Zimbabwe: Stand in solidarity with workers under attack!

Nurses and Doctors strike for PPE and major changes to health system

The following is reprinted from our comrades of the Revolutionary Workers Group of Zimbabwe (RWG-Z):

The RWG wishes to extend our most unflinching support to the workers of Zimbabwe for their resolve to re-ignite the struggle for a living wage. The past days we have seen the Health workers bravely expressing their disgust with the slave wages that the junta regime is paying them notwithstanding workers’ brave struggle to continue saving lives following the deadly outbreak of the Corona virus globally. It is also important to appreciate that these workers are also having to put up with long shifts and working in a very dangerous environment without adequate supply of PPEs. The sad part is that the workers have however, seen their living standards continue to get worse particularly as a result of hyperinflation and the unchecked loss of value of the worthless Bond notes/RTGS /Zim $ that even tuckshops are increasingly refusing as a medium of exchange.

The pain is being felt across the entire working class as the life of the poor in general has deteriorated dramatically, particularly in this lockdown period; an increasingly unpopular, reckless and elite lockdown which has made the lives of the poor more difficult than anything. What is shocking is that this regime which is saddled with serious corruption relating to award of tenders for COVID PPEs seems not to take the situation seriously. They recently announced a meagre 50% salary increase for civil servants as well as a US$ 75-00 allowance whose operational modalities nobody seems to understand, without any consultation with the workers. This is the height of the military regime’s arrogance on matters of workers and the poor in general. It is in that regard that as RWG, we stand in firm support to the announcement by the teachers and other civil servants that they shall be protesting against the slave wages on the 22nd of June 2020.

This protest should begin a campaign for a general strike across all exploited and oppressed sectors of society, to address not only the failure of the Covid strategy, but the underlying economic collapse that is being paid for by the working people. A strike committee elected by all workers in struggle should coordinate this campaign and prepare workers’ defence committees against the repressive state forces.

Let all the poor masses arise led by the working class. As Lenin and Leon Trotsky used to say leadership of the revolutionary struggle should permanently reside in the most oppressed and exploited proletariat class.

Our program addresses the basic needs of our class to survive, for safe and healthy work conditions our program picks up the forgotten promises of the anti-imperialist revolution. We fight to win jobs, education, health care for all. To win we need class independence and working class unity that brings the skilled workers, the daily laborers and our class allies among the street vendors, farm workers, the radicalized students and intellectuals together to build independent working class organizations in every workplace and community that advance and defend our movement. For survival, workers need to assert control of all PPE and use masks at work and in street actions, strikes and assemblies.

To escape the continuous economic crisis of Zimbabwe we say build union caucuses around transitional demands. To win Jobs for all with a living wage we advocate class struggle actions that make the bosses and imperialists pay billions in public works to build schools, clinics, hospitals and distribution centers for basic needs.

To defend the rights of our class we fight for democratic rights of the workers, the super-exploited and oppressed peoples in the workplace, streets and public domain.

To win these immediate survival demands and the fight for workers democracy against the brutal military regime, independent workers organisations and unions must unite to form an independent workers’ party capable of leading the class to power and a Workers’ and poor Farmers Government with a program to build a socialist republic as part of a wider South African Union of Socialist Republics!

Let’s make this a long winter for the exploiting class. For a militant campaign of strikes building for a general strike against the military regime and for a Workers’ Government!

Jobs for all! For a 30 hour workweek at 40 hours Pay! We demand a sliding scale of wages, hours and prices and employment for all who can work!! For guaranteed employment for all who are able, a guaranteed income for all! Land must be distributed to all poor peasants together with a state bank to provide cheap credit to all small farmers!

Workers break with the MDC and ZANU PF and form a workers party! No to US and Chinese imperialism!

For workers councils and for a workers state based upon them that defends workers and peasants against the local and foreign capitalists! For a workers and peasants’ government on the basis of the armed people to implement decisions that benefit the workers and the poor.

For an African socialist revolution as part of the 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! Viva Workers of Zimbabwe!! Viva Socialism!!

Revolutionary Workers Group of Zimbabwe (RWG-ZIM), 06/21/2020
Email: rwg.zimbabwe@gmail.com Website: http://www.rwgzimbabwe.wordpress.com

Let's resolve racist capitalism's crisis in favor of our class!

ILWU BLM stoppage against police violence

The brutality of racist American capitalism has been exposed yet again with daily vigilante/cop murders of Black people, most recently George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Rayshard Brooks, which have sparked mass social protest both in the U.S. and across the world. Lynching and arbitrary Boogaloo attacks are on the rise! We say!  #BLACKLIVESMATTER. Defend Black, Brown, Immigrant and LGBTQI+ people from state and vigilante terror.

The U.S. capitalist ruling class has been thrown into chaos, unable to control the streets which are filled daily by a movement, predominantly composed of multi-racial workers and energetic youthful  #BlackLivesMatter protesters.  Meanwhile the country is led by a wannabe Bonapartist POTUS who wants nothing more than to wage war on these protesters, using the military against Americans. Thursday, he threatened to use the Federal troops to smash the Seattle protesters autonomous zone #CHOP. The military top-to-bottom has little appetite for his unconstitutional schemes.

Sections of the ruling class and politicians, sweating under the pressure of the mass movement, want less repressive methods for the moment and are willing to enact token policing reforms in order to attempt to derail the protests. They proffer the carrot at the very moment Democratic mayors and Trump are still wielding the stick (and the rubber bullets AND Pepper gas.) Perhaps worst of all, the betting line is that real progress at removing structural racism will not be forthcoming from the politicians – this time either. Remember the Kerner Commission report! To win racial justice the mass movement must accelerate from “Defund and reform” to Disband, Disarm and replace with self-organization of the working class and oppressed community’s self-defense.

