Appeal of the Leninist Trotskyist Fraction

May 1st 2008

For an International Conference of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary workers organizations

The crisis in the capitalist imperialist world economy; the restoration of capitalism in Cuba; the fraudulent ‘Bolivarian revolution’; the heroic resistance of the masses of the Middle East: these are the frontlines in the class war that divides reformists from revolutionaries. We put forward our revolutionary response to these acid tests of the global class struggle.

The 3rd Congress of the FLT resolved to call for the formation of a revolutionary internationalist bloc to fight for an International Conference of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary workers' organizations. Today, as in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War and the betrayal of the Social Democratic International, we face a crisis of the capitalist imperialist world economy and the catastrophe that this will bring upon the masses; we are confronted with the Cuban question, the struggle against the fraudulent 'Bolivarian Revolution', the war in the Middle East and the international tasks and obligations that poses for the working class in all countries, and the questions of Colombia and Venezuela. These are all acid tests of the struggles of the world working classes that clearly divide the reformists, revisionists and opportunists from the real revolutionary internationalists that struggle to regroup the forces of a new international.

These are the red hot questions facing the international working class that will be the acid tests of all the currents that claim to be revolutionaries and internationalists, proving in real life who has the program and politics, who can speak the truth clearly, and who actually fights in the trenches with the proletariat and all the exploited. Facing these sharp events the principles and program of them all will reveal who are the revolutionary internationalists and expose all those fake Trotskyists, imposters and opportunists, who during the workers holidays hail the socialist revolution and the Transitional Program, and proclaim loudly for the "Reconstruction of the IV International", yet everyday follow the political path of class collaboration with the social democrats and Stalinists and become their successors.

We publish here then, the call of the Leninist Trotskyist Fraction expressed as a number of points that we put forward in response to the crisis of the world capitalist imperialist economy; on the Cuban question - to define clearly, as with the Russian question, how to win the dictatorship of the proletariat- facing the war and the heroic resistance of the masses of the Middle East; against the fraudulent claims of the "Bolivarian Revolution"; as the elementary principles on which to build a true revolutionary internationalist bloc.

The call contains 23 points as a revolutionary response to the acid tests of the world class struggle, as proposals for discussion, amendment or development, by the revolutionaries of the world, as a principled basis for a bloc to fight for the convening of an International Conference, and to prepare for the rapid international regroupment to fight the treacherous leaders that are stopping the world proletariat from going on the counter-offensive against the world economic crisis that has begun, and so returning to the road of the proletarian revolution.

All of the points presented here have met with the agreement of the comrades of the Marxist Workers Party (POM) of Brazil. It shares our vision and conviction and has put its resources in the service of the fight for an International Conference. The POM has taken the initiative to host in Brazil, towards the middle of the year, a Pre-conference of all the groups and currents that agree with this Call and share its aims. Consequently the FLT, having raised the need for a debate with all the groups and currents that will come to the Pre-Conference in Brazil, puts forward this call to open the discussion on how to build a revolutionary internationalist bloc to fight for an International Conference.

Therefore, on May 1st, 2008, in order to advance this struggle for a bloc to fight for an International Conference, we declare the urgency for a true Zimmerwald and Kienthal of the 21st century, capable of building an international center that can fight to create a new party of world socialist revolution on the basis of the legacy and program of the Founding Congress of the IV International of 1938, which represented the continuation of the legacy of the Bolsheviks and the Revolutionary Third International of Lenin and Trotsky.

We call upon all internationalists that share our view to regroup around the following responses to revolutionary acid tests of class struggles that divide the world and clearly separate two trenches in the sand between those who fight for the victory of the international workers' socialist revolution and those who betray the proletariat to the bourgeoisie.

In the imperialist epoch of crises, wars and revolutions, there can be no national programs. There is only the world program of the proletariat that transcends the national arena and makes the proletariat into revolutionary internationalists able to win the struggle to take power.

1. Only the triumphant proletarian revolution can stop the catastrophic barbarity of rotting capitalism. ‘Socialism or Barbarism’ is not a matter for the future. It is now a slogan for an urgent program of immediate action

The world capitalist crisis and the catastrophe that it will unleash upon the working class and the oppressed means that the promise of ‘Socialism or Barbarism’ must now become the slogan of revolutionary Marxists for a program of immediate action.

The attacks by capitalism on the jobs, livelihoods and lives of the working masses can only be defeated by the struggle to smash the world capitalist imperialist system. It puts on the agenda as the first task of the day, the fight for the proletarian revolution. Only by revolution will the world working class escape the misery, poverty and destruction of life under capitalism.

So that the working class and the exploited masss can survive, the imperialistic capitalist system must die! Against the reformist politics that attempts to confine the working class to the immediate tasks, we say that their daily tasks must now be for the seizure of power and the dictatorship of the proletariat, since that is the only way that they can overcome these attacks. Even the fight for the most mínimum of demands will be lost unless the proletariat takes power. The fight for food, work, land, against the war, against imperialistic oppression, can only be won with the victory of the international socialist revolution. Against the fraudulent posturing of the “socialism of the 21st century” proclaimed by the supporters of the World Social Forum, our war cry to save the planet from the catastrophe of barbarism is: “Socialist Revolution”!

As in 1914, with the outbreak of the interimperialist World War I and the historic betrayal of the proletariat by social democracy, today the crisis of the capitalist world economy and the catastrophe that this will unleash on the exploited of the world, mark clearly the front lines between the reformists, which now includes the deserters of Trotskyism, and the revolutionaries who fight to break the world proletriat from its treacherous leaders.

Either one is for the international socialist revolution, and fights with this perspective every day, or one tries to pressure the bourgeois for more reforms for breadcrumbs. Either one is for the socialist revolution and fights for it every day, or one is in favor of that fraudulent ‘socialism of market’ and ‘revolution of the 21st century’, as promoted by the Castro bureaucracy and ‘Bolivarian bourgeoises’ as a “redistribution of the wealth”; for the national bourgeoisies like El Fatah and Hamas, prison guards of their own Palestinian people on behalf of the Zionist occupant; for the collaborators with the imperialist occupation of Iraq and its working class, like the Iranian bourgeoisie; or for Hizbollah, which negotiates with the pro-US government of Siniora and with the imperialist UN troops who occupy the south of the country, and uses the blood of the Palestinean martyrs as bargaining chips.

Either one is for the fight for socialist revolution, or one becomes the tool of the national bourgeoisies, the junior partners of imperialism, who pay them to prevent the workers from embarking on the road to socialist revolution and bringing an end to colonial and semi-colonial oppression by imperialism. In 1914, when the workers were dragged by the social-imperialists to kill each other on the battlefields to defend the class interests of “their” respective bourgeoisies, the immediate task to stop the war and to win the “peace”, was none other than socialist revolution: “turn the guns around, and transform the imperialistic war into a civil war against your own bourgeoisie”. Such was the revolutionary program raised by Lenin, Liebcknecht and the other internationalists of the ‘Zimmerwald left’, which in 1915 could all sit on one couch, but by 1917 had become the core of the revolutionary leadership of the Russian proletariat and turned its revolutionary program into the reality.

Today, facing the onset of the crisis of the world capitalist system, “to turn the guns around” means to fight for the proletarian revolution, the only way to stop rotten capitalism from unleashing its catastrophic barbarism of wars, massacres, starvation and superexploitation against the masses. It means to prepare a great counter-offensive of the masses on a world scale to transform the current food riots into workers insurrections and the opening up of the road to the proletarian revolution.

