tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-249461012024-03-19T21:06:32.537+13:00redraveDave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.comBlogger637125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-87701976823015031602024-03-12T09:10:00.003+13:002024-03-12T09:10:47.925+13:00Class Struggle 148 Autumn 2024<p style=" margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block;"> <a title="View Class Struggle 148 Autumn 2024 on Scribd" href="https://www.scribd.com/document/712545265/Class-Struggle-148-Autumn-2024#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" >Class Struggle 148 Autumn 2024</a> by <a title="View dbedggood's profile on Scribd" href="https://www.scribd.com/user/30150756/dbedggood#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" >dbedggood</a> on Scribd</p><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" title="Class Struggle 148 Autumn 2024" src="https://www.scribd.com/embeds/712545265/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-gb2gih2Zy1kORMMBXREd" data-auto-height="false" data-aspect-ratio="0.7080062794348508" scrolling="no" id="doc_92108" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-76111639599027709972024-03-10T14:18:00.003+13:002024-03-10T14:33:10.744+13:00Why the Treaty is still a Fraud<h2 class="postitle" style="background-color: white; color: #171717; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; text-transform: uppercase;">WHY THE TREATY IS STILL A FRAUD</h2><div class="single-metainfo" style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; margin: 0px 0px 13px;"><a href="https://situationsvacant.blog/2024/03/10/why-the-treaty-is-still-a-fraud/" rel="bookmark" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;" title="1:02 am">March 10, 2024</a></div><figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized" style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; height: auto; margin: 0px 0px 1em; max-width: 100%;"><a href="https://situationsvacant.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/jan-19-1845-hone-heke.jpg" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;"><img alt="" class="wp-image-1595" data-attachment-id="1595" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="jan-19-1845-hone-heke" data-large-file="https://situationsvacant.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/jan-19-1845-hone-heke.jpg?w=615" data-medium-file="https://situationsvacant.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/jan-19-1845-hone-heke.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://situationsvacant.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/jan-19-1845-hone-heke.jpg" data-orig-size="615,450" data-permalink="https://situationsvacant.blog/2024/03/10/why-the-treaty-is-still-a-fraud/jan-19-1845-hone-heke/" height="450" sizes="(max-width: 615px) 100vw, 615px" src="https://situationsvacant.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/jan-19-1845-hone-heke.jpg?w=615" srcset="https://situationsvacant.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/jan-19-1845-hone-heke.jpg 615w, https://situationsvacant.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/jan-19-1845-hone-heke.jpg?w=150 150w, https://situationsvacant.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/jan-19-1845-hone-heke.jpg?w=300 300w" style="border: none; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: bottom; width: 839px;" width="615" /></a></figure><figure class="wp-block-table" style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; overflow-x: auto;"><table style="background: none repeat rgba(244, 244, 244, 0.2); border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px -1px 24px 0px; width: 620px;"><tbody><tr><td style="border: 1px solid; padding: 6px 24px;"><strong>Hōne Heke chopped down the flagpole with the British flag at Kororāreka four times (July 1844-March 1845)</strong></td></tr></tbody></table></figure><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">All the old shit flying around the Treaty, everything that is not about Māori land rights and the necessity to nationalise the land to restore them, is immaterial. Ann Salmond documents what Māori chiefs said about the Treaty. They knew from experience that missionaries and settlers coveted the land as their private property. Yet they <a href="https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2024/02/07/entire-waitangi-history-in-7-parts-plus-conclusion/" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">were promised chiefly sovereignty over their land</a>; and their land rights protected by the Queen. They had the right to sell to the Crown which would stop land being wrongly taken. That promise was never kept. That was the fraud then and now and will remain so until the Treaty is honoured.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;"><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch33.htm" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;"><strong> </strong><strong>Marx on why M</strong><strong>ā</strong><strong>ori lost their land</strong></a><strong></strong></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">The war in the north in the 40’s was the first land war as chiefs protested the fraudulent failure of the Governor to protect their land rights. Hōne Hekes symbolic felling of the flagpole at Kororāreka (see graphic) speaks volumes. Then, in 1852 the Queen signed off the Constitution Act granting the settlers a colonial state with the power to dictate land policy. Self-rule meant white rule only as those with private property had the right to vote.