class struggle 107

8/13/2019 Class Struggle 107

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Class Struggle 107 October-December 2013

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Brief Stuff Rape Culture an !atriarc"#The Roast Busters scandal created a national protest aboutteenage boys bragging about getting underage girls drunk andhaving sex in fact rape. Many agreed that there was a cultureof rape that made this sort of behaviour OK. Moreover the police

share rape culture hiding behind excuses for failing to act onwritten complaints for three years. Many said this culture waspart of the patriarchy a system of male gender domination ofthe female gender. This is only half the story however. It reducesrape to a symptom of male power over women that can bechanged by social reforms.

The problem with this is that it doesnt explainwhy patriarchalpower and a rape culture exist today. Humans lived in relativegender equality for tens of thousands of years before menimposed their dominance on women. Engels called this theoverthrow of Mother Right. The matriarchy where publicwealth was allocated through the female line for the benefit of

the whole society became the patriarchy where men nowcontrolled the accumulation of private wealth.

Patriarchy was the first class society to come into existence.Women fought their oppression and were met by male violenceand a culture that justified oppression. The real herstory is theresistance of women to the changing forms of patriarchy overthe ages. It has persisted through slaveand feudal class societieswhere women were oppressed in ruling and ruled-class families.Today it serves capitalism which exploits unpaid domesticlabour to produce each generation if wage-labourers.

Since the patriarchy originated in the overthrow of gender

equality it can itself be overthrown and gender equality

restored. But to do that women and men have to join forcesin the working class to overthrow capitalism.

We learned all this from the Marxist women who participatedinthe Russian Revolution and the German Revolution from 1917-1923. Women took active roles in the revolutionary partiesfighting male prejudice to be treated as equals. Because theywere socially oppressed under capitalism they won the right toform independent caucuses and present motions in their name.Moreover they played key roles in leading these socialistrevolutions.

In Russia in 1917 it was striking women textile workersdemanding bread that sparked off the February revolution which

led months later to the October Revolution. In Germany, RosaLuxemburgwas the main leader of the German revolution beforeher cruel murder in 1919. She was betrayed and killed becauseshe would have played a decisive role in making the Germanrevolution a success.

We urgently need new generations of Bolshevik women. Can thePussy Riotwomen jailed by Putin as hooligans give us somepointers? It is significant that they brand Putin as an ex KGBdictator and draw inspiration from the Trotskyist resisters whostood up to Stalin in the 1930s. Rather than making friends withpseudo Marxists like Slavoj Zizek, they should look to the lifeand work of Rosa Luxemburg, the many Bolshevik women, andthose who fought as Trotskyists against Stalinism, then join thestruggle for a new revolutionary Marxist Party today.

Dirt# Dair#ingDirty dairying arises from the large scale expansion of dairyingby corporates who are hungrily exhausting land, destroyingenvironment and producing dirty products to extract as muchmonopoly rent as possible. Rent is the value that labour-powerproduces on the land arising from the inputs of soil, climate,location etc. Monopoly rent arises from the limited supply ofland that is fertile, in a temperate climate and has good access tomarkets. The expansion of dairying in Aotearoa makes use of allof these factors to meet a growing demand for milk in theemerging economies of Asia.

The business takeover of Dairying is not a new gentry or newfeudalism as some argue. Its capitalist farming. NZ farmingsince British settlement has always been part of the globalcapitalist economy. Large scale farming employed agriculturalworkers, while small scale family farming was a source ofprofits for the banks, stock agents, meat works and shippingcompanies. During depressions indebted farmers walked off theland and governments made the less valuable land available.Wealthy farmers bought up the best land and got wealthier. The

amalgamation of farms in the recent decades continues the trendtowards the concentration of large scale or corporate ownershipof capitalist agriculture.

Rod Oram writes about how this concentration of assets ishighly debt-laden as amalgamations, new technology andeconomies of scale, require big outlays usually financed by bankloans. Oram shows how this is leading to the growinginvolvement of foreign investors. The word foreign here ismisleading as most of NZ big business is always been owned bybanks and firms that operate globally. Agriculture is noexception.

Fonterra, NZs biggest dairy corporation now operates globally.

Its only a matter of time before it will offer shares that are notunder the control of the cooperative producers making it a targetfor takeover or merger by some other big food monopoly. Theconcentration of ownership in large scale international British,US, Japanese, Australian and Chinese monopolies on the onehand, and the increasingly internationalised working class on theother, proves Marx prediction that as capital becomes global, sodoes the working class.

This is the international class structure that underlies theincreasing inequality globally. It is certainly inherently unstableas it requires one class to exploit the other and pretend its doingit in the common interest. Workers first response is local and

national. For example, as the social costs of Fonterras dirtydairying become clear, when contamination, dumping of excessmilk, poisoning of catchments etc become better known, therewill be working class demands to re-nationalise dairying, withcooperative ownership under working class management andcontrol.

Capitalism will not collapse but be revolutionised by the vastmillions who already constitute its global productive apparatus.Those multi-millions are also part of capitalism. It is their powerover the productive apparatus that will render the political powerof the tiny parasitic class impotent. The only question is whetherthis revolution will happen before global warming kicks offenough feedback loops to make as all equally extinct.


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Comraes an Cossac$sPutting up a memorial to Cossackswho broke the strike of theAuckland wharfies and helped set up a scab union in 1913 is aprovocation to todays workers and the Labour Party whichevolved out of the Federation of Labour formed in 1909.

That FOL (known as the Red Fed because of its socialistprinciples) broke from the Arbitration Court because it refused

to increase wages in 1908. The Miners Federation became theFOL and other unions like the wharfies, flaxworkers andshearers joined. Acting as free unions registered under the 1878Trade Union Act. There was no prohibition on strikes and theseworkers gained better wages and conditions than under theArbitration Court.

Also formed in 1909 was the Reform Party led by Bill Massey asmall farmer. Small farmers newly settled on land broken up bythe Liberal Government in the 1890s and assisted by state loansbecame a new force for private property opposed to the moreprogressive wing of the Liberals who favoured state leaseholdsover freehold. The prize of capital gain was the main route forthe landless out of the working class.

From 1910 the freeholders and business class behind Masseyorganised to force the FOL back into the Arbitration Court. Itbecame the Government in 1912 and the first major fight was atthe Waihi gold mines in 1912. The Waihi Miners Union joinedthe FOL in 1911 and won better wages and conditions. The mineowners used the Arbitration law to form a scab union imposing awage cut on the FOL miners locked out until they agreed.

For six months the miners held out supported by the FOL andoverseas unions. Police, scabs and armed thugs attacked thelocked out workers. George Evans was killed. 68 of the minersincluding all of their leaders were jailed for attempting to keep

the scab union out of the mine.This dispute was a dress rehearsal for the 1913 strike whichagain began as a lockout this time of the Wellington Watersidersby British shipowners who refused to employ men not in anarbitration union. Now the bosses were emboldened to smash thewhole Red Fed and the newly formed Social Democratic partyand force all workers into the Arbitration Court. Strikes insupport of the locked out Watersiders spread around the countryand were faced by police, armed scabs, the Cossacks, and eventhe army and navy (the latter with permission of the Britishcrown).

According to WB Sutch in Poverty and Progress in NZ p. 165:

Young farmers, Masseys Cossacks, rode into the main portsas specials to intimidate the strikers and the public, to form

arbitration unions and take the place of watersiders and

seamenWhen police and specials took over the Auckland

waterfront so that scab labour could work the ships, many other

unions (including craft unions) struck in protest. There was

almost a general strike in Auckland. Strike leaders were put in

jail (there were 169 convictions); at the ports the Employers

Federation formed new arbitration unions, often based on the

young farmers were there partly for this purpose; the ports were

worked by these people and other scabs; and the Supreme Court

decided that arbitration unions could not contribute strike funds

to another union. The arbitration unions formed by the

employers were registered, and the watersiders told that if theywanted to work again on the wharves they must join these

unions. By 20 December 1913 the strike was over, and Massey

was able to give Waikato farmers medals for strike breaking.

In case anybody thinks that that episode can never be repeated itmost certainly was in the 1951 lockout, and will inevitably againwhen organised labour stands up for its rights against the classthat owns the means of production and controls the state toenforce its class rule.

!i$e Ri%er Disaster is us allThe NACTs are so far refusingto be shamed into making statecorporate and ministries pay court ordered compensation to thePike River families. After Keys crocodile tears at the publicrally following the disaster, he now claims there is no legal ormoral reason to compensate the families. What do you expect?The NACTs crony capitalist regime is speeding up its rip, shitand bust style of plundering Aotearoas natural resources. Thismeans privatising land, water, minerals into the hands of cronycapitalists, destroying nature and furthering the carbon burningclimate collapse of the failing capitalist system.