2. Against the World Social Forum and the fake Trotskyists who act as its ‘left wing’ subordinating the proletariat to the ‘democratic’ imperialists and the national bourgeoisies

The ‘left wing’ of the World Social Forum acts in Latin America to subordínate the proletariat to the ‘Bolivarian’ governments, as in the case of Chávez, by calling on the masses to fight to pressure all governments to take ‘progressive’ measures to meet the demands of the masses. For example, the LIT demands that Chavez “advances to socialism”. In Brazil the PSTU calls for referenda in the unions and universities to put pressure on Lula to abandon his “labor reforms”. In Argentina, we see the PTS saying to the workers in struggle to put pressure on the Minister of Labor, the ‘democratic’ judges, the parliament, and some ‘left’ politicians, to make ‘favorable’ rulings or laws for the workers. This treacherous politics of class collaboration and popular fronts – “to support the progressive measures of the bourgeois governments”, to pressure the bourgeois state, its governments and regimes – is an absolute barrier to prevent the proletariat from asserting its leadership of the the ruined sectors of the middle-class from the country and of the city, and to advance towards a victorious insurrection and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Against these traitors, the revolutionaries who make this Call state categorically that anyone who creates even the smallest illusion among workers that they can solve their problems by pressuring the bosses state and/or the supposedly ‘progressive’ bosses, is a declared enemy of the historical interests of the proletariat and the struggle for the socialist revolution.

That is why we declare war without mercy on the political camp followers that subordinate the proletariat to the ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie. For example, in Bolivia these camp followers support Morales against the fascists of the ‘media luna’ when it was Morales who was responsable for sending the army to attack and defeat the hard core of the Bolivian proletariat, the miners of Huanuni. They support the ‘Bolivarian’ bourgeois governments of Correa and Chávez against Uribe, when they all joined in the Summit meeting of the Rio Group, and celebrated their business interests on the spilled blood of the Colombian resistance. In United States, they shouted “Anyone but Bush”, subordinating the workers’ movement against the war in Iraq to the French and German ‘democratic’ imperialists and to the Democratic Party. In the case of Argentina, the left wing of the World Social Forum facing the rich farmers lockout were divided over which sector of the bourgeoisie to support: either the Kirchner government and the transnationals of Mercosur and big oil, or the new bourgeoisie and agrarian capitalists backed by the cereal transnationals of the Chicago Stock Exchange.

The signatories of this document commit all our forces in the fight to defend what is written in blood in the international workers’ program: there can never be any support given to any bourgeois sector, its governments, its legislation, no matter how ‘progressive’ they are painted, because that means that we cease to call openly for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie.

The treacherous reformist leaders try to justify their class collaboration with the theory-program of ‘market socialism’. They confuse the workers into thinking that it is possible to reform rotting capitalism by ‘socializing the market’ and ‘equalising exchange’. According to this theory, the problem of capitalism is not in the sphere of production, but in the sphere of distribution. Therefore the problem can be solved by ‘redistributing wealth’ without touching the property of the capitalist class.

Thus the reformists expose themselves as the life support paramedics of capitalism who guarantee that nobody threatens the private property of the major cereal multinationals who control the production of cereals and are today consigning hundreds of millions of exploited workers all over the planet into starvation. They protect the oil monopolies that control the oil reserves and pipelines and who are responsible for millions of deaths and ‘genocidal’ killings in their ‘wars for oil’. And they protect all those companies owned by the national capitalists who are the junior partners and agents of the imperialist monopolies.

For that reason, we commit all our forces to defend what is also written in blood in the program of the international proletariat, that the problem of capitalism is not in the sphere of distribution, but in the sphere of production. This means that the capitalist class owns the means of production as its prívate property, and that because the working class has no means of subsistence other than to sell its labor, the capitalists are able to exploit this labor to expropriate its profits. For that reason, the only solution to capitalism’s problems, is the expropriation of the expropriators, that is to say, the victory of the proletarian socialist revolution that establishes a dictatorship of the proletariat to expropriate the bourgeoisie.

3. Facing the capitalist crisis and the offensive of the bourgeoisie to solve its crisis at the expense of the workers, we must organise a workers’ counter-offensive to make the bosses’ pay for their own crisis

The economic crisis has begun and now extends to the whole world capitalist imperialist system. Against all the revisionists who claim that there is a “long wave” of expansion of capitalism which makes reforms possible, this crisis, beginning with the recession in the United States and the onset of a world wide price inflation, the effects are already catastrophic for the working masses of the planet. While food production is at an record high, rising food prices have pushed millions into hunger and misery in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and begins to strike the workers in the imperialist countries. Thus, in the United States, already 28 million workers and their families depend on the food stamps of the bourgeois state! In the first years of the 21st century, the treacherous counter-revoltionary leaders around the world isolated and fragmented the struggles of the masses and contained and diverted the most advanced forces of the world revolution. Today, the impact of the capitalist crisis is to attack workers in every country, forcing the masses to respond to the political regimes that are imposing the policies of global finance capital.

We declare then that the most urgent task of the hour is to fightback against the crisis and the vicious attacks of the bosses against the exploited masses, to prepare and to organize a counter-offensive of the world proletariat, so that it is the capitalists who pay for the crisis they have caused.

To do this it is necessary to break with the bourgeoisie, to defeat labor aristocracies and bureaucracies of all kinds. This means to break with the ‘socialism of the market’ that prostrates the working class before the capitalist market controlled by international financial capital and the imperialistic transnational companies. That is the only way to turn the food riots and workers’ rebellions now spreading rapidly across the world into the start of a counter-offensive of the world proletariat against the crisis and the bosses’ offensive. The section in our Transitional Program that we must raise with all our strength is: to transform the economic fight into a mass political fight against the bourgeois states, regimes and governments. We must transform the spontaneous revolts of the masses against rising prices for the essentials of life, by raising the demands for the sliding scale of wages and working hours, for the nationalization and expropriation of the land, of the big oil and food monopolies; for the nationalization and expropriation of the imperialist banks without compensation and under workers control. In this way the workers will turn their food riots into a fight for workers states that can expropriate the private property of the bourgeoisie and force them to pay for the crisis they have caused. To do this the fighting masses must create their own democratic political organs such as soviets or councils, armed pickets and self-defence committees, to prepare for the insurrections against the capitalist states and for the seizure of power. To make this possible it is necessary for a revolutionary party with a program capable of making a socialist revolution to lead the masses in this struggle.

4. Mobilise the North American working class to “turn its guns around” against its own imperialist ruling class

The North American working class, like the European and Japanese working class, can strike at the heart of imperialism, and has in its hands the key to building a counter-offensive of the world’s workers in response to the crisis and attacks of the bourgeoisie. This key is the defeat of the treacherous union bureaucracy of the North American AFL-CIO that sold out the wages, conditions, health and retirement conditions won by long struggles of the working class. They, along with the World Social Forum – Castroists, Chavistas and the fake Trotskyists, put the US working class at the feet of the imperialist Democratic Party of Clinton and Obama. It is necessary to break with the Democratic Party, to defeat to the bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO, and to mobilise a political fight of the masses, with strikes, self-defence pickets, and demonstrations against the war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and to take up the demands of immigrant workers. This is the only way that the North American proletariat can face the brutal attack that the bourgeoisie is making against its historic gains and living standards, and to defeat the imperialistic regime of the ‘Republicrats’ and force the capitalists to pay for their own crisis, opening the road to the expropriation of the expropiators.

· For the independent political mobilisation of the North American working class!

· Down with the imperialistic regime of the ‘Republicrats’, killers of the people of the world and exploiter and oppressor of its own working class!

· Long live the May 1st political strike of the ILWU dockers against the war and the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and in defense of the rights of workers, in particular, immigrant workers!

· “If there is no peace, we will strike: stop the war in Iraq and Afghanistan! Defend the rights of the workers. Defend the rights of the immigrants. Close all the West Coast ports on May 1st”. These demands of the dockers, are the demands necessary to prepare and organize the counter-offensive of the North American working class!

