cs108 jan-march 2014

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Briefs

For Revolution in Bosnia: For a Federation of Balkan Socialist Republics!

In Bosnia workers are rapidly coming to the conclusion that capitalism and imperialism have nothing to offer them but starvation and death. They desperately want to go back to workers ownership and control. But they can only go forward and a good first step is that they are building forums and assemblies on majority votes. We should call these embryonic workers councils, which however need to throw out the non-workers, i.e., bourgeois and oppositional petty bourgeois agents, who will try to sidetrack the workers back into a bourgeois parliament. Thus we have a problem with the call raised in many places for a government of technical experts. We have seen governments of technical experts manage the crisis of capitalism at the expense of the working class in Italy and Greece. The Balkan states need workers governments. Read more

Imperialists out of the Ukraine!

Unless the workers of the Ukraine rise up/emerge as an independent force, fight for a workers government based on workers councils and workers militias that repudiates the debt, seize the commanding heights of the economy, the pipelines, the shipping and transport hubs, all the imperialist assets and puts them under workers control, austerity will be imposed and the debt will be extracted to the advantage of either Putins or Obamas paymasters. Read more

From Bosnia to Venezuela:

US-China rivalry threatens war

Ukraine, Bosnia, Syria, Egypt and Venezuela are all currently flashpoints in the growing rivalry between the US led bloc of older imperialist powers and the rising Russia/China bloc of emerging imperialist powers caused by the onset of the global crisis of falling profits. These flashpoints reflect the life and death struggle of these imperialist powers to restore their profits at the expense of their rivals. Ultimately this struggle is downloaded onto the masses who suffer attacks on the living standards and their lives. The uprisings and revolutions in these flashpoints represent the mobilisation of the global working class entering the stage to break free from imperialist oppression and the national bourgeois regimes that are its lackeys. There can only be one of two outcomes. Either imperialism destroys the planet and humanity, or the working class overthrows imperialism and builds a socialist society. For humanity to live, capitalism must die! Read more

Defend South Korean Railworkers!

For a United Socialist Republic of Korea!

The 22-day Korean KORAIL railway strike by more than 8,000 workers of the Korean Railway Workers Union (KRWU) and the Korean Public Services and Transportation Workers Unions (KPTU, a federation of unions) against privatization of the state-run service ended on December 31st...Korean workers, North and South, need to defeat every privatization drive as well as the Stalinist Kim regimes stratagems for restoring capitalism along the lines of the Chinese model. In the one scenario North Korea becomes part of an existing American semi-colony in South Korea while in the other it becomes a semi-colony of Chinese imperialism. The road to victory for a united Korean people would overthrow the parasitic Stalinist Bureaucracy in the North and unite all Korean workers against the US and competing imperialisms and their pet capitalist class in the South. Read more

Leader of Black Capitalism,

Nelson Mandela, dies at age 95

The leader of black bourgeois nationalism, life time servant of capital, Nelson Mandela, is dead, leaving behind a shameful legacy of all sorts of compromises and capitulation to imperialism, alongside betrayal of the liberation struggle of toiling masses. Needless to say, that this legacy is equally shared with Mandela by bourgeois leaders of all backward and ex-colonial countries- from Nehru to Gaddafi. Mandelas death is being used by the ANC, to attempt to reclaim its lost credibility by chanting the history of struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa where workers and youth in the cities and towns, fought heroically against the brutal regime and its heavily armed security forces, and scores were killed or imprisoned. We reprint the Workers Socialist Party of Indias balance sheet on Mandela. Read more

The CWI minority does not get to the roots of the leaderships empiricism

We welcome the recent attempts by CWI members around Bruce Wallace to challenge the CWIs rejection of Marxs Law of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall (LTRPF), for an eclectic set of causes including neo-liberalism, financialization, and under-consumption. However, we dont think that the minority critique represents a complete break with the CWIs empiricist method which we trace back to the version of Pabloism that germinated in the tendency founded by Ted Grant in post-WW2 Britain. We think that Militant like the other main tendencies in post WW2 Trotskyism liquidated the revolutionary party into reformism and Stalinism Read more

Egyptian Strike wave shows

Revolution is still alive and kicking

Under pressure from a mass uprising of millions, the SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) deposed Morsi and proved that it was not a neutral champion of the Egyptian people but the dominant bourgeois force in Egypt prepared to smash the revolution in return for economic backing from both imperialist blocs. The SCAF has failed in this aim as despite heavy repression the revolution has deepened and a major strike wave has spread across Egypt, uniting in a new union federation. This is the proof of what we said last July about the revolution deepening.

The deposing of Morsi was not a decisive defeat of the working class. It was not a coup in the sense of that of Pinochet or the Brazilian junta since it was immediately met by mass resistance of the MB supporters and the revival of a mass strike wave. The sectarian attempt by the SCAF to turn the labor movement against the MB as terrorists, has failed. Now that the revolution has returned to its base in the labor movement, the unity of the working class on a non-sectarian basis behind a revolutionary party and a transitional program to break from the SCAF is the order of the day. Read more

US vs China proxy war in South Sudan

The recent Workers International Vanguard Party in South Africa (WIVP) analysis of the war in South Sudan misses the essential point that the conflict is a proxy war between US and China. China controls most South Sudan oil production and takes 80% of its oil exports. North Sudan has little oil. While the US backed partition to gain control of the oil it no longer has confidence in Kiir who is aligned to China in a strategic development deal. In Uganda Museveni was a Garang supporter for years and now supports the current Kiir regime to maintain regional stability and reap his share of the booty from oil wealth in the region driven by China's expanding economy and its increasing influence in Uganda. This has opened a rift between Uganda as the US is backing the Machar coup which has already got troops in the most important oilfields. South Sudan is like every other flashpoint around the world. The US and China are locked in a global inter-imperialist rivalry which will increasingly be expressed in proxy wars such as this. Failure to recognise this fact will make your analysis sloppy at best and dangerous at worst.

Defend Venezuela from both US and Chinese imperialism; for a Workers and Peasants Government!