The Royal Commission, numerous testaments of miners,

crusading journalism like Rebecca Macfies book, andcommitted working class histories like Paul Maunders book, putthe case beyond reasonable doubt: capitalism rapes nature andchews up and spits out workersand their families in the processso it can make its profits out of their blood and guts.

What we have said consistently about this disaster is that it istypical of capitalism in its terminal decline and no faith in thebosses state or in any of the capitalist parties, NACTs, Labouror Greens will change that. Labour and the unions are part of thisretreat into rip, shit and bust. The old miners union has beenreplaced by the EPMU who are committed to working within theconfines of capitalist laws.

We need to fight like the Red Fed of the early 1900s before thelabour movement was co-opted into parliament. The Red Fedwas notorious as a federation of labour that put the interests ofworkers before the bosses law. They broke from the IC&A Act labours leg iron in the words of Harry Holland and foughtthe bosses attempt to break their federation by violent attacksand force them back into the Arbitration Court. This year, 2013is the 100 anniversary of the 1913 General Strike that signifiedthe defeat of the Red Fed.

A Red Fed today would be in a very different situation than 100years ago. As Maunder points out, the capitalist world divisionof labour has changed. While the NZ economy is still based on

extraction and export of raw materials, workers interests do notlie in defending their jobs by the further plunder and destructionof nature. A Red Fed would face climate catastrophe not byfighting for fair shares in the destruction of the planet, but byfighting for a new sustainable socialist system in which theworking class plans production for our need and not the profitsof the 1%.

So while the families should get their compensation in this life,the workers need to go on the offensive. The alternative toongoing destruction of nature and deaths of workers is to rebuildtheir unions and fight for a Workers Government that wouldsocialise the strategic industries without compensation to privateowners, and plan production under workers control for asocialist economy. http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2013/12/class-struggle-107-rape-culture-dirty.html


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&'()* Spin Doctors an+ealt"# &or$On 30th Sept the NZ Herald quoted Welfare Minister PaulaBennett as reporting that on average 3500 benefits are cancelledweekly, 2000 being due to 'other reasons than the recipientfinding employment). Most of these are presumably results of

the harsh new sanctions regime against those failing to complywith job-seeking requirements.Amongst these will be sickness andinvalid beneficiaries who have beendeclared fit to work by WINZsdesignated doctors. Enquiries madeunder the Official Information Acthave revealed that designateddoctors are being indoctrinated atWINZ training seminars in thehealth benefits of work and in thedoctrine that benefit dependency isan addiction

In its crusade to reduce benefit numbers by 40,000 thegovernment has found a powerful ally in the Royal AustralasianCollege of Physicians (RACP) and its Australasian Faculty ofOccupational and Environmental Medicine (AFOEM), which iscurrently conducting a campaign to convince doctors of thehealth benefits of work. So well does this fit with thegovernments plans that WINZ quotes the AFOEM's PositionStatementon the application form for the work capacity medicalcertificate in a blatant attempt to educate doctors signing it. TheWINZ form erroneously attributes the quotation to the AFOEM'sConsensus Statement, misleadingly implying that the signatorieshave all examined the evidence for the hypothesis advanced and

agree that it is "compelling." (Thanks to George Bush Jr andTony Blair we have learned that when government agencies startto talk of "compelling" evidence, it is time to start doubting).

The other words, the government is cynically intervening in theeducation of doctors to promote a theoretical model of dubiousvalidity, not out of any concern for the health of the populationbut because it happens to correlate so well with neo-liberalpolicy goals of workfare to drive down wages and restoreprofits.

The medical theory it is promoting is the so-called bio-psycho-social model of illness (BPSM), which has some grounds forcriticising traditional medicine for ignoring social and

environmental factors in the causation of illness. But while it hasindeed become part of regular medical practice to mobilisemulti-disciplinary teams comprising psychologists and socialworkers in the treatment of illness BPSM has failed to achieverecognition as a comprehensive theoryof medical causation.

Moreover, the BPSM restricts its definition of social to theimmediate social situation of the patient without inquiring intothe mediated power-based relations of the class-based widersociety. As expounded by some of its champions, it claims that ifa person is treated as if they were ill they are likely to becomeso, which is not much of an advance on Christian Science andNorman Vincent Peale.

Prominent among the advocates of the health benefits of work isSir Mansell Aylward, formerly Chief Medical Adviser, Medical

Director and Chief Scientist at the UK Department of Work andPensions, and now HOD in an academic chair sponsored byUnum, the world's largest disability insurer. The AFOEM hasacknowledged his leadership and he has had the ear of Welfareminister Paula Bennett. Not only has Unum been thoroughlydiscredited for the scale on which it has attempted to evadepayouts, it has demonstrated an interest in taking over the UKwelfare system.

It was Sir Mansell who devised the Personal Capabilityassessment (PCA) to which British claimants are subjected, theadministration of which iscontacted out to a private sectorfirm ATOS. The United Kingdomis further down the path of work-focused welfare reform than isNew Zealand, and the results it hasachieved- little published in NewZealand, are truly alarming

The Express Jan 17th 2013reported: Former Labour ministerMichael Meacher accused the firm

(ATOS) of ruthlesslypressurising the sick and disabled into work. Opening aCommons debate, he said 1,300 people had died after beingplaced in the work-related activity group, for those currentlytoo ill to be in a job but expected to take steps towards aneventual return to employment. Some 2,200 died before theassessment process was completed and 7,100 died after beingplaced in the group for those entitled to unconditional support asthey are too ill or disabled to work.

No wonder the disability support group opposing the UK'sbenefit reforms has adopted as its symbolic title "BlackTriangle" after the stigma worn under duress by disabled citizens

in the Third Reich.To return to AFEOMs position statement: this document doesnot shrink from making recommendations to the government,but recommendations that poverty be abolished are not amongstthem, despite the link between ill-health and poverty clearlyshown in the evidence it marshals, which demonstrates beyonddoubt that the children of welfare beneficiaries are more thanaveragely prone to illness.

This is something the Child Poverty Action Group, theChildrens Commissioner, and a wide variety of communityhealth practitioners have been pointing out for years. Is the factthat the government has been able to ignore this for so long due

to the influence of the RACP and those who in turn influence it?Do the learned physicians of the AFOEM really believe that it islack of work that is making the children sick? Should weanticipate a return to Victorian era child labour laws? ThePosition Statement includes further evidence that it is poverty,not unemployment that creates ill-health by acknowledging theexistence of an unemployed stratum of capitalist parasites whichis nevertheless able to remain in good health.

We say the pressure to force the poor into work is to drive downwages and create cheap jobs so that the whole working class isforced to pay for the bosses crisis. No way! For the workingclass to live parasitic capitalism must die!

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2013/12/winz-spin-doctors-and-healthy-work.html


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,abour %s Capital

Our position of giving critical support for Labour is to vote for it to put it in government to prove to workers

that no Labour-led Government however leftwing will be able to legislate to meet the demands and needs of

workers. Social Democracy sows illusions in a peaceful, egalitarian, environmentally friendly capitalism. There

is no such animal. Capitalism is brutal, barbaric and destructive, especially in the epoch of imperialism.

Already we see that Cunliffes promises of reforms are hedged around with financial constraints imposed notby neo-liberalism, but by capitalism itself. Will Labour challenge NZs status as an economic semi-colony of

the US and China in its position on the TPPA,Oil and Coal and asset sales, GCSB and TICS, SkyCity casino

capitalism, and disaster capitalism in Christchurch. Will Labour recognise the role that the working class

plays in creating the nations wealth and stand up and fight for the unions and workers by implementingfull

employment, a living wage, welfare rights, pensionsetc? Right now the Labour Party represents Capitals

profits expropriated from Labour. What is needed is a revolutionary socialist party that will socialise capitalist

property under the ownership and control of the working class and create a planned socialist society.

!!. an t"e coming /SC+'(. ar

To implement a sustainable economic policy, NZ would have toregain its economic sovereignty over the ownership and controlof its resources. The TPPA is the most dangerous threat to such anational strategy. TheTPPA is a tool of recolonisation by US tokeep China out of the Pacific. Extending the power of crisis-ridden US imperialism into whole Pacific to recolonise Pacificand to simultaneously block Chinas bid for a regional TPA, andalso gain more access to Chinas internal market. Thats why itsthe US state taking over every other Pacific state as a means oftaking over the Chinese state. Its a showdown of the two giantsof capitalism as the US declines and China rises. .

The US is in decline as its economic power wanes and its dollarceases to be the only world currency. This is because a currency

propped up by oil is being challenged by the Yuan which isbased on Chinas expanding productive capacity. The US wantsto grab onto China to halt its decline. It has done so with onehand the offshoring of manufacturing to Asia. But to grab withtwo hands it has to break into Chinas economic sovereignty,especially the dominance of its SOEs.