5. For the fighting unity of the European working class

In Europe, dockers have taken industrial action against Sarkozy’s attack on their conditions, despite and against the social pacts over taxes made by the the labor bureaucracy, showing that the French working class has re-opened its struggle against the V Republic. The English workers have increased their militancy, and teachers have gone on strike against Brown’s New Labour government of the corrupt and parasitic British imperialistic monarchy.

· Down with the social pacts and sellout deals of the labor bureaucracies with the imperialist bourgeosies, defending the privileges of the labor aristocracy at the expense of the majority of workers in these countries!

· Down with the union bureaucracy of the French CGT and CDFT, the British TUC, the Italian CGIL, the CGT and Workers’ Commissions of Spain!

By throwing out the treacherous union bureaucrats, the French, German, Spanish, Italian, etc workers can unite and organise the most oppressed sectors of the working class, in particular, the millions of migrant workers superexploited and oppressed by the imperialist bosses. The migrant worker youth that rose up in the Cités all over France to the shout of “Every night make Paris a Bagdad” set the example. That is the way to unite the working class of the European powers with their brothers and sisters, the oppressed workers and farmers of Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.That is the way to organize a counter-offensive of the proletariat against the regimes and governments of the imperialist powers, so that the ghost of the socialist revolution returns to haunt the old continent.

Down with the imperialist regime of the V French Republic! Down with the rotten imperialist monarchies of Spain and Britain, and the treacherous social imperialist governments of Zapatero and Brown! Down with the imperialistic regimes of Germany and Italy, all of them exploiters and killers of the peoples of the world, as well as their own working classes!

In order to advance in this way, the working class of the European powers needs to unite its ranks with the working class of Rumania, Slovenia, of the other states of the East – sold out to the imperialist powers by the Stalinist gansters as little capitalist protectorates for locating new assembly plants using cheap manual labor. The first task of French workers is to take up the demand of the workers of Dacia-Renault in Rumania who went on strike for equal wages with the French workers of Renault. Without this unity, French workers will not be able to defend their present wages and past gains from the bosses’ attacks, nor prevent the level of wages of the French workers from being driven down to the those of Rumania. In order to prepare and organize a strong counter-offensive, the proletariat of Western Europe needs to include in its demands the restoration of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the former degenerate workers states. They must call for the socialist revolutions to overthrow the new bourgeoisies, now in partnership with the imperialists, in the Balkan states, Eastern Europe, Russia and the republics of the former USSR. This struggle must be tied to the defence of the right to self-determination of nations in Europe and the former USSR.

· For the right of self-determination of the Basque and Catalan peoples oppressed by the imperialistic monarchy of the Bourbons!

· For the independence of Northern Ireland from the British imperialistic monarchy!

· For the expulsion of NATO troops from Kosovo, and for an independent, workers and socialist Kosovo!

· Free Chechenia from the murderous Putin and the new Great Russian bourgeoisie, and for the military defeat of the conter-revolutionary ‘white’ army!

· Down with NATO and all its military bases! Down with reactionary utopía of the ‘European unity’ of Maastricht!

In raising these demands now, the workers in all the European states will bravely face the attack of its own imperialistic bourgeoisies, defend their gains and re-open the road to revolution for the insurrectionary overthrow of the imperialist regimes and governments, and create the dictatorship of the proletariat in France, Italy, Germany, Spain, England, etc.

For the Socialist United States of Europe, from Portugal and the British Isles to the Russian steppes!

6. The Middle East must become the graveyard of the imperialist powers and their Zionist gendarme Israel

The struggles of the international working class and the exploited of the world have been concentrated in the Middle East. The armed rebellion of the Iraqi masses in Basra and Baghdad, even though it is led by the bourgeois faction of al-Sadr, has caused a huge leap in the national war of resistance with a resounding defeat of the Iraqi mercenary army and left the US protectorate government of Maliki hanging by a thread.

In March more than 1300 soldiers and police of the regime refused to “fight against the rebels”. The puppet government only survives because al-Sadr has held back and disarmed some of his forces to prevent a Vietnam-type defeat of the invading Yankee troops. On top of this victory, the Egyptian workers have made a general strike, the workers of Dubai and Iran are on the rise, and the Palestinian masses threaten to break the authority of al-Fatah and Hamas – those bourgeois jailers of their own people on behalf of the Zionist state.

Those who have signed this Call have already put ourselves in the trench of the exploited and oppressed masses of the Middle East. We commit all our forces to the fight for the defeat of all imperialist troops in Iraq and Afghanistan! For the victory of the heroic resistance of the Iraqi and Afghan masses! Stop the massacre and the genocide of the Palestinian people!

· For the destruction of the Zionist state of Israel!

· End the subjection of the Palestinian workers and oppressed people to the bourgeois factions of Hamas and al-Fatah, jailers and slave masters of their own people!

· For a national Assembly of Palestine that destroys the walls, and that calls for the Palestinian people of historical Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan to unite with its class brothers and sisters in Egypt, Iran, Dubai and all the Middle East!

· For a secular, democratic and non-racist Palestinian state of the workers and poor farmers government defended by the self-organised and armed Palestinian masses!

· Out with the UN imperialist troops from the south of the Lebanon! Down with the pacts between HIzbollah and the pro-imperialist client government of Siniora!

The proletariat of Egypt, rising up against the brutal dictatorship of Mubarak, is already taking the lead at the head of workers and exploited people of the Middle East, all those subjugated in Palestine by the Zionist occupier, and by the Arab sheiks and the national bourgeoisies in the other countries of the region. When the Palestinian people of Gaza demolished the wall in Rafah and made contact with the Egyptian workers, they proved that it is possible to demolish the wall despite the fact that it has been rebuilt by Mubarak and Hamas.

· Extend the revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggle to Palestine, Lebanon and all Middle East, the only way to destroy the Zionist state of Israel and to liberate the Palestinian nation!

· Down with Mubarak! For the insurrectionary general strike of the workers and exploited of Egypt that overthrows that notorious regime!

· For a soviet, workers and socialist Egypt!

· For a Federation of Socialist Republics of Workers and poor Farmers of the Middle East!

Let us turn the Middle East into the graveyard of the imperialist powers and their Zionist gendarme. To do this it is necessary for the working class of the Middle East to break with all the bourgeoisies of the region – the junior partners of imperialism in the plundering of its nations and the killing of its peoples.

· Long live the anti-imperialist fight of the masses of the Middle East and their struggle to defeat the imperialist troops in Iraq!

· Long live the working class of Egypt, Iran, Dubai and all the Middle East!

7. To mount the counter-offensive in Latin America we must break with the bourgeoisie

In Latin America, to be able to organize and to prepare a counter-offensive of the proletariat against the crisis of the imperialist capitalist world economy and the brutal attacks of the capitalists, it is necessry to break with the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ and the Castro bureaucracy that is preparing to complete capitalist restoration in Cuba. Break with all submission to the bourgeoisie its regimes and governments, ‘Bolivarian’ or not, which impose the plan of the World Social Forum. This is the only way for the proletariat and exploited people of Latin America return to the revolutionary road and shake up the continent, from Mexico to Terra del Fuego, with its revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggle.

8. Immediate and unconditional freedom for the many thousands of militant workers and people who are the prisoners of bourgeois states worldwide, hostages of the working class and exploited in the hands of imperialism and the national bourgeoisies

To prepare and to organize the counter-offensive of the world working class, we also need to fight to release the hundreds of thousand of workers and people who are jailed in all the imperialist countries held hostage to terrorise the proletariat. These prisoners are among the best fighters of our class and we need to release them to strengthen the counter-offensive of the the workers and oppressed of the world.

