Bolivia: Arm the workers to smash the fascists!

Like October 2003 and May-June 2005, the working class and the poor farmers are rising up to regain the revolution that the bourgeoisie of Morales and Garcia Linera have stolen from us.

Long live the workers and peasants movement of Cochabamba!



No crawling to the government of Morales and its Constituent Assembly and autonomy referendums!

Down with Reyes Villa!

For a provisional government of the Workers and Peasants of the Cabildo (open town meeting)!

Disband the murderous police!

Build workers and peasants militias in Cochabamba now!

General arming of the workers and farmers now!

Build committees of soldiers who organize themselves in the workers and peasants Cabildo!

Throw out the class collaborationist leaders of the COB, the COD and the COR!

All to Cochabamba: there let us create a national Congress of mandated delegates of the rank and file, of the COB, the COD and the poor peasants of Bolivia, and the revolutionary student movement!


The first year of Evo Morales government will be remembered for staining its hands in the blood of Bolivian workers and peasants in their struggle for land and water in Cochabamba.

On Thursday January 11 fascist gangs of the “Youth for Democracy”, armed with baseball bats, batons, pistols and gas grenades provided by the police, attacked thousands of farmers and workers who had rallied in Cochabamba to demand the resignation of of the prefect (governor) Manfred Reyes Villa, an ally of the former President Sanchez de Lozada (Goni) and today a leader of the fascist bourgeoisie of the Medialuna (the Tropical eastern part of Bolivia where most of oil and gas is found).

In a pitched battle that lasted more than two hours, the campesino comrade Nicomedes Gutiérrez was killed by the fascists. Many others were wounded. In the middle of the battle, the workers and peasants, in self-defense, lynched one of the fascist thugs of Reyes Villa.

In solidarity with the workers and peasants of Cochabamba, the exploited workers of El Alto marched in their thousands down to La Paz to surround the Hotel Europa where the prefects (Governors) of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando, Tarija and La Paz, who are demanding autonomy (the break up of Bolivia) including Reyes Villa, were meeting.

In spite of the calls by Morales to keep the peace and his appeal to the peasants of the six Federations of the Medialuna - the base of the MAS and Morales support - to respect the fact that Reyes Villa had been “democratically elected”, on Friday 12, in response to the call of the COD of Cochabamba (Departmental organisation of the Bolivian workers central), 20,000 workers and peasants held a huge open public rally in the Plaza de Armas and resolved to continue the fight until Reyes Villa was removed rom office.

Facing this rally, the class collaborationist government of Morales - the same one that last October called on the cooperativistas (self-employed miner bosses) to attack the militant unionised miners of Huanuni - did not miss a beat in ordering the police to ferociously repress the masses that occupy a TV channel supporting the governor.

It did not pause for a second before sending in the murderous army to Cochabamba. When the thousands of workers and peasants marched from El Alto to surround the Hotel Europa, Morales ordered his police to violently repress the demonstration.

Today, while our Cochabambinos brothers and sisters guard the fallen comrade and reaffirm their will to fight, the facist bands remain intact, Reyes Villa is still the prefect, though he has taken refuge with his fascist friends in Santa Cruz, and Morales continues to negotiate with PODEMOS (that is, with the organizers of the fascist gangs) over whether the Constituent Assembly will vote on the basis of a simple majority or two thirds majority.

But this repression has not stopped the continuous stream of contingents of workers and peasants arriving at the Plaza 14 of September in Cochabamba where they raise the cries of “Guns, shrapnel, the people will not be quiet” and “Resign or fall!”. In El Alto, the workers held a huge meeting on the 15th to demand the resignation of the prefect of La Paz begin to mobilize itself to throw to the prefect Paredes who supports Reyes Villa and the demand of “autonomy” made by the bourgeoisie.

In response to this, Morales has announced announced that he will introduce a law to hold a revocatory referendum (a vote to confirm or not the positions of the mayors and prefects). Reyes Villa supports the proposal, saying he can easily win such a referendum with the support of PODEMOS, but with the condition that Evo Morales subjects himself also to a revocatory referendum, in the expectation that the opposition can remove Morales from the presidency of the Constitutent Assembly and the Senate.

This new negotiation of Morals with the “autonomista” bourgeoisie of the Medialuna, is to make a new trap for the exploited masses, to force us off the streets of Cochabamba and La Paz, and to substitute the ballot boxes before we can overthrow the killer Reyes Villa and the "turncoat" Paredes.

Down with the trap of the “revocatory referendum”: the Bolivian workers and poor farmers in October of 2003 and June of 2005 already 'revoked' the mandates of the murderous presidents in throwing out Goni and Mesa!

Today we have already 'revoked' the mandates of the autonomist governors. While they were raised up by elections, we threw them down by our combat in the streets!


Stop the “reconciliation” of El Alto with the Santa Cruz fascist oligarchy!

Stop the “reconciliation” between the Rosca and Evo Morales being negotiated in the Constituent Assembly!

Stop the pacts made behind the backs of the people!

Stop making the workers and peasants the cannon fodder in the disputes between the fractions of the bourgeoisie over the distribution of the rent from the hydrocarbons and minerals!


It was the treachery of the workers leaders that made the workers kneel before the bourgeois government of Morales, that broke the unity between the workers and the poor peasants - won in the streets during May and June of 2005 to the demand of “Neither 30 nor 50%, [100%] nationalization” - and forced the peasant masses to bow before the national bourgeoisie.

Today, the class collaborationist government of Morales and the MAS in agreement with the national bourgeoisie whom they represent, threaten to destroy the historical organizations of Bolivian proletariat - the COB, the miners Federation, the COD and COR, etc. - statizing them and turning them into appendages of the bourgeois nationalist movement, to turn to Bolivia into a new Venezuela under Chávez where the working class is subordinated to the “Bolivarian president” and to the bourgeois state.

That is the treacherous result of the class collaboration of Montes leader of the COB, and the leaders of the CODs and CORs (Regional organisations of the COB) with Morales to destroy the independence of those organizations of workers struggle and subordinating them to the mayors and prefects.

The defenders of the popular front - in the 1930s Stalin, and today in Bolivia Garci'a Linera - always say that the weight of the working class aligned with the “progressive” bourgeoisie and the “patriotic” officers gives them an invincible power. Time and time again reality has destroyed that false claim, at the expense of the blood of the working class.

Today, Morales, Linera, Chávez, Castro, and Montes of the COB, try to yoke the two antagonistic classes of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie behind the plough of "Andean Capitalism”. The result is the neutralization of the power of the working class and the strengthening of the power of the bourgeoisie, now evident in the freedom of the fascists to mobilise on the streets and the officer caste to squash the revolutionary masses with fire and blood. That is exactly the role of the popular front: by adding the force of the working class to that of the bourgeoisie the result is zero, that is to say, the submission of the working class to the bourgeoisie, and its total powerlessness.

The Trotskyists of the FLT affirm, with Leon Trotsky, that the popular front does not unite the sum of class forces, but cancels out those forces. Trotsky said very well that if we are to reduce the operation of the popular front to a mathematical formula, it could not be the sum, but the law of the parallelogram of forces, where the result of two antagonistic forces, is zero.

The leaders of the workers and peasants have subordiated us to the fraction of the national bourgeoisie and have expropriated the workers and peasants revolution to serve the interests of the oligarchy and the Rosca

Of February to October of 2003, the Bolivian workers and poor peasantgs rose up against the hated US client regime of Goni (Sanchez de Lozada), the MNR (party of the Revolutionary National Militia), of Banzerismo (regime of the former military dictator General Banzer) and the MIR. More than 100 comrades gave their lives in the battle to bring down the murderous Goni.

But conspiring against the masses, in October 2003, Morales, Quispe and Solares of the COB told us that Carlos Mesa (Goni's vice-President) was the solution. They are the people who are responsible for stopping and containing the workers and peasants revolution that was underway which raised as its program the demands of the vast majorityof Bolivian workers and peasants: “Out with the foreigners!”, “Out with the transnational companies!”, “ Neither 30% nor 50%, nationalization [of the hydrocarbons]! ”, "land to the peasants", etc.