Its strategy is to restrict Chinas growth while at the same timesharing in it. By blocking China from the TPPA it puts China ata disadvantage. Yet the US corporations in those states thatalready have TPAs with China can piggyback into China onequal terms. Both US and Japan are big producers inside Chinawithin the free trade zones, but they want to extend into the state

sector, especially in privatising the SOEs.The Labour Partys position so far is to take credit for the TPPA!It is acting as a US lackey in a US imperialist drive against itsNo 1 trading partner, China! Its position is that it will not agreeto an agreement that is secret. Its position should be that it willreserve the right to unilaterally leave a TPPA that is signed

in secret. Otherwise the Labour Party is signing away what isleft of NZs national sovereignty and signing up the NZ workingclass to a war between the US and China in the near future!

Carbon* .ssets an Climate Collapse

Oil drilling and coal mining is a litmus test of Labours

economic and climate change policy. Will it go with the NACTline of the global capitalist economy wherever it pushes profitsin NZ, or will it opt for a state-managed sustainable economic

growth such as that of the Greens? Labour is torn internallybetween short-term jobs driven growth and longer-term

sustainable growth. It is trying to suppress this conflict in itsposition on oil drilling by opposing it until it is proven safe. But

just as like its position opposing mining on conservation land,this evades the larger issue of climate change. There is no waythat burning carbon can protect jobs now let alone in the future.The NACTs rip, shit and bust quarry mentality destroys jobs aswell as the environment. On the other hand the Greens reformsdont have the social support to win. The issue of globalwarming is now one of human survival where capitalism as asystem is destroying our future. Labour needs to rally itsworking class base to take control of the issue and make

stopping climate collapse the heart of its economic

development program.

A real Labour Party would recognise that climate collapse is acrisis many times more life threatening than the depression ofthe 1930s. What it needs is an emergency program to meet thiscrisis. First and foremost, the ownership and control of energyproduction should be socialised under workers control with nocompensation to the owners of privatised state assets. Theseassets should then be developed into 100% renewables (hydro,solar, wind, biomass etc). Energy efficiency and conservationshould be the criteria for all industrial and agriculturalproduction. State producer boards should plan and regulate themajor industries on the basis of sustainability as well as healthand safety. Problems with key industries such as a dirty

dairying would be regulated and state subsidies would becomethe basis of state shareholdings or cooperatives. The imperativeof sustainability would bring a slow socialisation of the economywith the workers and independent producers along with the statesharing in the true costs and benefits of production.

CSBan 'CS

These laws are major challenges to NZs economic sovereigntywhich means increasing dominance by imperialist US andChina. Yet Labour has always bought into spying on behalf ofits imperialist masters. From the SIS reds under the bed onbehalf of the UK and US to the GCSB and the war againstterror justifying the US global rule of terror. State spying serves

only the rule of capital. Specifically the great powers use spyingto advance their economic and political interests over their


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rivals. Loewensteinin Guardian updates NSAs latest global spynetwork of which NZ is a US team player. So the LabourPartys demand that NZs spy role be subject to an inquiry doesnot challenge the assumption that secret state spying isnecessary. If a true Labour Party is to represent the interests ofLabour against Capital here is what its policy should be.

First, a true Labour Party would challenge the view that theinterests of Labour and Capital can be reconciled - crony

capitalism is not an aberration but the norm. It would reject anofficial inquiry and set up an independent workers inquiry intospying. Second, it would abolish all state spying on its citizens,close down its installations, refuse to participate in spy networkswith other states, and instead set up a public Tribunal where anyaccusations of spying could be heard. The decisions of theInquiry and the Tribunal would be made by delegates elected torepresent the views of workers, women, youth, indigenous,social and environmental groups that comprise the broad labourmovement.

S$#Cit# an Casino Capitalism

Symptomatic of how decadent the NZ capitalist class is, is

Skycity. The NACTs are so cynical that they will pay out ofworkers taxes for Skycity to build its entertainment precinct inAuckland to fleece tourists and workers all, on the promise ofmore jobs. On the basis of this cost-benefit analysis, all thecosts fall on the workers and all the benefits go to the parasites.

Yet the Labour Party does not challenge Casino Capitalism at itsheart, the global financial capitalist class that parasitically livesoff the working class driving down their wages to increase theirprofits and then cynically exploiting their poverty byencouraging them to gamble. After all this is a metaphor for theway global capitalism in crisis works: stagnation of real growthcombined with massive speculative booms parasitic on growth.Labour needs to declare its intention to revoke NACTs corruptdeal with SkyCity and ultimately to revoke its casino licence.

C"ristc"urc" re-t"in$

If Labour is serious about going back to its working class rootsthen its role in ChCh is a test of that. Labour voted for thesacking of ECAN which ripped off water rights to boost dairyingprofits. Has Labour had a change of heart? Cunliffe announcedLabours decision to set up KiwiAssure attached to Kiwibank.Will this meet the need for a state insurer of disasters? Not ifKiwiAssure is just another insurance Co like Kiwibank is justanother bank. KiwiAssure needs to be a comprehensive no faultinsurer of disasters and funded on the model of ACC Otherwise

Labour is filling a gap rather than coming to grips with the largerquestion of the NACTs disaster capitalism model inChristchurch. Where is the workers alternative based on areturn to democracy and a comprehensive plan for the rebuild?Unless Labour steps up with major proposals it will haveabdicated any leadership of its historic constituency inChristchurch.

!ensions pensione off

ACTs neoliberal pension policy was adopted by Labour justbefore the 2011 election! The retirement age should come downto 60 not go up to 67.The generational argument is a red herring(making Labours red rather fishy) Society is more productive

every year, yet the proportion of the increase that goes to labourdecreases. The result is that capital creams it while workers are

expected to work longer for lower wages and low pension (ifthey survive). The Labour Party should take a stand onprinciples not affordability (neo-liberal bullshit about balancingthe budget while taxes on capital decrease). Labour produces thewealth. The working lifespan should decrease as productivityrises. Taxes on the rising share of capital should increase. Thestate can easily fund a living pension for a longer retirementfrom age 60. The irony is that a Labour Government led byCunliffe who has spoken of renouncing neo-liberalism, has

adopted the ACT policy of increasing the age of retirement sothat workers work more productively and longer for adiminishing share of the wealth they produce.

4rom &elfare to &or$fare

The Cunliffe Govt appeals to the memory of the Labour Party ofMickey Savage of the 1930s. That government was under suchpressure from unemployed and destitute farmers that itresponded with a social security package as a right ofcitizenship. It recognised that it was the capitalist economy andnot and underclassthat was to be blamed for unemployment andpoverty. The Blairite 4th Labour Government retreated to theneo-liberal view of social security as a responsibility that has tobe earned. Labour has remained silent on the NACTs slashing ofwelfare since failing to restore Ruthless Richardsons benefitcuts of 1991 all the way to Paula Bennetts abusive workfarereforms today. While David Shearer was briefly Labour leaderhe displayed his underclassprejudice with his reference to thebeneficiary on the roof. Will a Cunliffe-led Labour Party breakwith this neo-liberal workfare history?

A true Labour Party would return to the social welfare as a rightof Savages day and abolish all workfare measures introducedsince the 1970s. First, it would implement full employment and

job creation by public works. Free health, education and housingwould be paid for by a 100% capital gains tax on all property

and assets. It would create a UBI based on a living wage andadministered by the unions as a right whether one is working ornot. Even outright capitalists like Gareth Morgan argue that aliving UBI is more profitable for bosses than growing inequalityand poverty. These measures would help to recognise theworking class as the creators of wealth and shift the blame forNZs economic recolonisation by the US and China off theunderclass and back onto the decadent, parasitic and rapaciouscapitalist class that is destroying Aotearoa.

Re%olutionar# ,abour !art#

Is the Labour Party capable of standing up for Labour againstCapital? It is the very nature of the party that it has the main

contradiction between Capital and Labour running through it.Capital is devoted to exploiting workers for profits, whileLabour (not the Party!) is devoted to securing a share of thevalue going to securing a living wage. But such is the crisis ofcapitalism today all attempts at reconciling these objectives willfail. Profits must drive down living standards and destroy jobsand lives. Labour to live must challenge Capitals right to ruleby socialising all the essential resources that are necessary forlife and for the survival of the species. The Labour Party willsplit sooner or later into those who defend Capital, and thosewho are defend Labour.

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2013/12/labour-vs-capital.html


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/S.5 "e B.R Stri$es5Once again on t"e rele%ance an met"o of rots$#s ransitional !rogram

'ntrouctionEvery strike potentially becomes a school for revolution and thetwo BART strikes of 2013 posed questions of revolutionary

dynamics: how does the working class improve its position in aperiod of capitalist crisis and what worker democraticorganizational forms and political program are needed to win thebattle? These questions are provisionally answered by theTransitional Program. In this report we illustrate our differenceswith opponent political tendencies in the practice of theTransport Workers Solidarity Committee (TWSC). Much couldhave been learned, lets see who refuses to learn and why.