For that reason, those who signed this Call commit all our forces to the fight to liberate the hostages of the working class and the exploited people in the hands of the capitalist states. We must put on the banner of the world proletariat:

· For the freedom of the prisoners of Las Heras in Argentina, the prisoners of Guantánamo, and the prisoners of Oaxaca!

· For the freedom of the thousands of imprisoned fighters of the Colombian resistance in the jails of Uribe, the lackey of Bush, and his occupation army!

· For the freedom of the tens of thousands of tortured Palestinian political prisoners in the jails of the Zionist state of Israel!

· For the freedom of all the imprisoned fighters in the hands of US imperialism and the CIA in its secret jails in Afghanistan, Iraq and many other countries!

9. For the political revolution in Cuba as part of the socialist revolution in Latin America and the world

The signers of this Call denounce the process of capitalist restoration in Cuba being pushed by the Castro bureaucracy, and the restorationst regime that is based on the suppression of the Latin American revolution and the subordination of the emergent anti-imperialist struggle of the North American working class by Castro, the Chavistas and the World Social Forum, and the Democratic Party.

With the imposition of capitalist restoration in Cuba, imperialism, the ‘Bolivarian’ bourgeoisies and the Castro bureaucracy are prepared to bring about a terrible defeat to the Latin American and North American working class rendering it inactive for some years. But it is about to learn if this gamble will pay off! Capitalist restoration in Cuba will not be peaceful, as the Castro bureaucracy and its imperialist allies will have to overcome the revolutionary resistance of the Cuban masses with the methods of civil war. While the Latin American revolution has been contained, and the North American working class deceived and subordinated to the Democratic Party, the workers of the continent have not been defeated and removed from the scene for an historical period.

The restorationist bureaucracy that wants to become a new bourgeoisie, has already tied its fate to the ‘good neighbor’ policy of French imperialism and entered into joint ventures in the nickel business. It has also aligned with the US imperialist Democratic Party, gambling on the presidency of Obama or Clinton which will lift the embargo and boost the process of capitalist restoration. And it has allied closely with the bourgeois regimes on the Continent which which it collaborates to suppress the revolutionary struggles of the exploited people of Latin America.

Today, the bureaucracy and its restorationist regime has allowed free access to the hotels, which have shopping malls filled with comsumer goods – electric appliances, cell phones, computers etc. – to the bureaucracy, their children and a minority of the new middle-class that work in the industry, to create a social base for capitalist restoration. Left outside this consumption are the large majority of workers and farmers who earn $13 dollars a month and who live with food rations. With these measures, the restorationist regime legitimizes and legalizes the emergent capitalist market, so that it can prepare its conversión from bureaucracy to new bourgeoisie.

Today, the defense of Cuba means to fight for the victory of the political revolution. That means forming workers, farmers and soldiers councils and arming the people. That is the only way to stop the restorationist regime and its officer corps which is committed to capitalism, and which will defend the joint ventures, the market reforms and the social inequality that has got worse with Raul Castro in charge. That is why we must raise on our banner the demands:

· Down the capitalist retorationist regime!

· Down with the new rich of the Castro bureaucracy!

· Down with social and wage inequality, down with the medals, privileges and decorations!

· Down with the joint ventures! For a single currency, a single economy: the immediate renationalisation of oil, nickel, tourism and other joint ventures, without compensation and under workers’ control!

· Re-impose the monopoly of foreign trade, the nationalisation of land, and a democratically planned economy by the armed councils of workers, farmers and soldiers – the only way to make Cuba part of the Latin American, North American and world-wide revolution.

· Stop the betrayal of the historic gains of the Cuban revolution!

· The Latin American revolution, that has been suppressed but not defeated, must come to its defence!

· The world revolution must defeat the counter-revolutionary world politics of the Castro bureaucracy!

· Defeat the ‘Bolivarian’ regimes in Latin America that suppress the revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggle of the masses! Defeat the imperialistic regime of the US ‘Republicrats’!

Following a Latin American revolution, the Cuban workers and farmers will find in the revolutionary struggle of the Latin American and North American working class, the solution to the shortages imposed by the Castro bureaucracy with its treacherous class collaborationist politics and “socialism in a one country”. The Argentine revolution will provide the Cuban masses with good cereals, meat and milk to feed their children; the Brazilian and Mexican revolutions will provide the light industry; a victorious revolutionary Venezuela will supply oil. The Central American and Mexican revolution will forge the link to the millions of Latin American workers in the United States who can unite the North American working class, which can provide the new technology and productivity to rescue a socialist Cuba from isolation and backwardness.

10. The explosive Chinese question

Capitalist restoration and the surge of transnational companies into China meant not only the enslaving of the cheap manual labor of hundreds of million workers, but also the liquidation of nationalized property in land and the monopolizing of this land as the property of the CP ex-bureaucracy, transformed into a new national bourgeoisie. The expulsion of millions of farmers from the land forced them to migrate to the cities to join the army of enslaved workers. As a result much of the agricultural production of the country was destroyed. So today China must import the greater part of the foods that it consumes, which prices continue to increase.

The destruction of the nationalized property in land is the fundamental cause of the deprivation of the means of subsistence in China.

For that reason, the expropriation of the transnational companies, the ‘red industralists’ and the new land owners, and the renationalization and collectivization of the land, are the only way to feed the 1000 million of enslaved workers and destitute poor farmers.The new bourgeoisie and the ‘red industralists’ of the CP, are preparing to end everything to do with the old stagnant state sector, including sacking 40 million industrial workers. Landless farmers facing these attacks are rising up against dispposession and hunger. Workers despite the ban on strikes are increasingly taking strike action. Thus, facing the world economic crisis that has begun, the ‘Chinese volcano’ of workers and farmers is rising. This uprising workers and poor farmers will raise as its most urgent tasks:

· Victory to the social revolution that overthrows the new bourgeoisie and imposes the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat! The alternative is the worsening crisis, hunger, and killing of the masses, and the break up of China as it is divided again by the imperialist powers. The internationalists that make this Call are already in the trench alongside the working masses of China:

· For the overthrow of the restorationist bourgeoisie and for the dictatorship of the proletariat, but this time under the leadership of the revolution workers and poor farmers soviets!

Following this path, the Chinese class working can lead the struggles of all the exploited of Asia – already breaking out with the food riots in Burma, and the return to the struggle of the heroic Vietnamese who suffered a million martyrs in defeating the US invaders, and who today are enslaved in the assembly plants of the imperialist transnational companies in joint ventures with the ex-Stalinist restorationist bureaucracy.

The victory of the proletarian revolution in China is also vital for the working class of North Korea, where the ex-Stalinist bureaucracy is looking for ways to turn itself into a new bourgeoisie and to cheap labor assembly plants for the imperialist transnationals in partnership with the pro-imperialistic bourgeoisie of South Korea. Therefore, it is the Chinese working class that provides the key to the revolution of the exploited peoples of Asia, which will settle acccounts with Japanese imperialism, exploiter and killer of the Chinese, Korean and other oppressed nations of Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

· Down with the new Chinese bourgeoisie and its killer and oppressor regime of the ‘red industralists’ of the CP! For the restoration of the dictatorship of the proletariat of the revolutionary workers and farmers soviets in China and Vietnam!

11. Long live the uprising of the working class and exploited people of Haiti for food and against the occupation of UN mercenaries to maintain ‘order’ in the US protectorate

· For the military defeat of the UN troops from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Chile, mercenaries of US imperialism!