Many Democratic Party municipal governments talk police reform as they unleash their racist cops against the Black Live Matters protesters in the streets to tear gas, shoot, beat, arrest and also kill anti-racist protestors. Lynching in southern California and armed motorcycle gang attacks on protestors in Ohio show us how little we are served and protected. FREE ALL PROTESTERS! DROP ALL CHARGES!  FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS! 

The crisis of world capitalism has reached its deepest point since the Great Depression and the inter-imperialist WW II of the last century. Capital has failed to recover their rate of profit from the 2007-2008 crisis and now, despite fictitious growth in the stock market which benefits the wealthy speculators, a new severe crash – exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic is underway.

The moment is now for the working class to take advantage of the state crisis of bourgeoisie! The exemplary action led by the International Longshore and Warehouse Workers Union Locals 10, 34, 75, & 91on “Juneteenth” (June 19th) is intended to leverage the power of the working class to resolve the burning social issue of structural racism and police terror. We call on big battalions of the AFL-CIO to follow this leadership. Instead, Trumka ignores the ports shutdown and instead sends an email invitation to join “your local” WEDNESDAY (6/17!!) demo calling for passage of the HEROES ACT. So serious is Trumka about fighting racism that the “local” NYC protest is on Friday and it’s in Jersey City! To unite the working class the AFL-CIO leadership should join the ILWU and build mass strikes against structural racism.  Labor must clean its own house by uniting in anti-racist mass actions and strikes!

For the ruling class, April’s crisis Trifecta (environment, economic, Covid), has turned into June’s four headed monster as our movement for racial justice has linked oppressed sectors of the class into mass anti-racist movements in the streets! But protests alone and especially a protest movement that melts away into electoralism will not defeat the structural racism of U.S. capitalism.

It is long past time for the working class and the social movements to take advantage of the crisis of the capitalist state and go to full court press.  After two hundred minor test strikes in the last few months, the working class needs to take up the fight for Black equality and unite as a self-conscious class to advance to the general strike, the political general strike and working-class power.   The Communist Workers Group seeks to build a general strike movement, not for mere ‘feel good’ economic stopgap legislation or a police reform that Capital can later swipe or never enforce, but for a workers’ government!

The union’s last stronghold of state and municipal workers are today under attack as the ruling class politicians, in many cases Democratic Governors and mayors, renegotiate contracts to  make their employees pay for the crisis with furloughs and pay cuts, while billionaires are allowed to enjoy their tax cuts and inflated stock prices. States are crying for bailouts by the federal government; and communities and cities are talking about defunding the police! There are capitalists who are eager to make concessions to the movement if they can demobilize us with token demilitarization of police forces.  DON’T GO FOR IT!

They want us off the streets and contained because a great depression is at hand and the next administration will be all about “austerity” to pay the banks and even to bail them out. The ruling class capitalists, and their politicians like Biden, WILL dig in supporting their police, ultimately, since their rule rests on this firepower much more than any latter-day “consent of the governed!” They will give up chokeholds, perhaps. They will not give up the racist terror culture! Only the blind and deaf deny that class warfare is on their agenda.  The question the movement must ask itself is will we fight for power or take the bait and depend on elections for the changes we seek. We say, “Insist on survival!” For the working class and oppressed people to survive the whole class and all oppressed people must create popular assemblies to legislate and execute social justice programs!

Unless the working class and oppressed people build our power the Black and Brown communities will continue to be the hardest hit by layoffs as the depression deepens. This will multiply the effects of the pandemic upon the ironically labelled “essential” workers many of whom have always been the last hired and first fired. The faint praise of the Newsom and Cuomo administrations did not result in defense of their “hazard pay” in the exceptional cases of those who got it! Likewise, millions did not receive their so-called “stimulus” checks. While well-off intersectionals and union-affiliated academics talk democracy abstractions, we want to fight to get you your necessities!

Refuse victimizations! NO police violence–we call for disbanding and disarming Capital’s gunsels–And NO worker layoffs! We call for Labor-Black-Browns Community Defense Guards to guarantee social safety. These should be union-based and organized in Union Halls and the Community Centers of the oppressed communities so often nowadays under attack. We call for “Jobs For All,” and to do this we advocate for a 30 hours workweek with 40 hours pay at union wages. We further demand sliding scales of hours and wages, because we haven’t seen prices drop with the decline of economic activity (you can’t eat gasoline!) and the layoffs keep coming and will until WE stop them.

The ruling class has demonstrated they are incapable of solving the political crisis, the crisis of 400 years of racist dehumanization of the Black and Indigenous people, and the Brown and Asian peoples as well. The centrality of the fight against Black oppression has always been key to the advance of the working class in the United States liberating itself from the shackles of big Capital.  Why?  Because big Capital was initially accumulated on the back of chattel slavery and is sustained by the super exploitation of the Black, Brown, Asian and migrant workers and the pervasive racism that divides the working class. The white immigrant workers came to these shores not as exploiters of the native population or the Black and Brown workers, but as super exploited workers themselves. The Irish, Italians and Jews all had their initiation into the Americas, forced to struggle for scraps as urban workers. Due to their whiteness, they were allowed a few steps up the economic ladder, especially if they were willing to do the bosses’ bidding by manifesting racist bigotry. This racism exists even within the trade union movement promoted by class traitors. The worst manifestation of this poison is the welcome the AFL-CIO had afforded the Police and Prison Guards unions.  WE SAY COPS OUT OF OUR UNIONS AND UNION FEDERATIONS!

