Greece: Defend Savas Michael-Matsas! Drop all charges!

Defend Savas Michael-Matsas!  Drop all charges!

For international solidarity with workers, revolutionary militants and immigrants targeted by the fascists and the Greek state!

 

As Greece still reels from the capitalist crisis we see increasing racist attacks against immigrants and the left by the fascists and the state.[i]  The fascist Golden Dawn has brought bogus legal charges enforced by the Greek state against Greek Jewish Trotskyist Savas Michael-Matsas, for  “defamation”.  The “justification” for this was because the Workers’ Revolutionary Party (EEK) of Greece “issued a leaflet calling for participation in an antifascist demonstration protesting against a murderous attack by the Nazis against the immigrant communities in Athens that was made possible through the covert assistance of the local police in Greece” (see press release below).  

The CWG demands that all charges be dropped against Savas Michael-Matsas!  The international working class and left needs to come to the defense of all victims of fascist and state repression through labor actions! 

 On September 3^rd Michael-Matsas will be called before the bosses courts to answer these preposterous charges.  To defend Michael-Matsas workers should  bring their organized power to bare against the Greek state and its accommodation of the fascist monsters.

The rise of the fascists is an ominous is a mortal threat and it is crucial that the working class and the left organize to smash the fascists.  It is likely that either the working class will crush the fascists as part of the fight to resolve the Greek crisis by overthrowing capitalism through a workers’ government, or the fascists will crush the organized labor movement, the leftist parties and organizations and unleash murderous genocidal terror against the immigrant community.  All workers’, immigrant and leftist organizations need to build united fronts, “march separately, strike together”, for actions to stop these racist attacks.  Worker/immigrant self-defense guards need to be organized to drive the fascists from the streets and the immigrant neighborhoods. These workers defense guards should be organized in every factory, workplace and neighborhood, along with workers committees to organize against the crisis.

It is astonishing that the Messrs. bourgeois democrats of post war Greece do not recognize the contempt they are held in by the Golden Dawn it is likewise unfathomable how they fail to realize that the Golden Dawn would put their own liberal heads on the chopping block even before they finish dealing with the left and those they victimize for being non-Greek.  Golden Dawn would be worse than the Reles regime and much more akin to the Nazi occupiers of 1941-1945.  The workers must know that Golden Dawn intends to place the entire burden and exact the entire cost of the capitalist crisis from workers lives.  To do this they will apply the courts today and terror tomorrow and in power they will have work camps and death camps to snuff out all resistance.  It is for this reason that we treat civil libertarianism on the fascist question as a mortal error.  The one thing the international working class cannot tolerate is a regime of intolerance.  Let liberals like Noam Chomsky defend the fascists right to free speech.   

We say smash fascism in the egg!  The light-minded Euro-bourgeoisie believes it can safely hold the Golden Dawn as a cudgel over the heads of the trade unionists and the left thus you can expect no move against Golden Dawn from the state which is interpenetrated with fascists up and down the police ranks.   Therefore class independent armed workers action to smash fascism is urgently required to defend any and all democratic rights.  The bourgeoisie is telling the Troika that it needs a third bailout and wants to renegotiate terms on the outstanding balances of the previous two loans.  It feels it has stabilized the situation  enough to take this position because the masses are demobilized.  It is in this situation that the state brings this monstrous anti-semetic case against  Savas Michael-Matsas.

All workers must defend Savas Michael-Matas.  Drop all charges now!

CWG(USA) August 27, 2013

Savas Michael-Matsas has appealed for solidarity in a statement:

“As you know, the Nazi Golden Dawn in Greece has started a legal action against the EEK and myself, its general secretary.

I am accused of “defamation”, “instigation of violence” and “disruption of the civil peace”.
At the same time, the Nazis have intensified their non-stop, vicious, anti-Semitic and anti-communist campaign accusing me of being “the instrument of a world Jewish conspiracy to foment civil war, so as to impose a Judeo-Bolshevik regime in Greece”.

The Greek state has endorsed this action by Golden Dawn by bringing charges against myself, together with the former dean of the National Technical University of Athens, Mr Constantine Moutzouris (accused of permitting the operation of the alternative website, Athens Indymedia, from within the university).

 We want to ask you to kindly send messages of solidarity, signatures, motions, etc, to eek@eek.gr, in time to be presented both to the press and to the court.”[ii]

CWG also posts below an English translation of a press release that was posted at Permanent Revolution blog:
http://forum.permanent-revolution.org/2013/08/defend-savas-michael-against-golden.html

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[i] http://www.france24.com/en/20130715-racist-attacks-rise-crisis-hit-greece

[ii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savas_Matsas

Egypt Discussion: Statement of the FLTI

The revolutionary process in Egypt faces the counter-revolutionary reaction of the SCAF  (which has been and remains the main enemy and conduit of US imperialist program of attacks) against  the toiling masses the ‘exploited ones’ whose liberation demands  an  independent course through which the working class takes leadership of the revolution,  only then can the nation conquer bread, justice and democracy. Independence from both imperialist blocs, the national bourgeoisie, the Islamists and the SCAF is essential for the masses to make the ‘revolution in permanence’.

We have yet to see any of the self-proclaimed revolutionary currents develop a theoretical analysis of how rivalry between the US and Chinese blocs is behind the counter-revolution within the wider Arab Revolution. For example, while we are largely in agreement with the FLTI’s postion on the Arab Revolution what is missing is their refusal to recognize China as an imperialist power competing together with Russia against the US/NATO/Zionist interests in MENA.  Nor does the RCIT, with whom we are in agreement on China and have considerable agreement on the Arab Revolution, recognize the extent to which the revolutions in MENA are also proxy wars between the US and China.

In Libya the US bloc prevailed in removing Gaddafi who maneuvered between imperialisms before aligning with the China bloc.  But the US was not able to disarm the popular armed revolution and cannot transform its ‘democratic counter revolution’  into a military dictatorship. In Syria the revolution against Assad, who is backed by the China bloc, is held back by the US/NATO/Israel bloc’s fear of arming the revolution and ending up with a Libyan outcome.  In Egypt, the US was able to collaborate with the SCAF to re-impose a military dictatorship when the ‘democratic’ counter-revolution failed to contain the masses upsurge. As we wrote in our earlier analysis of the impact of the inter-imperialist rivalry on the Arab revolution, Libya and Syria show the way to the Egyptian masses.  Not until it breaks from the sham bourgeois democracy manipulated by the SCAF and opens up an armed struggle against the state can the revolution survive and succeed in overthrowing the national bourgeoisie and the bloody intervention of both imperialist blocs.

LCC 8/25/13

We republish and offer qualified endorsement to the following statement of the FLTI  on Egypt issued on the  August 17^th.  (Below is the FLTI’s English language text)

EGYPT – Statement of the FLTI Collective for the 4^th International

For International Labor Defence of Egyptian Workers!