The US is backing the anti-government opposition in Venezuela and using is proxy states in the OAS to further destabilise the Bolivarian revolution. Revolutionaries must defend Venezuela against this US trade wars, internal disruption, and attempted coups, without given any political support to the Bolivarian bourgeois regime or its alliance with Chinese imperialism. Most of the Latin American Menshevik left supports the Bolivarian states and their popular front regimes as progressive against US imperialism. But as we have shown, these regimes are bourgeois Bonapartist regimes balancing between the masses and both US and Chinese imperialism. Our program is for the formation of independent workers and peasant organs to break with the Bolivarian regimes and their links to both imperialist blocs. It is necessary to fight for workers councils and militias capable of uniting the working class around a revolutionary program for workers power to overturn the bourgeois state and impose Workers and Peasants governments in a federation of Socialist Republics of South and Central America! Read more

Class Struggle 108 January-March 2014

14

Aotearoa:

Mana: Movement for Reform or Revolution?

The NACT regime is fearful of both Mana and the new Dotcom party so they are spinning a campaign to smear both as they talk about an alliance to get over the 5% electoral threshold. Well the NACTs would know all about the 5% threshold. But is Mana selling out to a rich fraudster in danger of being extradited to the US, or is there some logic to Mana doing a deal with Dotcom?

Background

Mana is not very left wing. It is basically a Maori nationalist party with some populist elements linked to the Australian Green Left and the Bolivarians in Latin America. Mana came out of the Maori Party, itself a split from the Labour Party in opposition to the former Labour government policy to place the beaches in state control the Foreshore and Seabed act: effectively confiscated Maori claims to rights to the Foreshore and Seabed such as aquaculture and mining. But the Maori Party was always committed to the emerging capitalist tribal, or iwi, leaders whose interests were not those of the mass of Maori workers. They proved this by joining in a coalition with the National Government alongside ACT and NZ Future.

Mana split from the Maori Party when it proved incapable of standing up to its National Party partner to defend ordinary Maori. It appeared that Hone Harawira had been trying to meet the needs of poor and working class Maori as a Maori Party MP, and was obstructed by the Maori party leadership because of their alliance with the capitalists. The lesson should have been that an alliance with capitalists will not meet the needs of working or poor. Has Mana taken that lesson on board?

Mana took those dissatisfied Maori party members those who agreed that the Maori Party were betraying the needs of working and poor Maori in government with National. Mana enlisted Unite union official Matt McCarten as campaign manager and gained some union activist support. Mana movement also attracted some working class activists and left wing activists including some from Socialist Aotearoa (SA) and International Socialists Organisation (ISO).

Manas policy reflects the diverse membership influenced by Maori nationalist, at times popular practical social welfare for the poor. Feed the kids has been one of Hone Harawiras more potent policies raised in parliament. However just as the Maori Party was formed to defend the right of iwis to set up capitalist corporations to exploit the Foreshore and Seabed, Manas policies for the poor are a compromise with capitalism. They seek to patch up a problem within capitalism, rather than overthrow the entire system. As such it is a movement for reform and not a movement for revolution. Lets see how this works in practice.

Mana movement for reforms not revolution

Housing - Mana participated in the fight against privatisation of state housing areas in Glen Innes, Porirua and Hastings. It is committed to state housing and has picketed and blocked trucks removing state houses from Glen Innes. This is a good tactic but it is being used to push a parliamentary strategy rather than building a working class movement on the ground. Mana failed to build support in the community and in the unions against the removals to not only picket but occupy these homes with working class families that need the homes. Instead they used small groups of locals and supporters in futile attempts to stop the removals. As a result Manas weakness and desperation lead to individuals staging risky stunts and members being arrested including leaders such as John Minto and Hone Harawira. This has reduced housing activism to no more than political diversions such as road trips to Wellington (parliament) and letters to politicians. As a result the NACT regime has successfully divided Maori into competing over a declining stock of State houses with Kaitaia Maori receiving relocated Glen Innes houses and Whakatane Maori offering to buy up surplus State houses for removal.

Workers struggles - Mana has had victories in some picket line protests shaming an Otara retailer into removing gambling machines, and embarrassing the Auckland city council into exploring other options for an east west motorway from the airport (instead of through Mangere suburban housing area). These are notable because they are based on the effective rallying of working class communities which then have the potential to get politically involved in a questioning and challenging Manas reformist strategy. Generally however, Mana has only supported union pickets as followers not as leaders. Except for those in Mana who are involved in the Unite! union they have not given priority to campaigns for workers in struggle against the capitalist class. The Auckland Action Against Poverty (AAAP), founded by Mana co-Vice President Sue Bradford, a pressure group that is active in campaigning for the poor, does not promote itself as recruiting the poor to the unions, nor the Mana Party itself. The Mana movement is therefore fragmented and aimed at local body and parliamentary politics rather than aimed at building a united working class mass base capable of developing into a revolutionary movement.

Against Asset sales Instead of workers occupations of state assets against sales, Mana has played into the hands of private capitalism by supporting the Maori Council legal fight (injunction) against the sales (for Maori rights as capitalist rights). Power station workers combined with working class communities could occupy these sites together. However we would need to cut the power to the capitalist class to stop the sales. And that would have raised the question of who has the power? a revolutionary working class; or a parasitic capitalist class. What is needed is more direct action that mobilises the local working class communities in the issues that matter. The weakness of organised working class movement outside parliament cannot be overcome by being again and again diverted into parliamentary dead-ends.

Parliamentary partners - Mana has agreed to talks with the capitalist-aligned Maori Party (who props up this capitalist government and backs their anti-worker actions). The Maori Party are dedicated to being at the capitalist table. In talks, they agreed to work together on common programmes for the poor. This is further evidence of a non-revolutionary party: A party committed to working with outright capitalists is reformist. If Mana is serious in fighting for the poor working class it needs to split the remaining workers from the Maori Party leadership. This is also true for Labour and the Greens? Now Matt McCarten is the Chief of Staff for Labour leader, David Cunliffe, will he attract the working poor back to Labour? Where does that leave Mana in relation to Labour?

Many on the left including the small socialist ISO, SA and Fightback (see below) who are active in Mana support McCartens strategy which is a left-coalition government in which the leftish Greens and Mana will pull Labour to the left. But even at best this is an Australian Green Left/Boliviarian reformist strategy of reviving social democracy in the belief that capitalism can be reformed and socialism legislated into existence. As we have argued many times, a reborn social democracy today is looking to China as a populist if not socialist power capable of uniting all the oppressed nations of the world in a bloc against the dominant power of the US and its allies.

NZ left in and around Mana

The International Socialists Organisation (ISO), Socialist Aotearoa (SA), and Fightback, are tiny left organisations that work inside or around Mana. They claim to be socialist but over many years they have participated in popular fronts where they hook up with a layer of the capitalist class. While they promote worker activism, they are at risk of betraying working class interests to the capitalists. This is what happens internationally when these parties align themselves to the Green Left/ Bolivarian bloc with China which today is also an imperialist country exploiting the masses on every continent.