The workers' program cannot be reduced to slogans or bulletpoints. Yet when we raise it as an action program it is roundlyderided by all variants of centrists and reformists as a "laundrylist". The workers' program cannot be reduced to one pointunless that point is the Socialist Revolution; which while correct

in explaining what is objectively called for, does not takeworkers from their current backward consciousness to classpolitical consciousness and the understanding of the need for andhow to prepare for the Socialist Revolution. Those rightcentrists and reformists who adapt the workers program to theruling class' desire for and need to keep our wages below thelivable take the workers further away from preparing the classfor revolution.

The Sawant campaign and centrists in the Bay Area likeOakland Socialist Blogand Facts for Working Peopleblog arguefor the anti-working class minimum wage instead of demandingthat labor take on the fight for Jobs for All and a livable wage-a

prevailing wage that labor defines- a demand which raises thequestions of the sharing of work and shortening of hours with

no reduction of pay and the sliding scale of wages and prices.We are told by these centrists and their reformist friends thateven doubling the minimum wage would be a great step forwardfor the workers and thus we should build the link of theorganized to the unorganized by calling for labor to campaignfor a new higher minimum wage. Yet they continue to peg thatwage below the prevailing rate and thus below the living wage.

To win the prevailing rate will take a mass struggle that unitesthe class, develops democratic workers organizations, developsthe workers program and breaks from the Democrats. This ismore than the right centrists and reformists have stomach for.So they meet labor where it is (in the hands of the Democrats)and spice up the minimum wage demand (either by calling for$15 or $20 and a minimum $5 increase for all with pension andmedical,) just so they can appear more radical than the Greens,who call for $16.00 minimum, and the likes of Professor andformer Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who is for a $15.00minimum, and thus put pressure on the unions and Democrats todo what they are in the process of doing already; raising theminimum wage to $10 by 2015 in California.

This fake attempt to mobilize the low wage workers for a sub-living wage has been used by the labor aristocracy to mobilizesupport for and pressure the Democrats. We even have one

retired OEA "militant" here who admits that $36 an hour is theliving wage for the Bay Area but looks for a way to saddle the

labor movement with a sub-living wage demand as the means tounite with the unemployed. These labor fakers refuse to see thatwinning the most modest reforms is not possible without titanicpolitical struggles during this period of renewed capitalist decay.Indeed they adapt to the Roosevelt era minimum wage whichsupplanted labors traditional fight for a living wage. Even theearly AFL program "A fair day's work for a fair day's pay" ismore germane to workers lives than the sub-living wagepromoted by the Democrats, Greens, labor leadership, laboraristocracy and the reformists and centrist leaders who pose asrevolutionary socialists.

Labor is shell shocked by the onslaught of the bosses. Thedecades old labor/management team approach and even limitedstrikes will not keep workers current with inflation. The crisisforces big capital to crush the workers movement and chip awayat gains which were made by labor since WWII. The BART

workers, as representative of all public workers, are targeted asthe largest remaining unionized sector of the economy. Transitunions wield tremendous social power in the major metropolitanareas. The once powerful United Automobile Workers (UAW) isa shadow of its former self, while the ILWU longshoremen areunder heavy attack. Wisconsin and Michigan, bastions oforganized labor, have suffered heavy defeats. This must notcontinue! It is time to draw a line in the sand! The defeatengineered on the BART workers by the strong arm of thebusiness community, the political class and with the unionleaderships in tow represents a setback for the entire workingclass.

In every contract negotiation the class lines are drawn bare; thecrisis of leadership of the working class, the complicity oflabors leadership with the bosses, the lack of working classpolitical independence and the degeneration of the Marxist leftleave the workers without their own party and completely at themercy of the bosses onslaught. Traditional craft and industrialunionism in America restrained and accepting of the restraints oflaws like the Taft Harley Act, transferring hope from the self-mobilization of the workers in strikes and acts of class solidarityto a strategy of political subservience to the Democrats, has leftfar too many strikers alone on picket lines that do not stop scabs(the nurses), do not mobilize the class solidarity needed to win,and thus defeat after defeat is racked up, demoralizing the

workers.

Despite ruling class spin t"at a B.R stri$eoul cost 673 million a a#* t"e# irecte +oc$to pro%o$e one an#a#

With malice toward all who dare interfere with the right toaccumulate, the Veolia Corporation, whose tentacles aregrabbing up public transit (and water) systems across the countryand around the globe, acting in consort with the ruling class BayArea Council (BAC), together made a start at preparing theground for the privatization of the jewel of the Bay Area, theBART public transit system. Veolia has Para-Transit contractsin the Bay Area, competes with AC Transit for riders fromBART to the Oakland Airport and runs public transit systems forprofit on 6 continents. So it should have come as no surprise


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that Veolia was standing by with hundreds of buses and driversand a contract to drive BART passengers during the strike.Clearly, the BAC ensured Veolia it would profit both on theprovocation and on the consequences of the BART strike.

Across the country Veolia provides privatization solutions forpublic transits systems and then proceeds to degrade them andbust the unions. The Boston public school bus drivers launcheda wildcat strike against Veolia in Oct., 2013, in response to the

canceling of the workers contract with the city of Boston. Likein the Bay Area, strikers have been victimized. We say drop thecharges against the Boston 5, restore the contract, defeatprivatization! Workers need to know that negotiator for BART,Tom Hock, and Veolia were not engaged because he was thebest negotiator BART could buy for $399,000.00; rather, he wasrunning an expeditionary mission for the ruling elites who sitwith BART general manager Grace Crunican on the Board ofDirectors of the BAC. In conjunction with and on behalf of theBART directors and board he provoked a strike, more toantagonize and test the patience of the riding public than forreasons of the BART systems financial solvency. The rulingclass wants profit from public transit and Veolia and Hock have

a record of making profits, a fact which SEIU 1021 staffersresearched thoroughly.

The Democrats stepped forward capitalizing on the publicsdispleasure with the service interruption. Doing his mastersbidding, Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsome (product of theGetty billfold) scolded labor in no uncertain terms, and statedThis has got to be the last time this happens! Alongsidepromised legislation to outlaw transit strikes and possibly allessential service workers strikes, and in consideration ofattempts by Governor Brown and Mayor Reed (SJ-D) to destroythe public workers defined pensions, the hiring of Hock isanother interlocking piece of the ruling class strategy tocommodify everything, drive down the median wage, make the

workers pay more for their pensions and trap those pensions inthe financial services industry, while pushing more of themedical insurance costs onto the workers, all in order to restoreprofitability to capital.

The crisis of the overproduction of capital has drawn vastreserves of otherwise idled capital into the privatization process.The tendency of the rate of profit to decline (detailed byRoberts) puts pressure on individual capitals (whether held intrust or corporations) to maximize their rate of profit against thecompetition of all other capitals, which share among themselvesthe consequences of an ever-diminishing rate of profit.

The incursion of private capital into publicly run works as abusiness model has been described as privatization or thecommodification of everything. This Hayekian/Randiandream-come-true allows individual capitals to accumulate profit(a share of the total social surplus value) from essentially not-for-profit enterprises, while at the same time socializing thecosts and risks. Rather than creating new value, theprivatizations in education and the public transit turns overpublic capital resources to private industry and guarantees profitto the privatizer, while mollifying those who disparage publicworks and services (Tea Party and neo-liberal ideologues).

"e B.R Stri$e5 . 8e# Battle for ,abor

At the September 11

th

ATU Local 1555 meeting, apparentlybolstered by the distribution of the Transit Workers Solidarity

Committee (TWSC) leaflet, and despite a small turn out, thefrustrated workers challenged local President Antonette Bryantfor the leaderships lack of communications about thenegotiations and for not preparing the membership for the strike,which was being provoked actively by the BART negotiator.Unfortunately, a stirring of frustration in the rank and file hadnot resulted in a timely formation of a rank and file oppositioncaucus or broad-based strike committee.

Although supported by the TWSC, an organic rank and fileopposition never coalesced around the handful of outspokenrank and file militants who explained how the leadership wasacting to sink the strike preparations, how the leadership wasrefusing to mobilize the membership and was making commoncause with both the Democrats and management to prevent thisthing from getting out of hand.

Two community/labor marches were organized and relativelywell attended, as the routine model labor protests go. Eachmarch, one in August and one in October, was attended by some1500 workers and community supporters, far short of themassive gatherings the labor councils could muster if they wereserious about setting the stage for victory. The control of the

stage and microphone was in the hands of the union leadership,but under pressure from the community groups, Uncle Bobby(Oscar Grants uncle) and an Alan Blueford familyrepresentative addressed the crowd. The representatives of theMario Romero family from Vallejo were not included among thespeakers. Not until strike leader George Figueroa spoke at thesecond rally, after being victimized by management andabandoned by the union leadership, did any union speaker callfor a clean break with the Democrats and the formation of aWorkers Party. No wonder the leadership has abandoned thiscourageous strike organizer. The CWG calls for the completerestitution of Brother George Figueroa without furthervictimization, including all back pay, benefits and privileges!