Steel workers sit-in at Suez Steel Works (photo Hossam el-Hamalawy)

  On August 12^th, two Egyptian trade-union leaders, Amr Yousef and Abdel-Raouf Abdel-Khaleq, of the Suez steelworker’s strike were arrested as the army laid siege to the factory where the strikers were holding a sit-in.  The MENA Solidarity Network[i] has appealed for international solidarity with the detained workers and in defense of the strikers.  The international working class needs to rise to the defense of the MENA workers as defense of our class as a whole.  While the MENA Solidarity statement does call for workers’ action, it also calls to demand that Egyptian Minister of Labour Kamal Abu Aita “deal with the situation”, thus breeding illusions in the Egyptian military which is now reveled as the monopoly of the administration as well as the state and this state is now loosing bloodshed and repression against the Egyptian workers and its political opponents particularly the activist base of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Sending emails to General Abd-al-Fattah al-Sisi, Commander in Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces or to the Egyptian embassies will do little to put a brake on the repression.  On August 20^th, two more strikers were arrested. Laws passed at the behest of the army after Mubarak’s ouster in 2011 enforce heavy fines and imprisonment for strikers. 

This attack on a militant strike comes in the wake of the removal of Morsi by the Egyptian military in order to head off the deepening the revolution, itself the result of mass discontent with the local effects of the world capitalist crisis.  June saw tens of millions mobilizing in the streets in the largest protest in history demanding the ouster of Morsi’s bourgeois regime.  This amounts to a falling out among capitalist thieves as the military stepped into the forefront of the government and turned their ire against the Muslim Brotherhood as well as the working class in order to stabilize the situation for imperialist investment and attempt to restore capitalist order.

The Egyptian working class played a major role in the struggle against Mubarak.  Strikes and other militant labor actions continued throughout 2011 and 2012 at unprecedented levels and were not beaten back by the repressions of ordered by the Morsi regime.  The Egyptian working class has started to break from the long-dominant, state-controlled Egyptian Trade Union Federation’s stranglehold on labor organization and have begun to form independent unions and labor federations even before the ouster of Mubarak. As is shown by the Suez steel workers strike, the working class has not been broken.

What is on the order of the day is the independent organization and mobilization of the Egyptian working class at the head of all the oppressed sectors against the current military regime of al-Sisi.  Egyptian and MENA workers should come to the defense of the Suez steelworkers through labor actions, sit down strikes and labor boycotts.  Factory, workplace and neighborhood committees need to be formed; to organize workers self-defense guards to defend the masses.  These measures could lead to splitting army ranks from the officer corps and starting to crystallize a conscious revolutionary working class political opposition to the Egyptian capitalist regime and her imperialist masters.  To begin to effect these measures the workers and exploited masses must be reunited to combat the rule of the SCAF to whom the anti-Morsi millions have temporarily lost their initiative.  The rank and file Muslim Brotherhood membership with all their illusions and programmatic backwardness are nevertheless sustaining the revolution with their battle with the military wing of the capitalist class who have ruled Egypt without interruption since 1952.

The international working class, who are also facing the wholesale onslaught on their way of life needs to rise to the defense of the Egyptian, Syrian and MENA masses through labor actions, and particularly in the imperialist centers like the United States, by waging revolutionary class struggle against ‘their own ruling’ class.

Victory to the Suez steelworkers! 

Stop the mass murders committed by the military and the police.

Defend the right to strike! Defend freedom of assembly, the press and self-expression!  Organize the unorganized! 

Build factory workplace and neighborhood action committees!

Release all detained workers and drop all charges!

For international labor solidarity in action to defend Egyptian workers!

Victory to the Arab Revolution!

August 25, 2013                                                                                                                         Labor Donated

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[i]  http://menasolidaritynetwork.com/2013/08/12/egypt-appeal-for-solidarity-after-steel-workers-arrested-by-army/

http://cwgusa.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/for-international-labor-defense-of-egyptian-workers/

Argentina: legislative elections 2013

We repost the statement of the LOI-CI on the Argentinian elections. Notwithstanding our differences with this organisation, we are in solidarity with its stand to call for a vote for worker candidates on a class struggle platform. We also agree with the LOI-CI characterisation of the Left Front as standing on a reformist program. You can find an abbreviated Spanish version here.

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Statement of the Trotskyist of LOI-CI Democracia Obrera facing PASO (initials in Spanish for Open Compulsory and Simultaneous Primary Elections)
 
With the electoral circus, the boss parties of the bankers and the transnational companies count the votes so that they can see how to share the business.
The workers will expect more repression, inflation, sufferings and attacks against their conquests
Enough with maquilas (sweatshops) and jail factories!
Out from Argentina and the continent the Wall Street’s bankers and transnational companies!
Our call for a class Independence vote against the boss parties 

Argentina is a country where the government gets income tax from the workers. This tax is much higher than inflation. This is in order to maintain the capitalist parasites. This is not all; Argentina is a country of sweatshops and jail factories, more than 60% of the working class lives with the small amount of $3000. Argentina is Bangladesh. Thus, the factories’ walls fell down slaughtering textile workers who earn 2 dollars per day.
In Argentina, millions of workers work as slave in clandestine worships, paid under the table, also picking veggies and fruit. Here, in Pompeya (neighborhood of Buenos Aires Capital), as it happened some years ago in Tunisia, a worker was exposed so she was heard, so she could get her wages and not be dismissed as it happened in the textile factory ELEMENTOS. We die as dogs, and when we go to work, in the terrible trains under the control of the parasite bosses, who even contract mercenaries to kill fighters as it happened with Mariano Ferreira.
We even have to live with slaughtering-floods as happened in La Plata. They still hide dozens of dead to ease the political responsibility of the boss politicians. The migrant workers try to choose delegate and the murderer bosses with the the police kill them and make them disappear as in Choele Choel (Rio Negro) happened with Solano. His family still demands justice and demands his son appears alive camping in the area. When the workers rise up against precarious work and income tax the government militarize the town, torture the workers and put them imprisoned as the fighters, the oil workers of Las Heras.
When immigrant workers can no longer afford anything else because 50% of their wages is to pay a cardboard-roofed room in a shanty town then we occupy a piece of land and the government kill us as it happened in Indoamericano o Ledesma Park, or we are shoot on highways as Fuentealba in Neuquen.
Thousands of young people are doomed, no future nor education or a job, with an extermination policy with paco (drug) and the easy-trigger by the murderous police forces.
And on top of all this, the full time workers are charged the income tax. This is used to subsidize the capitalist companies. They get reduction of taxes in the industrial parks located in Mercosur. They are subsidized to steal money, to the transport companies. But the deduction of income is not the only tax to the worker wage. Most of us paid with our wages the VAT, which is 21% to what we consume. 350,000 million per year are collected with VAT to keep a handful of capitalist parasites and huge profit of bankers and transnational companies.
Kirchnerism and the right wing opposition are representatives and managers of Wall Street in Argentina, of that 1% of parasites, who from New York plunder and sink the world into misery, barbarism and wars. They decide the price of oil. With the land oligarchy, Monsanto, Cargill and huge cereal food companies defined prices. They need slave workers for the maquila Argentina.