Even if their support is critical which means that they do not endorse the complete program of Mana, and reserve the right to criticise it, typically these criticisms are not raised inside Mana. This means that they end up politically supporting the Mana program which is fundamentally reformist and geared to give Maori a fair share of kiwi capitalism. For example the asset sale campaign has become a shadow of the campaign that it was. Instead of the working class getting mobilised in the streets and occupying the assets, the struggle was demobilised. Now its only a paper war, ticking the boxes. It has been diverted into parliament with the petition and referendum begging for notice from the ruling class which of course ignores it. The capitalists go right ahead with their sales agenda.

Manas reformist program shows that those on the left inside Mana who object to alliances with Labour, Greens, of Dotcom because they are capitalist, are sowing illusions in Mana as revolutionary. As we argue in the section below on Social Democracy and Revolution, to build an extra-parliamentary mass revolutionary party it is necessary to destroy all those parties that drag workers into parliament on the promise to reform capitalism.

Mana and Dotcom?

We can see that Mana stands for reforming capitalism in alliances with political parties that have links to the capitalist ruling class such as the Maori Party, the Greens, and the Labour Party. This reformist strategy is based on building a parliamentary majority so its first requirement must be getting enough votes to get into government. Thats why Mana is talking to Kim Dotcom and the new Internet Party. There is no doubt that Dotcom is a capitalist who made his millions with his internet Megaupload and Mega businesses. But in order to stay in business Dotcom has to fight the giant monopolies that dominate the internet and the media empires. Both Dotcom and Mana have an interest in campaigning for internet freedom against the media and other monopolies that control global wealth for the 1% against the 99%.

So there is reformist logic in a political agreement between Mana and Dotcom. Its unlikely to be a formal alliance but one in which common policies are jointly defended. This could be a commitment to electoral cooperation and /or to policy proposals around the internet, spying, rights of minorities, etc. Such an agreement could easily be part of a wider left coalition in Government. As revolutionaries our position is not to moralise about who owns fascist memorabilia, but to judge deals on whether or not they advance the interest of workers.

Social Democracy and Revolution

In the last issue of Class Struggle we spelled out our position on the Labour Party as a capitalist party and the need to build a Revolutionary Socialist Labour Party capable of leading a socialist revolution in NZ that will smash the state and replace the capitalist parliament with a Workers Government. We will not go over all the arguments again. What is important here is that such a new RSLP will not arise out of thin air but out of those who currently vote for existing parties of the left who become convinced that they are betraying the interests of workers and who split to the left to build that new party.

Our attitude towards the McCarten strategy of a left coalition is that it is necessary to give critical support to such a coalition to put it in government so that it can be shown up as pro-capitalist and anti-worker. But this can only work if a left coalition keeps left and doesnt include in it right wing or openly racist and chauvinist parties like NZ First. This is because the left becomes a hostage to the right to stay in government so that the right can be blamed for broken promises to the workers. So who would we give critical support to in such a left coalition?

The Greens are an anomaly because while largely based on the petty bourgeois or middle class, they are in some areas more left than Labour especially on the environment and global warming which brings them up against monopoly capital. Labour itself is a divided party with a capitalist program but a working class base. It too includes a large middle class element. In short we would give critical support to a Labour/Green/Mana coalition government where beyond confidence and supply agreements the parties remain independent.

Each party would then be judged on delivering on its own promises and not who else they can blame for its failure to deliver. This would allow workers to judge them on how they matched words and deeds, and prove that parliament is a bosses talk shop and that workers need to build a mass revolutionary party for socialism.

In the event that Mana makes a deal with the Internet Party or any of the other parties for the purposes of getting a left coalition into government we would have no principled objection to such an agreement. We would also consider giving critical support to the Internet Party if its program advances the interests of the working class e.g., free internet and education, and an end to 5 eyes and the TPPA.

A new revolutionary party will not fall from the sky but arise out of the struggle of workers in defence of basic democratic rights and social and economic security. That includes the majority working class being able to vote for a government of their choice so that they learn that real democracy is impossible unless they go all the way to the overthrow of the capitalist state and the creation of a Workers and Oppressed Government. (See article on the Spanish Marches for Dignity, March 22 in this issue).

Australia:

Manus Island: Brutal and Murderous Attack on Asylum Seekers by Guards and Cops!

The concentration camps, where refugees are forced to live for the crime of seeking asylum, are barbaric and horrendous. This applies to camps both on the Australian mainland and those offshore. It is indeed very understandable that refugees sow their lips, attempt suicide and riot. On Manus Island things are even worse because they may catch malaria and dengue fever.

The refugees there were agitated because they believed that Papua New Guinea would not allow them to stay. This has been denied but it is what they were led to believe.

What happened on February 15 was not so much a riot but a brutal attack by security guards assisted by the locals including members of the police force.

At least seventy seven were injured, many seriously the guards and allies were armed with machetes, sticks and stones. The refugees were unarmed.

One refugee, Reza Barati. An Iranian Kurd was murdered within the detention centre not trying to escape. One witness according to the Sydney Morning Herald saw one refugee with his throat cut. And another whose face was swollen beyond recognition. The injuries were horrendous.

It has been suggested that the guards were taking revenge on refugees who abused them. These guards were inadequately trained. Their employer G$S has been sacked but the company which has taken its place, Transfield, has employed the very same guards. Eight refugees have been charged. The PNG Government claims it is investigating. We wonder how many security guards will be charged. All that has been changed is the employer.

Of course revolutionaries are unconditionally on the refugees fighting the system, including physically.

Scott Morrison has been caught out lying. He, of course chose to believe only that information which suited his agenda the criminalisation of the refugees. He has been forced to retract.

The Pacific solution first introduced by Howard and reintroduced by Gillard is barbaric and reactionary. This atrocity is an understandable bi-product of this policy Both the Abbott Government and the previous Rudd Government are responsible. They have blood on their hands. So too does Peter ONeil PNG Prime minister who made an agreement for PNG detention centres with Kevin Rudd

The refugees are victims of politics. The Liberal Party has effectively used this issue to expose Labor, showing that they are the better defenders of Australias borders. The Liberals have indeed exposed Labor winning over chauvinist working class people The point is to enlist working class support for their reactionary agenda. Tony Abbott now boasts that he has stopped the boats.

Bill Shorten [Labor Party leader] has been critical of Scott Morrison for lack of information.