No peace for the leadership until brother Figueroa getsjustice!

Throughout the struggle ATU Local 1555 made its officeavailable to an ad-hoc support committee which served as anintersection between the union leadership and the communityactivists. Under the guidance of Local 1555 Recording SecretaryChris Finn, these forces came together to take up support of thestrike. The resulting committee brought together activists fromthe Alan Blueford coalition, a number of left groups activistsand many of the same activists of the TWSC who wereorganizing strike support; groups like PSL, Solidarity, the LeftParty, ANSWER, BAMN etc., et.al.

Neither the ad-hoc committee nor the TWSC attracted the rank-and-file BART workers. The rank and file was not looking for

an outside or support vehicle to be active through. They weretaking leadership from their organization, which was doing


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everything it could to prevent the mobilization of thememberships of the various unions in BART and AC Transitfrom coming together with other out-of-contract unions, the porttruckers and the low wage workers in fast food and big boxdistribution centers, for united class-wide strike action. No massor regular strike committee meetings would be convened. Theleadership rightly gauged the sentiment of the rank and file asexpressed by two rejections of the TAKE AWAY tentativeagreements by the membership of their sister union, ATU Local

192. Tentative agreements the leadership had negotiated andtried unsuccessfully to sell to the AC Transit drivers. Fear ofthe growing frustration of the masses and with the logic of aunited transit strike on everyones mind, reinforced and kept theleadership on message, which was all conciliation and 100%obsequious in tone. As proof of their servility to big capital, theunion leaders enforced gag rules over rank and file militants,throwing them off the negotiations committees because theyfought the concessionary bargaining, fought for transparency, forcommunity outreach and mass mobilization to bring themembership the truth about the leaderships sellout perspective.

Reformism an t"e B.R stri$e

The servility of the leadership to capital pinned by the strongarm of the Democratic Party has long been apparent. At anearly summertime barbeque at Oaklands Mosswood Park priorto the strike, members of the three main unions met together butno organizing was discussed. Nor was any speakout organizedto discuss how to win the upcoming struggle. Rather theleadership ushered in the local Democratic Party committeemanwho praised the local leadership and promised that theDemocrats would be on the workers side. Yet in the daysleading up to the strike and for its duration the local Democratsand their Party leaders not only denied any support to theworkers--and by the end of the struggle the entire power of theDemocrats would be brought to bear on the workers--withLieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom proclaiming This has gotto be the last time, signaling that the growing unity drive ofRepublicans and Democrats alike to legislate against the right-to-strike for transit workers (and possibly essential workers) isnear the top of the Democratic Party agenda. Friends of Labor?Who needs friends like these!

Hand in hand with the bosses, the labor movements leadershipheld back the solidarity actions needed for the BART workers towin decisively. They could mouth the words, A loss for BARTworkers is a loss for all workers, but their role asmanagements enforcers assured they would not mobilizeagainst the attacks on public workers. An AFSCME Local 444

delegate to the Alameda Labor Council argued that labor shouldante up with full page advertisements in the bay area newspapersto counter the corporate media spin, but even ATU Local 1555delegate Chris Finn opposed the recommendation, so labor gaveup the media war without spending a dime!

The nicest thing you can say about the BART union leadershipsof ATU Local 1555, SEIU Local 1021, and AFSCME Local3993 is that they were not prepared strategically to protect oradvance the compensation or conditions of their workers in thisnegotiation. Long in the pocket of the Democrats, the leadershiphad nowhere to turn when faced down by every significantDemocrat from the mayors to the governor and President. The

leadership quickly backed down from the demand for acommensurate COLA (to cover losses imposed in the previous

contract,) and they quickly caved under the political andcorporate media pressure on pensions and medical. All thewhile the membership was atomized and demobilized, watchingtheir future being bargained away. The vacuum of leadershipwas becoming apparent and management smelled blood.

The long-term dependence on politicians, lawyers and theteaming with management had the effect of demobilizing anddemoralizing the membership over many years. The

memberships were never gathered for mass strike committeemeetings to discuss and develop, of their own will, a fightingstrategy! The memberships were of course polled but thendemobilized and only called in for informational meetings andstrike logistics planning (so unserious as to be a joke was thecall-in opinion airing session organized by the leadership ofATU Local 1555 which provided scant mechanism to translatemembers demands into negotiating positions.)

The union leaders were pressured on the one side by the unionbusters of the BART board, the Veolia Corporation and theircommitment to the capitalist Democratic Party and on the otherside by the workers determination to make up for sharing thepain during the first years of the current crisis. This explains

how the leadership stumbled reluctantly into and out of twostrikes, giving it away at the negotiating table only to catch a3% hail Mary pass tossed by management after the deaths oftwo scabs killed by management-run scab trains. With the end ofthe stimulus payroll tax relief on November 1 st, this 3% willnever appear in the workers envelope as money. In fact, thatsame 3% was sold as make-up for the new pensioncontributions. The union leaderships response to thismanslaughter was a quasi-religious candlelight vigil. The CWG

calls for a workers' tribunal to be convened by the labor

movement to try those responsible for this crime!

To avoid labor taking advantage of the changing public

sentiment against management, and for fear that the strike mighthave spread to AC Transit, the Port Truckers and beyond,management kicked in 3% in order to sweeten the deal andprevent the anticipated No vote from the membership for theTAKE AWAY AGREEMENT, which was presented as theLast Best and Final offer on the table before the scab trainaccident. This sweetener also served as a Get Out of TownFree Card for Tom Hock, and his $400,000 fee, which, despitethe corporate media black-out, was becoming public knowledge,as was his role in stalling the talks and provoking the strikes.

The union leaderships recommended the membership accept thisTA despite the fact that it did not catch up with nor will it keepup with inflation. The CWG consistently advocates NO votes onTAKE AWAY tentative agreements. The passage of thisagreement is a setback for the BART workers, AC Transitworkers and all other workers. In preparation for this defeat, acast of characters, from the union locals on up to theinternational unions and across all the legitimate organs oflabor, including its many self-styled socialist champions,particularly those of the economist persuasion, all took specialeffort to make certain that nary a finger would be raised toassure a worker victory.

"e enemies arra#e against t"e ransitional9et"o5 Centrism in t"e labor mo%ement

:Continue; http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2013/11/usa-bart-strikes-once-again-on.html


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(uclear !oer ont stop Climate Collapse

Prominent climate change pioneer James Hansen and a number of others including Guardian journalist

George Monbiotare now publicly advocating new nuclear power generation as the only viable solution to

burning carbon. Yet we literally do not have the time to debate the cost-effectiveness of Nuclear energy 60 even

20 years ahead. Climate collapsewill have turned nuclear plants into nuclear disasters by then. We should be

shutting down nuclear plants now if we are to survive as a civilisation. Environmentalists and reformistpoliticians who think that capitalism can find a nuclear fix to climate change delude themselves and attempt to

delude the masses. The evidence is clearthat nuclear energy is as potentially destructive of nature and society

as is burning carbon. The sun is the only nuclear plant which socialists should advocate as the source of our

energy.

Capitalists produce for profit no matter what the expense interms of social and environmental damage. Any social progressunder capitalism is due to working class struggle. That is whysocialists never put their trust in capitalist solutions to social andenvironmental problems. The current structural crisis ofcapitalism is creating worsening global instability and threat ofinter-imperialist war. In wars nuclear reactors are vulnerable todamage and destruction. Israel has bombed Syrian and Iraqinuclear facilities and continues to threaten to destroy Iransnuclear facilities.

Moreover the major imperialist powers have nuclear poweredfleets which if involved in military hostilities would endangertheir reactors. Even without war there is a long list of nuclearaccidents and release of radiation.All this is the living proof that ascapitalism nears the end of itsexistence it intensifies itsdestruction of the forces of

production. Today this has takenan unforeseen dramatic turn. Thedestruction of the forces ofproduction today all fuse into theglobal destruction ofanthropogenic climate catastropheand the threat of humanextinction.

Risk is real, not hypothetical or alarmist

Nuclear plants are too risky, too expensive, too insecure and tooslow to build in the time left us. The danger of nuclear meltdownis top of the list. Fukushima Daiichi and TEPCO are evidence of

the negligent design and operation of nuclear power plants. Farfrom rescuing capitalism from climate change there is the'potential' for nuclear meltdowns due to climate collapse. BothChernobyl and Fukushima were Level 7 (highest known)meltdowns caused by human failure. Chernobyl involvedoperator error compounded by design deficiencies andinadequate operating instructions. Fukushima was built on afault line, without adequate protection from a tsunami, and alsohad major design deficiencies. Climate collapse adds muchgreater risks of accidents as an exponential increase inextreme weather events that will render many existing plantsvulnerable to flooding. This is why nuclear plants should beclosed down now before they are inundated by storms and floodsand no new ones built by big nuclear subsidised by the dominantimperialist states.