With its transnational companies formed MERCOSUR to evade taxes, to exploit the comparative advantages of each country, to enslave workers, to steal the Bolivian oil and gas, minerals of the Andes. They agreed FTA and took all the minerals in Peru and Chile to its companies in China. They installed maquilas in Mexico to sink the wages of US workers, as in Africa and Asia; they filled Latin America, as in Colombia with military bases.
In Argentina, we see how the cereal companies like Cargill and Monsanto, banks and multinationals and the native oligarchy as a junior partner keep 80% of U$S 40,000 million from the land income.

Reserve Dollars go to Wall Street because with them is paid the Argentine bonuses of the foreign debt. The government keeps paying with fresh dollar the bonds which the banks got in the crisis of 2001 at the value of 1 peso 1 dollar, while the Wall Street parasites steal, with a devaluation of 40%, the savings of people. They stole the people more than 50 billion dollars, expropriating their savings.
16 billion dollars come out of the country on payment of bonds, and 6.000 million dollars in royalties, profits and patents to the transnational companies of Wall Street. The government wants to make happy the workers with a netbook which most of their children will never use it, and with alms as the universal child allowance, which does not even reach to cover 30% of children needs, while the worker women are denied to have free childcare and get paid a salary 30% lower than the workers.
THERE WON`T BE SOLUTION FOR ARGENTINA NEITHER FOR THE OPPRESED NATIONS OF LATIN AMERICA IF WE DON’T KICK OUT WALL STREET AND THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY.
THE WORKERS MUST BREAK WITH THE POLITICAL FRONT MAN OF THE IMPERIALIST BANKERS, AS WELL AS THE POLITICIANS OF KIRCHNER GOVERNMENT AND THE RIGHT WING OPPOSITION. In U.S.A these bands of Wall Street have taken to ruin the US working class making them pay for the crisis. Imperialist Europe bankers associated with Wall Street stealing, looting and in bankruptcy today they are destroying all the conquest of workers in the continent.

Yesterday Bush invaded and destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan to keep the oil and opium routes, which are the spurces of large medical laboratories. The Chevron in Argentina is another business of Wall Street and its oil companies to plunder the nation.

They plunder the tormented Africa and want to transform the world into a great Foxconn, a company that in China manufactures IPOD and Hewlett Packard, with 300 000 slave workers in a real factory which is a prison, with fences, railings and bedrooms on the ground. They want to impose that to the world.
When the workers upsurge against the mines of the Anglo-American in Africa, they shoot us. When we fight for bread, they cause genocide as in Syria and repressed us as in Tunisia. In Argentina when workers revolted, as happened in Kraft few years ago, Warren Buffet picked up the phone, 8 blocks away from Wall Street and sent the police forces and their lackeys of Kirchner’s government to beat up the workers. They and oil companies have decided to give a lesson to the oil workers of Las Heras for leading the fight against the earning tax and against outsourced work.
From Wall Street, a world financial oligarchy has spent, consumed and stolen what the world human labor has not even produced yet. And today, they put the burden of the crisis to the working class and the people they oppress.

With a web of investments and control of stakes of 1300 transnational companies are the core of the world economy and form, from Wall Street, where the imperialist banks of European and Japanese link with a financial super-oligarchy. They control 150 companies, 50% of the wealth of the planet. International finance capital concentrated holds 80% of the wealth in the world and have left 1,200 million people living with less than U$S 2 a day. These parasites rule and got the core of the economy, industries and finances of Argentina and Latin America, among others on every continent.
The last decade of this democracy for the riches in Argentina was a Paradise for the car companies, the soy producers, Cargill, Monsanto, Chevron, IMF and the parasites of Wall Street and it was a hell for the workers and the poor people
The revolutionary socialists are going to tell the truth to the workers: we cannot confront and defeat the attack we suffer today in Argentina, stealing our wages, slave labor, and the theft of the nation from a parliamentary seat. We call not to believe this. We cannot be fooled anymore. We are facing an enemy that controls the world politics and economy and has recruited hundreds of paid agents, union bureaucrats and labor leaders to defend it from the mass revolutionary struggle.

Workers need in the enemy's ground, which is the parliament (a true notary's Wall Street), a brave anti imperialist parliamentary seat. We need workers and revolutionary member of parliament who can tell to the workers that such an economic, political and military power rules the world, oppresses us and exploits the working class (even same or worse than us in Europe and U.S.A) would be defeated fighting in the streets, organizing ourselves, getting rid of the union bureaucracy (paid with crumbs falling from the exploitation of the working class).

We confront Wall Street and their political bosses fighting with our class brothers in Brazil and as the Chilean youth, as the Lonmin workers did in Africa with pickets and strike committees. With insurrections and uprisings for bread and against starvation as in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and as the exploited masses of Syria are doing against the genocide carried on by Wall Street and as the Palestinian masses, today tormented and imprisoned by the fascist Zionist state of Israel ... which is the armed wing of Wall Street in Middle East.

We defeat Wall Street and their transnational companies as we always do it: fighting and defending our conquests in the streets. This was the way we ended with the Menem, with murderers of De la Rua and Duhalde and so we fought against this lackey government, disguised who never gets tired of repressing the people and sells out the nation to imperialism. Such is the case that they submit to the courts of New York.
It is necessary to tell the truth: that cave of bandits of Wall Street who are the real owners of Argentina will be defeated fighting with the international working class and with the socialist revolution. We have to kick them out as we did it in 2002… this time so they do not come back ever again!
The left currents in Argentina who are running in these elections want to hide this. They are telling us that voting and with a parliamentary seat we will resolve our problems, their members are tired of submitting laws for workers and only may present testimony of what this parliament, the house of the capitalists, has given to the exploited ones: nothing. We always get everything with the fight or as a consequence of this.

We must tell the truth: you cannot talk on May Day about the international unity of the workers and when you have access to television, hide the "international unity" under the carpet or to make silence about the genocide in Syria and make silence that the Palestinian masses are being slaughtered. They cannot talk about the class struggle of Brazil without calling the Argentinean workers that we must fight together and like them.
In Brazil the parliamentary left is confronted by hundreds of people in the country and now millions of exploited ones have taken into their hands their problems, because the reformist left of the Lula's PT and all those who supported him over the years from the unions, were all lackeys of Wall Street and capitalists. We must tell the workers the truth. There are millions in the streets for 20 days and they reduced the bus fare from 3.20 to 3 reales. This shows that only fighting for everything and in tough battles we can get the least. So how are you going to make the Argentine workers believe that with laws we can solve our problems, making illusions in this rotten democracy for the rich?