But his criticism only goes so far. He knows that Labor shares responsibility for the barbaric situation. He wants the PNG solution to stay and he will not let this incident get in his way.

The refugees are an important issue within Australian politics. Basically the workers movement must take a stand. Refugees must be free and allowed to come to Australia, unconditionally!

There must be working class action to free the refugees. Revolutionaries reject the borders imposed upon us by capitalism. We must reject all immigration controls. We must smash all immigration controls!

The capitalist propaganda machine is working overtime spreading lies. Many working class people are sucked in by these lies such as refugees living in luxury hotels.

We must counter this lie machine. Workers must be with the refugees against the system.

Reprinted from REDLETTER Publication of the Communist Left of Australia Number 105, March 2014

Australian Manufacturing Faces Collapse!

In February the last major car manufacturing company in Australia Toyota announced it will be closing operations in 2017. This despite making a profit.

This is no surprise though. Both Holden and Ford have announced their closures also. The cost will be horrendous. As well as the three thousand directly employed an estimated twenty three thousand will be laid off in connected industries.

Of course Tony Abbott will tell you that whilst some industries are failing thanks to his prudent management there will be an expansion of jobs elsewhere. Well not many of the car workers have much prospect of getting work in tourism or computer software. The fact is that a large proportion of them will never be able to fully paid employment again.

Things are especially tough for the people of Geelong. Not only is the Ford factory closing, so too is the Alcoa plant. This plant will also lay off thousands. This will mean other closures as workers are forced to leave the city and there will be less customers. Will Geelong become a ghost town!

For decades, governments both Liberal and Labor have thrown money at the car industry. The multinationals have pocketed millions. All this has bought is time. The closure of the car industry was inevitable. In no way could it withstand the economic crisis.

Of course it is not just car manufacturing which has folded. So too has white goods, clothing, textiles and ship building. Fruit canning in Shepparton, Victoria has only survived thanks to the Victorian government handing over thirty two million dollars to Coca Cola Amatil.

It is clear that more protection has not solved the problem. Protectionism has maintained Australian manufacturing in a state of backwardness, ripe for collapse.

The fact is that manufacture in Australia has always been backward. Australia has only been a significant manufacturing sector after the Second World War. That manufacturing was established in a state of weakness, poorly capitalised, under equipped and suffering from a small local market. It has been massively subsidised by the Australian government.

The Global Financial Crisis has hit Australian manufacturing hard. It has meant a highly valued Australian dollar. This has meant that Australian manufactures have been uncompetitive to export. So jobs have been lost and this will continue.

In no way has this been the fault of the Australian worker. In the car industry the union movement has co-operated accepting low wages. They have accepted lay-off and there is no sign of any fight back against this major threat to the industry. The union strategy appears to be crawl to the government to Save Australian industry.

Tony Abbott will not be coming to the party.

Of course these closures are a serious threat to the livelihood of workers and must be fought.

Not one worker out the gate!

Workers must organise on the job to prepare to fight every lay-off.

Organise! Occupy! Expropriate the car industry under workers control!

Our struggle must be international. To put Australian jobs before jobs elsewhere, such as Asia, plays the bosses game. It ties us to the class enemy. We must fight for jobs everywhere to stop the bosses playing us off against each other.

It is clear that the Labor Party has no answers to the crisis.

To fight internationally we need a revolutionary communist party committed to a new communist international.

Build a revolutionary communist party!

Break with the chauvinist Labor Party!

Reprinted from REDLETTER Publication of the Communist Left of Australia Number 105, March 2014

South Africa:

NUMSA breaks with ANC

Finally m0re than a year after the massacre at Marikana, a major union is in the process of breaking politically from the Tripartite Alliance of the ANC, SACP and COSATU that has ruled over imperialisms super-exploitation of South Africa since 1994. The National Union of Metalworkers (NUMSA) will not campaign for the ANC in the next elections and has called for an independent union- based socialist party. It seeks to force the leadership of COSATU to call a special conference to pass a resolution that all the COSATU unions break politically from the ANC. But NUMSA has not rejected the reformist Freedom Charter, the ANC charter that called for a peaceful, parliamentary transformation to socialism. Nor do the other political breakaways from the ANC, the CWI-led Workers and Socialist Party (WASP) and the Malema-led Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) reject the Freedom Charter. It is necessary for the revolutionary left to fight for independence of the unions from the ANC and for the formation of a new mass revolutionary party that breaks the necklace of national capitalism and fights for international socialism.

Global Crisis and South Africa

The global crisis of falling profits since 2007 has been downloaded onto the semi-colonies by both the US-led and China-led imperialist blocs. In this way imperialism tries to cut the prices of raw materials and labour power so that global profits can be restored. In South Africa the ANC acts as the junior partner of the MNCs imposing deep cuts on workers living standards to restore both imperialists and the ANC share of rising super-profits. The strategic relationship between the ANC and China does not allow SA to escape the fate of imperialist super-exploitation of SA workers. SA may be a BRIC but it is definitely becoming a semi-colony of China. Traditional British and US MNCs are now joined by Chinese MNCs in intensify labour and forcing down wages. This has been felt in every sector of production from the mines to agriculture.

The response of the MNCs and its junior partner the ANC has been met with growing resistance in mass demonstrations and strikes. The ANC has declared itself national strike breaker by using the police and union thugs to shoot down miners and other workers in an attempt to intimidate the militant leadership. This has been met with angry resistance such as at Marikana where miners staged a wildcat strike against the corrupt NUM bureaucracy that acts as the paid agents of the mine owners. When two miners were shot by NUM officials, the wildcat spread. Attempts by NUM national leaders to quell the uprising failed and led to the planned police massacre at Marikana. As a result most of the platinum miners have left the NUM and joined AMCU, a breakaway union. More strikes have followed leading up to the current platinum workers strike for R 12 500. It is clear that the legitimacy of the COSATU unions is now being questioned by a widening layer of militant workers. Such was the lead up to the NUMSA vote to break with the ANC. Out of the capitalist crisis comes the opportunity for revolution.

Militancy is not enough

Working class militancy as a response to the demand for more super-profits does not automatically throw up revolutions. Militancy results from rising exploitation and austerity, but the causes of these attacks on workers are not immediately obvious. Capitalism exists as an exploitative social relation where Capital exploits Labour in the process of production. However, this appears as an exchange relation where exploitation is based on labour being paid below its value. It appears that the solution is for labour to mobilise to get a fair distribution of wages and profits. This leads to economism where the labour movement adopts a reformist perspective of distributional politics.