Mesa was not slow to show what he was: while he tried to deceive us and stop the struggle with a few concessions, he proved he was just like Goni and the Rosca (mine-owners oligarchy) conspiring with them to defeat the workers and the poor peasants. In May andJune of 2005, in spite of the desertion of the leaders of the COB to the side of the regime - Solares and his allies managed to dominate the formation of the 'headquarters' of the struggle in El Alto. We blocked the roads, we surrounded centers of the exploiters power and took over the streets to demand our solution: a a popular, workers and peasants assembly to represent all the poor exploited masses of Bolivia.

Against the fascist bands of Santa Cruz, the mercenaries of the large estate owners and oil companies, the El Alto 'headquarters' put out the call to form workers and peasants militias. Against the officers caste in the army, we demanded that those who killed workers, and soldiers who refused to shoot the people during October, be tried and punished.

But the exploiters cornered in Sucre made a deal with Morales behind the back of the people to replace Morales with Rodriguez and call for new elections. In this way they banished the 'demons' that had appeared - the 'demons' being the hungry workers, peasants and destitute who are the big majority of the Bolivian people who had risen up against the small minority of corrupt, exploitative and murderous, national oligarchy.

There, in Sucre, between midnight and dawn, the exploiters found the solution to the threat to their power in the "pact of the two cities”, of El Alto and Santa Cruz. That infamous pact agreed to a rigged, elitist Constituent Assembly without no participation of the big majority of the workers and peasants, and to the autonomy referendum.

The class collaborationist leaders of the COR and the COD, called for a vote for Morales as the “lesser evil" and supporting the MAS openly in the elections. They sabotaged the revolutionary headquarters of El Alto, and diverted the workers into the pact for the CA and autonomy referendums with the new Rosca regime. At the same time they sacrificed the peasants movement to the national bourgeoisie of Morales, and Garcia Linera - that agent of the Totalfina and French imperialism.

Those leaders are responsible for stealing the workers and peasants revolutionary uprising. They are the ones who subordianted the workers and peasants to the national bourgeoisie. They are the ones who sabotaged our demands and allowed the regime, weakened and defensive, to survive by the farce of the Constituent Assembly and the autonomy referendum agreed to by Morales and PODEMOS.

They are people responsible in the last instance, for the treacherous pact of the CA and autonomy, and for the survival of the 'gonistas' like Reyes Villa, the oligarchy of the Medialuna, and the rotten corpses of the MNR, the MIR and Banzerismo - that is, all the bosses parties of the Rosca regime that was facing overthrow in October of 2003 and May-June of 2005, which today go on the offensive with their fascist gangs to kill the workers and poor peasants.

Down with the pact of Morales with the Rosca, its Constituent Assembly and its autonomy referendums!

This pact has the purpose of protecting the class interests of the national bourgeoisie, in particular the cruceña oligarchy and the transnational companies. It guarantees the continued plunder of the hydrocarbons, the superprofits of the oil monopolies, and a larger share being siphoned off by the national bourgeoisie. That is why the 'nationalization' of Morales was a fraud as it allowed the oil companies, and their 'junior partners' the national bourgeoisie, to make 'join ventures' with the state and to continue to make huge superprofits by robbing the hydrocarbon wealth that the Bolivian workers and farmers demanded for themselves in the struggle for “Neither 30% nor 50%, nationalization of hydrocarbons”.

The result: enormous profits for the transnational companies and the national bourgeoisie, while the poor workers and peasants continue paying for expensive fuel to cook, or suffer the cold because they cannot afford to pay for the trillones of cubic meters of gas under their feet to warm themselves.

This infamous pact between Morales, the Rosca and the transnationals, now being implemented in the CA, treats the masses as cannon fodder in the disputes between the national bosses and the imperialist monopolies over the distribution of the enormous mining wealth of the Mutún; it gives more state subsidies to business such as the cooperativistas bosses who were behind the attack on the miners of Huanuni under instructions from the former cooperativista minister of mines Villarroel and his supporters, and with the approval of Morales.

The pact is behind the fraudulent “agrarian reform” that redistributes only patches of unproductive land and the deserts of the Plateau to the landless peasants, while 87% of the fertile and cultivable land remains in the hands of a tiny number of landowners who defend their property with armed fascist gangs in the Medialuna. It means a limit to the holdings of family farmers to 1600 square meters for the cultivation of coca, the promise to continue the US “Coca eradication plan”, the murder of two coca farmers who defended their crops, and renewed pacts with Yankee imperialism to allow it to build bigger army bases and station more DEA troops in the Yungas and Chapare.

The conflicts over this pact being fought out today among the different fractions of the national bourgeoisie over the division of the spoils of Bolivia's wealth, mean that the comuneros of Ayo Ayo are still in jail, the killers of over 100 workers and peasants in October 2005 are still free, along with the murderers of the homeless workers, the miners of Huanuni, and the coca growers, all of whose blood stains the hands of Morales government.

So while the bosses fight over a two thirds or a simple majority in the CA; while they fight over the degree of autonomy for the departments; that is, while the different bourgeois fractions fight over their shares in the booty of the hydrocarbons, minerals and the national rent, the poor workers and peasants continue to shed their blood as the currency in the deals made to advance business at the expense of the people. However, because they fear the return of the "demons" (i.e. the insurgent workers and peasants) the bosses will agree that to prevent the fall of Reyes Villa and the Rosca regime, they will call on Morales to impose a 'national' solution to protect their property and oil profits, as always, at the expense of the needs and the lives of the poor workers and peasants of Bolivia.

The overall result of this infamous pact of “pacification” and “reconciliation” between the conspiring leaders of the COB, the COR of El Alto and the farmers organisations, and the killer fascist bourgeoisie of Santa Cruz, is the stealing of the workers and peasants revolution that had begun in 2003. This is the "Bolivarian Revolution” that Morales, Chávez, Fidel Castro and their friends want to sell to us: full pockets for imperialism and the bourgeoisie; hunger, slavery and repression for the poor workers and peasants. Now Chávez has announced, like Morales, “nationalizations” of the telephones and electricity in Venezuela, that will end up as 'joint ventures' with the imperialist monopolies, while 60% of the workers and poor people continue living in misery! Now the Cuban Castroite bureaucracy - another key proponent of the “Bolivaria Revolution” - is negotiating with the Yankees to set up joint ventures to complete the restoration of capitalism on the island, and transforming itself into national bourgeoisie!

Now Sandinista ex-“commander" Ortega in Nicaragua - whose election to the presidency has been warmly embraced by Morales and Chávez - has formed an alliance with the ex-assassins of the 'somocistas' and the 'Contras' armed by the CIA, and guarantees to protect the continuity of the FTA that enslaves the nation to imperialism!

This is the famous "Bolivarian Revolution”: the expropriation of the workers and peasants revolution. This is the main objective of the class collaborationist bourgeois government of Evo Morales. To achieve that aim, imperialism, the transnationals and the Rosca conspired to deceive the workers by making the pact with the fraction of Evo Morales [representing the rich coca growers] as the representative of the whole national bourgeoisie. Now that this objective has been fulfilled, and the masses have been subordinated to one fraction of the bourgeoisie, and the workers and peasants organisations betrayed by their leaders to the state, the Rosca - representing of the transnational companies and the oligarchy of the Medialuna - wants to assume its traditional role as the leading fraction of the national bourgeoisie that controls the state. They no longer need Morales or his Chavista and Castroist allies. Now the Rosca wants to mobilise all its power and its property to smash the remaining life out of the workers and peasants revolution. For that reason today it is organising its forces and its fascist gangs to prepare to drown the last vestige of the revolution in a blood bath.