The standard rejoinder of nuclear advocates is that the risk ofnuclear meltdowns and resulting harm is vastly overstated byanti-nuclear campaigners. Or at least, as Hansen et al argue,these known dangers are much less than that of carbon inducedglobal warming. The official method of measuring radiation

poisoning originates from methods of measuring doses ofradiation from nuclear weapons. But obviously there are alsolonger term environmental and healtheffects.

There are huge differences in which measures one uses.Monbiot, for example, quotes from theUN agency Unscear forhis numbers of 43 dead from Chernobyl, while Caldicott andothers think this agency covers upand lies about the true extent

of health effects and quotes theNY Academy of Sciencesreview of a mass ofepidemiological research. Moreimportant than Chernobyl as anindicator of future risk fromclimate change are themeasurable effects of theFukushima meltdown becausethey simulate the extremeweather conditions associatedwith climate collapse.

We have already seen nuclearplants flooded in the US. In 1992 Hurricane Andrew causedmajor damage to the Turkey Pointplant in Florida. Fort Calhounin Nebraskawas shut down because of flooding in July 2011 andremains shutdown. Nuclear whistleblowersin the US claim thatthere no adequate preparation for upstream dam failures facing

many plants. During Hurricane Sandy more than a dozen plantson the eastern seaboard were threatened and the oldest nuclearplant in the US, Oyster Creekin New Jersey, was shut down asflood water came within two feet of its backup diesel coolingsystem. Since Fukushima, US nuclear plants have beensubjected to inspections and found wanting, the worst being atMonticello, Minnesota.

In Britain, unpublished government analysis shows sites are atrisk from flooding due to climate change. [Sizewell graphic].InEurope, heat waves have caused problems with nuclear plantsthat have to be shut down. In 2003 and 2006 and 2011heatwaves forced the shutdown or reduction in production of

nuclear plants in France, Spain and Germany. In the US the 2012heatwave forced the shutdown of one reactor at the Millstone


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nuclear plant in Connecticut. Inside Climate Newsreports on themany instances in the US and Europe where heat and droughthave interrupted production of nuclear power. So, climatechange is already bringing extreme weather events such asdroughts and flooding that are testing the poor design and safetyof existing nuclear plants.

Fukushima Daiichi and nuclear Armageddon

The disaster at Fukushima has altered the debate dramatically.

Here we have a combination of design defects andadministrative blunders combining with a natural disaster a 9point earthquake and a massive tsunami. Here is the perfectstorm that simulates what many argue will be the future naturaldisasters compounded by extreme climate change. Fukushimahas activated both sides of the debate, but now ramped up manydecibels in response to the potential extreme threat.

On the pro-nuclear side Fukushima supports the need for anuclear future. A Forbes writer claims that the radiation leaksfrom Fukushima are no worse than eating bananas. In any caselike Hansen et al, the writer claims the risks ofFukushima leakages are far less than continued

carbon burning. He states that the Germandecision to close the nuclear stations meansmuch greater reliance on damaging brown coalburning plants. He concludes:

The point being that Fukushima went through

absolutely the worst natural disaster that the

world could throw at a nuclear plant: and yes,

that plant was wrecked but wrecking the plant

hasnt killed anyone and wont do. The

amazing thing about nuclear power is not how

dangerous it is but how safe it is. And given

that we do indeed need to have some power if

were to keep this civilisation thing on the

road, given that renewables simply cannot

scale up in time, were going to have to

replace some of our fossil fuel fired generating capacity with

more nuclear. Which is exactly what Hansen et alare pointingout.

The anti-Nuclear side point out that the real threat has not yetbeen revealed. While the effects of Chernobyl forced theauthorities to disclose what led to the disaster and the smallnumbers of deaths are seriously challenged, in Fukushima westill have a lot of political and corporate secrecy and denial.Koide Hiroaki is a nuclear engineer and one time advocate ofnuclear power who now wants these plants closed down. A long-

time critic of nuclear energy, after March 11, 2011 he is nowseen as a sort of official nuclear whistleblower in Japan. Notonly has Koide exposed the safety defects of nuclear plants, helinks this fact to the secretive corporate state regime thatdisregards public safety. His message is clear, the plantscontainment systems were destroyed by the earthquake andtsunami and the leaking of radiation continues and is not undercontrol. Existing levels of emissions are much worse thanconsuming bananas and future emissions and their health effectsare as yet unknown. The latest informationon emissions is veryscary. There is an excellent coverage of Fukushima by JapanFocus.

It is clear that far from convincing us that Fukushima hassurvived the worst that even global warming can throw at us

proving the viability of a nuclear future, on the contrary, theverdict of Fukushima is that the future of nuclear powergeneration is very much in doubt. Japan is proving that once thereal human costs of nuclear disasters become known, publicopinion is mobilised and far from settling for more carbonburning as envisaged by the Abe Government, can become thedecisive factorin the rapid growth of renewables. What the pro-nuclear lobby fails to recognise is that public pressure in Japan,Germany and other countries is now making possible the

viability of energy renewables to replace coal, oil and gas plants.

Renewables come cheaper and faster

At the same time as downplaying the risk of nuclear disasters thepro-nuclear advocates underestimate the viability of renewablessuch as solar, wind and biomass based on increased costefficiency even without the nuclear industries massive statesubsidies. Renewables are already competing with nuclear andincreasing their share and do not take 10 years or more toconstruct. Moreover the multibillions needed for new nuclearplants takes money away from the rapid expansion of

renewables.

In a comment to an article on the call in theHansen et al Open Letter for nuclear poweras an alternative to burning carbon, Amory B.Lovins from the Rocky Mountain Institutewrote:

"There's an important missing point here:

Building new nuclear power plants would

reduce and retard the climate protection thatDrs. Hansen et al. (and I) want. Why?

Because new nuclear power plants (of any

kind) are so costly and slow to build that

they'd save ~3-20x less carbon per dollar and

~20-40x less carbon per year than investing

the same money in efficiency, cogeneration,

and modern renewables. This unavoidable

conclusion from these technologies' empirically observed market

prices and deployment speeds was summarized in 2009. I

wonder if Drs. Hansen et al. would please enlighten us about

exactly why they believe renewables cannot scale fast enough.

The empirical data show that non-hydro renewables are adding

80+ GW/y, have already added more capacity in less than a

decade than nuclear power has achieved in a half-century, and

are attracting a quarter-trillion dollars of private capital per

year. Nuclear energy is losing capacity (and was even before

Fukushima), will soon fall behind nonhydro renewables in

output as it already has in capacity (even China's nuclear powerwas outgenerated last year by its windpower), and is

unfinanceable in the capital markets.

More fundamentally, non-hydro renewables are scalable, mass-

producible manufactured products. They're exploiting the

economies of mass production and fast marketwide installation

that for nuclear power are a remote hopeand unrealistic due

to poor economics. It's strange to tout new reactors when the US

has terminated 14 operating or planned ones this year alone

because just their operating cost can't compete. If the concern is

the supposed challenges of grid integration, I'd invite the

authors to explain why Germany and Denmark (with 23% and

41% renewable electricity in 2012) have Europe's most reliable

electricity, and how the lights stay on in Spain (48% in the firsthalf of 2013) and Portugal (70%), all without new bulk storage.


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Of course, the cheapest and fastest options are on the demand

side. U.S. weather-adjusted electricity use per dollar of real

GDP fell 3.4% last year alone, and we're barely scratching the

surface of profitable efficiency.

Workers Power!

While the capitalist market is already showing that energyrenewables are cheaper, more efficient and practicable as thealternative to burning carbon. But state monopoly capitalism

facing a terminal crisis is driven by massive energy corporatesthat have interests in pushing coal, oil, gas and nuclear ratherthan energy renewables. To survive as a ruling class, they willfight a dirty class war to dig, drill and frack the remainingstockpile of carbon and turn the world into a ball of fire. Climatescientists are coming to the view that climate catastrophe isunstoppable. We therefore face a very stark choice of capitalismin all of its destructive drive to survive, or socialist revolutionfor humanity to survive. Facing capitalist crisis and climatemeltdown the working class needs a political program that canmeet its needs. To have a chance of surviving we have to get ridof capitalism and create a socialist society! We put forward aprogram of Transitional Demands for urgent debate among theworlds workers:

Basic demands for decent jobs, wages, houses, transport,health, education, social security etc all pose the urgentnecessity for workers to self-organise their own classpower!

We demand the immediate closing down of coal and gasplants (other than emergency backups) through workeroccupations of big oil and its operations.