They talk about the class struggle in Brazil, but they do not tell the workers of auto-industry and auto-parts, and food chains, of cement, which are on both sides of the border, that we have to organize in common unions, in coordinating common struggle, as the capitalists do and organize for their business and centralize their attack against the workers in Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires, in Minas Gerais and in Cordoba, Rosario and Porto Allegre.

From FIT, from some of its semi-hidden advert, they said we have to fight like in Egypt. Some of the leaders of the left said that. But in Egypt the masses fight, as in Tunisia and Libya, this rotten democracy for the rich who expropriated the struggle for bread to the heroic revolutions of the oppressed peoples of North Africa and Middle East.
The Left Front cannot occasionally talk about the classism and '70 and name with those pompous names its union groups and not to tell the Argentinean working class in this election that to defeat the exploiters and end the income tax, not to mention the unemployment and contract conditions, it is necessary to fight like in Cordobazo, follow the path to the general strike as the Rodrigazo, occupy the factories and set up a Villazo and set up the workers coordinations as in the '70s, getting rid of the union bureaucracy and take the streets as in 2001, with the general strike, the pickets.

Only the workers carrying on this fight could get some conquests, albeit totally degraded. Thus we got, do not forget, the six hours for the subway workers, maintain factories under worker-control and even the miserable work allowance given by the state. They all were a consequence of heroic struggles that left in the streets the martyrs of Anibal Veron, Kostequi, Santillan, Teresa Rodriguez, etc.
Today workers are worse because in the revolution that we began in 2001 we did not take power and ... "became all of them came back": bloodsuckers of political bosses, their judges and murderous army men, and union bureaucrats. All of them, when we took the streets could not face the rebellious masses. That's what they – the ones that have been expropriating our revolution, getting rich and killing the poor people for 10 years - deserve the masses rise up again.
Boss Politicians cheat with the electoral trap to disorganize the workers so the workers do not believe in their own strength and struggle, to prepare future and better attacks against their conquests. While television is filled with the faces of the Argentinean left politicians, in none of their advertisements are the faces of the workers who are imprisoned in Corral de Bustos or Bariloche, or submitted to vengeance courts as the oil workers of Las Heras.

The left leads the workers on their lists, but they do not say that we have hostages in prisons and in courts of the capitalists, the left does not say that the bourgeoisie has decided to put in jail thousands of workers who have fought as in Las Heras, as in Tierra del Fuego, as in the Garrahan, Kraft, Bus Line 60 and in hundreds of battles across the country.
For socialists we use the elections as an electoral platform to tell the truth to the workers and people, not to create more illusions and deceptions than the illusions propel by the political bosses. As the revolutionary socialists say:
THE LIBERATION OF THE WORKERS WILL COME FROM THE WORKERS THEMSELVES!
FIT has abandoned this issue because it thinks everything will work without a struggle, without a brutal war between the capitalists and their states against the workers. But in Argentina, colony of Wall Street, without major class struggle there will be no place to start recovering the salary, or end the income tax, nor to get decent work and to prevent the imperialist pirates plunder our nation.
The revolutionary socialists do not believe the siren songs of the Bolivarian revolution - a genuine imposture of revolution. In 2003 Castro’s brothers, Chavez and Morales came to say that we should support Kirchner. Today they sell out the socialist Cuba to the imperialism with 500,000 laid-off workers, with luxury hotels for the world bourgeoisie, and giving to the children of bureaucrats the right of inheritance to have private property. Maduro and Morales repress the workers and attack with inflation and devaluation the workers. In Argentina, Kirchner’s government represses and kills workers with almighty judges, supported by bankers to imprison and suppress the workers.
We must say enough: Enough of Wall Street! Enough with the maquila Argentina! We must expropriate without compensation the transnational companies and expel imperialism in order to eat and live with dignity!
Against the ones that are for the nation, and are against to be a colony and support Kirchner government, lackey of imperialism, the revolutionary socialists say that:
ARGENTINA WILL BE SOCIALIST OR WILL BE A COLONY

It seems incredible but the left of the system has given up to any anti imperialist struggle because it left aside the struggle for the socialist revolution as an immediate and urgent task of the exploited.
As revolutionary socialism posed in the electoral processes, the masses question, even in the enemy ground and in a distorted way, the problem of power. The left of the system has suggested that they are for a left alternative to workers and to fill many seats with left deputies to help workers' struggles. What about power? Do they call the working class to take power, to make a revolution to overthrow the bourgeois regime and this brutal dictatorship of capital under parliamentary forms? The left has banned the struggle for workers' socialist revolution in the elections of 2013.

We must fight like in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Brazil! Fight alongside Syrian workers and fight with workers picketing as Marikana mines in South Africa and with the method of the general strike yesterday in Greece!
We have to say enough is enough and fight with the occupy movement that surround Wall Street shouting "we must expropriate 1% of the parasites that plunder the world", we must fight with the Indignados of Madrid who shouted "Our dreams do not fit in your polls"!
We must stand up again war cry of our revolution, 2001:
EVERYONE OUT, NOBODY LEFT! To end the income tax, work in black and unemployment, for a minimum wage of $ 9,000 for all, with prices indexed to wages and not with the scoundrel Moreno. We must fight like in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Brazil! Resist as in Syria and fight with the worker pickets as in Marikana mines in South Africa and with the method of the general strike as it happened before in Greece!
Behind the smoke screen of the electoral campaign, the capitalist gangs dispute their business.

Enough with democracy for rich! Down with the arch-reactionary Constitution of 1853-1994!
The Argentinian left currents as FIT and MAS that match their program, have decided to follow the path of the Brazilian left, to assimilate to the oppressors’ regime and to make workers believe that their demands will be achieved with laws in the parliament of the executioners. In every fight they did not hesitate to take the fights to a dead end of the negotiations of the Ministries of Labour which is just a directory of human resources of the bosses against workers.

They have made the workers to believe that with left seats in parliament "we can eat, heal and have education" as Alfonsin said in the '80s, also they told the workers that there may be judges who make progressive, democratic and historical resolutions for the workers when they always defend the private property of capitalists and only make some concession when it is useful for the capitalists to defend themselves from an attack of the oppressed ones.

The trial and punishment to all the killers and military men is gone from FIT program, their only enemy and repressor seems to be the genocide Milani. Bergoglio, the Argentinean Pope seems to have blessed them all and the expropriation of the property of the Church, the separation of the church from the state and de exposure to Bergoglio as a collaborator of the military dictatorship is not seen in any of the main adverts of FIT.

CEPRODH (as posted in the brochure presenting its meeting in Cordoba) posed the brutality, defending the Supreme Court, that anti worker policy of Kirchner’s government that calls to vote for board members of the judiciary who chosen by the judges "is a Bonapartist attack". This is constitution madness when the Supreme Court is the Bonapartist institution of the bourgeois state which s above all institutions of the state and is the guarantee -together with the army- when the democracy for the rich falls. Another sector of the left looks with sympathy the Kirchner politicians who careful respect the caste of judges, and only discusses, as the right wing opposition does, how many judges each of the bourgeoisie fractions have in order to share the business of Argentina.