How to unite the working class against the divisions imposed by the bosses’ ideology of racism, sexism and discrimination of all kinds?

It is time for the union movement, which has traditionally been white-led, to identify its racist past, first by expelling the Cop unions from the Labor Federations, and then by organizing sectors of the economy with the lowest paid Black and Brown workers.  We need to use the power of the labor movement to break the anti-organizing laws and nullify them in practice.  We need to employ tools such as the PRO Act (Protect the Right to Organize act, so soon forgotten in an election year by union “leaders” who are Democrats first.) We need to use the secondary strike to bury Taft-Hartley through class struggle that organizes the unorganized and wins jobs, living wages, medical care, vacations and pensions for all! Recalling FDR’s “Four Freedoms” is speechifying flim flam; the delivery is due!

We call for a fighting workers’ Labor Party! This will be a class-for-ourselves party that is a tribune of the people and champion of all the oppressed! As against the sectoralist multiclass organizations that preserve capitalism, we raise special sets of demands to address special and particular oppression; we fight for all workers as defense of the rights of our whole class, accepting all!  NO EXCLUSIONS!

We fight for justice for ALL!  Remember all victims of racist terror!  George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and Rayshard Brooks Presente!! 

Drop all charges and free all arrested anti-racist protesters!  An Injury to One is an Injury to All!

Cops, National Guard and Military off the streets!  Hands off the demonstrators! 

Mobilize the social power of the working class for political labor strikes demanding justice for George Floyd! Defund the cops! Not one penny for the forces of state repression! Abolish the police, successors of the slave patrols!

Cops are racist terrorists and strikebreakers! Kick the cops and prison guards out of our unions and labor federations! Struggle against racism in our unions: build anti-racist class struggle caucuses that fight for political independence and a transitional program. 

For mass labor-centered mobilizations to drive the racist terrorists and the fascist militias from the streets! Convene workers tribunals for justice for all victims of cop violence!

Build racially integrated, armed, trained and disciplined Labor/Black/Brown self-defense guards out of our union halls and community centers to defend Black and Brown people against racist cop, fascist and vigilante terror!  

Charging Derek Chauvin with second degree murder and manslaughter is a mockery of justice! Workers and oppressed will never find justice through the capitalist courts! For workers tribunals!

For workers political strike actions to oppose state repression and to defend the protests! Shut the whole country down! Then open it up under workers control and self-management!

No to stop and frisk and racial profiling! Cops out of the schools and off of transit! Down with the American injustice system, racist mass incarcerations and prisons!  Abolish the racist death penalty!

Racist police terror and violence will never end until American capitalism is abolished. Smash racist segregation through revolutionary integration! End discrimination in housing, jobs, education and healthcare! For Black liberation through Socialist Revolution!

Build a fighting Workers/Labor Party and a Workers International, a tribune of the workers and oppressed, to fight for a Workers Government! For workers rule and World Socialism!

COMMUNIST WORKERS GROUP, (CWG-USA)               https://www.cwgusa.org/          June 19, 2020                               Labor Donated

Class Struggle # 133, Winter June-August, 2020

   Class Struggle 133 by Dave Bedggood on Scribd

Justice for George Floyd! Justice for all victims of racist police terror!

U.S. Preparing A Military Crack Down On What’s Left Of Democratic Rights

Workers and oppressed fightback must prepare and organize against the rise of fascism!

(Image: liampayne/Instagram)

The public lynching of George Floyd, coming when it did, functions as an inadvertent  yet clear incitement by  the MAGA crowd to exploit the resulting  inter-racial “red/black’ youth revolt. The  ruling class, never missing an opportunity to spin the story from racist police murder to what it terms “illegitimate forms of protest”, in turn uses this characterization to justify Trump’s opportunistic imposition of emergency powers–sending in the National Guard. Trump personally  wants these powers because he can’t get elected without a crack down or lock up that keeps the masses from voting.

Chauvin, is a product of instituionalized racism; this known killer with MAGA and Klan connections,executed a public lynching provoking a nation-wide protest as if it were a plan from Trump’s playbook. The local “red/black” police squads followed as per handbook, putting provocateurs like Pederson into action. He was caught on video smashing store windows as the protests began, dressed in black with his wife’s respirator and an umbrella, protesters exposed him as he tried to retreat to his getaway vehicle. Pedersen and his cohorts’ job was to incite full-on riots to justify Trump calling in the National Guard, throwing red meat to his racist Confederate flag waving base. Always ready to sow confusion with a mixed message, Trump laughably claimed MAGAs love Black people. Because Trump cannot risk a military war with China yet, he needs a domestic anti-black, anti-immigrant class war to prepare the ground for possible suspension of the November elections. Why is this happening right now, and what must we do to fight it?

Why is this happening right now?

The suddenness and extremity of the current crisis compounding the pandemic, climate disruption and inevitable economic crash has created a situation where the ruling class is in a panic and without the normal solutions. The working class is divided, lacking leadership and facing mass unemployment (25%), while the ‘middle class’ of better paid workers and self employed are sliding rapidly into bankruptcy. Facing a crisis many times worse than the 1930s, global capitalism has reached its terminal crisis.