We demand the transfer of the multi-billion state subsidiesto big nuclear be spent instead on rapidly expanding solarand other renewables to reach zero carbon by 2030.

We demand a crash program of public works in renewablesto meet the climate collapse deadline of 2030 and to put the

industries under workers control and administration. Energyproduction must be socialised under the democratic controlof the working people!

Capitalist resistance to our basic survival demands willprove than it is necessary to overthrow the capitalist rulingclass and replacing it with a worldwide WorkersGovernment. Without this we cannot act in time to reverseclimate collapse, stop human extinction, and create asocialist society based on planned production that restoresthe balance with nature and produces sustainably to meethuman needs.

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2013/11/nuclear-power-wont-stop-climate-collapse.html

reetings to t"e Secon Congress of t"e Re%olutionar#

&or$ers roup of )imbabe

from the Communist Workers Group (USA) December 6, 2013

Since independence in 1980 the ZANU-PF and itspredecessors have made Zimbabwe safe for imperialistexploitation. The Program of Permanent Revolution isconfirmed in the negative results of the national revolution,which gained for the national bourgeois forces the role ofadministrator over and champion of a capitalist economy whichcan neither support its people nor gain its independence from thedictates of the world market. They are playthings of imperialism;they cannot avoid the economic and military ravages intertwinedwith the inter-imperialist struggle over Africas resources. TheZANU-PF regime has not always been a favorite with the former

colonizers and they are tolerated in the breach because the costof overthrowing them was judged to be too steep by the Blairand Mbeki regimes. Sanctions imposed at that time impacted thelives of the working masses and ordinary poor. By design theydid not interfere with the profits of the giant extractioncompanies.[1]

In the epoch of imperialism there is no national program for theliberation of the semi-colonial countries and their people. Thepan-Africanist vision also has not liberated Africa. While toutedfrom many corners of the continent by liberation fighters turnedcapitalist state administrators, it serves as an ideological andorganizational roadblock to the African workers revolution inparticular and the world revolution by extension.

The tasks of the bourgeois revolution, the completion of theagricultural reform, national independence and democracy havenot been completed by the ZANU-PF. How could they be withtheir political program? A layer of veterans has become a newruling class. Their privilege derives from and is maintained bythe counter-revolution from within the anti-imperialistrevolution, and is just a cost of doing business for theimperialists.

Had these tasks been completed Zimbabwe would be able tofeed its people and would not be trapped into mono-cropping for

the world market. The starving of the masses fills the prisons forwant of bread and democracy. Yet in the prisons hundreds havedied because the state cannot find the funds to feed the inmatesbut one meal a day.[2]The capitalist system is the crime and theprisons are the result! We say tear down the prisons! Completethe agricultural reform by uniting agricultural workers under theleadership of the working class to seize Capitals assets, plan andimplement a rational production of food to meet the needs of thepeople.

Had these tasks been completed the resources of the state wouldprevent the epidemic (reportedly 100,000 victims) of waterbornedisease, and cholera would not be a threat today. Yet bysubordinating the national revolution to imperialism, the mineralwealth of the nation keeps the miners and their families living inpoverty without clean and safe water supplies.[3]


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We hear Anglo American tooting its own horn for havingdonated a preposterous $100,000 to the Red Cross and showcaseplumbing projects to fight cholera. The fake concern of theseimperialists is notable on two accounts. Capital proclaims itsbeneficial role as a big investor, yet the historic impoverishmentof the nation is the product. We say complete the revolution!Expropriate the assets of foreign capital! Make the imperialists

pay![4]

Rio Tinto, Anglo American, Impala Platinum drain the nationswealth by keeping the miners wages at the starvation minimumwage of $227 a month. The Chamber of Mines is fighting theunions demands for $800 for diamond miners, $700 forplatinum miners and $573 for gold miners. The impasse innegotiations last week (Nov 26) will once again put the ZANU-PF to the test as the state arbitrator adjudicates on the dispute inJanuary. We say no faith in the state arbitrators! VICTORY TOTHE MINERS IN THEIR FIGHT FOR A LIVING WAGE! TOWIN AGAINST THE INTERNATIONAL CORPORATIONSUNITED STRIKES ACROSS SOUTHERN AFRICA ARENEEDED!

In Bloomberg.com we read, The union believes that its fairand just for each sub-sector to remunerate its employees at ratesthat are proportional to its performance We say union leaderswho tie labor costs to the price of the ore workers extract fromthe ground are not committed to the workers but to the marketand its dictates! The LCC demands a living wage for all! Forwage and price committees tied to mass assemblies of workers,the unemployed, agricultural labor and students! We must rejectwages being determined by the wild fluctuations in the price ofthe ore workers mine. Imperialism has extracted its profit andsuper-profits when the ore was selling at high prices, yet theydid not raise wages then, and now the labor fakers tier the wagedemands referencing the imperialists excuses about the fall indemand! Repatriate the stolen super-profits! Expropriate theExpropriators![5]

We have noticed a big increase of the Chinese influence inZimbabwe and it is not limited to the economic sphere. The 98million dollar loan to build the Harare military base signals along-term partnership with the ZANU-PF regime. It willgarrison forces aimed squarely at the working class, asZimbabwe is not the imperialist proxy of choice for enforcementon the continent. For the present we dont see Zimbabwe makingmilitary moves against its neighbors. This base will constitutethe security of the state at the expense of the masses who willhave to pay back the loan. And the Atlantic Monthly raises thequestion about what it represents about future projections of

Chinese military power onto the continent. We well rememberthat imperialists have made Africa their battleground in bothinter-imperialist world wars and we see Africom as an earlyplaceholder for US imperialism and its NATO allies.[6]

The Marikana example is an object lesson in the need of theworking class to organize self defense of its ranks and itsstruggles. We know the ANC colluded with the mine ownersagainst the Marikana miners and shot them down in cold blood.The ZANU-PF is no better and we must warn the workersagainst faith in the state and prepare the masses to defend theirstrikes, to arm the people and disarm the police. As Trotskyobserved in his history of the Russian Revolution, The way to

the soldiers rifle leads through the revolver taken from thePharaoh. [7]

From the belly of the imperialist beast and on behalf of thevanguard workers of the USA we salute this second congress ofthe Revolutionary Workers Group! We salute the programmaticconquests that have resulted in the formation of the RWG. TheRWG is the ripe fruit of the battle against Cliffism and itssurrender to the Popular Front and entry into the MDC. Wewould wish to caution vanguard fighters everywhere of theCliff/Schachtman tendencys history of reducing class struggleto economism. Recently, these willing class collaborators (the

ISO-Z) tried to hitch their failed economist project to theunsullied standard of the RWG which proudly defended thetransitional method against a fake unity of the working class andits vanguard around the minimum program of reformism.

The RWG likewise rejected the schematicism and target fixationof the FLTI which refuses to recognize Chinese imperialismthough it stares workers in their face anywhere they care to lookand particularity in the southern hemisphere. The RWG hassuccessfully defended the revolutionary position on the August1991 coup and counter-coup in the former USSR and has doneso against the considerable pressure from the backslider RCITwhose break from the method of Cliffism is incomplete as

demonstrated by their support for Yeltsin faction and theirobjectively pro-imperialist position in support of the Bosnianbreakaway state and the NATO bombing of Serbia.

We salute the RWG for raising the banner in Africa forsolidarity with the Revolutionary fighters in Syria and insolidarity with the deepening Arab revolution against themisguided calls for retreat to bourgeois parliamentarism and theConstituent Assembly while trade unionists on strike in Egyptare daily fighting the military regime and while the order of theday across MENA is to organize workers councils and militia.

We are united in our internationalist vision and resolved uponthe tasks of building a revolutionary workers international. The

very survival of humanity depends on our victory. Capitalism,the impending inter-imperialist conflict over resources andmarkets and the devastation of climate change will devastate thebillions in the semi-colonial world whose infrastructure is leastprepared to adapt. The impact of drought driven by climatechange on the Syrian economy has driven the people to revoltand we will see case after similar case as the compradorbourgeoisie seek to keep the cork in the bottle. Hurricanes,typhoons, natural disasters combined with capitalist lack ofplanning and the anarchy of production that gave us Fukushimacries out for the formation of a planned world economy. Ourtasks are monumental but our program of class independenceand the dialectical method of the transitional program guide us

to build our fighting party to lead the workers to victory.

.ll poer to t"e or$ing class


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Guy McPherson is rapidly gaining areputation as Guy McStinction as the climate

scientist who is predicting near-term humanextinctionbeyond the 2030s. He makes thecase that Climate Collapse (CC) is upon usand that only industrial collapse could stop it.When that happens we as a species will as hesays, Go dark as it becomes extinct. The 26positive feedback loops(PFLs causal chainsthat are self-reinforcing and increaseexponentially) are many and almost all arealready beyond human control.