There are no institution of this democracy for rich and the arch-reactionary Constitution of '53 where the leaders of this left have not given up.

The Trotskyists of Workers Democracy affirm:

Enough of democracy for the rich! Down with the arch-reactionary Constitution of '53 - '94!

Dissolution of the caste of judges, the real leaders of the police forces and the intelligence services, which are only to give orders to repress and slaughter the workers and the poor people!

Dissolution of the genocide officer caste of the Army Forces!

Dissolution of the damned murderous police, gendarmerie and all the repressive forces of the state! For watching worker and popular committees: the ones who can guarantee our safety are the workers! Trial and punishment to all the genocide military men and all the killer bosses from before and today! Worker and popular trials!

Out with the Ministry of Labour and its compulsory conciliations! Out with the Professional Associations Law with which the state uses it to regulate the workers` lives and the unions!

Hundreds of thousands of fighters and militant youth of Argentina go with FIT at a time when this has moved a giant step to the right.

FIT decided to water down and dress up this rotten democracy for the rich. They say that the working class can succeed without a revolutionary struggle, without preparing and organizing a general strike defeating the traitors of the union bureaucracy, is to call the workers to surrender to the capitalists who use this democracy for the rich to wrap the fiercest dictatorship of capital, covering up the brutal plundering of Wall Street.

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Our call to make a class vote 

The Argentinian left has abandoned all anti-capitalist banners and more and more puts in the background the militant worker organizations that support it Let’s defend the policy of class independence against the electoral circus and the bosses’ parties
In 2011, when the collapse of Wall Street was still fresh and the world working class was moving forward against the exploiters in Middle East, Europe and USA, FIT disguised as anti-capitalist. It sent greetings to the anti-capitalist movements of the world.

Now, its anti-capitalism become a program of immediate demands to be voted as laws in a Congress dominated by the bankers of Wall Street. Both yesterday and today, everything is fake. This is a Left that only wants a Parliamentary Seat desperately. This is why it reduces its program, adapts to the “common sense” of the rich middle class and “left” kirchnerists who it tries to seduce with its sweetness, even publicly or slyly to cut ballot (voting some members of its list and some members of other lists), like Altamira and PO are doing now. We just need to see the cover of their last paper and we can realize that they call to vote for Pitrola (leader of PO) in BA and Altamira in Capital and they get rid of senators list head by the PTS members. They aren’t even a real left front and they play hide and seek between them.

Now that FIT is sure that will pass the proscriptive percent of this primary elections, shamefully didn’t propose to MAS an unified fight to defeat proscription of the bourgeois regime, which they denounced yesterday.

In 2011 FIT said that they raise the banners, despite some of the candidates like Altamira called openly to vote for Kirchner for president and FIT candidates for the Parliament, that workers vote for workers and they said they fought for the class independence. Today, this practically disappeared as the axis of the electoral campaign and all the workers forces are to help the left politicians achieve a seat in the Parliament. An example of this is that they have liquidated the slogan of Left…. And workers Front. “Workers” have become a smaller word and is almost gone. FIT is almost breaking, not only breaking with a program but also with a policy of class Independence.
Not only this, they have refused to do a united meeting to unify a big number of fighters and workers shop stewards that FIT has among its ranks. Because this would prove the importance and the conditions that FIT has to set a Workers Front to fight. The workers of FIT have disappeared, they only fill their acts and complete their lists. They leave in the background worker fighters and it is one left the left politicians… fighting for a seat in the Parliament… deplorable.
An example of this issue is the meeting that gathered a hundred worker shop stewards in Northern Zone organized by PTS, while PO organized another meeting of worker organizations with SUTNA and CTA.
When we proposed the demand of the workers of Las Heras be part of a fight of the workers, PO not only divided the big forces of worker and militant organizations of Northern Zone, but also said that the fight for the freedom of the imprisoned workers of Las Heras divided the fight against the tax on wages, and stated this openly on its paper. How can divide the fight against the tax on wages with the demand for the freedom for those who started this heroic fight? We must unify more this fight, not only in Argentina but at international level with all the leaders and fighters of the working class prosecuted. Tge fight for the prisoners of Argentina is the fight to end the prosecution with Savas Masas (leader of Greek EEK), for the freedom of the anti-imperialist prisoners of Guantanamo and the 4,500 Palestine prisoners who are in the jails of Zionism.
PO convinced FIT of this policy. In the last demonstration to the House of Santa Cruz demanding the freedom of the comrades of Las Heras, except for a couple of left lawyers and small delegation of PTS, FIT missed the appointment.
Yesterday FIT said that any factory that closes or dismisses workers must be expropriated and nationalized, like Zanon. And now… there must be a law in the Parliament against dismissals and lay-offs. Pathetic. When the economic crisis reaches the semi-colonial world, we more than ever must fight as in Brukman and Zanon: occupy the bosses’ factories, without compensation and make them work under workers’ control.
After the elections, when FIT conquer many seats, the workers who took them to the elections will be fighting face to face with the bosses and union bureaucrats.
The Left Front, in the program concentrated of slogans that distribute massively call to vote for them, propose the nationalization and re-statization of privatized companies “under worker control”… and TNCs! They let aside the main question of a revolutionary socialist program that IT MUST BE DONE WITHOUT COMPENSATION.
Letting this question aside in the slogans that are seen by millions of workers means, by omission, calling to pay compensation in fact the capitalist companies in crisis; this is the program of Kirchner for Argentinean Airlines and for Repsol, and the program of Chavez for Techint. This is the program of Kichnertist left, to which Altamira dreams to receiving votes from. “They haven’t stopped to think” that this is Obama’s program of nationalizing some bankrupted banks of Wall Street. This is the program of nationalizing losses of capital while they always privatize profits.
It is crystal clear. The politicians of the left have decided, in order to get a seat in Parliament, not to scare Wall Street. Because let’s be clear, 90% of the lands, companies and banks of Argentina are under the guardianship and directs of Wall Street, London and Bundesbank. FIT forgot that in order to defend wages we must disregard the fake collective bargains of the traitors of the union bureaucracy, which is where they sell workers’ wages. IT IS WHERE UNION BUREAUCRACY SIGNS EVERY YEAR THE AGREEMENT OF THE TAX ON WAGES. FIT covers up that treacherous union bureaucracies like Moyano, both CGTs and CTA agree every year collective bargains, always lower than the inflation rate, which they sign a minimum wage of $3,000, which they accept dismissals and lay-offs and they sign the tax on wages.

This can be easily explained: if a union doesn’t sign a collective bargain that doesn’t includes the elimination of the tax on wages, then the working class would be in the best conditions to start an offensive to end with it.

Left places itself behind the bureaucracy, while the bureaucracy discusses which is the limit to start charging the tax on wages.