That is the treacherous role of the popular front and the politics of class collaboration of the leaders of the COB today into the hands of Montes, the friend of Morales, who keeps quiet while our comrades are attacked and killed in Cochabamba. It subordinates the working class to a fraction of the bourgeoisie, to destroy its independent organizations of struggle, to deceive the masses with sweet phrases and token concessions to buy the time to allow the fifth column to attack the revolutionary vanguard as they did in Huanuni, and to allow the imperialists and the “autonomist” bourgeoisie to mobilise their fascist bands and the officer caste to prepare the armed forces to smash the revolution, and to break-up Bolivia if necessary.

The collaborationist leaders of the COB and the COR are responsible for usurping the historic program of the Bolivian workers: "the liberation of the workers will be work of the workers”. They want us to think that the national bosses are our allies, when in reality they are the agents and junior partners of the imperialist monopolies and share in the superexploitation of Bolivian workers and poor peasants. They want to convince us that we should support the "patriotic” generals and "progressive” bourgeois.

But the workers and poor peasants of Bolivia already know from experience that we pay in blood for our support of the bourgeoisie. We learned that tragic lesson in the huge revolution which began in 1952, in supporting the "progressive” government of the MNR [Revolutionary National Militia] that stole our revolution and ended in a military coup that massacred the miners vanguard by shelling the mines. We learned that tragic lesson of the Popular Assembly of 1971, when the treacherous leaders told us to support the "anti-imperialist” and “socialist” general Torrez, only to end up under the heel of Banzer's bloodthirsty military coup which smashed our revolutionary uprising.

For that reason, so that our class brothers and sisters win the battle in Cochabamba, and that in Cochabamba, Huanuni and El Alto we revive the revolutionary struggle that has been stolen, the most urgent task now is to break our workers and peasant organisations from the bourgeoisie and the new treacherous Rosca regime based on the pact between Morales, the national bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie of the Medialuna, and the transnational companies.

We have to fight to regain rank and file control of the COB and the COD with our slogan: "the liberation of the workers will be work of the workers”. We have to return to the Theses from Pulacayo, the program of the heroic Bolivian revolution of 1952! That program proves that we have to rebuild the worker-peasant alliance, because the only class that can break with imperialism, solve the land question and end the misery of the poor peasants by expropriating the landowning class and the banks to finance the development of agriculture, and provide bread and work for all who want to work, is the working class leading the poor farmers in a socialist revolution.

Reforge the worker-peasant alliance, led by the COB, the COD and the COR, organizing the poor and landless peasants, united with the revolutionary student movement - as we did it in October 2003 and May-June 2005 - the only way to end the imperialist plunder of our nation and solve the needs of the exploited people, creating a revolutionary workers and peasants government to finish the revolution begun more than three years ago!



They continue to rob our hydrocarbons, our minerals and our land from us: we will not allow them to rob our revolution from us!

End the blood of the workers and peasants spilled in the service of the different gangs of the Bolivian bourgeoisie and transnational companies!

Out with Reyes Villa!

For a Provisional Government of the workers and farmers organizations of Cochabamba, based on the committees of self-defense of the armed masses!

Using the popular front of Morales, Garcia Linera and the prattling politicians of the MAS, the supporters of Goni and Rosca have staged their return. The bourgeois press in Bolivia, alarmed by the angry disputes between the different bourgeois fractions for the control the Bolivian state, speaks of a “war of positions”, fearing that because of these divisions, the "demons" of the insurgent workers and peasants can stage their return.

The Morales government calls on the "autonomist” bourgeoisie to negotiate and invites the priests, the NGOs and the Human Rights commissions that always appear after the workers and farmers have been killed, to stop us from making our own justice against the fascist bands of the Rosca.

The old Rosca controls four departments of the Medialuna, and two prefectures in La Paz and Cochabamba. The new coca and national bourgeoisie of Morales and Garci'a Linera, have the majority in the CA and control the central state power.

Morales role, as representative of the national bourgeoisie (those who pocket the rent of the hydrocarbons and the businesses of the Bolivian state) is to take charge of the workers and peasants to prevent us from developing the struggle for our basic demands and take back the dual power that we created in in 2003 and 2005. They are the ones in charge of throwing water on the fire of the revolution.

At the same time the old oligarchy of the Rosca has used the pact of the CA and the antonomies, to mobilize its fascist bands of “rich children”, plain clothes police and the mercenaries of the large estate owners, to prepare the armed defence of its property and its interests. This is the “war of positions” of which the Bolivian bourgeois press speaks: it is the workers and farmers, fighting and dying in the service of one or other fraction of the Bolivian bourgeoisie.


Enough! The poor workers and peasants are not the cannon fodder for any business of the exploiters!

In Cochabamba, like yesterday in Huanuni, they tied our hands to stop us from fighting back. The government of Morals defends the pact with Rosca: it wants to keep the fascist assassin Manfred Reyes Villa in the power. In that “war of positions” for the biggest shares in the spoils of the plunder of the Bolivian nation and the exploitation of the workers and peasants, not one more oppressed person must die!

Like yesterday in Huanuni, today in Cochabamba the class struggle is on the streets: we want to fight, and to die if it is necessary, for the wages, hydrocarbons, minerals, and land that belongs to us, the workers and peasants.

And in this war of classes, on the other side of the barricade there are the fascist bands massacreing workers and peasants, supported by the Rosca, and the government of Morals and his gang of native bourgeois, in dispute with them over minor business differences, but in fundamental agreement that the people must be suppressed before them threaten the property of the whole national bourgeoisie.


Long live the Cabildo of the workers and peasants of Cochabamba!
No submission to the government of Morales and its pact of the CA and the regional autonomies!
Down with Reyes Villa!
For a Provisional Workers and Peasants Government of the Cabildo!
Disband the killer police!
Militias and generalized arming of the workers and peasants of Cochabamba!
Create soldiers committees to organize as part of the workers and peasants Cabildo!


Let us revive, in Cochabamba, the headquarters of the workers and peasants revolution so that we can eat, have land and end the imperialist plunder of our nation!

Enough of the collaborationist leaders of the COB, the COD and the COR!
All to Cochabamba: let us found a national Congress of mandated delegates of the rank and file, of the COB, the COD and the poor peasants of Bolivia, along with the revolutionary student movement!


In October, the heroic miners of Huanuni who resisted the counterrevolutionary attack of Villarroel and the cooperativistas encouraged by Morales, had their heroic struggle isolated and contained. It was clear that the leadership of the COB, in the hands of Montes, did not lift a finger for the fight of the Bolivian workers. The job of those union bureaucrats is to prevent the Bolivian working class, led by its heroic miners, from re-entering the road to revolution.

In order to smash the fascist gangs of Santa Cruz, the Medialuna and Cochabamba, it is necessary to create workers and peasants militias. To create these militias it is necessary to throw out the collaborationist leaders of the Miners Federation and elect a new leadership mandated by the base (rank and file). The “rich children” and the mercenaries of the bloody fascist gangs that kill the workers and peasants in the interests o the Rosca oligarchy, deserve to be taught a lesson with the dynamite sticks of the miners.

For a National Congress of the Miners Federation in Cochabamba, led by the heroic wage-earning miners of Huanuni, alongside the Open Cabildo of the exploited cochabambinos! For mandated delegates for each 50 workers of the workshops of La Paz and Cochabamba!

What Cochabamba needs is that and workers of El Alto, throwing off the COR and their collaborationist leaders and mount a fight against the La Paz prefect Patana who sold out to Morales and the national bourgeoisie for a plate of lentils, and re-create in El Alto the 'headquarters' the revolution and the program of the 8 of June of 2005. That program, after the overthrow of Mesa, called for a "national, indigenous Popular Assembly as an instrument of national power" based on elected delegates of assemblies of workers, with self-defence committees, planned an indefinite general strike and a national road blockade for the "nationalization and industrialization of hydrocarbons”. It also rejected “all the bourgeois traps of constitutional succession and new elections". What Cochabamba needs is that it takes as its model the militant slogan of the alteños [people of El Alto] : “We are the guardians of the hydrocarbons; we are the communitarian Wipala, we are the indomitable El Alto”!


