulation in the realm ofconsumption rather than production.

The under consumption theorists make the crisis one offalling wage share of the working class as an income class(what Marx calls revenue classes at the end of CapitalVol. 3,) so the state becomes the site for a distributionalstruggle over income shares (i.e., minimum wage,

duration and amount of unemployment insurance, taxburden on working class, pensions, national insuranceetc.) At the level of international relations this theorytranslates to supra-imperialism and in the currentsituation, US super-imperialism. Income shares arerepresented at the subjective level as apolitical, tradeunionist economism. The centrist loudly declaims forrevolution but practices economism. Whereas, if fallingprofits cause crises despite rising exploitation andindependent of wage shares then the crisis of capitalismcannot be resolved by distributional structural reformsbut only by expropriation of the 0.01% and thereorganization of production by the workers for human

need and by their own plan. The break from economismrequires the understanding of the Tendency of the Rateof Profit to Fall (Note 1).

Marikana Solidarity: Our experience andsome observations

On August 16th of this year we of the CWG, together withour international co-thinkers in the Liaison Committeeof Communists, proposed solidarity actions with themurdered andstriking Marikanaand other South

African mineworkers. We wroteour first leaflet andblog statements onthe subject thatnight and spentthe next daybeating the BayArea bushes forsupport for anASAPdemonstration ofthis solidarity.

Before anotherweek went bythere was enoughfar-left agreementfor a solidarity committee to exist, and it exists. Wecould scarcely say it was formed. Not only was this not apropaganda bloc, as some who have fetishized aprinciple that only a revolutionary party or perhaps alsoits union caucuses may raise transitional demands, butthe committee has so far failed to adopt a missionstatement (Note 2). There are a number of centrists whohave their own reasons for preferring that the committeehave only a logistical and no political agreement. Each

dreams of turning this movement into an uncriticalcheering squad for the South African political groupingof their choice, or to position her/himself to broker the

support of major Bay Area union officials (a vain hope, aswe said and as it turns out.)

One of these is the well-known spokesperson for theDemocratic Left Front (DLF). Judging by two months ofwhat he has said and what he has not, including hisarticles in Amandla!, the public organ of the DLF, wewould have to say he has a functionally Menshevikconception of the South African revolution. This is not

merely his personal view of how matters stand, either.Was there a Lenin? Does he matter nowadays? Youdnever guess from the front page Amandla! article Crisisand Alternatives of Dec. 11 by Achin Vanaik. He beginsby playing up to the left and even seems to contradict themore usual underconsumptionist view expressed inAmandla!, saying crisis is the natural product ofcapitalism. But he drops that subject almost right away.Was there a revolution in Russia? He doesnt mention itat all, and it doesnt appear in the discussion of desirableeconomic organization models and examples, which isglaring given what he says the purpose of the analysiswas.

Do you see mention of taking power? Yes, they say youcant fool yourself about that. But theres no mention of arevolutionary party, scarcely any mention of the workingclass, and instead we have a discussion of whatcoalitions of progressive forces can accomplish, whatreforms (yes, they said it) would amount to alternativesto the capitalist crisis. Progressive alternative is the bigconcept here, and it boils down to making finance capitala utility owned by the state; the state, but not under

workers control,the state he findsso very useful for

regulation andconflict resolutionbetween

competingcapitals and

internationalstability in theabstract. We werejust thinkingabout this andhow it sounds likea Cliffite

International

SocialistOrganization fakesocialist

campaign whenthe Zimbabwe

comrades of the Revolutionary Workers Group warnedus that the local I.S.O had put out the call to form a DLFin Zimbabwe! If none of this sounds like the dictatorshipof the proletariat to you, it doesnt sound like one to useither.

Now of course the DLF can say this is a signed, guestarticle, and disown any part of the content if put on thespot. But it is in the discussion of what southernhemisphere nations (!) can do to mitigate the naturalcrises of capitalism and the collisions of states incompetition that the author shows his true colors. He


15/20


15

employs indirect but nevertheless unmistakable languageto propose that the states of the southern hemispherewould be better off fighting American hegemonism byallying themselves with the economic projects of Chinaand Russia, and he discounts as a much less likelydevelopment the rise of Chinese Asia-Pacifichegemonism to the point of contesting U.S.hegemonism. How is this Metternich-style combinationcalculus calling itself a dialectic different than the foreign

policy - or is it retail advertising- of the tri-partitePopular Front? From the market or 21st Centuryphony socialism it is eager to embrace? Perhaps beingserious about power as they say on their masthead logomeans doing what the Popular Front only proposes to do.