The contradiction between nature and capitalism is clear in the combination of the revolt of nature, signified by the zoonotic pandemic and meteorological cataclysms (fire, warming, mega monsoons, hurricanes, floods,  tornadoes), the spontaneous uprisings of workers and oppressed against the moves of the ruling class towards populist Bonapartism and the capitalist class preparing the ground for fascism, the only way out for capital against the threat of socialist revolution. A new generation of multi-racial working class fighters need organization and theoretical armament to resolve the contradiction, stepping off the reformist ineffectual treadmill of electoral duality and the protest-only culture of the petty bourgeoisie! 

How is this contradiction expressed in the U.S.A.?  In the U.S., the contradiction is between the world hegemon and an economically advanced but politically backward working class benefitting from the imperialist extraction of super-profits from oil and other key resources and debt service. They have been shearing off the workers’ living standards since the 1970s and now the Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall has caught up with the U.S. capitalists as a class. Seventy years into the post-WW2 era, U.S. economic decline leaves the ruling class with few options other than the fascist road. One of these options is outright Bonapartist dictatorship. Since Trump’s election in 2016 he has sought to expand the presidential powers to become a Bonapartist ruler. The current compounded crisis leading up to the election pushes him faster in that direction, to take executive control of the other branches of government, asserting new powers and now attacking states’ rights.

The Bonapartist mobilizes right wing populism against the more timid and liberal wings of the  bourgeoisie that are not otherwise willing to go along with the requirements of the biggest capitalists for authoritarian control and militarized solutions. Bonapartism and fascism share characteristics but are not the same. The Bonaparist leader will point to himself as the only force capable of solving the crisis and who does not hesitate to put the military on the streets for his own gain. The Bonapartist maintains a semblance of popular democracy, allowing the unions to exist and the voices of opposition to publish. The fascist follows when the Bonapartist cannot resolve the crisis in favor of capitalism,  and when the workers movement challenges for  power the fascist step in to crush the organizations of the workers and oppressed, crush civil liberties and round up, imprison or disappear opponents.

“From fascism the bourgeoisie demands a thorough job; once it has resorted to methods of civil war, it insists on having peace for a period of years. And the fascist agency, by utilizing the petty bourgeoisie as a battering ram, by overwhelming all obstacles in its path, does a thorough job. After fascism is victorious, finance capital directly and immediately gathers into its hands, as in a vise of steel, all the organs and institutions of sovereignty, the executive administrative, and educational powers of the state: the entire state apparatus together with the army, the municipalities, the universities, the schools, the press, the trade unions, and the co-operatives. When a state turns fascist, it does not mean only that the forms and methods of government are changed in accordance the patterns set by Mussolini — the changes in this sphere ultimately play a minor role — but it means first of all for the most part that the workers’ organizations are annihilated; that the proletariat is reduced to an amorphous state; and that a system of administration is created which penetrates deeply into the masses and which serves to frustrate the independent crystallization of the proletariat. Therein precisely is the gist of fascism….” 

– Leon Trotsky, “Fascism: What it is and How to Fight It”

The COVID pandemic has compressed this contradiction explosively. The COVID threat to life forced a belated move to lockdowns, closing down the economy, creating millions of unemployed. The failure to control the virus has impacted the most exposed sections of society, impoverished workers, People of Color and immigrants. Trump, doing the bidding of the Chambers of Commerce, has constantly rejected workers’ right to life by demanding a ‘re-opening of the economy’ at the expense of their lives. The result was predictable and workers have resisted with over 200 strikes since early March. The threat of a mass movement against him has caused Trump to lose ground with his base over COVID; even Twitter is challenging him with fact checks; and he is threatening  governors and mayors who stand up to him. Etc.,  etc.

Trump needs something to justify a state of emergency to force a re-opening of the economy and blame Blacks for resisting it. The imperialist playbook is to make other countries pay for your crisis, but in the end it’s workers and oppressed everywhere that pay. And so far he hasn’t broken the working masses. He knows that by targeting Black and migrant communities he divides the working class, gets the wavering elements of the ruling class fearful of mass anarchy behind him, and can use his power to impose martial rule and settle the question of who retains presidential power. At the same time he avoids the need for an external war with China which is a risk too far in the present global situation. The ‘red’ scare tactic is useful in winding up his white supremacist base as a fascist movement to attack the threat of workers revolution, but as yet there is no need to push this to the limit and risk a global war. With the executive power and support of Congress he has the room to retain power and prepare for the future fascist regime. The critical question is: can workers’ and oppressed mobilise and organise against that power and resolve the class war by taking power with a Workers’ Government and Workers’ State?

How to fight it!

Trapped between elections and protest the working class has no political self organization nor party that acts in its interests. Without an independent voice of the working class and oppressed the discussion dominated on the mainstream media ranges from Fox with its hypocritical stance of: “…yes you have something to be angry about but your going about it all wrong…” to the worthless Democrats looking for a way to channel all the righteous indignation off of the streets and into an “Anyone but Trump” Biden moment.  The problem for the Democrats, and they know it, is that in many of the urban centers where daily police terror in the Black and Brown community is the norm, these cities are being gentrified by Democratic political machine politicians in league with billionaire developers. And the enforcement actions in response  to this wave of protests triggered by the murder of George Floyd are also guided by Democratic administrations calling in the National Guard so they don’t look weak in face of Trump’s taunts and threat to send in the military police. Their big reason to show little opposition to Trump is their desperate need for budget bailout monies. They won’t get these if he doesn’t sign the bill granting them!

So the multi-racial working class and oppressed youth who filled the streets for the last week have no legitimate reason to support the Democrats other than the pragmatism that comes with fear, moral defeat and short sightedness. The fake socialists like Bernie Sanders and his followers in and around the fringes of the Democratic Party want your energy to put Biden in office because they do not believe the working class can take power into its own hands and are unwilling to chart a course to that end. They fear the youth uprising they wish to manipulate for their “new normal!”  