Enough of begging to the rigged CA to meet the needs of the exploited!

The CA serves the businesses and the profits of the Rosca, the transnational companies and the national bourgeoisie represented by the MAS, robber of our revolution, and only chains the workers doubly to the slavery and misery of the national and imperialist bourgeoisies!

From Cochabamba, we will create a great congress and national peasants, uniting all the organizations of the poor peasants, and led by the Cabildo of the Cochabamba workers and the Miners Federation, with delegates of base of the COB, the COD, together with the revolutionary student movement which is fighting alongside the workers and farmers against the fascist thugs of Reyes Villa.

For the revolutionary overthrow of Manfred Reyes Villa!
For a workers and peasants government in Cochabamba!

Against the war of positions of the fractions of the exploiters; against the infamous pact of the CA and the autonomies, we counter-pose the workers and Cochabamba peasant government for whom the revival of the class war in Bolivia will deliver justice, end the large estates and give land to the peasants, mines to the miners, worthy work and wages to the workers, and the hydrocarbons to the Bolivian people, and stop the transnational companies plunder of the nation.

Against the collaborationist leadership of Montes, Patana and others, that subordinates the workers organizations to the bourgeoisie, we must reclaim the COB and the COR for the base, and restore the workers and peasants alliance to revive the fight for land, bread and national independence

From democratic assemblies of the bases, it is necessary to defeat the collaborationist leaders of the COB, COD and COR, replacing them with the leaders of the militant rank and file. On this question the Theses of Pulacayo speak clearly, saying that the workers will never support the bourgeois, no matter how disguised as “progressives” or “anti-imperialists” they appear.


We must reclaim our COB, our COD and COR!

Kick out of our organizations all those collaborationists like Montes, the servants of the national bourgeoisie that provide a cover for the old oligarchy by supporting a new MAS oligarchy, that rises out of the bowels of the old to drown the revolution in blood!


The working class requires a revolutionary leadership to once more win the streets for the poor landless farmers, demonstrating to them its capacity to fight, and to win - that is to say, that it has the power to make a revolution to provide its class allies with its most pressing needs for land, cheap credit, tractors, electricity, and a worthy standard of living.

The peasants of the tropics, the Yungas, all over Bolivia, need land; down with the fraudulent "agrarian reform” of Morales and Garcia Linera, negotiated in the United States with Bush and the DEA, and agreed with the oligarchy of Santa Cruz! Out with the DEA!

The oligarchy, with its shout of “autonomy”, defends it's 87% of that productive land in Bolivia that it has robbed. Morales and the CA have shown that it doesnt want to touch a single hectare of the parasitic oligarchy of the Medialuna. We counterpose nationalisation now of the territories of the Medialuna oligarchy and to redistribute the land to the poor peasants that wants to work the land, and to transform them into cooperatives and communes, with the state guaranteeing finance, electricity, machinery, tractors, fertilizers, etc.! In order to defeat the “autonomistas” and the Rosca, it is necessary to expropriate the land of the oligarchy and to give it to the poor peasants and the destitute.

It is necessary to expropriate the banks without compensation, and nationalize the banks under the control of the workers, creating a single state bank, to put an end to the usury of the bankers who takes the land from endebted peasants and creates large estates for the rich, so as to provide cheap credit for our campesino brothers and sisters.

It is necessary also to expropriate the parasitic commercial bourgeoisie - of which Evo Morales is a faithful representative - who pays a cruelly low price to buy commodities from the peasant, and sells them for an exorbitant price to the workers and the people of the cities, or on the world market.


Out with the transnational companies from Bolivia!

Down with all the agreements of co-participation for the rent of hydrocarbons with Respol, Totalfina, Petrobras, British Petroleum and other new allies of Morales!

Use Bolivia's resources and funds for public works to guarantee high standard houses and provide free gas to all workers and peasants homes in Bolivia!

For the nationalization without compensation of the Mutún mine and all the mineral wealth under the control of the Miners Federation (FSTMB) and the COB!

Immediate Increase of wages for all the Bolivian workers, with a minimum wage at the level of the family shopping basket and indexed according to the cost of living!

Divide the working hours among all those who want to work including the unemployed!

Down with the plan of Morales to eliminate university freedom, that is already creating a new Rosca bourgeois in the universities!

Total university autonomy! Education neither for the Rosca, nor for the national bourgeoisie: tripartite government with a student majority in all the universities of Bolivia, to make the university serve the needs of the revolutionary workers and peasants, the demand raised by the red students of the UTO of Oruro!


We have already proved that none of these measures will come from that infamous pact of the rigged CA and the autonomies. Nor will it introduce any measures against the officer caste of the army, the murderous of the workers and peasants of Bolivia.

The hour has arrived to converge on the workers and farmers Cabildo at Cochabamba, and to hold a session there to convene a great national congress of the Miners Federation, the COB and all COD and COR, with delegates of the base.

Immediate formation of national workers and peasants militias independent of Morales and his government and all its supporters, to smash the fascist gangs of the Medialuna and the prefects of Rosca

The oligarchy and the Rosca are armed to the teeth. They have organized their fascist militias and they have recruited openly to these counter-revolutionary shock troops. The Cabildo of workers and peasants of Cochabamba, where the delegates of all the workers and peasants organizations of Bolivia meet, has a million times more legitimacy than those pacts that arm and disarm made by the Rosca and Morales behind the backs of the people in the CA, to organise workers and peasants militias, and to call on the rank and file soldiers to form committees to send their delegates to a true National Assembly, of workers, peasants and indigenous people of Bolivia, representating the massive majority of our nation. Thus we will finally bring to justice the murderous officer caste of the Armed Forces, today free and unpunished thanks to the impunity and pardon that Morales government has provided them.

It is necessary to smash the fascist bands of Reyes Villa in Cochabamba; it is necessary to enlist now at El Alto and in the Miners Federation all those workers and poor peasants who are prepared to fight for the defense of their cochabambinos brothers and sisters, and for their own class interests.

Every minute, and hour of every day, workers and peasants are suffering the blows of the fascist thugs of Medialuna. Enough! For a national military command of all workers and peasants organizations, centralized by the COB, the Miners Federation and the Cabildo of Cochabamba, to settle accounts with Reyes Villa and his thugs and to smash the fascist gangs of Santa Cruz! With the fascists we do not discuss: with the fascists we fight! But for to do this, the workers and peasants organizations have to break with Morales and his policy of using the police and military to defend us from the fascists. On the contrary, it is the police that provides the fascists with arms and gas grenades so that they can kill the workers and poor peasants, and that in October armed the cooperativistas to kill the miners of Huanuni.

The facists recruit their thugs publicly to defend the interests of a handful of oligarchs and expropiators of the people. The slower the workers and peasants organizations are to break with the bourgeois government of Morals and the pacts of the CA and the autonomies, the more will the Bolivian earth be irrigated with the blood of the miners, workers and poor peasants. The more time we take to build the centralized national military command of the workers and farmers organizations, the faster will the officer caste mobilize the Armed Forces to drown the revolution the heroic workers and peasants, begun in October 2003, in a blood bath. For military commands in all the miners, workers and peasants organizations in Boliviak, centralised in the Cabildo of the COD and the peasants of the region of Cochabamba!


Only a Workers' and Peasants Government, supported by the militias of the armed masses and by soldiers committees, will be able to guarantee national liberation, agrarian revolution and the bread and work for the workers

In the pact of “reconciliation” of El Alto and Santa Cruz, made by Morales and the collaborative leaders of the COR of El Alto and the church, it was the workers and poor farmers who had to yield and to drop their demands. In the rigged, undemocratic CA, the deputies of PODEMOS - representing the of cruceña and Medialuna bourgeoisie - were armed to the teeth, and openly recruiting for their fascist bands. Today some of the allies of Morales like the prefect of La Paz, Paredes, and some of the deputies of the MAS, have switched sides and oppose the simple majority in the CA. But whether for or against a simple majority, everything is decided by 250 deputies of PODEMOS and the MAS, behind the backs of the people.