Only with annulling the fake collective bargains, disregard all the wage agreements and call the workers to prevent than any collective bargain be signed that includes the tax on wages and call to organize a big fight to open the road to achieve this demand.

FIT says that deputies must earn the same wage than a worker. But in order to do what FIT says, first all workers must have a job and earn at least $9.000. This means calling the working class to disregard the fake collective bargains of union bureaucracy.

Partido Obrero disciplined all the FIT’s members. Whoever think of calling to fight for the destruction of the Zionist fascist State of Israel and supports the Palestine Cause, is accused of provoker by its leadership, like happened with Convergencia Socialista, which was refuted for this reason from FIT’s lists and its candidate took a place in the list for a place given by PTS.

Izquierda Socialista, claimed defending the cause of the Syrian masses against killer Assad, has tens of tens of minutes on TV and radio to fight to defeat the fence to the Syrian masses killed and today remains in absolute silence on it. It is a front of the opportunist where whoever has more votes rules, the rest obey if they can get a seat. PTS has several spots where they express the militancy of their worker leaders. Unfortunately they can only be seeing in YouTube by the left layers of the voters who look around in the Internet. In the mean time, it shares the electoral drunkenness with their FIT partners.

In this elections, workers don’t have the best conditions to face the electoral trap of the establishment and Wall Street parties. This situation is not because of the working vanguard that put all its forces conquered in the combat against the bosses and the government to set up the “Left and Workers Front”, so this ends being a “Left Front”… where its leaders only fight for a seat and not to organize a unify those who fight, claiming, as a Marxist must do that “workers liberation is a job for the workers itself”.

More and more the day of the elections comes and more and more workers are moved to the background by FIT. Most of the prosecuted workers and their workmates will vote for FIT, some of them are in the scaffold of the videlist judges like in Santa Cruz. This is unacceptable. This situation can be reverted until October. FIT and MAS must call a militant workers’ public meeting headed by the prosecuted comrades so never again a worker be placed in the scaffold of TNC’s judges and them and the bosses politicians be the ones punished.

Call of the Trostkyists of Democracia Obrera to vote in the elections
Neither FPV, nor PJ, nor UCR, nor FAP, nor any other bosses politician…

Workers must not vote for Wall Street and slavering bosses candidates
From our program and anti-imperialist fight, taking the banners of revolutionary socialism that left abandoned long time ago, we call to vote critically to the organizations that represent the name of the working class in the elections. We call to vote, with this program and under these banners, critically the lists of FIT and MAS headed by worker shop stewards and fighters.
We call to vote for the left’s lists headed by worker fighters, because against them is concentrated the entire attack of the class enemy, after the votes and the electoral charade be over. Worker fighters will be with their rank and file and comrades fighting against capitalists and treacherous bureaucrats. Perhaps some left politician achieve a seat, but they wouldn’t have prepared the workers for the hard current and future combats. They have only said sweet statements to the ears of the working vanguard, when what is coming are new blows against workers by the government and oppressive forces.
Even though left politicians have place it in the background, their front was also “of workers”, in order to win some voters of the rich middle classes of kirchnerism: We, workers, vote for workers, not bosses.
This is why in CABA we call to vote for the shop steward Dellecarbonara (Subway worker) who belongs to the FIT’s lists as candidate to senator. We call to vote for comrade Muzlaz in Cordoba, who was dismissed in the fight of the workers of Somisa and FIAT in Cordoba, to comrade Alcides Christiansen in Neuquen, among others.
We feel that we must oppose to the policy of the left of the system called FIT, which tries to ingratiate itself with this regime of the democracy for the rich, a policy of fight for the political class independence, which are the minimum conditions that the working class needs to intervene in this electoral charade of deception and lie of the bosses politicians, front men of Wall Street bankers.
In those provinces where FIT lists aren’t head by working fighters, we call to vote or cut ballots for MAS, as vote to fight against proscriptions which mean PASO for the small currents of the working class who claim being socialistas and want to be known and win sectors of the masses with their programs.
It is urgent to set again on its feet the Internationalist Trotskyist Workers Party of Mateo Fossa and the Fourth international in Argentina
From Worker Democracy we will continue to fight for our revolutionary program because it is ever more clear to the vanguard of the Argentinean working class that it is necessary to set up a true revolutionary party in Argentina, beating the present “lefts” who have already and long ago adapted openly to this regime of democracy for the rich and the arch-reactionary 1853 / 1994 Constitution which regulates it.

Hundreds of thousands of workers and young people are looking for an alternative to overcome the oppression, exploitation and to take in their hands the solution of their problems. Hundreds of thousands of them will vote FIT; we do trust these rank and file workers. We know that from the entrails of the labor movement the vanguard will emerge of the next battles that should go the way of El Cordobazo, the Argentinean 2001 revolution and the massive struggles of the world working class as today in Egypt and Tunisia, as yesterday in Greece or Madrid, today in Bangladesh, in Chile and again in Bolivia, and of those fencing Wall Street.

The Argentine working class need to have again among its ranks a Trotskyist party as that which Mateo Fossa founded in the 1930s that never bowed to Stalinism or to the bourgeois regime lackey of imperialism, and this could be so because it was a truly militant party for the Fourth International. That's the fight that we are today continuing, the Trotskyists of Workers Democracy that we strive to rebuild our party: the Fourth International.

In that struggle we have put all our effort and energy. The new labor movement that this decade of delivery of the Kirchner of the oppressed nation to Wall Street bankers is giving birth to is looking at the struggles advanced by their class brothers and sisters all over the world against capitalist bankruptcy in huge revolutionary struggles. The reformist left adapted to the system throws sand over the eyes of the working class so that the workers don't see themselves as part of a single and unique world working class which is today taking decisive battles in Syria, China, Greece or as in Chile and Brazil, or as the indignant young do by fencing Wall Street.

A new labor movement is emerging in Argentina and should return to the path of El Cordobazo and Classism, learning from the revolutions that were expropriated from them in Argentina and Latin America; they must learn also how to fight, how to advance and retreat studying in the life book of the struggles of the masses in Africa and Europe. The generation of the ' 70s Cordobazo was a byproduct of huge struggles of the Argentine proletariat that had forged a huge experience of struggle in the Peronist resistance, which was shaped thousand and one times by the whip of capital, but also by the fire of the revolution burning from Mexico and the Southern Cone to the French May to the Prague Spring, to the uprising against the war in Viet Nam in United States, a revolutionary upsurge that shook the entire planet at a time.

In the current conditions this working class is maturing, under the influence of large international events, the imperialist crack, wars and revolutions and the whip of the capital that makes its existence unsustainable. The Trotskyist internationalists will not change our course. Not only we confronted counter-revolution at an international level in decisive battlefields on the planet, as in Maghreb and Middle East, in the Pacific, accompanying the workers’ combat from China to Japan to the martyred Africa in the very heart of the pickets of Marikana. We did not surrender in Latin America, fighting in Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, etc. We have confronted and denounced the covenants of the Castro brothers delivering Cuba to imperialism and the Colombian resistance to the fascists paramilitaries of Santos Government and the US bases; we did not fall in the traps of the siren chants of the scam of "Bolivarian revolution" Governments, lackeys of imperialism as Chávez, Morales and Kirchner, not least oppressors of the workers than those imperialist agents, the FTA Governments.