And what of the South African Popular Front? Theauthor doesnt mention it at all, and he is supposed to beaddressing the reasons why the Southern hemispherehas not seen the masses on the streets fighting austeritythe way the European masses have. He puts it all down tomanipulations of national and ethnic hatreds by thehegemonic U.S. and the dollar economy. Workers

champions need to put the DLF on the spot about all ofthe above and accept no baloney. How do they differfrom the Kautskyians of a hundred years ago who fudgedon the question of the fate of the bourgeois state toplacate the reformists and for the same reason dodged onhow the workers were to come to power?

Amandla!, the journal of the DLF serves up a watereddown Marxism where crises have so many contingentaspects that they can in part be managed by a broad anti-capitalist front which does not exclude popular fronts.For example, Foster and McChesney (Note 3), editors ofthe Monthly Review in an article on the global financial

crisis continue the underconsumptionist school of Baranand Sweezy. Long term stagnation is caused byfinancialization, the stagnation-financialization trap.But what caused stagnation? In last paragraph before thesection on The ambiguity of global competition we findthe main point: Prices rising ahead of labor unit costs!That is, relatively falling real wages leads to marketsaturation which then becomes overproduction ofcommodities. Hence the classic Monthly Review schoolof underconsumption.

Rmy Herrera suggests underconsumptionist theory inReflections on the Crisis and its Effects(Note 4), alsopublished in Amandla!: This over-accumulationmanifests itself through an excess of saleable production,not because there are not enough people who need ordesire to consume, but because the concentration ofwealth tends to prevent an increasingly large proportionof the population from being able to buy themerchandise...

The neo-liberal regime has thus been unable tomaintain growth except by doping to death the demandof private consumption while promoting lines of credit tothe maximum. It is this exorbitant expansion of creditthat has ended by revealing the crisis of over-accumulation in its current form. In a society where

increasingly large numbers of individuals are beingexcluded and without rights, the expansion of outletsoffered to the principal owners of capital can only delay

the devaluation of the excess capital placed on thefinancial markets, but it can certainly not avoid it.

For their part, Panitch and Gindin 5 ignore thefundamental causes of crisis and focus on different formseach time. They think that 1970s crisis was resolved byneo-liberalism and that this new crisis is not caused byfalling profits. They have special emphasis on the state assite of class struggle which logically lends itself to

structural reforms. These guys are not Marxists butempiricists.

The Democratic Left Front in South Africa and the entirelayer of World Social Forumites, NGO lovers,ISO/SWPers, hand in hand with anarchists andOccupiers are drawing to themselves layers of anti-capitalist youth whom they seek to poison with anti-Leninism masked as anti-Stalinism. They appear to denythe inter-imperialist struggle and recreate the Kautskyitesupra-Imperialism with the USA as the super imperialpower. Thus they make little of the inter-imperialiststruggle between the US/UK bloc and the China bloc.

Meanwhile Africom is preparing for a bloodbath acrossAfrica as wars for resources proliferate. They embracethe theorists (Chomsky, Harris, Harvey, Panitch, Sangar)from whose ilk we are presented underconsumptionistcrisis theory which blames the crisis on the symptomsleading them to Keynesian solutions and limitingdemands (i.e., calling for nationalization of the mines butnot calling for workers control and not demanding therebe no compensation for the big capitalists.)

The Democratic Socialist Movement

We havent encountered any Taffeites face-to-face in the

solidarity effort to date in the U.S. Nevertheless, who andwhat the Committee for a Workers International(CWI)is and their errors generally and those of their SouthAfrican affiliate, the Demo answers for as they attemptto fill the political void to the Communist Partys left.They have garnered some international attention from allthe blame and denunciations (and also repressions)heaped on them lately by the Vavi leadership ofCOSATU, the trade union federation that is integral tothe Popular Front state. We think the DSM wants into aPopular Front government, which certainly would haveto make some disagreeable anti-austerity and wageconcessions to the masses to accommodate them. How is

that, you ask?