Revolutionary internationalists, alongside the workers of Arentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Chile, and the rest of Latin America, must unite behind the anti-imperialist struggle of the working class and the exploited people of Haiti. In this US protectorate, Argentinean, Brazilian, Chilean and Bolivian troops, under the camoflage of the gang of robbers in the UN, are like ‘gurkas’ in the service of imperialism, kiling the hungry and desperate people whos rise up with their demands for “Bread!” We must fight for the military defeat of all the UN troops in Haiti, expecially those of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Chile. We say clearly that any Latin American soldier who occupies Haiti is a legitimate target of the resistance and the anti-imperialist struggle of the Haitian masses to expel the invaders and to liberate their nation from imperialism.

12. Defend the Colombian masses against Uribe and Bush and against the ‘peace’ plan of French imperialism, the ‘Bolivarian’ bourgeoisies and the Castroist restorationist bureaucracy

The signers of this Call are for the defence of the Colombian mass resistance against Uribe and his killer occupation troops, and against the plan to force the FARC to disarm and surrender pushed by the ‘Bolivarian’ bourgeoisies, the Castro bureaucracy and French imperialism. The ‘Bolivarians’ say that they will treat the incursion of FARC into Ecuador as an “act of military agression”. We see the ‘Bolivarian’ Lula regime announcing that “if the FARC enters Brazilian territory, it will be met with fire”.

· Down with the killer Uribe and his semi-facist regime! Down with the plan to force the FARC and mass resistance to disarm and surrender!

It is necessary to unify the resistance of the working class in the cities with the poor farmers, by means of workers and farmers committees, and with a program that raises the demand:

· Immediate to break with imperialism and for the expropriation of all the landowners and the immediate redistribution of land in Colombia under control of the FARC!

· For the expropriation of the monopolies, the banks, and the re-nationalization without payment and under workers’ control of all the privatized companies, and for work and living wages for all the workers, etc.

By this means the Colombian masses will be able to centralize their resistance and prepare a workers’ and farmers’ counter-offensive against the government of Uribe and his semi-fascist regime, opening the road to revolution and the formation of a workers’ and farmers’ government supported by the independent organs of the armed masses breaking with imperialism, and expropriating the landowners and distributing the land to the farmers.

· For the immediate withdrawal of the Venezuelan, Ecuadorian, Peruvian and Brazilian troops now on the border with Colombia to isolate the FARC and force it to surrender to Uribe – who tortures and kills any workers or farmers who dare to oppose him – his his government and the occupation troops under the orders of the US imperialists!

All workers organizations of these countries must place all of their resources into supplying and defending all those organisation of the workers and poor farmers of Colombia that resists the killer regime of Uribe.

13. Stand alongside the heroic workers of SIDOR of Venezuela and fight for the real nationalization without compensation and under workers’ control of SIDOR

The signers and supporters of this Call fight to unite all of the Latin American proletariat alongside the workers of SIDOR in Venezuela, who were violently repressed by the National Guard of Chávez in March and who today are striking to nationalize the factory. It is necessary to unmask the deprivation and repression that the ‘Bolivarian’ governments and the national bourgeoisies impose on their own working classes.

· Stand up alongside the SIDOR workers, for the nationalization without compensation and under workers control of SIDOR!

· Neither the repressive ‘Bolivarian’ bosses like the Techint group, nor the fraudulent fake nationalization of Chávez – where he compensates the bosses with the money of the workers.

· No to Chavez’ collaboration with bosses to build joint ventures and his use of the National Guard to repress and defeat the heroic fight of the SIDOR workers in order to guarantee the profits of the ‘Bolibourgeoisie’!

· For the election of delegates of all the factories and workplaces of Venezuela, one for each 100 workers, to refound the UNT in support of the SIDOR workers, and to break all subordination of the working class to the Venezuelan bourgeois state and the government of Chávez!

14. In Bolivia, break with the government of Morales and his Constitution, that represent the class interests of the imperialists and the national bourgeoisie

Break with the bourgeoisie; raise a program to fight against poverty and misery; form workers and poor peasants militias and march on Santa Cruz to smash the reactionary fascist gangs, returning to the road of workers socialist revolution! Take back the Bolivian revolution stolen from the working class by the popular front government of Morales!

Morales’ regime represents a faction of the transnational companies allied to a ‘Bolivarian’ bourgeoisie to control and divide the spoils of the plundered gas. The containment of the revolution could not have happened without the bureaucratic leaders of the COB and the COR who allied with Morales’ regime to hijack the revolution the workers and peasants began in 2003-2005. The revolution was derailed into the bourgeois Constitution that consolidates the new regime of the ‘Bolivaria’” bourgeoisie for the exploitation and subordination of the working masses of the Bolivian nation. The lifting of the barricades and the disbanding of the self-organisation of the workers and peasants, has trapped the masses in the popular front, allowing the fascists to rally their counter-revolutionary forces against the working class and the exploited people.

The fight for food, land, work and national rights cannot succeed without the return to the alliance between workers and poor farmers. But to do this, and convince the poor peasants to break with the bourgeoisie and re-establish the peasant-worker alliaince, it is necessary for the proletariat to break all ties to the bourgeoisie, throw out the treacherous leaders that betray them, and with a revolutionary program and revolutionary leadership, to take their struggle onto the streets. Only this open fight can prove to the poor farmers that the proletariat is able to overthrow the bourgeoisie, break with imperialism, and expropriate the expropriators to provide the food, land and gas that the people need.

Today the political situation is marked by an enormous conflict between two factions of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie of Santa Cruz prepares to vote for autonomy on 4th of May. Morales’ government of the ‘Bolivarian’ bourgeoisie, declares the vote to be “unconstitutional”, and is supported by the army that until now defends a unified Bolivia. Morales is still trying to resolve the crisis inside the popular front by negotiation with the Santa Cruz bourgeoisie.In this conflict between the two bourgeois factions, the key role is being played by the treacherous leaders of the miners who are also committed to the popular front. As the conflict between the bougeosie factions developed, a big wave of protests by workers and poor farmers against the rising prices of food and gas took place. But instead of mobilising these protests against the Media Luna fascists, the miners bureaucracy kept the protests separated and disorganised. After 9 days of a general strike in the key mining district of Huanuni, the treacherous union bosses stopped the miners from uniting to march on Santa Cruz, saying: “The miners cannot go to blockade the Media Luna because that would encourage secessionists to oppose the Morales government”… when it has been and it is the same Evo Morales and the MAS who have allowed the fascist reaction in the East to raise its head! Thus he restored Reyes Villa, the prefect [governor] in Cochabamba who had been overthrown by a mass rebellion! Thus Morales and the MAS, backed by the class collaborationist COB leaders, did deals with PODEMOS – the party of the Eastern bourgeoisie – including agreeing to the autonomy referendum, for more than a year in the Constituent Assembly.

This class collaboration of the union leaders is a Stalinist policy, which is designed to stop the independent mobilisation of the proletariat. It contradicts the Theses of Pulacayo adopted by the miners in 1948, that says that anyone who speaks of national unity, in a country divided by classes, is an open collaborator with the bourgeoisie. This Stalinist politics led to the isolation and demobilisation of the miners protests for food in the West while in the East the fascists of the Media Luna came onto the streets to threaten all those opposed to the automony referendum. Meanwhile the bosses fight over the profits from the gas and other resources, while the masses already suffering from rampant inflation, hunger and deprivation, are contained inside the popular front by the Stalinist burreaucracy of the COB, supported on the left by the POR-Lora, earning their pay by keeping the lid on the rising anger of the masses which is primed to explode.

· We must break with the government of Morales and his Constitution, the constitution of the transnationals and the the national bourgeoisie that plunders the wealth of Bolivia, has not given gas to the people, land to the poor farmers, or bread to the workers!