It is significant that these demonstrations are racially integrated.  Historically in America, major working class and social gains have been won for all when white workers have united with Black people and taken up the fight for Black rights.  And the ruling class knows this! This prompts the sector of capital represented by Trump and Barr to consider a rapid turn to fascism, hoping to have adequate ‘Boogaloo’ (civil war) support for a ‘Fatto Compli.’ They are capable of self-delusion about their chances too, particularly because Trump surrounds himself with yes men. So we need to advance the historic program and organizational forms of the working class to disabuse the far right of their chances of carrying the coup off! We need to make the AFL-CIO organize “Federal” Locals of the unemployed open to all the unemployed! This would at a stroke signify a great unifying of the class as a militant labor movement. Demand living wages for all, employed and unemployed! 

Revolutionary Marxism sees the youthful vigor expressed in the streets as incipient rebellion, as the voice of the voiceless manifests in desperate direct action.  Desperate because all “legitimate” means of redress are like talking to the hand.  All roads of reform are blocked by the economic desperation of a capitalist class facing its own demise due to the  tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Their largesse, their noblesse oblige, allows only  incremental changes made one day and taken back the next.  Even the most peaceful leaders of the oppressed and workers are shot down and jailed while self serving opportunist leaders get way too chummy with the class enemy after convincing the masses they can ‘work it’ from the inside; only to turn on their base when the real master tells them to enforce austerity by force of arms. Reform and electoralism has failed to end exploitation of workers and the environment, has failed to end racism, bigotry, and misogyny and has resulted in one imperialist enforcer after another doing the capitalist class’s bidding overseas.

During the Obama years we saw the escalation of police murder of Black and Brown lives in cities under Democratic Party control. For the fake left, the political initiative is always in the hands of liberalism. This means the social revolt of the moment is of little importance and the principle of class political independence is either inapplicable or just another concept to fob off or put into historical storage! The solution offered by the liberals and fakers like the DSA, the Progressive International, the Working Families Party, et. al. is to get out the vote for Democrats without even putting a warning label on that deadly option.

A warning, would be in order, that it was Obama who shut down Occupy, uniting the FBI with local Democratic mayors and providing their police with military grade equipment and federal “intelligence” assistance to crush a movement which shut down the ports of Oakland, Portland and Longview,  threatening the billionaires of Goldman Sachs where it hurts. It was Obama who assisted the coup leaders in Honduras to crush the mass movement,  making it the murder capital of the world as union activists were hunted down in their homes and in the streets. It was Obama who funded the Zionist  operation known as “Cast Lead”  devastating Gaza. It was Obama who extended the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and kept Gitmo open.  It requires a level of national chauvinism  on the part of self-proclaimed revolutionaries (from Anarchist to pseudo-Marxist) to ignore the actual role of the Chief executive of U.S. imperialism and advocate election of his henchman Biden!

We also learned that spontaneous and sustained  protests, even when they result in general strikes from below (as in Oakland when 40,000 shut down the port winning support from the most militant workers of the ILWU) are not enough to win.  The Occupy was smashed by the Democrats who guided the masses back to the electoral arena. But even the reelection of Obama was not enough to keep the people off the streets.  The racist institutionalized terror the capitalists need to keep Black, Brown and oppressed working class families down and powerless could not be dismantled by all the weary speechifying of Obama and the parading of AG Holder.  And so Occupy was shut down but the movement morphed quickly, with the cell phone camera and social media exposing multiple racist cop and vigilante murders, into #BlackLivesMatter.

Ferguson erupted and national attention was transfixed on its racist legacy of slavery-the modern lynching by cops and neo-fascists. Youth, many of whom got their activist start in Occupy, enraged by the lack of progress, attacked symbols of the confederacy and the battles in the streets became national debates which exposed the rightists’ love of the heroes of the confederacy and the stars and bars as OVERT RACISM.   When the fires of  the  Rodney King, Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland,  Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd protests fade and the lawsuits commence, the liberal politicians always come out with endless proposals for police reform and citizens review boards that have not and cannot  reform institutions of racist terror which the capitalist class relies upon to keep poor folk down.

There is a rapid shift today in the U.S. as racism becomes morphed into a fascist movement in support of Bonapartism. But already the compounded crisis has sparked an uprising that changes the objective situation, so that Bonapartism of the centre cannot hold. Witness how fascists protesting the lockdown and touting automatic weapons caused the Michigan state government to suspend its sessions for a week. This interference with government then escalates to the Governor of Minnesota sabotaging public order by calling out the National Guard, deploying them against the workers’ right to protest for the first time since  Missouri deployed the Guard in Ferguson (2014). The fear of revolution expressed by Trump and the Democrats as “anarchy” could force Trump to move to fascism quickly, as his Bonapartism is a balancing act where neither class has the ascendancy. Bonapartism is a transitional form of class rule that cannot hold when the class war escalates, facing the compounded terminal crisis where we face the question of socialism or barbarism.

Trotsky saw fascism as on the agenda in the 1930’s, and even wondered out loud whether the U.S. could continue to afford bourgeois democracy.  The outbreak of WW2 war substituted for it by finally stimulating full employment. Since then unions have been further incorporated into the state machine, the working class has become even more amorphous without a mass workers party, let alone a mass revolutionary workers party. The new left has retreated to part of the way with their latest LBJ. So the uprising today is an expression of class spontaneity without any independent working class voice. What little benefit it has from social media can be closed down with the flick of a switch. Even so this resistance makes the prospect of a Bonapartist class balance difficult, and demands a more reactionary solution. If we are right and Trump cannot risk a major war with China yet, how does he resolve the internal class war? Trump is capable of exploiting the crisis and making a turn to fascism if he is convinced this is the only or the preferred way to hold onto power. He has the backing of a sector of the ruling class to do so, and it is an open question how much of the military would support suspension of the Constitution, in whole or part.