The CWI is another anti-Leninist tendency originating inBritain, where it is an attempt to revive a Labour Partythat really never was, i.e., an actual 2nd Internationaltype Socialist Party, and not the actual, and from dayone, bourgeois-workers party that is the 2ndInternational, pro-imperialist outfit. An affiliate of theCWI in Eire has had some traction on a similar, ifsomewhat more historical basis, only neglecting thatmost Socialists who were not wiped out in 1916 went onto found the Irish CP. The Irish Socialist Party has seatsin the Dial Eirann. One almost never hears from or aboutthem over the din of continuous scandals there. TheDSM was at first a small socialist split from the AfricanNational Congress, only later rallying to the CWI.


16/20


16

In South Africa what causes the migraines for the VaviCOSATU leadership is the DSMs call for a new massparty of labor, i.e., an old social-democratic, LabourParty, such as they mistakenly think the British modelwas. The COSATU leaders are sharing power with theANC and have real privileges and Mercedes to lose! Sucha new party would fill seats in Pretoria and share powerin coalitions, just as the actual Labour Party in the U.K.always did. We are encouraged that they reject the

Krugman Keynesian economic view that the presentcrisis of capitalism is superficial and unnecessary andthat a macroeconomic policy of government spending inthe U.S. could cure the world economy with fullemployment in two years. They quote Karl Marx from theCommunist Manifesto in their most recent webzine onthe nature and cause of capitalist crises. But we dontknow if they explicitly reject underconsumptionism, for afact.

Knowing how to compile a list of scandals and the rightcapitalists to blame is useful but the indispensableremedy for capitalist crises, the politically organized

armed uprising of the proletariat for the smashing of thebourgeois state and its replacement by their own self-organized power is absent from their pages. We think theworkers have to take control of their Local Unions andbreak with the COSATU leaders and the Popular Front.We are for the permanent revolution! We are for aSocialist Federation of Southern Africa, and not in thenever-never land of a second stage of the revolution thatnever comes and for which the various Menshevismshave no actual plans. We think that forming a newparliamentary party of a type that proved everywhere tobe useless and ultimately an obstacle, just becausemomentarily it seems to suit a mood of the masses and is

therefore possible and can fit you out with perks is aterrible opportunist error.

Permanent Revolution not Centrism

The Liaison Committee of Communists warns theworkers and anti-capitalist youth that the only class thatcan defeat capitalism is the working class, that thepopular front is the consequence of the two stage theoryand that workers must not be drawn into a bloc withcapitalist parties or enter the capitalist government. Theworkers party does not enter politics to administer thecapitalist state but to bring it down and form a workers

state. Any left front that does not clearly state and standby this understanding is not left at all but a radical pettybourgeois movement which will prevent the workersfrom finding their road to power.

Furthermore, there is an international layer of fakerswho claim not to be leaders, who claim to be listeners,who claim they will follow the lead of the real workersand not show up with any pre-conceived program.Nevertheless, these fakers are actually leaders, no matterhow much they deny it. They are leaders who are todaytelling the workers, you dont need your ownrevolutionary party, you dont need to maintain classindependence, you dont need to develop a transitionalprogram to help workers advance from their minimal dayto day demands to the logic of a workers government,you dont need to understand the pitfalls of Stalinism.

To defeat capitalism workers need their ownrevolutionary party and a revolutionary workersinternational that unites workers of the world in the faceof pending inter-imperialist wars. The formations thatoppose the building of such a party are transmitting theideology of the ruling class into the workers movementtrying to keep the workers from having their ownindependent and revolutionary party. The DLF in SAruns from Stalinism but only critiques its

authoritarianism and the cronyism that it hasdegenerated into. It does not critique Stalinism as asocial phenomenon and therefore the break of MazibukoJara (a DLF founder and spokesperson) and others fromthe South African Communist Party (SACP) isincomplete and either ignores or denies (but has notstated) that the pitfall of Stalinism is its reversion to theMenshevik two stage theory, which the SACP embracedand implemented, abandoning proletarian revolution forthe National Democratic Revolution.