Since economism blames the bosses for using their power to raise profits at the expense of wages, the bosses policy of attacking labour to raise profits is seen as the enemy, rather than the capitalist system itself. This anti-worker program may be labelled neo-liberalism, corruption, austerity etc., but for reformists it can be reversed by workers parties winning elections with a program for parliamentary socialism. Thus economism gives rise to opportunism as the bureaucratic leadership of the unions and left political parties attempt to negotiate fair shares. So despite the militancy of workers, economism prevents them from organising independently of the labour bureaucracy, building their own political organs and forging their own path to the socialist revolution.

The Freedom Charter

The ANC Freedom Charter was a reformist program drafted by the SACP, a Stalinist party, which put forward the two stage theory of a national democratic revolution preparatory to the socialist revolution. It was held that once the black majority came to power it would nationalise the means of production to develop the economy and create the basis for a second, socialist, stage. However, since 1994 reality has shown that the ANC in an alliance with the SACP and COSATU has failed to implement the Freedom Charter. Land and industry largely remains in the hands of national and multinational capital, and that far from creating the conditions for socialism, the living standards of the masses have deteriorated.

Those who criticised the ANC did so in terms of its corrupt politics, adopting of neo-liberalism, and enriching of a new black bourgeoisie at the expense of the masses. Their alternative was and is today to be for a new mass party to replace the ANC and implement the Freedom Charter as originally planned. For example the Marxist Workers Tendency (MWT) in the ANC was kicked out for criticising the leadership. Today its successor, the Workers and Socialist Party (WASP), calls for a new socialist mass party that can be elected to power to legislate for socialism by nationalising the land, industry and banks without smashing the state! Similarly, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) of the former ANC Youth leader Julius Malema expelled in 2013 for criticising the current leadership, calls for nationalisation of the mines and industry but only a 60% state share leaving 40% owned by the capitalists. Neither of these political currents, which are also discussing an alliance, wishes to break from the democratic national program of the SA revolution.

Permanent Revolution

When Trotsky called for a Black Republic in SA in the 1930s he did not see this as a national democratic stage to prepare for a future socialist stage. Once the black majority was in power it would face a hostile intervention from British imperialism which would necessarily force it to follow the course of the 1917 revolution in Russiato the seizure of power by the working class, and to defend itself in a revolutionary war against imperialism. That is the permanent revolution. The Leninist-Trotskyist position on the right of nations to self-determination was not a matter for isolated nations. The imperialist epoch was one in which oppressor nations oppressed the colonies directly and the semi-colonies via the national bourgeoisies. The struggle for national independence would require a struggle to defeat both the national bourgeoisie and its imperialist masters. Trotsky was assassinated by a Stalinist agent in 1940, but the period of decolonisation that followed WW2 vindicated the Leninist-Trotskyist position.

By contrast the Stalinist conception of socialism in one country was translated into national roads to socialism where the national bourgeoisie would take power to prepare the conditions for socialism. This was an opportunist adaptation of the Stalinists to the democratic bourgeoisie as allies of the Soviet Union against world revolution. The new bourgeoisies would prevent the workers from rising up and be rewarded as the junior partners of imperialism. In every case such political independence was a sham that ensured continued economic slavery. So in South Africa the SACP dutifully wrote the Freedom Charter as the Stalinist road to socialism.

The ANC in power since 1994 has proved beyond question the validity of the Leninist-Trotskyist conception of national liberation via permanent revolution. In the colonies and semi-colonies where the national liberation movement went on to overthrow the national bourgeoisie and defeat imperialism this proved that it was possible to win a partial national liberation and independence from imperialism. But these were not workers revolutions. These were petty bourgeois revolutions that resulted in transitional deformed workers states such as China, Vietnam and Cuba that were ruled by bureaucratic elites, living off the backs of the workers and peasants. Such states would be overthrown by workers political revolutions and become healthy workers states, or they would revert to become restored capitalist states. Political revolutions could only arise out of an international working class movement led by an international party and program committed to permanent revolution. What does all this mean for South Africa today?

Revolutionary leadership

We can see that when NUMSA breaks with the ANC, the national bourgeois lackey of imperialism, but does not take the road of permanent revolution, it cannot succeed in creating the conditions for socialism. That is why revolutionaries in South Africa must be clear about their program. When NUMSA breaks from the ANC and SACP, fights for COSATU to break also, and calls for a new mass political party, it must be supported, but very critically by raising the transitional program for permanent revolution.

When NUMSA argues for implementing the Freedom Charter we must say: The distributional politics of the Freedom Charter, for completing the nationalisation the South African and imperialist corporations, is nothing more than the SACP Stalinism of the ANC now dressed up as the win-win partnership with China on the road to market socialism. The road to China, Vietnam or Cuba, of merely nationalising capitalist property and calling it socialist, leads inevitably to a new capitalist tyranny over the workers.

Moreover when the road advocated by the EFF and the WASP as well as other left currents, to form a mass party with a program to join the Bolivarian bloc of nations with China against US and EU imperialism, we must say: China is not the model for South African socialism. It is a restored capitalist state that has become a new imperialist power that super-exploits workers and peasants in all of Africa and the world. Its rivalry with the US threatens to engulf us in a new world war.

When the left reformists call for a national socialist program for South Africa, revolutionaries must point out that South Africa is not a single country but a vital part of all Southern Africa and the whole of Africa. The working class and landless peasants know no borders. They form a surplus army of migrant workers super-exploited and super-oppressed who move across and between continents.

We must therefore call for the unions to recruit all workers, employed, unemployed, or whatever language, ethnicity and gender and build a mass party based on the workers councils and militias to unite all working people to overthrow the South African state and defeat its imperialist backers in their attempts to destroy the Southern African revolution.

Our action program is for:

Workers to take control of their unions as fighting democratic unions!

Build a mass workers party based on the reclaimed unions!

Form local workplace and community councils and self defence militias!

Mobilise for a general strike to bring down the government and replace it with a Workers and Peasants Government!

This government will then impose a plan to create a socialist economy based on the expropriation of all capitalist property, national and MNC, the mines, the banks, the farms, etc., under workers democratic control.

Such as program will unite workers of all Africa and enable a Federation of Socialist Republics to be established on the continent.

Program:

Why we call for a New World Party of Socialism based on the Transitional Program of 1938

Readers may have noticed that we usually finish our articles with such a call. Here we explain what we think it means based on what Trotsky said about a new international party, with a Transitional Program, and the Transitional Method that is incorporated in it.