Everything is decided behind the backs of the big majority of the people, mainly the poor workers and peasants. The collaborationist leaders of the COB, the COD, and COR and the peasants organizations have forced the fighting organizations that overthrew Goni and Mesa, to beg before the CA where none of the problems of the poor and oppressed people can be resolved, and where they are used as cannon fodder in the disputes between the different bourgeois fractions.

The only true democracy of the working class and the poor farmers is the workers democracy of the organizations of the masses in struggle, where we decide how to take into our own hands the resolution of all our problems! But the collaborationist leaders were determined to wreck any independence won by our militant organisations, to neutralize and force them to kneel to the prefectures and to the government of Morales, so that we were made to give up our power to decide our future to these gangs who conspire against the people in the rigged CA.

The pact between Morales and the bourgeoisie of the Rosca and the Medialuna, has left the real power with the transnational companies, whose General Staffs and directors, with a handful of national parasites, decide behind closed doors the destiny of Bolivia. A very small minority of directors of the transnational companies, bourgeois and oligarchs of the Medialuna, bosses politicians of MNR, the MIR and the banzerismo today re-united in PODEMOS, deputies of the MAS in the CA, Evo Morales and the Garci'as Linera, they are a true band of conspirators against the people.

Morales, with the collaborationist leaders of the COB, the COD and other workers organizations, are following exactly the “advice” of Fidel Castro. In the same way that he told the workers and peasants who in the1980s rose up, overthrew Somoza and started a revolution, that they did not have to be the new Cuba, today Fidel told Evo Morales not to make the 'errors' of Cuba, that is, not to expropriate the bourgeoisie, but on the contrary to make only a 'democratic' revolution. What is this “democratic revolution”? A handful of bloodsuckers plundering the nation and exploiting the workers and poor peasants, conspiring behind the backs of the people in the offices of the transnational companies, the imperialist embassies and the corridors of the rigged CA, to decide the destiny of Bolivia!

It could not be any other way. The CA of the pact between Morales and the MAS and the PODEMOS, cannot with a simple majority or two third majority break with imperialism, expropriate the landowners and give the land to the peasants, nor give bread and work to the workers, nor anything. This has been absolutely proven already. The only thing that the CA had done is to strengthen the Rosca so that is can begin to mobilise its power once more, and to bring about a deeper defeat for the workers and peasants.

In Bolivia, as in all semi-colonial nations, the true democratic-revolutionary tasks are the break from imperialism to win national independence, and the agrarian revolution. The gutless Bolivian national bourgeoisie of the “Andean Capitalism” which Garcia Linera speaks of, junior partner of imperialism, is absolutely incapable of solving these democratic objectives because it is intrinsically tied, by thousands of business interests, to the imperialist transnational companies. It can haggle and discuss its share of these businesses, but like the exploiting class that it is, it will never touch the property of the transnational companies. Only the working class, the one truly national class, which has no interest in any ties to imperialism, can break these chains, and lead the poor peasants and all other oppressed people in the nation to the complete realisation of those democratic tasks as part of a socialist revolution.

Only a provisional workers and peasants revolutionary government, with a victorious insurrection that overthrows the Rosca, destroys to officer caste of the armed forces, and expropriates the expropiators, can break with imperialism and win national independence, solve the agrarian problem by expropriating the landowners and redistributing the land to the poor peasants and landless, guarantee worthy work and living wages for all the workers, reclaim the hydrocarbons, minerals and all the natural resources of the nation, and resolve the problems of the vast majority of the oppressed people.


The national bourgeoisie, junior partner of imperialism, has demonstrated that it cannot even give to the peasants the equal right to vote in a free and sovereign Constituent Assembly. It cannot allow a truly free and sovereign bourgeois democratic institution, because, as soon as it acted in the interests of the huge majority of the people against the interests and the property of the imperialist transnationals and of its junior partners the national bourgeoisie, the exploiters would use the officer caste and fascist gangs to dissolve the CA and repress any threat to their continued class rule.

For that reason, there can be no free and sovereign democratic Constituent Assembly without at the same time creating soldiers committees and arming the people, to smash the fascist gangs, disband the police, destroy the officer caste, that is to say, form a government of the poor workers and peasants who are the vast majority of the people.

The proletariat must say to the peasants to convince them of their true numerical strength, that it they really want a truely democratic and sovereign CA, the best way is to create workers and peasants militias to smash the fascists. We must explain clearly to our peasant brothers and sisters that only a provisional government of the revolutionary workers and peasants supported by the armed organisations of the masses, can dissolve the police, destroy the officer caste and allow a truly free and sovereign national CA, with one deputy elected for each 10,000 people for the whole country, recallable at any time, paid no more than a workers wage, where they can discuss democratically how to break with imperialism, expropriate the landowners and distribute the land to the peasants etc.

At the same time, we must say to them clearly that a Workers and Peasants Republic - that is to say, the dictatorship of proletariat - would be a million times more democratic than any bourgeois republic with most democratic of Constituent Assemblies, that in fact no more than the dictatorship of a handful of exploiters of the vast majority of the exploited and oppressed Bolivian people.


A Workers Socialist Revolution, or a caricature of "revolution" called "chavista" and “bolivarian”.
The internationalist Trotskyists of the ORI: standing up alongside the heroic revolt of the workers and peasants of Cochabamba

As in Huanuni in October, today the cochabambinos class brothers and sisters are putting up a revolutionary fight. It is clear that in Bolivia today the historical alternative is between communism or fascism. Like successive pre-shocks, these confrontations herald the coming events in Bolivia, either a counter-revolutionary pact in the CA between Morales, as the representative of the national bourgeoisie, and the oligarchy of the Medialuna, that finishes off the last vestiges of the revolution; or the popular front throwing water on the fire of the masses struggle, allows the Rosca to mobilise its fascist gangs and the officer caste to go on the offensive, and the heroic revolution of the workers and peasants that began in 2003 is drowned in blood.

This danger becomes more serious every minute, because the Bolivian masses do not have at their head the leadership they need and deserve. The crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletariat becomes more serious each day. The renegades of Trotskyism like the POR-Lora, the LOR-CI, the mst (ex- LIT-CI), working with the conciliationist leaders of the COB and other organizations, have collaborated decisively in liquidating the leadership of the working class allowing those who collaborate with Morales such as Montes, Patana and others to steal the revolution. They are part of the treacherous popular front bloc that is the World Social Forum, renouncing the 4th International founded in 1938 and its program the Theses of Pulacayo that was adopted by the Bolivian miners in 1946 and which guided the revolution of 1952.

Today, more than ever, the Bolivian proletariat needs a revolutionary leadership. The internationalist Trotskyists of the ORI, members of the FLT, are a nucleus that has yet to win the authority to lead the exploited masses, but we are fighting alongside them because we want to convince the masses of the correctness of the strategy and program of Trotskyism as part of our shared experience.


But the decisive combats and confrontations which will determine the outcome of events in Bolivia are already here. There is a race to see if the heroic Bolivian proletariat can equip itself with the revolutionary leadership it needs and deserves to resolve the decisive confrontations in the heat of battle. The elements needed to create the General Staff of the revolution exist in the mines of Huanuni, the factories and the streets of the indomitable El Alto, in the revolt of the cochabambinos workers and peasants, and in the revolutionary struggles of the students of Oruro, El Alto, and Cochabamba; and in the thousands of workers who have been educated for generations by the program of Trotskyism adopted by the Bolivian working class in the Theses of Pulacayo.

As the conditions that will allow the revolutionary General Staff to form are developing, all the forces of the ORI, a member of the FLT, are being thrown into the fight to recover the COB, COD and COR as organisations of the base, as well as the organizations of the poor and landless peasants, as organs that can go from the defensive onto the offensive in Cochabamba, El Alto, and Huanuni, so that those struggles can win and re-open the road to the revolution that has been stolen by the Morales popular front.