Only the theory of permanent revolution can explain whythe African revolution stagnated and has produced a

continent of semi-colonial states which have not attainedtheir independence from imperialism and which todayare being prepared, by competing imperialisms, as thebattle grounds over which world monopoly of essentialresources and super-exploitable labor will be fought inthe coming decades. The theory of Permanent Revolutionholds that the weak bourgeois classes of the semi-colonial and ex-colonial countries cannot break withimperialism and therefore cannot complete the nationaldemocratic tasks of the bourgeois revolution. Only theworking class can complete these tasks through theagency of the dictatorship of the proletariat in anuninterrupted revolution that carries bourgeois

democracy to its conclusion and carries society beyond tothe socialist reorganization of production for humanneed.

(1)http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2012/07/11/gravity-the-higgs-boson-and-the-law-of-the-trpf/(2)http://cwgusa.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/discussion-of-statement-of-purpose-for-the-south-africa-mineworkers-solidarity-committee/(3)http://www.amandlapublishers.co.za/special-features/global-financial-crisis/1381-the-endless-crisis-by-john-bellamy-foster-and-robert-w-mcchesne

(4)http://www.amandlapublishers.co.za/special-features/political-economy/1216-reflections-on-the-current-crisis-and-its-effects--by-remy-herrera(5)http://www.amandlapublishers.co.za/special-features/global-financial-crisis/630-capitalist-crises-and-the-crisis-this-time--by-leo-panitch-and-sam-gindin

Reproduced from CWGUSA bloghttp://cwgusa.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/marikana-solidarity-up-against-centrism-and-modern-menshevism/

This article is also online athttp://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2012/12/marikana-solidarity-up-against-centrism.html


17/20


17

TPPA: The NAFTA from HellWe don't know beforehand the precise fiscal cliff "deal" Obama and Boehner will

strike, but all versions will fire many thousands of government employees, as whole

agencies are made to disappear. This will just be a warm up for the Trans Pacific

Partnership Act and its secret provisions! Now that Obama is re-elected and term-limited, there is no reason anymore to simply approve a raised debt ceiling. There is

no desire to owe China more money, and when the bourgeois class feels ready for

world war there won't be any reason to pay their debts either. The main enemy of the

American workers is their "own" capitalist class, now hell bent on a "guns, not

butter" policy! Meanwhile, with the TPPA they will be able to define the precise

meaning of their "new world order." It won't be a philosophical question any longer,

but a plan coming together to impoverish you!

At the November N.Y. City Central Labor Council

meeting the President, Brother Vincent Alvarez spent 10minutes belabouring his point that the re-election ofObama was a great victory for labor. But scarcely werethe words out of his mouth when he had to concede thatwe will have to fight for every nickel we get from this'lame duck' congress. So the CLC was to lay on ademonstrationagainst the loomingcuts to every socialgain 'on the table'before the twinparties as theypretend to tussle

before the "fiscalcliff." Was, except theleadership didn't havea call, an hour or aplace for it to give theassembled Delegates!A serene world theymust live in at theirpay grade. You could,yes you sure couldsuspect them of being completely integrated into thestate and complicit in concealing the nasty surprises thelame duck Obama will spring on us, his "legacy" as the

leader of the executive committee of the capitalist class.

What we're talking about are the questions wherefore the"fiscal cliff" and where does the TPPA figure in thecapitalists plans? Just at the moment there is growth,slight growth, in the U.S. economy, but palpable and notjust paper. U.S. companies are gaining orders at theexpense of their European and Japanese competitors inreplenishing inventories of supplies for homeconstruction, which replenishment had to resume sometime. The ratio of government debt to the U.S. GrossDomestic Product hovers between 72 and 73%, a lowfigure for any modern state, so the hysteria about

indebtedness is almost purely a camouflage driven byideology. The banks want to call in 'theirs' and slash newborrowing by the state because everything that

characterized the 20th century U.S. government, apart

from being the trough for the military industrial complexand the paymaster for support programs for racistrepression, is about to be shoved off the cliff and junked.This is the domestic content of the Trans PacificPartnership Act, a NAFTA from Hell!