In Defence of Marxism/Dialectics

For Trotsky the Transitional Program and the method underlying this cannot be separated from a bigger debate that took place between Trotsky and the petty bourgeois opposition who did not see the need for dialectics. What they mistook for a superfluous philosophy was, however, the Marxist conception of capitalism that produced the knowledge necessary to overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism. Dialectics was no abstruse theory, but the method that produced the theory making possible the practice of revolution. For Trotsky, rejecting dialectics was rejecting Marxism and the socialist revolution.

Trotsky explained how even if revolutionaries did not get the dialectic, the dialectic got them because the laws of capitalism worked behind their back.

That is to say the method of dialectics enables revolutionaries to understand the contradictory totality of capitalist society and how to use this knowledge to act to transform the social relations in favour of the workers revolution.

This is why Trotsky was at pains to explain to the members of the SWP that the program must not tail the existing mood/consciousness of workers but intervene to change their mood/consciousness. This could only happen if those demands reflected the objective reality so that in the struggle to achieve them, workers subjective consciousness would make the transition (Trotsky used the analogy of crossing a bridge) from immediate bread and butter demands to the workers insurrection and to a workers state. In short, Trotsky demonstrated how dialectics was necessary to keep a Marxist program alive. The Transitional Program and the party that fought for it, was dialectics in action.

Unfortunately, such were the conditions at the time, the US SWP, as the main national party in the Fourth International, was heavily influenced by the default ideology of capitalism, empiricism or in Trotskys terms the US version of this, pragmatism. The problem with empiricism is that it takes only the observable features of capitalist society and tries to act to change these in the interests of one or other class. In other words, it is an ideology that takes for granted the inversion of relations of production as relations of exchange.

Empiricism is therefore the default ideology of the working class without the intervention of Marxism or dialectics. It limits the consciousness of workers to that of economism, struggling to improve wages and conditions, rather than to overthrow the wage system. The labor aristocracy and the bureaucracy that emerges out of it, has no interest in challenging empiricism because it is consistent with their interests to peacefully coexist with the capitalist class in bargaining to improve living standards rather than organise to overthrow the social relations of capitalism. Empiricism understood at this level of generality however takes on special features depending on the historical context. In the US empiricism became pragmatism capitalism works to create the American Dream of Horatio Alger.

Pragmatism was the ideology of the expanding colonial frontier where the new settlers did what worked in their interests conquering indigenous peoples and Mexicans to convert land and labor to capitalism. When the US expanded beyond its national borders to plunder colonial profits it bought off a privileged labor aristocracy that pragmatically defended imperialism as social imperialism as Lenin put it, socialism at home and imperialism abroad. Obviously socialism at home paid for by imperialism abroad is the socialism of the ruling class, the petty bourgeois, and their allies in the working class, the labor aristocracy and the labor bureaucracy.

The history of a labor aristocracy that allied with the ruling class colonial conquest was bought off by a share in the plunder meant that the working class also bought into bourgeois ideology of the settler nation and civilised white race used to justify conquest and domination of other nations. Given this history, Trotsky characterised the default bourgeois ideology of US pragmatism in terms of its advanced capitalist production in contradiction with its social backwardness. While US capitalism was now the most advanced in the world, its working class was the most backward because of a division between blacks and migrant workers who were most exploited, and a layer of privileged aristocratic workers who turned their backs on socialism. To hold onto their privileges and contain the most exploited workers, the labor aristocracy employed a labor bureaucracy as the labor lieutenants of the ruling class to control the unions and workers political organisations.

Trotsky in 1940 wrote about how to confront the backwardness of the US working class facing the crisis of fascism and war: It is a fact that the American working class has a petty bourgeois spirit, lacks revolutionary solidarity, is used to a high standard of life, and the mentality of the American working class corresponds not to the realities of today but to the memories of yesterday. Now the situation is radically changed. What can a revolutionary party do in this situation? In the first line give a clear honest picture of the objective situation, of the historic tasks which flow from this situation irrespective as to whether or not the workers are today ripe for this. Our tasks dont depend on the mentality of the workers. The task is to develop the mentality of the workers. That is what the program should formulate and present before the advanced workers. Some will say: good, the program is a scientific program; it corresponds to the objective situation but if the workers wont accept this program, it will be sterile. Possibly. But this signifies only that the workers will be crushed since the crisis cant be solved any other way but by the socialist revolution. If the American worker will not accept the program in time he will be forced to accept the program of fascism. And when we appear with our program before the working class we cannot give any guarantees that they will accept our program. We cannot take responsibility for this ... we can only take the responsibility for ourselves...We must tell the workers the truth, then we will win the best elements. Whether these best elements will be capable of guiding the working class, leading it to power, I dont know. I hope that they will be able, but I cannot give the guarantee. But even in the worst case, if the working class doesnt sufficiently mobilize its mind and its strength at present for the socialist revolution even in the worst case, if this working class falls as a victim to fascism, the best elements will say, We were warned by this party; it was a good party. And a great tradition will remain in the working class.

Defending the Workers States

In his attempt to defend dialectics and defeat empiricism in the SWP Trotsky focussed on the demand in the Transitional Program for the unconditional defence of the workers states. In his view if revolutionaries could not defend the SU from defeat and capitalist restoration, they could not defend any historic gain won by the working class. Let us see why the stand taken by Trotsky in In Defence of Marxism that was focussed on unconditional defence of the workers states remains vitally important today. It is not a minor question that need not prevent comrades from coming together in a revolutionary party. Nor is it an historical relic to be consigned to the archives of Trotskyism

Those who claim it is a minor difference that need not separate revolutionaries point to Trotsky who said that in relation to imperialism, both camps would still defend the workers states. True, but as Trotsky went on to say, that is not all there is to it. Arriving at a correct policy from a wrong theory is no guarantee of further political agreement. In fact its a guarantee of disagreement on principled questions. Let us see how.

As Trotsky showed, the petty bourgeois camp based its defence not on the objective task of defending workers property despite the bureaucratic dictatorship, but on the subjective mood of the US labor aristocracy towards the Stalinist regime. The various theories of Shachtman, Cliff and Daum et al., all arrive at a theory that the USSR by 1939 was not a workers but rather a new class state or a capitalist state. This means that it can be defended against imperialism so long as it too is not imperialist, defended against fascism, so long as it is not fascist, or when it invades weaker countries such as the Ukraine or Finland. In other words for the third camp, defence of the SU was always conditional on the mood of the US labor aristocracy. That is, a method of eclecticism.