We put all our forces into the fight to rebuild, generalize, and centralize at the national level, so that the armed organs of working class self-determination and direct democracy of the masses can prevail. Because there, in those organs, under the vigilant eyes of the masses, every day the policy and the programs are subject to the workers and peasants votes to see if they work to defend their class interests. And because of this, their experience in these organs allows the workers and poor peasants to quickly learn how to deal with their treacherous leaders, how to get rid of them, and how to judge the correctness of the program of the revolutionaries.

In those organs, a small nucleus of internationalist revolutionaries can multiply its forces by thousands, on condition that it fights implacably against all the conciliationist leaders, speaks the truth to the masses no matter how difficult, and points out clearly, at each step, who are their allies, and who are their enemies.

We revolutionaries of the ORI, members of the FLT, have already chosen our trench in the combat: standing up next to the heroic uprising of the exploited people of Cochabamba! Standing up next to the miners of Huanuni and next to the revolutionary workers of El Alto! That is our place: we only ask for a position in the front rank of the fight, and the possibility of honestly fighting to convince the workers and the youth of the correctness of the program and strategy of revolutionary Trotskyism.

16 de Enero de 2007

Octubre Rojo Internacionalista (ORI) de Bolivia

Partido Obrero Internacionalista (CI) de Chile
Grupo de Obreros Comunistas (CWG) de Nueva Zelanda
Fracción Trotskista (Vanguardia Proletaria) de Brasil
Liga Trotskista Internacionalista (LTI) de Perú
Liga Obrera Internacionalista (CI)-Democracia Obrera de Argentina

Integrantes de la Fracción Leninista Trotskista

ELECTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES

A VICTORY FOR THE IMPERIALIST BOURGEOISIE

The victory of the Democrats on November 7 in the US mid-term elections gave them control of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The victory was widely hailed as a vote of no-confidence in Bush’s war in Iraq. Chávez, Castro and other leading figures of World Social Forum congratulated the Democrats calling the victory “a defeat for neoliberalism”. The fake Trotskyists also said that the result of the election was a “defeat of Bush”. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The only defeat for Bush was that inflicted by the Iraqi Resistance and the militancy of US workers!


The defeat for Bush was inflicted by the heroic Iraqi resistance and the flood of body bags coming home, and not the ‘rebellion of the voters’ lauded by the fake Trotskyists. It was the Iraqi bullets and not the American ballots (which can never ‘defeat’ the bourgeoisie) that counted in the election. It was the defeat inflicted by the Palestinian people and the oppressed people of Southern Lebanon that defeated and humiliated the military machine of the Zionist-fascist state of Israel, acting as the US gendarme in the Middle East.

It was the defeat inflicted by the awakening of the US working class mobilising against the war – like the Movement of the Million Workers against the war; more than 1,500 demonstrations against the war; the thousands of local committees that built giant mobilizations fighting the bosses offensive against work conditions to casualise and drive up the rate of exploitation; and the campaigns that organized to defend the workers left to die by the state in hurricane Katrina.

It was the massive upsurge of millions of Latino migrants, treated as pariahs in the US, who organized a national strike on 1st May. It was the Spanish workers who on March 2004 rallied to the cry: “The war is yours, the dead are ours”; and the heroic young workers who in 2005 set alight the cities in France to the battle cry: “Every night we will make Paris a Baghdad”.

It was these heroic resistance struggles that has broken the teeth of the imperialistic offensive, the “war on terror” against the “axis of evil”, launched by Bush in 2001 on behalf of imperialist finance capital, in response to the revolutionary upsurges in the semi-colonial world like in Ecuador, Palestine, Indonesia followed by Argentina and Bolivia, and the world economic crisis that hit the US and saw Wall St lose 8 trillion dollars in one year.

The objectives of this counter-offensive were clear: US imperialism had to redesign the map of the semi colonial world to grab control of the vital oil reserves and pipelines, raw materials and cheap labor. In its back yard - Latin America, its main goal was to force the FTAA on all countries as it had done with Mexico and Chile in the 1990s. In the Middle East and Central Asia, its objective was to re-colonise Iraq, Afghanistan and other nations to take direct control of oil at the expense of the national bourgeoisies and its imperialist rivals France and Germany.

The counter-offensive required the Bonapartisation of the US regime and a intensified attack on the working class of that country. Thus, the fraudulently elected Bush government using the attack on the Twin Towers and the reactionary attacks on Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq, erected a Bonapartist-police regime with state power concentrated in the White House and the Democrats supporting the 'war on terror' and home and abroad.

But the objectives of the US offensive were more ambitious still. For Bush and the US bosses the recolonization of the Middle East and Central Asia were beach heads to mount a wider attack on China and Russia. Not content with the restoration of capitalism in these former workers states, the US ruling class wants to turn them into US colonies or protectorates grabbing their resources and depriving their rivals, France and Germany of any share in the booty. It is the wider ambition of this plan that has met with defeat due to the resistance of the masses, nothing to do with the election.

On the contrary, the result of the election of 7th November are a victory for the US imperialist regime of which Bush, and the Republican and Democratic Parties, are part. It is a victory because it allows President Bush to retain the support of the warmongering, anti-labor and anti-immigrant "Republicrats” and continue with his imperialist counter-offensive.

Today, the Democratic imperialists say to the masses that they can solve their problems. The treacherous union bureaucrats call on workers to vote Democrat to "defeat Bush”. These are the “democratic” pacifists of Clinton who led the slaughter in the Balkans in the 90s; of Carter, backer of the bloodthirsty military dictatorships of Latin America in the 80s; of the Kennedys, who began the colonial war against the the Vietnamese people in the 60s, and the Roosevelts who led the US imperialist war that ended by wiping Hiroshima and Nakasaki off the map with atomic bombs.

To claim that the ballot box can stop the US counter-revolutionary offensive while the Iraqi nation is still occupied and bleeding is to desecrate the tomb of more than half-a-million Iraqian workers and who have been killed by the Anglo-Yankee troops. To claim that the electoral victory of the Democratic imperialist killers is the “expression” of the Iraqi resistance, of the heroic militias who fell fighting in Fallujah and left unburied as food for dogs, is a huge insult to the oppressed peoples of the world.

The Democrats are a pacifist lid to stop an upsurge of US workers against a new 'Vietnam'


The failure of the plan to occupy and colonise Iraq has raised the spectre of a new Vietman before the eyes of the US ruling class. It fears that the resistance of the Iraqi masses may turn the occupation into a workers and peasants revolution in the Middle East. More than that it fears that the defeat of the US army in Iraq will spark the US workers revolution inside the US. The US ruling class is well aware that the risks of its gambit in Iraq includes an insurrection, not only in the Middle East, but also at home, where the US bourgeoisie has intensified its attacks on its own working class.

But the bourgeoisie will stop at nothing when it sees its property and class rule threatened by the masses. For example, after the victory of the Russian revolution in 1917, the world bourgeoisie quickly learned that it had to destroy the soviets at all costs. It grasped immediately that soviets were the form of workers class power irreconciably confronting the power of the power of the bourgeois state, and capable, under a revolutionary leadership, of removing the treacheous misleaders paid by the bourgeoisie to strangle the soviets, and taking power.

In the same way, US imperialism learned the lesson of the defeat suffered in Vietnam: it learned that it must prevent at all costs a defeat of its troops in a semi-colonial country from turning into the start of a proletarian revolution, particularly in its own 'homeland'.

To prevent Iraq from becoming another Vietnam, the US ruling class called on the Democrat machine backed by the gangster union bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO, and internationally by Chávez, Castrism and the fake Trotskyists, to create a big wave of pacifism to divert and contain the US working class, with its potential class power becoming aroused, into voting Democrat to 'defeat' Bush.

To 'defeat' Bush then, workers were trapped into voting for a party that: supported the war against Afghanistan and Iraq and voted the war budget; the “patriotic laws” attacking the civil liberties of the masses; all the attacks by the bosses on workers' historic gains; the enslavement of the twelve million immigrant workers in the US, and the building of a wall on the Mexican border!