Workers and oppressed need our own party with a program that answers today’s immediate needs with answers which only working class power can implement. Such a workers party will organize the entire working class united with the oppressed. The party will build class-political consciousness for the overthrow of the exploiters and their state. The workers’ own party will coordinate all the partial and democratic rights battles to achieve the goal of the conquest of political power by the workers and oppressed.  We call this a transitional program. It is built in every struggle addressing each single need of the people with steps through self organization to the establishment of workers control of the means of production by democratic planning in the interest of all, not for profit.

How do we get from here to there? We begin this way:

We fight for justice for ALL!  Remember all victims of racist terror!  George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmed Arbery Presente!! 

Mobilize the social power of the working class for political labor strikes demanding justice for George Floyd! Defund the cops! Not one penny for the forces of state repression!! 

Cops are racist terrorists and strikebreakers! Kick the cops and prison guards out of our unions and labor federations! 

Struggle against racism in our unions: build anti-racist class struggle caucuses that fight for political independence and a transitional program. 

Build racially integrated, armed, trained and disciplined  Labor/Black/Brown self-defense guards out of our union halls and community centers to defend Black and Brown people against racist cop, fascist and vigilante terror!  

For mass labor-centered mobilizations to drive the racist terrorists and the fascist militias  from the streets! Convene workers tribunals for justice for all victims of cop violence!

Charging Derek Chauvin with only third degree murder and manslaughter is a mockery of justice! Workers and oppressed will never find justice through the capitalist courts!

Cops, National Guard and Military off the streets!  Hands off the demonstrators! 

For Workers Political Strike Actions to Oppose State Repression and to Defend the Protests! Shut the Whole Country Down!

Free all arrested anti-racist protesters!  Defend Samantha Shader! Drop all charges and release her now! An Injury to One is an Injury to All!

‘Antifa’ are not terrorists!  Government hands off ‘Antifa’!

No to stop and frisk and racial profiling! Cops out of the schools and off of transit!

Racist police terror and violence will never end until American capitalism is abolished. For revolutionary integrationism! End discrimination in housing, jobs, edcuation and healthcare! For Black liberation through Socialist Revolution!

Build a fighting Workers/Labor Party and a Workers International a tribune of the workers and oppressed, to fight for a Workers Government! For workers rule and World Socialism!

Brazil: the Crisis and the Fight Against Reformism

The instability of the bourgeois democratic regime in Brazil has deepened since the impeachment of Dilma in 2016. The Brazilian institutions have their structures eroded on display. Saving democracy, including bourgeois democratic rights, is only possible through the direct struggle of the working class with its traditional methods of struggle. Replacing the direct class struggle with parliament and bourgeois institutions as the PT and the reformist left does, or replacing it with union bureaucracy as do centrist parties like the PSTU, is the historical betrayal of reformism and the main cause of the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the working class.

The traditional right that led to Dilma's impeachment with maneuvers inside the bourgeois democratic regime, claiming that the cause of the crisis was the PT, which would be resolved with its departure, did not see the return to “normality” that was expected in the 2018 elections. The 2018 elections, with Bolsonaro's rise to power as a representative of the extreme right in the country, broke the 25-year polarization between PT and the traditional right represented by the PSDB.

After Dilma's fall, the government of her vice-president Temer was a government on a tightrope for 2.5 years. Its main moments of tension were the leaking of corruption cases carried out by the same Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash investigation) that had overthrown Dilma. Temer faced a truckers strike that paralyzed the country and a general strike called by the union bureaucracy but with workers' support.

Bolsonaro today fails to impose a Bonapartist government, that is, to put himself “above the classes” and “appease” the country. On the contrary, it advances through fascism, relying on the ruined petty bourgeoisie and the most backward elements of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, as shown by the video of the ministerial meeting published in the media. But the meeting also shows that Bolsonaro's radical line is not shared in the government. Most faithful to him are his ministers called by the press the “ideological wing”, the minister of the environment, education, human rights and the economy. Another wing is that of the military ministers and Vice President General Mourão. The “technical wing”, which after Mandetta and Moro left, practically no longer exists.

The Brazilian bourgeoisie is clearly divided and in dispute. The sector linked to the Lava Jato, Globo, the judiciary sector, the congress, Moro, etc., attack Bolsonaro hard. There are daily reports of corruption, actions by the Supreme Court (Federal Supreme Court), Lava Jato and PF (Federal Police) against the president and his children, and attacks on the government in the media. The dissemination of the video of the ministerial meeting is the result of one of these actions.

At the meeting, Bolsonaro, speaking of the economic crisis ahead of him, states it is a "disgrace", predicts a situation of "unemployment, chaos and social disorder" and warns the ministers of "(political) concerns that everyone must have". The minister of education spoke of arresting the ministers of the STF (Supreme Federal Court); the environment minister to take advantage of the media distraction with the pandemic to take steps to facilitate deforestation in the Amazon; Damares, minister of human rights, spoke of arresting governors and mayors; and Guedes, from the economy, of privatizing public banks.