· Break with the bourgeoisie, raise a program of struggle to end the hunger and misery; form workers, poor farmers and soldiers militias to march on Santa Cruz to boycott the referendum and smash the fascist gangs!

· This is the only way to break with the popular front, defeat the treacherous leaders, workers and farmers militias can smash the Media Luna fascists and re-establish the peasant-worker alliance of 2003 and 2005 and expropriate the landowners and expel the transnationals.

15. For the Socialist United States of South and Central America

Under the subordination of the ‘Bolivarian’ bourgeoisies, far from the false promises of “Latin American unity”, we are facing increasingly ferocious disputes for control of resources among those capitalists allied to the different imperialist powers and their transnationals. The unity and organisation of the workers and poor farmers and the liberation of the Latin American nations from imperialism can never be led by the national bourgeoisie. They are tied by a thousand deals to the business interests of imperialism and the monopolies. The class interest of the national bourgeoisies is to negotiate over their share of the national profits with the imperialist masters. That is why, like any exploiting class, they are in terror of the anti-imperialist struggle of the masses going beyond an attack on imperialist property to expropriate national capitalist property.

· Down with the FTAA, the FTAs, CAFTA, Mercosur and other Free Trade Agreements of the transnational companies and the national bourgeoisies, who plunder our nations and superexploit our workers!

The working class is the class that has no borders because it does not have any interest that ties it to imperialism. It has nothing to lose and is the only class able to unite the exploited and oppressed nations of the continent, overthrow the bourgeoisie, destroy the bourgeois state and expropriate the expropriators. The victorious Latin American revolution will be linked to the political revolution in Cuba, which defeats the restorationist bureaucracy, and becomes a bastion of the American and world revolution. Thus is opened up the creation of the Socialist United States of South and Central America, the only way to create the conditions favourable for organising a rational socialist plan at the level of the subcontinent, able to utilize the technology, natural resources, industry and wealth of all our nations to meet the basic needs of the working class and poor farmers.

16. For revolutionary leadership of the unions independent of the capitalist state, the labor bureaucracy and the labor aristocracy

The fake Trotskyists who have moved to reformism, now support the ‘statised’ unions as a ‘left’ bureaucracy. They keep workers under the control of the bosses’ state by means of the legal framework within which the union bureaucracies function. Against all of these traitors, we fight, first, for the total, unconditional independence of the unions from the capitalist state, and to transform the unions into organs of the majority of exploited masses and not of the workers’ aristocracy.

· Down with compulsory conciliation! Out with the bosses state from the workers’ organizations! Down with all bourgeois laws that regulate how workers must organize: we workers must organize ourselves as we want!

We fight for the maximum workers democracy inside the unions, and against the labor bureaucracy and aristocracy.

· For revolutionary leaders in the unions! Down with the labor bureaucracy and the labor aristocracy!

· Down with bosses deducting union dues!

· End the priviliges of the leaders of the unions!

· For leaders mandated and recallable at any time by the assemblies of the rank and file, paid no more the the average wage of the workers, and on ending their term of office, returning to work!

In the epoch of imperialism, the unions cannot be politically neutral, that is to say, they cannot limit themselves to serve the daily needs of the working class. They cannot be unions of anarchists because of the dominant role of the bosses state in capitalist society. They cannot be reformist unions, because the conditions of rotten imperialist capitalism leaves no room for lasting reforms.

For that reason, either the unions become, in the hands of the union bureaucracy and reformists of all kinds, an auxilliary part of the capitalist state used to subordinate the workers and prevent the revolution; or, on the contrary, they must become an instrument of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat, provided they are led by a revolutionary leadership that has won its place in the struggles of the workers and exploited people.

17. For workers democracy and the self-organisation and self-determination of the masses and for the formation of workers councils to make the proletarian revolution

We fight for workers democracy, which is banned from the unions and mass organisations by the reformist leaders, functionaries of the bourgeois state, compulsory conciliation, the ministries of labor and the labor laws that regulate the exploitation of the workers organizations.

· For the maximum workers democracy to guarantee the right of minorities to fight to convince the majorities, and for the majorities to put its policy into action against the exploiters!

· For the self-determination and self-organisation of the masses!

· For strike committees and factory committees!

The development of the struggles of the workers will bring with it the development of the methods of fight necessary to smash capitalism. As it says in the Transitional Program: “the bourgeoisie will not hesítate from using, in addition to its ‘lega’” forces of repression, fascist, paramilitary, special police gangs, and the armed thugs of the union bureaucracies. As always, the reformists of all kinds, infect the consciousness of workers with the poison of pacifism, and faith in appealing to the ‘democratic’ institutions of capitalism, its laws, courts, etc to stop repression. Against all of these traitors, we say that the working class has the legitimate right to defend itself: Strike pickets, committees of self-defense, in preparation for the formation of workers militias and the arming of all the workers!”

The signatories and proponents of this Call declare that no-one can be revolutionary or a Trotskyist who does not at the onset of a pre-revolutionary situation, put at the center of their program the demand to build, extend, develop, centralize and arm its organs of self-organisation and direct democracy, that is to say, its pre-Soviet and Soviet organs, in preparation for the insurrection and the taking of the power by the proletariat.

18. For the rebirth of proletarian internationalism destroyed by social democracy, Stalinism and the deserters from Trotskyism

The fight for class independence, for a revolutionary leadership in the unions, for the self-organisation and self-determination of the masses in struggle, can only advance under the leadership of a revolutionary international party that reconquers the revolutionary Trotskyist program – destroyed first by social democracy and then by Stalinism, and finally by the betrayers of Trotskyism and their contemporary currents. In the first place it is necessary to re-affirm clearly the internationalist duties and tasks of the working class in each country. The revolutionary III International of Lenin and Trotsky was the first to call on the working class in the imperialist countries – the US, the European powers and Japan – to raise on its revolutionary banner, the demand for the liberation of the oppressed colonial and semi-colonial nations, sacked, super-exploited and victims of imperialist wars. Lenin said: “A nation that oppresses another nation cannot be itself free”.

In Latin America, it is clear that the defence of Cuba against capitalist restoration, along with the fight to return to the road of revolution of the workers and poor farmers of Bolivia, are the most important internationalist tasks for the proletariat of the continent. In Brazil, for example, the working class has as one of its most important internationalist tasks the fight for the expropriation of Petrobras – partner of the French imperialist oil company Totalfina in Bolivia and Ecuador. And it shares with the Argentine, Chilean and Bolivian working class to fight resolutely for the the military defeat of the mercentary troops sent to Haiti by Lula, Morales, Bachelet and Kirchner, to kill the workers and exploited masses on behalf of US imperialism.

19. Down with the fake ‘Latin American and Caribbean Congress of Workers’ convened by the COB bureacracy and the fake Trotskyists of the PSTU and CONLUTAS in Brazil

The working class of the American continent urgently needs to break with the bourgeoisies. To do that it has to remove the treacherous bureaucracy, and the fake Trotskyists who provide a left cover for the Castroists and Stalinists as the ‘left wing’ of the World Social Forum. Only then will it be able to unite its ranks across national borders and defeat imperialism, capitalist restoration in Cuba, and the national bourgeoisie in every country from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.

The fake Trotskyists such as the PSTU of Brazil, organize congresses like the ‘Congress of Latin American and Caribbean Workers’ convened next July by CONLUTAS, the Batay Ouvriye of Haiti, and the class collaborationist leaders of the COB of Bolivia –supporters of the government of Morales that has suppressed the workers and poor farmers revolution. This Congress deceives the workers claiming that it will advance the unity of the vanguard of the working class of the continent.