The election result is therefore a victory for the bourgeoisie. Rather than being a crisis for the Bush regime, the imperialistic regime of the “Republicrats” has been strengthened by containing the growing movement of the US working class against the war, stopping any development of the struggle against the war from breaking with the union officials and the Democrats, and mobilising against the attacks on workers such as Katrina and immigration laws.

Containing workers resistance to the 'war on terror' at home is critical in implementing the plans of the US bosses to liquidate of all of the conquests of the labor movement and force the closure of plants, sackings, wage cuts, loss of pensions and health insurance etc., so that US corporates can compete with their relocated plants in China, Vietnam and Latin America.

The victory of the Republicrats and the big wave of pacifism means that the US ruling class has been able to prevent, for the moment, the development of independent organisations of the super-exploited working class that works more than 50 hours a week for miserable wages, where 50 million do not have access to basic health care, where 35 million live in hunger, and whose living conditions are becoming more and more like their class brothers and sisters in Latin America.

The Democratic plan to rescue the profits of US business from the Iraqi marsh


The result of the elections reflects a pact between the different fractions of US imperialism - such as oil, construction, the military etc who were the dominant fraction in 2001 - with the corporations that have relocated their production to China, Asia and Latin America. They have agreed to protect the wider interests of US capitalism by making an orderly exit from Iraq so that the resistance to the occupation does not turn into a revolution in the semi-colony or in the 'homeland'.

This pact junks the tactical failures of the “war on terror” and the “axis of evil” and creates a new bipartisan foreign policy of US pacifism, and new agreements with the national bourgeoisies to contain the masses and protect the interests of US business. Thus, Syria and Iran are no longer to be classified as “terrorist states” and are now being invited to 'mediate' and 'guarantee' 'peace' in Iraq and the Middle East.

As is always the case, where the imperialists make agreements with national bourgeoisies, the currency that pays for these dirty dealings is the blood of the oppressed masses. The imperialists and the national bourgeoisies have a common interest which is to contain the masses to ensure their superexploitation is maintained.

So in Lebanon, after the heroic masses defeat of the Zionist army, the bourgeois leaders of Hizbollah made a deal with the imperialistic powers, the UN, and Israel that allowed the Zionists to again enter Gaza killing and destroying. This deal is also in the interests of the Palestinean bourgeoisies' national unity government of Hamas and Fatah and a “two states” solution that guarantees the enslavement of the Palestinean masses. At the same time, the Shiite bourgeoisie of Hizbollah is now in position to become the leading fraction of the Lebanese bourgeoisie.

In the same way, the plan of the Democrats to make an orderly retreat from Iraq is to do a deal with the national bourgeoisies of Syria and Iran, so that they control the popular resistance in Iraq and cover the backs of the US forces as they withdraw. Instead of encouraging and fomenting the fratricidal wars between Sunni and Shiite militias to divert the resistance from the occupying forces, the US will now use the regional national elites as its 'partners' to suppress the 'civil war'.

Thus, the Iranian Shiite bourgeoisie will be made responsible for the control of the Shiite masses and disarming the militias of Al Sadr, while the Syrian bourgeoisie will be expected to isolate and crush the resistance of the militias by stopping the supply of arms, equipment and ammunition across the Syrian border.

As its part in the "withdrawal" US imperialism will unleash a blood bath in the so-called "Sunni Triangle" sending thousands of troops to wipe out the heart of the resistance in the same way it destroyed Fallujah. It will also unleash its troops against the Madhi brigades of Al Sadr in Sadr city in Baghdad. At the same time the Syrian and Iranian bourgeosies will create a regular army capable of finishing off the resistance and creating a stable Iraqi regime that serves the the interests of US imperialism and its allies and the Syrian and Iranian bourgeoisies.

This is the “withdrawal” plan being prepared by US imperialism today under the leadership of the Democrats, and with the collaboration of Chávez, Castro and the World Social Forum of “pacifists” and “negotiators”!


The US ruling class can today pay the price of this 'pacifist' policy of pacts and agreements with the national bourgeoisies in the Middle East to suppress the mass resistance thanks to the increased profits extracted from the working class and the raw materials plundered from the semicolonies and the ex-workers states, and the attack on the past gains of the working class in the 'homeland'.

Thus the terms of the agreement in Iraq will be the division of the oil wealth to be appropriated from the Iraqi masses by the imperialists, and the Syrian and Iranian bourgeoisies. The Democrats are confident that the US transnationals can make a deal that is no worse than those they are making with the populist 'pacifist democratic' leaders in Latin America!

With hundreds of millions of workers enslaved by the transnational companies located in the restored capitalist economy of China; with Latin America transformed into a reservoir of cheap labor in the assembly plants in Central America and its raw materials plundered by the big imperialist monopolies in the MERCOSUR countries; with the ex-workers states of Eastern Europe supplying cheap labor for the European imperialist transnationals; with the Russian working class oppressed by the Putin ex-KGB arms-dealers turned into bourgeois junior partners of imperialism; with US workers losing their past gains and working more than a 50 hour week; the German working class working 40 hour weeks to compete with German plants relocated to China and East Europe; there are more profits to bribe the national bourgeoisies.

While in the United States the Democrats 'peace' plan has succeeded in preventing the antiwar movement from spreading and uniting with other workers struggles, in the EU new popular front governments are playing the same role. In Italy and France popular fronts are in preparation as the renewed attacks against the masses by the “right” governments of Berlusconi and Chirac-Sarkozy will risk causing the revolutionary explosion of the masses. Popular Front governments of the 'left' will be better able to divert the masses struggles into parliament and 'pacify' the working class as in the face of new interimperialistic disputes and colonial adventures over labor reserves, raw materials, zones of influence new and superior colonial adventure.

Meanwhile, in Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela, and Argentina, populist parties (popular fronts in one single party) of the “Bolivarian Revolution” or popular front governments steal and strangle the anti-imperialist and revolutionary struggles of the masses. These regimes, while pretending to oppose US imperialism, in reality act as its agents and enforce the super-exploitation of the working class and the ongoing plundering of the natural wealth of the semi-colonies of the Southern Cone.

In Chile and Mexico, countries dominated by the US through free trade agreements, the fake Trotskyist left is weak and there has been no left populist front capable of tying the hands of the masses and prevent them from rising up in pre-revolutionary insurrections against the right wing bonapartist regimes which have turned these countries into virtual colonial protectorates of US imperialism.

Indeed, to prevent that happening in Nicaragua, the popular front of Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas - those ex- “guerrilla commanders”, now the yuppies of Wall Street and agents of CAFTA who sold out the Central American revolution in the agreements of Esquipulas and Contadora, along with Fidel Castro, has been elected as the government.

The big pacifist wave in the United States; pacts and agreements with the native bourgeoisies; class collaborationist governments of the “Bolivarian Revolution” in Latin America; preventive popular fronts in imperialist Europe, these are all policies of the imperialist powers to prevent the heroic Iraqi resistance and the defeat suffered by the Zionists in Lebanon from sparking off a workers and farmers revolution in those countries, and in turn spreading like a prairie fire to the working classes of the metropolises.


The WSF creates a “democratic front” to disarm the workers before an imperialist counter-revolution


The big pacifist wave to divert workers from developing the antiwar movement in the US would not have succeeded without the political treachery of the reformist leaders in the World Social Forum who have recycled the old Stalinist policy of supporting the "democratic" imperialists against the “fascists”.

In 1935, as World War II approached, Stalin and imperialist France signed the Stalin-Laval pact of “nonaggression” and collaboration as a “democratic” front against the imperialist “fascists” of Germany.

In this way, the Stalinist bureaucracy said to the worlds workers that the fight was not class against class against every bourgeoisie, but a fight to defend the "democractic” bourgeoisie against the “fascist” bourgeoisie, and that the defense of the USSR was not that of the workers but that of the "democratic" bourgeoisie. With this political left cover for class collaboration the Stalinist bureaucracy sold-out the Spanish and French revolutions, completed the liquidation of III the International, betrayed the world revolution and opened the road to the imperialist slaughter of World War II.