A historical period of counter-reformism has opened. As revolutionary Marxists we remain steadfast in our fight because we know that in these and the next waves of the struggle of the proletariat, there will be a merger between us internationalists and the best elements of the vanguard of the world working class. Argentina will not be an exception.

BART UPDATE: Labor needs a strategy of political independence in order to win strikes and smash austerity!

Many leftists and working class militants are confused about why labor ends up on the losing end of nearly every confrontation. Why the “good guys” lose is not merely a question of poor tactics by well-meaning labor leaders-even when they do rise directly out of the ranks. The long term political subservience of labor to the Democratic Party (one of the two major parties controlled by and representing the capitalist class) acts like a ball and chain on labor preventing strikes from accelerating to victory. Only by going beyond the parameters set for labor by the bosses’ parties in power can labor mobilize the power of the working class to win-what are indeed class battles! Those “legal” parameters, set in stone by anti-labor laws, supported and invoked by both Democrats and Republicans, with the acquiescence of labor’s misleaders, prevent strikers from asserting their power to initiate and win indefinite, general and political strikes.

On July 5th, after 4.5 days of strikers shutting down BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), under threat of a government mandated cooling off period, both sides agreed to extend contract expiration for 30 days. Some see this as a tactical retreat or tactical mistake, but in reality it is emblematic of a subservient labor leadership whose strategy is to grovel at the feet of the state.


HWRS & LBB lick the tail of the bureaucracy*

In Class War #5 we raised the rhetorical question: was the collapse of the strike a tactical retreat or a strategic collapse in the first place (pg10)? It seems the HWRS/LBB has answered that ending the strike after four and a half days was a “tactical mistake.”

In their August 1st Statement “Transport and Public Sector Unions: Strike in Support of the BART Workers and Their Unions!” they categorize the bureaucracies’ capitulations in the first round of negotiations, which sent the strikers back to work without any gains for a 30 day cooling off period, as a tactical mistake. Trying to make lemonade out of lemons the HWRS/LBB state:

“Even now, the ATU 192 workers at AC Transit, and the AFSCME 444 & 2019 workers at EBMUD, still have not settled their contracts. This gives the workers an opportunity to correct the tactical mistake (our emphasis) made by the BART unions in returning to work before they had achieved the goals of their strike.”

So it remains for us in our lonesome to say this was a strategic collapse in the first place. We would not only want to make the points that the ICL (Spartacist) makes that on both sides of the negotiating table you have champions of the Brown administration, but that this is a cynical class collaboration against the interest of the workers and takes place against the backdrop where labor leaders of this kind across California and the USA have acquiesced in the bosses austerity, as has their beloved president Obama who is yet to make one practical move against the ALEC-inspired sequester.

This trade union misleadership has “thrown the fight” and left the membership on the ropes and it will be all California workers who take the resultant beating. To win labor needs to repudiate the bureaucracy, the Democratic Party and all of the false consciousness of capitalist ideology. As we said in Class War #5, workers must reject the compounding of “reactionary backward consciousness perpetuated by the media, the culture and the state [which] limits labor’s power to mobilize the entire class to win strikes.” It will take a general strike to win this battle. And right now is not too soon to realize this.

HWRS/LBB not only says this was a tactical error but proceeds to reduce the workers real grievances to a secondary order of importance, changing the subject to the also objectively necessary labor self-defense of oppressed communities. This wouldn’t be bad if they had raised demands that made either winning the strike or defending the oppressed an immediate prospect.

Replace the misleaders via a class struggle program to defeat the bosses and their politicians

Today the labor leaders still tell the workers there is no alternative but to acquiesce to the state’s demands that labor work without a contract. Thirty days after the end of round one, on August 4th, on the eve of the strike’s resumption, Governor Brown put a seven day halt to the strike to “investigate why” the negotiations are stalled. In both cases the government stepped in, not on the side of labor but to prevent the workers’ momentum from accelerating.

Marty Morgenstern, State Labor Secretary, with S.F. Mayor Ed Lee (right) at a news conference: “I don’t think the Bay Area should be on pins and needles. It’s time for this to end.” Photo: Sarah Rice, Special To The Chronicle

The governor, the Democrats and all the politicians in the Bay Area were gesticulating madly in front of the TV cameras, doing everything they could to berate labor and stop the BART strike from reigniting and gaining support. They know that AC Transit workers (who at this writing 8/5 have announced a 72 hour strike notice) and other city, municipal, county and state workers unions are also working while out of contract. The possibility of united strike action by multiple unions at this time could “legally” grow over into a General Strike. The Taft-Hartley restrictions written into law precisely to prevent another Oakland general strike as happened in 1947 are cited by labor leaders whose link to the Democratic party prevents labor from challenging these laws with militant class struggle! These laws were written to prevent class solidarity strike action. It is only by general strike action that we will defeat these laws and regain labors’ strongest weapon–SOLIDARITY STRIKE ACTION!

If labor’s historic strategy was to obey the dictates of the state it would never have won the 8- hour day or organized the industrial unions, forced the government to concede a minimum wage, social security, or end child labor. Labor’s strength can emerge victorious only when our organizations mobilize the membership and the entire working class with the understanding that the capitalists run the government and that it is not neutral, that the state is the tool of the bosses and that labor needs its own political independence and an action strategy to win a fair shake.

Only with this understanding can labor unite with all the unorganized, the precariat, the immigrant communities, the international workers movement and those victimized by racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and anti-Semitic police and vigilante terror in order to initiate united general strike and political strike actions that can secure democratic and economic. The capitalists have their posse, the politicians, the corporate media, the cops, and even their agents in the labor movement who keep us tied to their politics. We need to have a strategy of political independence to win. This means organizing class struggle caucuses in our unions which develop class struggle strategy and tactics to turn our organizations into fighting tools for workers victory.

Labor must have a strategy of defeating Taft-Hartley in the street through united strike action defying government injunctions. This is a strategic, not a tactical decision, one which can only be made when the rank and file assert their dissatisfaction with the long-term losing strategy of class collaboration foisted upon the membership by the entrenched bureaucracies of the major labor federations. To get off this political treadmill workers need their own fighting workers labor party which adopts and carries out a transitional program bridging the immediate concerns of the class to the historical resolution of the major contradictions of class society and all oppression. A party which will stop at nothing to accomplish this and will secure all political power for the working class.