McPherson accepts that against all odds thereare (currently) two positive feedbacks that we

can influence. These are the ones that set allthe other PFBs in motion. Broadly they are theextraction and burning of fossil fuel. The onlyway McPherson thinks we can reverse andstop those positive feedbacks is for industrialcivilisation to collapse.

The problem is that while McPherson has the scientificcredentials to understand and explain CC, he lacks thesecredentials when it comes to explaining the industrial civilisationthat caused it. One requirement of science is that if you arepostulating human action to stop an effect you need tounderstand the cause. Before we talk about industry collapsingwe need to know what it is and how to make it collapse.

McPherson understands industrial society as that of empirecontrolled by corporations. He sees industrial society ruled bythose in power now using a police state and NSAto keep a holdover the people. He hoped that the Global Financial Crisis of2008 would bring about the collapse of industrial society. Butthat did not happen. The big banks and big business rallied withbig bailouts and bonuses from big government that then turnedthe big cops on Occupy.

Far from collapsing, the monopoly capitalist state then embarkedon a crash program to extract and burn all known fossil fuels toboost profits. What will it take to build a citizens crash programto stop the corporate crash program turning the planet into a ballof fire? McPhersons response to this is the need for totalrevolution, anarchy and freedom but he has no road map forhow this can be made possible. This is the main problem withGoing Darkand the rest of this review is about spelling out thatcrash socialist program for survival.

Capitalist crisis meets Climate Catastrophe

Why didnt the 2008 GFC bring about the collapse of industrialcivilisation? The short answer is that the capitalist class did notallow it to collapse. Industry is capitalist industry owned andcontrolled by capitalists. They are motivated by profits whichthey screw out of the working class surplus-value. Capitalism is

a dynamic contradiction. It develops technology to increaselabor productivity to get more surplus-value out of workers. But

the consequence of this is the increase ininvestment in the tools of production (machines

etc) that cannot produce value, relative to thewages of productive workers, who do. This is thefamous organic compositionof capital. This sowsthe seeds of crisis in the form of the Tendency ofthe Rate of Profit to Fall (TRPF). The capitalistsfight the TRPF with counter-tendencies,plundering the world for cheap resources, cuttingwages, and of course inventing better machinesto make labor more productive. But inevitablythe capitalists cannot screw enough surplus valueout of workers to make a profit on theirinvestment and the TRPF wins. A crisis of fallingprofits results leading to a fall in investment, the

classic capitalist slump, and an overproduction ofcapital which must be devalued to restore the rateof profit.

The last major slump began in the 1970s butdespite devaluations of capital, particularly in the neo-liberalyears, surplus capital remained. It found an outlet in speculatingin existing values creating fictitious values was above truevalues. The 2008 GFC was a collapse of several of theseovervalued speculative markets, beginning with housing butspreading to the whole banking system. To prevent this systemcollapsing along with these fictitious values, the banks werebailed out by central banks which created $trillions of debt to be

paid for by future generations of workers in cuts to livingstandards - hours, wages, pensions, conditions etc. But $trillionsof fictitious values remain to be destroyed before profits recoverback to their post-WW2 boom levels.

The GFC did not lead to the collapse of industrial civilisationbecause it was no more than a symptom of that long decline ascapitalism exhausts its capacity to plunder the earth and thelabor value of workers sufficient to sustain its profits. Thecapitalist class treated the symptom of an ailing capitalism but ithas not yet been able to cure the disease falling profits. Thisexplains why the ruling class is ruthlessly mining, drilling,fracking the earth, and ruthlessly spying, militarising, andrepressing workers, activists and terrorists who resist itsheadlong rush to destruction. It is the crisis-ridden capitalistsystem in extremis that accounts for the polarisation of theglobal population where the ruling class, with its politicalparties, fake social movements, and media bullshit oppress theglobal working class which is fighting to survive as part of thenatural world that parasitic capitalism threatens to make extinct.This contradiction is becoming more extreme and can beresolved in favour of nature and humanity only by theinternational working class, the proletariat, overthrowing andreplacing the capitalist system.

Green capitalists and socialists

McPhersons terms, anarchism, freedom and totalrevolution are subversive concepts, but they need to be


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translated into revolutionary strategy and tactics to overthrowcapitalism. Logically, total revolution is the only course ofaction in stopping the positive feedbacks still within our control.If we succeed then survival makes Freedom possible. But areAnarchism, ecosocialism and even Marxism up to the task?

The first test is to reject Green Capitalism which is bothutopian and reactionary. It is utopian because capitalism cannotcoexist in harmony with nature. It is reactionary because it limits

itself to non-violent civil disobedience. This is a sort ofpassive-aggressive behaviour activist against the corporateelite but pacifist against capitalism.

Who are the Green Capitalists? James Hansencalling for morenuclear power; Bill McKibbens 350.org and anti-Keystonecampaigns funded by Rockefeller and other business foundationsto the tune of $10million to stop the tar-sands and shale fracking;Climate Ground Zeroand the defenders of Coal River Mountain,or Greenpeaceclimate activism all over the world. All assume itpossible to stop fossil fuel burning without overthrowingcapitalism. While they act out this passive aggression thepositive feedbacks keep burning us up.

Total Revolution also means going beyond Green Socialism(or ecosocialism) which claims that socialism can be achievedby redistributing the worlds wealth and stopping capitalistgrowth without smashing the capitalist state and creating acentralised workers government. This is Green capitalism with asocialist gloss. It deludes workers into the belief that capitalistscan be made to forgo their carbon burning destructiveprofiteering without making workers pay dearly with loss oflivelihoods and loss of lives.

The best known advocate of Green Socialism is John BellamyFoster, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon.Forster shares with the Green capitalists the belief that we have

the time to mobilise to stop climate change by pushing forreforms. He critiques Hansen et al for failing to see thatcapitalism will repress any direct action to enforce a carbon taxbut at the same time pins his hopes on such reforms leading tothe development of revolutionary consciousness. Such reformsinclude a carbon tax, opposition to capitalist waste, to capitalistgrowth that does not meet needs and so on.

The problem is we do not have the time for a struggle forreforms that may lead to revolution. Marxists have alwaysargued that reforms only result when the bosses want to head offa revolution. We have to take action now to shut down oil andgas plants as well as the major industries that rely on them suchas the auto and plastics industries. Inevitably such mass direct

action targeting the ruling class right to rule will bring down thespy, anti-terror state forces on activists and prove to those on thereformist road that a leap to revolution that destroys thecapitalist state is necessary.

Total Revolution and Survival Socialism

For Marx the forces of production included nature (importantlythe labor-power of workers) that was subordinated to capitalistproduction for profit. The capitalist exploitation of nature did atthat time not pose Climate Catastrophe. Today we are faced withconsequences of centuries of capitalist plunder a blowback bynature. This is not anthropogenic but capitalogenic ClimateCollapse. For thousands of years before capitalism humans hadto coexist as part of nature. So it is not human agency but

capitalist agency that destroys the forces of production in its madrush to exhaust millions of years of stored up carbon. Forrevolutionary Marxists capitalism is way past its due date. Asocialist revolution is way overdue to stop the massivedestruction of the forces of production (nature).

Yet while socialist revolution is necessary now there can be noimmediate transition to a socialist society in which newlyinvented technology will allow the forces of production to

developed in harmony with nature allowing a reduction in laborand a situation of plenty. First, the destruction of nature has to bestopped. The immediate priority will be the conservation ofresources while a transition to new technology is developedalong with a global plan that reorganises production on the basisof meeting the basic needs of all. For revolutionary Marxiststhen, total Revolution means overthrowing capitalism andreplacing it with a transitional workers government that acts tostop the carbon burning feedback loop. Only if and when thathas been achieved can production be planned sustainably to meetthe needs of the 7 billion earthlings.

Climate change demands a total revolution to dump corporatecapitalism. Anarchism is not sufficient. Anarchism ispremised on the petty bourgeois individual who is a creature ofcapitalism. The proletariat is the progressive class withincapitalism but whose historic mission is to be the gravediggersof capitalism and the builders of socialism. The proletariat needsto control and conserve its resources to survive as part of nature.Grass roots movements likeIdle No More, and trade unions andcommunity activists, need to join forces as the universal struggleof the proletariat. This is class war. We need to organisedemocratically but act globally. This requires an internationalorganisation a world socialist party. We must take the powerand wealth off the ruling class take over the Banks and all thebig business.. We must smash their state apparatus thatindoctrinates us, spies on us and represses us.

There is one positive mega feedback a socialist revolution canstop. It is the capitalist exploitation of nature as the source ofcorporate profits. We as workers are the source of those profits.Our labor-power (along with the rest of nature) is the source ofall wealth. We need to mobilise our own class power. We haveto build a system of workers power to defeat the state power ofthe ruling class. That power has to be based on its source ourlabor. We need to withdraw our labor in many strike actions thatbuild into

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