What is in store forus, unless we as laborand behind us thegreat masses defeatthe TPPA, is theonset of the completetriumph of capitalist

anarchy. It is styledas a trade pact, butthis is only a featureof what it is.Including the U.S.,eleven ruling classesand counting aroundthe Pacific Rim areserving notice totheir governments

that henceforth there will be a visible hand at the top,above the mere state, which will decide the claims of"investor states" where they come into conflict with the

laws protecting the nationals of any country. Decide tosoak the treasuries of those countries for restrainingtheir profits with 'prevailing wage" laws, with child laborprotections, with trade union rights enumerated, withproduct safety and consumer and food and drugprotections.

Internationally the TPPA has the aspect of a showdownbetween the old hegemonic power of the U.S. and therising power of Chinese imperialism. This makes lifecomplicated for the signatories, some of whom, likeAustralia and New Zealand are members of the USRIMPAC treaty pact already. The New Zealand Trade

Representative seems to be Washingtons errand boy atthe Auckland meetings, and looks to be unperturbed atthe prospect of a trade war, an investment war and then


18/20


18

a shooting war, with the U.S. Marines poised to move onany recalcitrant government from bases nearby. It hasbeen revealed that the U.S. has arranged that his rewardwill be to become the head of the World TradeOrganization!* Australian representatives have someidea of these war dangers and are so far opting out of thechapters that permit the TPPA courts to rule on what theAustralian tax policies will be.

The left press credits Occupy Melbourne protests for thissudden sovereignty awareness, and we dont doubt it.They named the TPPA a Power Tool of the 1%, andexposure generally works against easy ratification by thebourgeois politico drones. In the broadcast cited above alawyer for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters(U.S.) spoke of the fight against the TPPA as a class warbattle. Funny how he can say this on cable TV in NewZealand. We never hear official representatives report tothe union membership in these terms, and we dont missmany meetings! So the road ahead for this treaty is notnecessarily altogether a smooth one. But a TVappearance on the far side of the planet is not a great

assurance, any more than the tiny December 6 HeraldSquare CLC demonstration was! Class war battles areonly won in courtrooms after the actual victories arewon by mass actions of the workers. Thats history, notopinion.

The task of champions of the liberation of theinternational working class is to close off this road towar! The U.S. seeks to line up the workers of the PacificRim countries as cannon fodder with promises of morejobs. We say there is nothing in this for the worker butmisery and death. Down with the TPPA! Solidarity withthe Chinese workers and all Pacific Rim workers! Their

battle against their bosses is the same fight as ours! Wewant a Socialist Federation of the Pacific!

We see the various reformist and Social Democratictendencies freaking out over the TPPA. The reason theydo so also invokes the fate of the international anddomestic working class, but does not derive from theworkers interests. For the reformist and social democrattype, the diminution of the powers of parliaments andjudiciaries in favour of the U.S. Executive BranchMEANS Bonapartism, which in fact it is. Theirgradualist, linear and exclusive strategy of governmentspeacefully reforming themselves into workersdemocracies is wrecked at one swoop by Obama and therobber barons. The TPPA puts these Bernsteins out ofbusiness, whether they realize it or not.

It gets worse! Everything activists thought they defeatedin the SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act,) the PIPA(Protect Intellectual Property Act,) and ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Act) is brought back with avengeance in the TPPA, the signal feature of whichthanks to the 600+ top U.S. and U.S.-ownedmultinational corporations who dominate the exclusivesessions is that this treaty (TREATY!!!) will not bemodifiable, subject to reform or repeal except by actionof all the signatory countries!

It has been pointed out that this could become theworld's "last trade pact," {link to Lori Wallach} sincemembership would be open-ended in the future. Ask

yourself what ruling class would not want to be above allprovisions of the pesky laws resulting from the resistanceof their working class. All the "Tax the Rich"campaigners will immediately be caught on the wrongfoot as millions of additional jobs will be deported to awhole Pacific rim of sweatshops like those now in theMarianas. Should Japan sign the TPPA, it will want to doso to become the worlds largest importer of US naturalgas. Under provisions of the TPPA the state-by-state

struggle against hydro-fracking will be obviated by thecourts it establishes. State governments will findthemselves powerless flak catchers. This is the American"disaster capitalism" Magna Carta of superior bourgeoisright, subordinating all parliaments and coming home toroost as an invader, like a Mafia Godfather who says withjustification that this is "just business."