This opens up the program to swings in the mood of the US labor aristocracy under pressure from the US ruling class. Russia was defended when it was threatened with invasion by fascist Germany, but not after the Stalin-Hitler pact when it made a pact with German fascism. Most of the Third Camp split with Trotsky after this, seeing no difference between the fascist and Stalinist regimes. Stalins invasion of Finland in 1939 was the last straw. The third camp buckled under the international wave of revulsion for Stalinism and sympathy for democratic Finland. At that point agreement on unconditional defence of the USSR was no longer possible between the two camps.

Such fundamental disagreement over defence of workers states is far from an historic relic. In the period since the WW2, the Third Camp and its empiricist/eclectic method has created a gulf between itself and Trotskyism on method, theory and program to the point where it is no longer Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyist. To paraphrase Trotsky in In Defence of Marxism, if you cannot defend the workers state you cannot defend anything!

To be continued...

USA:

Abolish Wage Slavery!

For a Guaranteed Living Income for All!

Today, here and across the country, minimum wage workers are taking a stand for their right to a living wage. We have no need to recite the facts as regards the real unemployment, the multimillions living at or below the poverty level, the failure of the economy to meet the needs of the people as regards education, medical care, housing, jobs, clean air, clean water, and safe abundant food. Minimum wage workers testify to their inability to make ends meet on these sub-living wages. So, while workers produce everything needed in society, enough so all can live well above a poverty level and millions more workers are standing by idle waiting for an opportunity to produce even more goods, the economy organized in this anarchistic-capitalist mode of production, is incapable of eliminating unemployment, poverty or of guaranteeing a living income for all! The slave-wage system is rotten and poverty is its proof!

The ongoing economic crisis forces the class of capitalists, who while some individuals may reap record profits, collectively they confront a long term crisis of profitability, which they logically respond to by hoarding capitals, casting about for profitable opportunities, all the while driving down the price of your labor power (the main variable in the formula of profitability.) This diminishes your ability to purchase, and in turn expands unemployment, pressuring each to work for a penny less. The minimum wage appears to prevent the bosses from paying that penny less, creating an inviolate floor that appears to prevent the race to the bottom. But capitalism is versatile so the race to the bottom violates the legal floor. Individual capitalists cheat workers out of wages, millions are mis-categorized as independent contractors, paid subminimum wages as domestics, farmworkers or waiters; years pass without Cost of Living Allowances, and corporations secure stock gains by outsourcing to lower wage countries or hire the undocumented in sub-minimum wage conditions, and steal Social Security and Medical taxes from these workers and the government, keeping these funds as extra profit! So we know the minimum is not the minimum and that the fight against a life of enslavement to the wage system cannot be overcome without a GUARANTEED LIVING INCOME FOR ALL! To achieve this we must win JOBS FOR ALL! AT A LIVING WAGE DEFINED BY LABOR, WORKERS AND THE OPPRESSED! Workers must fight to win control over wages and prices!

The minimum wage has for a lifetime been kept far below a living wage and today that distinction must be addressed by the labor movement, by all working people and the oppressed. This is a question of life and death for our class.

The over production of Capital turns into its opposite, the under production or lack of distribution of the essential goods and services needed by the masses. The ideology of the capitalists and their intention to control the Capital directs the capitalists government that they are not obliged to put their vast hoards of capital to productive use to employ the masses, meet human needs and clean up the environment. Their ideology is driven by the market, which demands that their hoards of capital compete in the mega-speculation markets, where Capitals are concentrated, millionaires and billionaires are created and destroyed. Despite the non-productive nature of the speculators recovery, the media touts the economic turnaround, which we see has not hit main street, the industrial or manufacturing sectors. Millions remain out of work with no prospect of work. But there is work to be done and idle capital! This was the contradiction that occurred during the Great Depression as we were taught in 11th grade economics. Idle hands and empty factories! A formula that was only resolved by WWII which destroyed billions in Capital internationally at the cost of near 60 million lives. Today we face the same contradiction and the struggle of low wage workers is right in the forefront.

But there are those in ranks of labor and among the so-called friends of labor who do not want you to fight for a living wage, they want to keep you enslaved to a new improved, higher, but still sub-living wage. Some, like Obama say $10.10 by 2015. Others tell us to Fight for Fifteen; still others tell us Fifteen is not enough, that Sixteen is the magic number, or that Fifteen plus medical and pension is required. But when you look at the various calculators assembled by the various universities that study the conditions of labor, the actual living wage varies city by city and is closer to $30 per hour than $15. The fake friends of labor run from the call for a living wage for all to be defined by labor (union prevailing wage where it has kept pace with inflation) and thus bolster the capitalists position by convincing workers they should not fight for a living wage but rather should accept the ever-so-reasonable sub-living wage instead, because it is doable today in the world of real politics. Their analysis of the cause of the crisis, based on a banking screw-up by greedy financial houses and mortgage lenders, turns the structural crisis of capitalist decay into an episodic mistake by a bunch of bad players whose bad decisions can be rectified by proper Keynesian fixes instead of requiring revolutionary working class solutions.

If it were merely a question of good people in Washington, those friends of labor our unions told us to elect, wouldnt they have already imposed massive programs to put us all to work, lift us out of poverty, to replant the forests, to put millions to work building clean energy projects, to put millions more to work cleaning up the environment, when they had the majority in both houses and the executive? But big capital cannot see profit in that kind of investment, and they, more than your unions ever did or could, own the politicians in congress, lock stock and barrel.

To win a living wage labor needs its own independent politics, based on the mass mobilization of the workers in every job place to organize the unorganized, to revitalize the unions where they exist, build new unions and build solidarity among all workers to strengthen the entire class, as opposed to the current state of atomization of labor, of business and craft unionism, which today is in many places degenerating into corporate unionism and captive unionism.

To do this we need a workers party with a fighting program that unites all workers, from the best paid to the poorest. This can be accomplished when the organized sector takes up the demands JOBS FOR ALL -SHARE THE WORK -THIRTY HOURS WORK FOR FORTY HOURS PAY! FREE QUALITY UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE, EDUCATION AND PENSIONS ARE A RIGHT!