The video was released in an investigation by the Supreme Court (STF) of allegations of Bolsonaro's interference with the Federal Police (PF) made by Moro when he left the government. Bolsonaro's response was to show once and for all that he is in charge of the PF, since days after the video was released, the PF carried out an operation against corruption investigating the governor of RJ (Rio de Janeiro), Witsel, who is part of the right-wing opposition to Bolsonaro. The governor, who was formerly a supporter of Bolsonaro and flew over the favelas by helicopter firing shots at the communities, now went on television to rage against the action of the PF and in defense of “democracy”.

Witsel cannot be our “spokesman” for democracy! Neither the Globo network, nor Moro, Morão, army generals, Maia or Lava-jato and other “democratic” and “progressive” bourgeois sectors! It is not only the Bolsonaro government that is in crisis, it is a crisis of the Brazilian bourgeois democratic regime, of the reactionary 1988 constitution and its institutions. 

We live in a moment of capitalism's terminal crisis, with the intensification of the inter-imperialist dispute between USA and China that leads us to war, and further accelerated by the pandemic. The crisis of the regime in Brazil only exposes the semi-colonial character of the country, which historically has been dependent and oppressed by American imperialism and today is squeezed between the inter-imperialist dispute between the USA and China. As we said in our ILTT (International Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency) statement:

“The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fragility of Bolsonaro’s ability to rule Brazil in the interests of the US fraction only. He does not have majority support and has backed off much of his radical slash and burn of the welfare system and privatisation of state-owned corporations. But his crazy “little flu” stand on the pandemic has put him offside not only with most people, but with most of the state governors who are imposing lockdowns, and many bourgeois and military figures. This compounded crisis has disqualified Bolsonaro ruling as a Bonaparte, strutting above the classes and claiming to represent the people. Now he is a buffoon whose power has been quietly transferred to the army command which will try to find a new candidate to fill the vacancy for a Bonapartist figurehead.

For the ILTT, the bankruptcy and instability of the Brazilian ruling class is evidence that semi-colonial capitalism cannot solve the terminal crisis of capitalism. Only the revolutionary working class can solve this crisis by overthrowing capitalism and building a socialist world.”

Revolutionaries do not fight for democratic rights by defending this rotten and reactionary regime. The war that we have witnessed between the sectors of the bourgeoisie, with both sides using the state institutions to attack each other, shows that with the current regime the bourgeoisie is unable to contain social and political instability in the face of the greatest economic crisis in history. This explains the growth of Bonapartism and fascism as a necessary method for the bourgeoisie to contain social upheavals and the workers' struggle.

It is already clear that the right-wing opposition headed by Lava Jato, Globo, Moro, STF and sectors of the FFAA (Brazilian Armed Forces) want “Fora Bolsonaro” (Out with Bosonaro). Bolsonaro's impeachment today is openly defended by various sectors of the right, with more than 30 requests filed in the Chamber of Deputies. At a time when the bourgeois democratic regime is barely standing, can the country endure yet another impeachment? Ultimately the issue will be resolved by the military, with whom this bourgeois sector has no problem joining in order to guarantee "stability" and "democracy".

Impeachment is also the defended by most the left, PT, PSOL and PSTU that seem at least to have reached an agreement on “Fora Bolsonaro”. The totality of the left today, from the right wing to the ultra left, debates and writes polemics about the way out of the crisis within the bourgeois democratic regime. What everyone agrees on is that “revolution is not possible”. The debate broadcast over the internet between PSTU, MES and MRT is an example of this.

The PSTU is keen to emphasize that Fora Bolsonaro alone is not enough, Fora Mourão is also necessary, so the solution is “general elections now”. The MRT, which agrees that a revolutionary exit is not possible, says that new elections do not challenge the regime and that the exit should be the Constituent Assembly (AC). These controversies were no different during the crises in the Temer government, in which PSTU opposed the PT over “general elections” while the PT defended elections for president only. The MRT, on the other hand, once again represented the left flank of reformism trying to save the regime with a new AC.

Why should we defend a bourgeois democratic regime that collapses, at a time of greatest economic crisis in history, in the midst of a pandemic, in which imperialisms threaten war and the bourgeoisie has no other choice but to attack the working class harshly to pay the price of the crisis? The working class defends its rights, including bourgeois democratic rights, with its direct struggle, the general strike, occupation, pickets, self-defense and workplace committees.

There has never been a reason for the class to stop “going to the streets”, that is, fighting for their rights. Even more in the face of a huge crisis of capitalism, attacks and withdrawals of rights and the pandemic. A general strike is necessary for workers to take control of measures to fight the pandemic in their hands, deciding who will work, with what security, what will be produced. The bourgeoisie has always been clear that it did not intend to contain the pandemic, but only to delay it so that we die little by little, without promoting chaos in the health system.

The general strike is needed to defend jobs and wages and to preserve rights. It takes organization and class independence, with the formation of local and national workers' committees, occupation of factories and hospitals. Self-defense committees against rising fascism are urgently needed. The reformist left, which is at home and uses the pandemic as an excuse for its betrayal, will soon have to return with its fanfare of “demonstrations”, which in fact has the purpose of containing the struggles, especially at the moment when more demonstrations, protests and the spontaneous resistance of workers increase.

We defend lockdown as a necessary principle to contain the pandemic. But the bourgeoisie “lockdown” is on the one hand to save capitalism itself, and on the other hand to repress and contain the working class. Only workers can guarantee the necessary social isolation to contain the pandemic. That is why the “lockdown now”, without class character, called by the PSTU as a necessary stage, defends the lockdown of the hypocritical bourgeoisie. The world bourgeoisie has understood that repression and authoritarianism is the best way to “fight” the pandemic.