Those who sign and support our Call, state that this ‘Congress’ will do the opposite. It will be a new obstacle to the struggle to unite the ranks of the working class on the continent. FIrst, it says nothing about the burning Cuban question. It does not call for a Latin American revolution, or a political revolution in Cuba, to stop capitalist restoration. Second, how is it possible to unite the ranks of the Latin American working class, without breaking from the COB bureaucracy that collaborates with Morales, and accuses the striking miners of Huanuni of “playing into the hands of fascism”? How can we unite the ranks of Latin American workers when the LIT refuses to call for the defeat of the Brazilian, Argentine and Chilean troops who are suppressing the food riots of the masses in Haiti? Instead they do the opposite, asking the workers in these countries to put pressure on the ‘Bolivarian’ governments of Lula, Kirchner, Bachelet and Morales to “withdraw” the troops from Haiti. How can Latin American workers unite behind the PSTU, that says to the Brazilian workers to pressure Lula for ‘referenda’ to defend the rights of workers –when the only thing that this does, as Trotsky said, is boost the paper-making industry?

This ‘Congress’ will not raise the demand “Down the union bureaucracies”. It refuses to even unite the automobile and metal workers of Brazil with those of Argentina. The imperialist transnationals have concentrated their automobile production in these two countries. Here is an opportunity to unite the Brazilian workers to break with the CUT bureaucracy that enforces annual productivity increases with those in Argentina where the union bosses of the UOM and SMATA enforce poverty wages in the face of rising hunger. Nor will this ‘Congress’ call on Brazilian workers to fight for the expropriation of Petrobras and its French partner Totalfina in Bolivia and Ecuador, without which it is impossible to unite Brazilian workers with their Ecuadorian and Bolivian brothers and sisters. There is no chance that the convenors of the ‘Congress’ will demand that the workers organizations become independent of the state. They will not reject employers deductions of union dues, or demand mandatable and recallable leaders, who must return to work, as elementary measures against the bureaucratisation of the unions. They cannot make these demands since it would be suicidal for the COB bureaucracy that collaborates with Morales, or the PSTU that created a brand new statised union CONLUTAS in which they became a ready made ‘left’ bureaucracy.

Thus the founding congress of CONLUTAS in May 2005, was presided over by two representatives of the restorationist Castro bureaucracy, James Petras and Celia Hart Santamaría, who sang the praises of the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’. Sitting next to the leaders of the PSTU, these ‘Bolivarians’ had many hours to speak and poison the consciousness of the delegates, while the revolutionary left opposition around the FT, fighting for a revolutionary regrouping of the Brazilian proletarian vanguard, had only one minute to speak to its positions in a plenary session. For that reason, it is obvious that far from organizing a true congress of workers, with delegates chosen by the rank and file in democratic assemblies, the convenors are a preparing a ‘Congress’ of bureaucratic leaders, behind the back of the ranks, where everything will be negotiated and decided in closed meetings before the congress takes place. Therefore, this ‘Congress’ will not serve to unite the ranks of Latin American workers since it does not fightback against the current crisis and looming catastrophe, and for the socialist revolution as the immediate task.

That is, it does not call for the transformation of the revolts of the workers and exploited people against rising prices today, into a workers counter-offensive the opens the road to the socialist revolution, as the only way that workers can defeat imperialism and win the bread, land and work that they desperately need. It will be a Congress of the ‘left’ union bureaucracy preparing itself to suppress and defeat all the radicalized struggles of the working class against the ‘Bolivarian’ regimes. Instead it will pressure these governments to “re-distribute the wealth” when it is obvious that the only things that they ‘re-distribute’ are ... shortages, hunger, sackings, poverty wages, beatings and jail for the exploited people.

The signatories of this document sound a warning to the proletarian vanguard of the Continent about the massive deception being prepared by the fake Trotskyists, and call on them to oppose the ‘Congress’ of the ‘left’ bureaucracy and fight for an International Conference of revolutionary workers organizations and principled Trotskyists on the basis of the programmatic points developed here, and to give a real leap to the struggle to unite the ranks of the workers of the American continent.

20. For the class morality and principles of the proletariat

We are committed to the defense of the morality and the principles of our class, and to fight the infamous methods of the Stalinists, social democracy, and the deserters of Trotskyism, who persecute, assault, slander and attack the revolutionary currents in the organizations of masses where they are in the leadership. For example, in the middle of the workers’ revolution in Hungary in 1956, the Lambertists falsely slandered the revolutionary leader Varga, accusing him of being an “agent of the CIA” in an attempt to suppress his political differences. This current did the same against Ricardo Napurí. We saw the POR-Lora in Bolivia blaming Juan Pablo Bacherer, a leader of its own current that had political differences, of being a police agent, using that slander to expel him. More recently, in Argentina in 2002, the Workers’ Party of Altamira, beat and handed over to the bosses’ police and justice system, Juan ‘Pico’ Muzzio, a leader of LOI (CI) – Workers’ Democracy. These are some of the many examples of the ways in which the renegades of Trotskyism have broken with the elementary principles and morality of our class, and have taken over the role of the Stalinists in the use of these infamous methods.

21. For Leninist democratic centralism

The proposers and signatories of this Call, recognize ourselves as the defenders of Leninist democratic centralism, as expressed in point 10) of the Declaration of the Four: On the necessity and the principles of a new international, a bloc of the Bolshevik-Leninists formed by Trotsky in August 1933 which says:

“Party Democracy is a necessary prerequisite for the healthy development of revolutionary proletarian parties on a national as well as an international scale. Without freedom of criticism, without the election of functionaries from top to bottom, without the control of the apparatus by the rank and file, no truly revolutionary party is possible.The need for secrecy under conditions of illegality changes completely the forms of the internal life of a revolutionary party andmakes wide discussions and elections difficult, if not altogether imposible. But even under the most difficult conditions and circumstances, the basic demands of a healthy party regime retain their full force: honest information about the party, freedom of criticism and a real inner unity between the leadership and the party majority. Having suppressed and crushed the will of the revolutionary workers, the reformist bureaucracy turned the Social Democracy and the trade unions into impotent bodies despite their memberships numbering in the millions. Having stifled inner democracy, the Stalinist bureaucracy also stifled the Comintern. The new International, as well as the parties adhering thereto, must build their entire inner life on the basis of democratic centralism.”

We fight to build an international center to regroup principled Trotskyists according to Leninist democratic centralism norms. We say that today our international democratic centralism is far from perfect as it depends upon the limited degree of programmatic agreement that prevails, but it is nevetheless a thousand times superior to the most formally perfect democratic centralism that exists in any isolated national group whose fate, sooner or later, must be one of degeneration.

22. 70 years since the Founding Congress of the IV International we take back the legacy and program of 1938 from the imposter Celia Hart Santamaría and the the fake Trotskyists

The 2 of September 2008, will mark 70 years since the founding congress of the IV International. The deserters of Trotskyism and the imposter Celia Hart Santamaría will try to usurp that day to promote the falsification of the legacy of Trotskyism to cover up their betrayal of the proletariat and, in particular, the restoration of capitalism in Cuba. Against this treachery, we call for a campaign in defense of the IV International of 1938, denouncing all the imposters and renegades of Trotskyism. The 2nd of September is the day on which we will proclaim the continuity of the legacy of the 1938 International in the world class struggle. The fight for the defense of the IV International of 1938 is today inseparable from the struggle for the political revolution against capitalist restoration in Cuba.

The best tribute that we can make to the IV International of 1938, and to its theoretical and programmatic legacy, is the fight to build an International Trotskyist Center dedicated to “retake the road” that was lost in 1940 with the murder of comrade Trotsky, and the refusal, on the part of the leaders of the US SWP and the European Trotskyists, to immediately found a strong international center as the only means of guiding the revolutionary struggle during the 2nd Imperialist World War. This was the only way to prevent the degeneration in the IV International that began in 1946 into a federation of groups and national leaders who, necessarily, ended up degenerating into centrism, and and then into open opportunism.