This same policy of the “democratic front” is that which today is promoted by the treacherous leaders of the World Social Forum in the United States. The union bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO - supporters of Bush and the invasion of Iraq, obeyed its masters, the US bourgeoisie, and contributed hundreds of million dollars of the union dues of the workers, to the electoral campaign of the Democrats. The traditional leaders of the Latino labor movement - allied to the catholic church, pacifists, etc. - and also the Communist Party of the US called openly and directly for workers to vote for the Democrats.

But the decisive thing in the success of the big pacifist wave was the the influence of Castroism and fake Trotskyism which play a treacherous role in the new organizations that have emerged in the US working class to oppose the war. These currents did not directly or openly call for a vote for the Democratic Party, but they played a central role in diverting the emerging indepenedent struggles of workers into the Democratic Party machine.

The first example was the undermining of the call to for a national strike of the 1st December, 2005, put out by more than 700 workers organizations against the war and to support the victims of Katrina. The reformist leaders conspired to transform that strike into a day of “commemoration” of the struggle “civil rights”.

In the same way, months later, under the leadership of the catholic church and the pacifists, the magnificent struggle of twelve million migrant workers, mainly Latina, who called a national strike on May 1st 2006, was diverted behind the Democrats. When the new anti-immigrant law which threatened to deport up to 12 million "illegal" immigrants was met with a massive wave of protests, the treacherous leadership wanted to amend the law in Congress. These reformists put a stop to the mobilisation of an independent migrant movement which is capable of directly challenging the policy of the US bourgeoisie to use the 'illegality' of migrant workers to continue persecuting, jailing and deporting them in order to super-exploit them as wage slaves.

These treacherous leaders made sure that the each of these currents and organisations do not coordinate and centralise their struggles. The guarantee that each fight, strike or mobilization is isolated and contained. For example the demonstation in support of the Oaxaca commune were separated from those of migrant workers. Mobilizations against the war were isolated from the labor struggles of unionists to defend their gains from attack, and from organizing support for the victims of Katrina etc.

By this means, the new layers of millions of workers roused by the war, Katrina and the anti-migrant laws, were coralled into the 'democratic front', subordinated to the bourgeois, petty bourgeois and treachersous WSF leaderships, and steered into voting for the imperialist killers of the Democratic Party.


US Workers: Your first task is to fight for the Victory of Iraq and the Defeat of the US troops in Iraq!


Once again, at the moment, the treacherous leaders have succeeded in making the US workers kneel before their imperialistic bourgeoisie, this time to the killers of the Democratic Party. The US proletariat will pay a high price for this new treason. The more they capitulate to their own ruling class the more it is able to intensify the superexploitation, invasions and massacres in the colonies, semi-colonies, protectorates and the ex-workers states. And the more counter-revolutionary victories the imperialists win in their colonial adventures, the greater the atttacks on the jobs, conditions and rights of their own working class bringing it down to the level of the workerfs in Latin America and then that of Iraq, Palestine, Asia, Africa, etc.

As understood by Marxists in the 19th Century, "a people that oppresses another one cannot be free itself”. In the last few years, the emergence of the resistance to the colonial war in Iraq in the US working class began to approach this understanding. And for this reason the leaders of the WSF have conspired to force it so retreat from any break with its own imperialist bourgeoisie. That is why, today, the first necessary task of the US working class must be to break with its own imperialist bourgeoisie - "The main enemy is at home!"

• Down with the new imperialistic plans of pacts and agreements with the bourgeoisies of Syria and Iranian to massacre the resistance and to collaborate with Bush and the Republicrats!

• Down with the imperialist regime of the “Republicrats”, killer of the peoples of the world and exploiter of the US proletariat!

• US troops out of Afghanistan, the Middle East and Asia!

• Immediate and unconditional freedom for the prisoners of Guantánamo, the secret jails of the CIA, the imprisoned and tortured militia fighters of the Iraqi resistance in Abu Graib, etc.!

• For the destruction of the Zionist-fascist state of Israel, the gendarme of US imperialism and killer of the Palestinian people!

Only by breaking with its own imperialistic bourgeoisie and the “Republicrat” regime and standing up across the whole continent calling for the victory of its Iraqi brothers and sisters against the US troops, will the US working class be able to end its subordination to the Democratic Party and class collaborationist politics of the "democratic front" of Stalinism, Castroism and its 'left' cover, the fake Trotskyists.

Only by building militant organizations independent of the state to fight for a national Congress of rank and file delegates of all the workers and exploited peoples organizations can the unions be rid of the treacherous bureaucrats of the AFL-CIO and the imposters of the “Change to Win” and other equally collaborationist leaders who have betrayed the movement in support of the peoples oppressed and killed by US imperialism, and the mobilisation of struggles to resist the attacks on their jobs, wages, conditions, and rights.

A Congress of rank and file delegates of all militant workers organizations in the US could mount a national campaign in support of the heroic workers and peasants Commune of Oaxaca, now repessed by the troops of the Mexican army sent by Fox-Calderón, servants of their US master, and give massive support to the workers and peasants revolution in Bolivia that is today stolen by the popular front of Morales government and the policy of class collaboration of the World Social Forum, and so help these struggle return to the revolutionary road.

• US imperialists out of Latin America!

• US out of Guantánamo!

• Down with the economic, political and military free trade agreements of NAFTA, CAFTA, MERCOSUR, and all treaties that subjugate and exploit the Latin American nations in the interests of imperialism!

• For the expropriation without compensation and under workers control of all the US companies and properties in Iraq, the Middle East, Latin America, Asia and Africa!

Such a Workers Congress would organize a united struggle to demand that the wages and conditions won by US workers in corporates such as Ford, General Motors, and the other transnational monopolies, must apply to all the workers in their plants relocated in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

Such a militant campaign would lend huge support to the defensive struggles of the Chinese proletariat against the conditions of wage-slavery imposed by the transnationals, turning it into a counter-offensive that can open up the road to a new proletarian revolution that overthrows the semi-fascist regime of the new Chinese bourgeoisie, expropriates all the transnational companies, and establishes a dictatorship of the proletariat in the ex-workers state.

It is the duty of the US working class which has shared in the superprofits of imperialist exploitation to stand up and make this fight, just as it is the duty of workers of the European imperialist powers to support the struggle of the Russian and other workers of the former USSR against the semi-fascist regime of Putin and the new Russian bourgeoisie.

Breaking with the US bourgeoisie, and taking into its hands the demands of its class brothers and sisters of the nations subjugated by its own imperialism, the US proletariat can use its massive strength to resist further attacks, and reclaim its lost gains, and demand the rights of all migrant workers to automatic citizenship and all other legal, social and political rights.

• Smash the Minutemen vigilantes!

• Pull down the apartheid wall on the border!

• End the slavery of US workers: down with sellout deals of the AFL-CIO bureaucrats, and the new bureaucrats of “Change to win” that give away jobs, wages, conditions and rights!

• Worthy Work for all, with a sliding scale of working hours and wages, a minimum wage at the level of the cost of the family shopping basket and indexed according to the inflation!

• Nationalization without compensation and under workers control of all company that close or dismisses workers!

• Immediate payment of an unemployed wage equal to the minimum wage for all vacated worker!

• Guaranteed retirement benefit at age 60 years equal to the minumum wage!

• Free quality health care for all workers and their families, guaranteed by the employers and the state!

Breaking its ties to the bourgeoisie, defeating the union bureaucracy and the treacherous leaders of the World Social Forum, the US working class will be able to ride the big pacifist wave that currently engulfs it, and mount a massive struggle against its own imperialist bourgeoisie and the 'Republicrat' regime, that can transform its defensive campaigns against the war and the bosses attacks into the beginning of the socialist revolution in the US.

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This is an edited and shorterned version of an article first published in Workers Democracy, No 19, December 2006, journal of LOI -CI (International Workers League - Fourth International) of Argentina, member of the Leninist-Trotskyist Fraction.