This Act is a supremely American project and an alliance,in secret chapters, against China and the ShanghaiCooperation Organization. This despite the spin-only,faux invitation to join the pact extended to China by RonKirk, the U.S. "Trade Representative," in the lead up to

the December meeting of the secret membership of thiscapitalist cabal in a casino (!!) in Auckland, New Zealand.This alliance dovetails perfectly with the Pentagon's"Pacific Pivot" and makes a joke of the "theory" of thevarious neo-Kautskyans who see no special significanceto the pact and believe there is now a stateless super-class of capitalists who practice a supra-imperialism. Sofor example, with this theory neo-Kautskyans canimagine and do they ever! progressive governments'that will not participate in this alliance.

In New York the reformist pro-Bolivarians ignore themurders of the Marikana miners and characterize the

South African government as "progressive."Internationally this anti-Leninist trend has grown to awhole constellation of sects among the "3rd worldist"petit-bourgeois currents at the fringes of the workersmovement. Many of these drank the Obama electoralKool-Aid. Reformists in Occupy Wall Street had theirown reporting general assembly subset known as"Occupy Canvass," which worked to get out the pro-Obama vote, a fool's errand given how the New York tallywas never for a moment in doubt.

Sadly, New York had no fighting workers' labor party toexpose this Treaty in the context of what it will do to thestate's ability to respond to emergencies like HurricaneSandy or the nor'easter that followed, when corporateincome taxes will also be overruled by the judges in aninternational TPPA court, a Grover Norquist wet dream!A fighting workers' labor party would aim at nothing lessthan the complete smashing and suppression of thebourgeois political power, destruction of their state anderadication of the worksite dictatorship of the capitalistclass. Brother Alvarez, like Brother Trumka, lovesObama, who is foursquare behind his handpicked "TradeRepresentative" Kirk. He loves Obama even thoughperhaps a third of the Central Labor Council Delegatesare members of the AFL-CIO's "Association of RetiredAmericans."

Think for a moment how Obamacare was supposed tobe a great boon to the elderly and was put up in our viewfor the last two years by the cynics on staff and the


19/20


19

credulous Democrat suckers as the one accomplishmentof Obama's first term. The TPPA will ban Obamacare'sformulary group shopping provisions! This will be awindfall for "big pharma" and a death sentence formillions who no longer work. AIDS patients will onceagain feel outcast. Millions are already workingindefinitely after age 65 (remember "retirement age?") tobuy medicine AND eat.

In the eponymous movie the capitalist big (Mr.)Lebowski tells the Dude "Your revolution is over; mycondolences. Your side lost!" This film was much funnierthan anything we are likely to experience in years tocome if the TPPA is ratified and becomes the law abovethe law. It is not funny to think of how much the actorwho played the big Lebowski resembles Warren Buffettor how what he said prefigured Buffets remark thatthere is a class war and his side is winning. It is time forthe working class' side to have a great deal more fun atthe capitalists' expense. We can begin to win by defeatingthe TPPA.

First we have to trash illusions in Obama and "friends oflabor" in the two wings of the bourgeois party. Obamawants to "fast track" the approval of this pact. Thismeans he would sign for the U.S. in place of the Senate, abody that pretends it would read and debate its contentsand provisions, but is itself the plaything of the samecorporations and multinationals, corrupted by their"contributions" in thousands of ways and even staffed by"revolving door" corporate loyalists temporarily on thetaxpayers' payroll.

Some reformists want you to continue to support thisgrand edifice of flimflam and simply demand that the

Senate get their hands on and debate the TPPA Then ofcourse they'll reject it

Class Struggle No 103 Nov 2012-Jan 2013

Documents

Transcript of Class Struggle No 103 Nov 2012-Jan 2013