The bosses’ strategy has been sold to the rank and file by the labor aristocracy and the union’s bureaucracies because they, a small percentage of the laboring class, have had their bread buttered by their alliance with capitalism at the expense of the unorganized millions of workers here and the hundreds of millions of workers super-exploited by parasitic Wall Street imperialists “investing” abroad. This grand coalition of labor and capital is enforced through the Democratic Party of President Obama, Governor Brown, Mayors Ed Lee (SF) and Jean Quan (Oak) on the one side and the sellout labor leaders on the other. There was no tactical mistake when the BART workers went back to work without a contract! No, it is the long term strategic collapse of the labor leadership that ill-prepares the class for these battles and which must be removed and replaced for labor to assert its just claims of today and win its historical revolutionary class demands.



* Humanists Workers for Revolutionary Socialism and Labor Black and Brown

RWG (Zimbabwe) Post-Election Statement

 

NO TO ZANU PF DICTATORSHIP! NO TO PASSIVE RESISTANCE!

BUILD RANK AND FILE UNIONS TO CALL FOR A CONGRESS OF WORKERS!

FORWARD TO A GENERAL STRIKE TO CONQUER OUR DEMANDS!

FORM A WORKERS PARTY AND BREAK WITH THE POPULAR FRONT!

The elections held on the 31st resulted in a landslide victory for ZANU PF in the presidential election, a two thirds majority in the Parliament and the regaining of control of most local councils they had lost to the MDC’s.The elections have generally been described by all observers, the parties and the western nations as peaceful but by some as not being free and fair due to instances and accusations of bussing, a shambolic voters role, massive disenfranchisement, double voting, suspicious voting slips and pens among others. In an initial statement the main MDC (referred to as the MDC-T) has rejected the election as a huge farce and met on Saturday to offer a way forward to their members who were becoming restless with some calling for a boycott of parliament and street protests. The other MDC (MDC-N or just MDC) has also rejected the outcome citing massive rigging of the elections by ZANU PF and security agents with the help of Israeli agents but resolved not to boycott the government.

What is clear is that the MDC-T is now desperate to regain confidence from its western imperialist handlers among its members and has resolved to boycott parliament and other state institutions demanding a re-run. In a clear sign of political impotence they have also resolved to present evidence of vote rigging and manipulation to SADC and the AU, the same bodies whose observers endorsed the elections. But most tellingly the MDC-T states it will achieve all its aims through peaceful means. It would have been foolhardy for anyone to expect the MDC-T to go beyond this and call for the mobilisation of the masses into the streets as this will be much difficult to control and may develop beyond the call for a re-run to include radical demands.

As we speak the mood across the country is one of surprise and shock for the masses who had put so much faith in the MDC-T. They are more shocked by its resolution to pursue a useless route. It’s true that to a large extent ZANU PF manipulated the voting system in their favour in order to defend itself against western imperialism and on behalf of Chinese led imperialism, but also critically over the years the MDC-T has lost its original appeal because of its record in office, as well as its initial limited radical tactics. The way it conducted its congress and selection of public office representatives also added to an already gloomy situation for the party. Some have also hinted to the nascent internal struggles and infiltration as additions to a list of factors that have made it possible for ZANU PF to retain its dominance. On the other hand Mugabe based on his pre-election speech and also in order to destroy the opposition, might offer positions to the MDC-T.

The key observer bodies, SADC and AU, have endorsed the elections and the outcome effectively ending their mediation role of over five years and also setting the tone for inevitable albeit grudging acceptance of the results by western countries and the USA which are eager to participate in the diamond industry and also tone down the ZANU PF indigenisation drive despite their recent condemnation of the outcome. That observers known to be funded directly by western states have castigated the manner in which the poll was run and the results will do little to sway the western states resolve to end this disastrous episode that has not boded well for them in terms of regaining dominance ahead of Chinese imperialism.

The key lesson for workers, youths and the poor masses is the inability of reformism to resolve even the basic democratic issues. Firstly, that a hated regime can steal its way to power and yet get away with it shows that real democracy is not compatible with a capitalist system where economic geo-political interests ride above people’s wishes and interests. Secondly and more importantly, this election has and will expose the reformist MDC-T party as a degenerated part in the imperialist game with no intentions and capacity to move beyond electoral,diplomatic,judicial,religious and legal routes in their fight for the rights and interests of the poor masses it claims to represent.

In our pre-election statement we wrote that, “The elections to be held on the 31st of July 2013, though not a fundamental national development, will point to the trajectory to be taken in the implementation of capitalist exploitation and state brutality on the workers and the poor masses. Whichever party wins the elections will without doubt and despite all election rhetoric go full swing to impose massive austerity as demanded by imperialism. The events in Egypt prove that democracy is not enough to cater for the needs of the poor. Workers and the poor should mobilise and organise now to be able to defeat such moves and protect their livelihood and interests”. Both ZANU PF and MDC have been fighting on behalf of their imperialist sponsors to oppress and exploit the masses and resources of this country.

We call on the workers, youths and poor masses to reject the impending ZANU PF dictatorship through independent mobilisation on the basis of genuine workers and poor masses demands as well as active and militant working class methods. International capitalism certainly cannot solve its crisis without proving that bourgeoisie democracy is but a mask for the bourgeoisie dictatorship. Zimbabwe is living proof of the futility of trying to polish the mask on behalf of the dictatorship! We also call on the workers and the poor masses to reject the call for passive resistance and symbolic protests and instead mobilise for a general strike as a key element of revolutionary protests led by independent local organs to avoid betrayal and the hijacking of the struggle by reformist groups bent on squandering the fight of the poor.

• Workers, youths and the poor form action committees to fight the growing and coming attacks on the wages and conditions of the poor and the livelihood of the majority poor! 
• Form rank and file committees in our movements and unions to advance the workers program, lead general and political strike actions and break with the reformist leadership!
• Workers and poor masses break with the MDC and ZANU (PF) through building rank and file unions and a congress of all workers, youths and the poor in struggle that prepares for a general strike!
• Workers form an independent workers party to break the popular front of the MDC and ZANU PF dictatorship and that champions the interests of the workers and the poor masses!
• Jobs for all can only be won by the workers’ conquest of their own economic plan, by sharing the work, by shortening the hours and ending poverty by implementing a sliding scale of prices and wages!
• Provide free quality health care and education for all run by the workers, students, educators, and health care providers themselves!
• The big capitalists and imperialist companies must be made to pay to end the poverty and misery. If they cannot or will not we demand they must open their books expose their business secrets and then to nationalize their assets and put them under workers control!
• For a workers government that defends workers and peasants against the local and foreign capitalists on the basis of the armed people building a workers’ state that implements decisions for the benefit the workers and the poor!
• For an African socialist revolution as part of an international revolution that alone can guarantee a better life for all!
• For a new world party of socialist revolution based on the Transitional Program of 1938 to lead the revolution to end capitalism and open the road to socialism!

REVOLUTIONARY WORKERS GROUP, ZIMBABWE (RWG-ZIM)

rwg.zimbabwe@gmail.com

www.rwgzimbabwe.wordpress.com

06 August 2013, Harare Zimbabwe