These demands can be won by forming rank and file class struggle caucuses in our unions that bring back the class struggle methods that built the unions in the first place, like job site occupations, general strikes and political strikes. Thus our fight today is not to reform a decaying mode of production ready for the dung heap of history. Our fight must be for what we need to lift all of us out of poverty! Only a workers government can guarantee a living income for all because only a workers government will relieve the capitalists of the hoarded capital and put it to work. Only a workers government can or will tell big capital that if you cannot provide for all, we (the assembled working class) will nationalize the commanding heights of industry without compensation and run them under the workers own self-management and plan. But a workers government will not come about without a struggle, a struggle in the unions, the factories and job sites led by a workers party with a revolutionary program, which by its very nature must confront the multi-national corporations and thus be internationalist and build the fight for workers power in solidarity with a revolutionary workers international party! This is what it takes to end poverty in our time! Build mass workers assemblies! Form the workers party that fights for a workers government and the historic program of the working class. ABOLISH WAGE SLAVERY!

Communist Workers Group USA 3/27/14

Spain:

Marches for Dignity, Spain, March 22

Here we reproduce the Manifesto of the Marches for Dignity. We give critical support to this program insofar as it embodies the immediate and democratic demands of a transitional program. The demands are based on what Spanish workers need now, and not what the system can deliver. These demands will necessarily pose the question of which class rules. What the Manifesto lacks, symptomatic of the absence of a mass revolutionary party, are the socialist demands necessary to build independent organs of workers power to prepare for the insurrection and seizure of state power.

MANIFESTO

Were starting 2014 with no improvement for the workers, sunk in an unprecedented capitalist crisis and without any measures on the part of this illegitimate government other than misery, precariousness and repression, rulers who act as reall representatives of big banks, employers and big business, of capitalism, under the order of the Troika (the European Commission, the Central European Bank and the International Monetary Fund).

Were living in a situation in which every minute were being pushed to brink, a situation against which we must all start to give a real, collective, mass answer, by fighting from the grassroots, from our different territories but with one voice. Because with every day that goes by the situation is getting more agonizing, more difficult.

In the Spanish State there are hundreds of thousands of us who have lost our homes or who dont receive benefits for dependents. There are more than 6 million of us without paid work and unemployed. Weve got tens of thousands of working people without any unemployment benefits at all. There are more than a million of us who are living below the poverty line and all thats going down while the Popular Party continues with its cuts, destroying and robbing the health system, education, culture, pensions, closing down local television stations that are essential to the survival of minority languages and other public services. And they go on privatizing anything thats profitable and giving tax benefits to the rich (bankers, big business, the Church, etc.)

Massive crowds gather during a protest against the Government in Madrid, Spain, Saturday, March 22, 2014. Hundreds of thousands from different parts of Spain marched towards the Capital to join a large anti-austerity demonstration, demanding the resignation of the Government and to express their anger at government financial cuts, its housing rights policies, and the high unemployment rates. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

There are more than 500,000 of us, young and not so young, people that have been forced to emigrate in order to try to eke out our living in one way or another. And despite this, they go on shutting down small and medium businesses with impunity, destroying most the real productive fabric, both industrial and agricultural, which could give work to the majority of the population.

In this context women have long had fewer rights: the right to live without male violence or to decide over our own bodies the right to family planning.

In our country if you were born somewhere else in the world, if your skins a different color or you have another religion, they take away your fundamental rights (healthcare, education et.) and can even shut you up in an Internment Center, even though youve committed no crime.

Simply for speaking our own minority language, simply for wanting to live in accordance with the culture of our land, we can be fined or even thrown into prison like during Francos fascist dictatorship, but now they call it democracy.

Fines and criminal penalties, imposed just for exercising the right of freedom of speech or the right to disobey unjust laws, are heavy, but the corrupt lite never go to prison and never have to pay for the damage they cause.

While the Government continues to hand out cash to big building firms, to the energy companies, to bankers and to corrupt businessmen etc. Theyre leaving us with no work, no house, no health care, no pensions, no university grants, no schools, no education, no future: in a word no life.

Theyre raising taxes, the price of energy and basic products for the poorest of use, while theyre reducing to a bare minimum employers social security contributions, to create work, they cynically say, and they turn a blind eye to massive fraud, corruption and capital flight. And without money were left with no house, no job and no wherewithal to survive.

Both the so-called Popular Party (PP) and the so-called Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) are the culprits. To reduce us to this situation they made the constitutional reform in 2011, a Treaty with the European Union and an Organic Law to guarantee payment of the debt and, if need be, to suppress any public institution (like the Statute of Autonomy of the Valencian Country), if it doesnt reduce its debt (and so its provision of public services) whenever and however they want.

We fought with great sacrifice to gain our social rights and were just not prepared to lose them. We demand from politics the transformation of our economy to make it an economy at the service of humanity and to guarantee that these rights can be universally exercised.

Thats why we demand:

The abrogation of all the counter-reforms that have been forced down our throats (labor laws, laws affecting pensions, education the right to safe legal abortion, the 15/97 act which commoditizes health care, the law of civil repression etc)!

A realistic plan against unemployment and a law establishing a basic income!

Stoppage of all evictions, the guarantee of the fundamental right to housing and to the basic utilities of water and energy.

Universal, free and high-quality public services!

Realistic and effective policies to ensure equal opportunities, regardless of a persons origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, diversities or age!

A guarantee of the reimbursement of the loans made to banks and their nationalization along with the nationalization of all strategic companies and sectors.

A fiscal policy whereby those that have more, pay more and public social expenditure is guaranteed above everything else!

A guarantee of the right to decide, in all spheres, as persons, workers, peoples. Because we demand real democracy!

In order to advance in the construction of unity and peoples power we must advance in the Marches for Dignity so we can arrive in Madrid on March 22 from all cardinal points of the Spanish State!

We want to live and work with dignity in our land with our people!

To defend all that is and should be ours, struggle is the only way!

Bread, a roof, rights and dignity for all workers!

What We Fight For

Overthrow Capitalism

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

Fight for Socialism

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

Defend Marxism

While the economic conditions for socialism exist today, standing between the working class and socialism are political, social and cultural barriers. They are the capitalist state and bourgeois ideology and its agents. These agents claim that Marxism is dead and capitalism need not be exploitative. We say that Marxism is a living science that explains both capitalisms continued exploitation and its attempts to hide class exploitation behind the appearance of individual "freedom" and "equality". It reveals how and why the reformist, Stalinist and centrist misleaders of the working class tie workers to bourgeois ideas of nationalism, racism, sexism and equality. Such false beliefs will be exploded when the struggle against the inequality, injustice, anarchy and barbarism of capitalism in crisis, led by a revolutionary Marxist party, produces a revolutionary class-consciousness.

For a Revolutionary Party

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

Fight for Communism

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

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

Online at http://redrave.blogspot.com

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