We are seeing the lockdown of the bourgeoisie in countries like India, Kenya and South Africa, in which dozens of workers were killed by the police for “breaking the quarantine” while having to be locked up at home starving! That is why hypocritical, bourgeois and petty bourgeois speeches that the left makes, such as "saving lives before the economy", lead to the support of people like Bolsonaro, who claims to be very concerned that the people have no work. That is why the social isolation necessary to contain the pandemic must be taken into the hands of workers.

The right-wing opposition to Bolsonaro, in the Lava Jato bloc, Globo, STF, etc., are not concerned with containing the pandemic, and the opening of the economy during the increase in cases affirms this. Their concern for the economy is to maintain the profits of the bourgeoisie. Despite the dispute with the government, they support measures to reduce wages, a rescue package for bankers and attack public servants. Much less are they concerned with "democracy".

The Broad Front that PT and organizations like Frente Povo sem Medo participate in alongside center-left bourgeois parties like PDT, PSB to “contain fascism”, is a betrayal. The Popular Front (FP) does not fight fascism, on the contrary, it opens the way for fascism. It serves to contain the direct action of the class and divert the struggle into parliament and the regime, allying itself with sectors of the “democratic” bourgeoisie in a FP, the reformist left divides the class and ends workers' independence, which is the only force capable of containing fascism.

Workers need to break with their opportunistic leaders and union bureaucracy. That is why we need the united front (FU), which brings together the grassroots workers as well as their leadership. The bloc of the union centrals, of which CSP Conlutas is the driving force, is not a FU, because it is based on agreements between unions and political currents, without the participation of the base, which is only called in the days of “demonstrations”. That is, it is a bureaucratic bloc, the result of the opportunistic policy of the PSTU, which replaces the class with union bureaucracy. CUT, Conlutas, Intersindical, must make the FU by mobilizing workers to build workplace and self-defence committees, and the political general strike to defend rights, wages, pandemic control, towards the seizure of power and workers' government.

The PSTU, as a centrist party, is slipping towards ultra leftism. We saw this in Dilma's impeachment process. The PSTU did not fight against the maneuver of the bourgeoisie, stating it would not defend the Popular Front (FP) government. Currents such as the MES (PSOL) openly supported the actions of the bourgeoisie of Lava Jato as a defense of “democracy” and “justice” (bourgeois, of course). Now it defends justice and the PF against "the 2 sides", strengthening security actions and institutions supported by laws such as the Anti-Terrorism Law, which ultimately is used against workers.

The PSTU and many ultra-left currents denied the rise of fascism and the ultra-right and supported impeachment as something "progressive", because the workers were "breaking" with the PT. To deny the rise of fascism to justify that it would not fight against the maneuvers of the right because that would be to support the FP, shows that the ultra-left face does not differ in any way from opportunism when it supports the FP against fascism.

Once again, the struggle against the rise of Bonapartism and Fascism should be carried out by the independent workers with their traditional methods of struggle. And without any support to the PT FP government. The PT administered the bourgeois state, unable to contain the extreme right and fascism itself. A government that made Belo Monte (Hydro Dam), sent troops to Haiti, established military police bases in the slums, allocated billions to banks and contractors and put the price of the crisis on the back of workers, could not be defended. It is true that the workers' discontent with the worsening of the crisis and their living conditions pitted them against the government, not with the methods of the bourgeoisie, but the direct struggle of the class.

The opportunistic aspect of the PSTU did not take long to appear, in the 2nd round of the 2018 elections, it called a vote in the FP against Bolsonaro. While making bureaucratic blocs with the union bureaucracy, substituting for the direct class struggle, the PSTU has a sectarian policy against PT and often PSOL, denying a true FU that gathers the base in front of its leadership. In fact, it becomes a counterrevolutionary element, supporting a bloc with the union bureaucracy as the United Front, and preventing the formation of true FU and direct class action, leaving the workers' movement in the hands of the union bureaucracy!

The global crisis of capitalism is deepening, as is the intensification of the inter-imperialist dispute. The forecast is for a drop of 5.99% of GDP in Brazil this year! The prospect for workers worldwide is one of misery and repression. In Brazil, there were already millions of unemployed, and in the pandemic over 1 million jobs were lost. Our job market is more than 50% informal. They are public health workers scrapped and attacked for decades, no longer guaranteed rights or decent wages, attending to the pandemic without the basics of protective equipment.

From this crisis, the Brazilian semi-colonial bourgeoisie cannot escape except with dictatorship and fascism. Any policy that leads workers to the illusion of the bourgeois democratic regime, that it is possible to “improve” capitalism or reach socialism through parliamentary means, is betrayal.

Workers must unite not only in Brazil, but in the world. The reformist leaderships also promote the division of the world's workers, as shown by their support for “left” governments like Argentina. Hearing the reformist left talk about Argentina and its government, it gives the impression to Brazilian workers that the pandemic in Argentina is paradise! While in the real Argentina, the government puts the people on lockdown, workers suffer from hunger and repression in quarantine, go on strike and are harshly repressed by the police. The reformist left, as well as dividing the class to ally with bourgeois sectors at national level, internationally promote FP with bourgeois governments, dividing the class. Especially in its support for the China / Russia imperialist bloc, supporting it as an alternative to American imperialism.

The left is beating its head to find a way out of the crisis within the democratic regime, saying that "revolution is not possible". We say, there is no possible way out of the bourgeois democratic regime and capitalism. Fascism and military coup threatens us, and the only way out for the working class is the socialist revolution, possible and necessary!