The fight against the fake Trotskyists is inseparable from the struggle for a new regrouping of the internationalist revolutionary forces. The betrayers of Trotskyism constitute the ‘left wing’ of World Social Forum –a collection of
‘Bolivarian’ bourgeois, Social Democrats, recycled Stalinists, Castroists, and labor bureaucracies of all kinds. Today, the ‘founders’ of the World Social Forum - like Lula, Chávez, Evo Morales and others, are at the heads of bourgeois regimes and governments attacking the working class and the exploited people. Alongside them, a section of the fake Trotskyists, headed by the Mandelites and the imposter Celia Hart Santamaría, have congealed around the parties of the ‘new’ type like the PSOL, the MST of Argentina, ‘Marea Socialista’ of Venezuela, etc., and continues to openly promote the World Social Forum, and directly supports Chávez, Evo Morales, Correa, and other ‘Presidents’.

Another faction of the fake Trotskyists, such as the PSTU/LIT, the UIT-CI, the MAS of Argentina, etc., try to keep ‘left’ formally outside the World Social Forum. But they were present at its founding, and participated in the meetings of the World Social Forum. They call for a “critical” vote for Lula, as did the PSTU in the second round of the presidential election of 2002. Or like the LIT, voted for Morales and Chavez, demanding that he “advances towards socialism”. We saw the LIT travel with a contingent of Spanish union leaders to the Gaza Strip on 1st May 2007, to meet with the unions led by el Fatah –the jailers of the Palestinean people on behalf of the Zionist occupiers. The leaders of the LIT called on the Spanish workers to put pressure on the social imperialistic government of Zapatero to send “humanitarian aid” through the blockade of Gaza at the same time that the Palestinean masses were rising up against el Fatah and its collaborationist police and intelligence services.

This faction of the fake Trotskyists try to impose a ‘Pivertist’ type of politics, i.e. of putting pressure on bourgeois governments so that they take “progressive measures”. They falsify the Trotskyist Transitional Program which demands that reformist leaders of the workers break with the bourgeoisie and lead the fight for a workers’ and farmers’ government, and instead demand that the bourgeoisie “breaks” with itself.They are the faction that accuses others of having betrayed Trotskyism in the past, and today, as does the LIT, claims that it is now its ‘left wing’, calling for the “reconstruction of IV International”, so as to cover its treacherous role on the left flank of the ‘Bolivarian’ regimes. Thus by posing as ‘left wing’ they continue being the faithful members of the World Social Forum which was, and continues to be, “its” true International, no matter how hard they try to hide it.

That is why the signatories of this Call declare that no one fights the World Social Forum who does not fight its ‘left wing’ that gave it a ‘left’ legitimacy yesterday, and that today tries to protect the ‘Bolivarian’ governments from the rising anger of the masses by diverting it into ‘Pivertist’ pressure politics from ‘outside’ the popular front. That is why we support the cry of the Chilean workers and youth: “the red alpacas are dangerous” [Communist party ‘police’]. They are “dangerous” because they are the thugs of the Chilean CP which tries to contain the anger of the masses directed at the civic-military regime of Bachelet, as part of the ‘left wing’ of the World Social Forum in Chile in support of that government. We affirm that the most urgent task today is to regroup a revolutionary internationalist vanguard and break the world proletariat from the influence of the ‘left wing’ of the World Social Forum.

23. For a revolutionary internationalist bloc to convene an International Conference of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary workers’ organizations

The crisis and offensive of the capitalist imperialist system has become a crisis of the whole of humanity, which in the last instance, is the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletariat. If the proletariat does not end the catastrophe facing the planet, then the imperialists will try to solve their economic crisis by means of wars and barbarism, risking the destruction of humanity. The crisis of leadership cannot be resolved without settling accounts with the representatives of the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ – the collection of recycled Stalinists, Social Democrats and bourgeois ‘Socialists’ – but most critically the renegades of Trotskyism that have trampled the program of the IV International of 1938 under the feet of the treacherous leaders, labor aristocracies and bureaucracies all over the world. A revolutionary regrouping of the healthy forces of Trotskyism and the of other revolutionary workers organizations, is necessary and urgent.The reformists have proved that they cannot meet even the most mínimum needs of the masses, much less lead the uprisings and revolutions that must come. Rotten capitalism cannot stop the masses from starving.

The urgent task of the moment is for a new Zimmerwald and Kienthal to regroup the global forces of revolutionary internationalists. That is why we put forward the 23 points as our responses to the critical acid tests which these revolutionary forces must pass in the regroupment process: the treacherous ‘Bolivarian Revolution’; capitalist restoration in Cuba; the war in the middle East; the tasks of internationalists on the Colombian, Venezuelan, Bolivian question, etc.

Let us build a revolutionary internationalist bloc to summon an International Conference that is the rallying point to advance the struggle to defeat the treacherous leaders and the struggle to build a new party of World Socialist Revolution.The time of national programs is finished. Only an international center can learn and apply the revolutionary lessons from the acute events of the international class struggles, and guide the proletarian vanguard in each country according to the interests of world working class, overcoming the national pressure on the proletariat in any single country. The dissolution of the international center of the IV International by the leaders of the US SWP in 1940, left each national section exposed to the terrible pressures of the national conditions in each country – of inter-imperialist World War and the defence of the USSR – and marked the beginning of the crisis and the degeneration of the IV International founded on 1938.

Today, it is necessary to build a new Zimmerwald and Kienthal that defends the continuity of the theory, revolutionary strategy and program of the Founding Congress of the IV International of 1938, and is prepared to challenge for the leadership of the exploited masses on the planet, so to make its revolutionary program, in the next period, part of the objective factor of world proletarian vanguard.

The capitalist imperialist system has once more run aground on the rocks of a global economic and financial crisis. Under these crisis conditions, an International Conference of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary workers’ organizations, must be our primary objective. The discussion and debate among all internationalist currents arround the acid tests we propose we expect will prove who are the revolutionary internationalists, and who are part of the reformist life-support system of the rotten capitalist imperialism.

The laws of history are stronger than any apparatus. In 1989-1991, we witnessed the total bankruptcy of the centrists and opportunists who, in the name of Trotksyism and the IV International, allied with the Stalinists who were restoring capitalism in the degenerated workers states. There is not the slightest doubt that, in the heat of the current events of the world class struggle and facing new crises and mass uprisings, the deserters of Trotskyism with their openly reformist politics, will betray again and again. Against this, it is necessary for the revolutionary internationalists to intervene now in all the struggles with the program of the IV International Congress of 1938, and transform the struggles of the Cuban workers and poor farmers against the capitalist restoration, the heroic resistance of the Iraqi, Palestinian masses and all the Middle East masses, and the struggles of the US workers the United States and other imperialistic powers, etc.

Our purpose then is to fire up an revolutionary internationalist bloc to fight for a new Zimmerwld and Kienthal International Conference that can serve as the launch pad for an enormous revolutionary force of the masses that will, in last instance, with its struggles and victories, determine the course of the future of humanity.

A Class Struggle Pamphlet

Reprinted from the International Workers’ Organiser, No 8 May 2008,

periodical of the Leninist Trotskyist Fraction which has members in Argentina (LOI-CI) Chile (POI-CI) Peru (LOR-CI) Bolivia (LOI-CI) Brazil (FT) and Aotearoa (CWG).

Communist Workers’ Group

Email cwg006@yahoo.com

Class Struggle is also on our website http://www.geocities.com/communistworker/

CWG members blog at http://redrave.blogspot.com

Unofficial translation by the CWG 1 May 08