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">The state began to create legal ways to privatise land, often creating rifts within hapu and iwi, leading inevitably to the Kingitanga and the organised resistance to fraudulent land sales. The settler state then declared such resistance to the colonial state land grab to be rebellion, and the pretext for war to take the land.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">Marx in <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch33.htm" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">Capital Vol 1 chapter 33</a> published in 1867 writes that the white settler colonies <em>reveal the truth</em> hidden in the home countries, that capitalism must create the conditions for capitalist production – the privatisation of land, creation of a landless labour force, and capital to invest in the exploitation of labour power.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">In <a href="https://monthlyreview.org/2020/02/01/marx-and-the-indigenous/" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">Chapter 31</a> Marx also shows his long-standing interest in the whole process of ‘primitive accumulation’ necessary for the “Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist” at the expense of indigenous peoples.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">E.G. Wakefield’s ‘Systematic colonisation’ planned to transplant capitalism fully assembled in the settler colonies by buying land, and artificially creating a labour force with NZ Company land priced ‘sufficiently’ to force workers to work for capitalists until they could afford to buy land. In reality the plan collapsed and gave way to the wild Southern frontier of decades of land wars against the indigenous people for land.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">The Crown’s right of pre-emption might have slowed down the theft of the land if the state had honoured chiefly sovereignty. Instead, the colonial state became the wholesale land agent. In the 1850s Grey defrauded the chiefs, sold land cheap creating a free for all to set the price of land to meet the growing demand of the hordes of settlers escaping unemployment and destitution at home.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">Marx depicts this wild frontier in the fate of John Peel of the Swan River in Australia. Having imported capital, machines and labourers to assemble a capitalist venture, he found his labourers owed him no loyalty and ‘shot through’ to the bush to claim land to work for their own subsistence.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">Far from ‘transplanting’ capitalism to the colonies, the settler colonies became a state managed “free market” where white settlers and their colonial state collaborated to dispossess Māori and set up as self-employed peasant farmers. The second land war from the 1860s to 1880s followed inevitably as the numbers of settlers increased the demand for land which Māori chiefs would not sell.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">Now the reality that British imperialist policy was driven by the laws of capitalist development is revealed. For the colonial state to create the necessary conditions for colonial capitalism, it was necessary to privatise property, remove Māori from the best land, create a landless labour force, and build a state which legalised this process and the military enforce it.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">By the turn of the 20<sup>th</sup> century all the best Māori land was converted into private property, the people of the land, now labourers, subsisting on what was left of their land.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;"><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/04/nationalisation-land.htm" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;"><strong>Marx on the nationalisation of land</strong></a></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">Marx had a lot to say over the importance of land rights in the struggle to end capitalism and build socialism. The privatisation of land under capitalism becomes a barrier to the further development of the forces of production and raises the demand for land nationalisation.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">Historically it was no accident that the predatory white settler wars against indigenous peoples was to privatise their common land. That is exactly what the tribal chiefs did after the fall of Rome when they setup tributary societies based on extracting rent from the peasantry.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">Most of the feudal landed gentry had no incentive to increase labour productivity on the land. Those that did made the transition to modern capitalist agriculture throwing the surplus peasantry off the land into industry as wage labour or the reserve army of the unemployed. </p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">As Marx explained, white settler colonisation was the result of this ‘destruction of the commons’ which created a surplus population of the unemployed who then migrated and grabbed the land off the indigenous peoples as their means of subsistence.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">As we have seen, the failure to transplant the social relations of capitalism in the colonies ready-made, led to an expanding warlike frontier as waves of new settlers arrived hungry for land. The settler colonial states, freed from the direct control of the mother country, created a <a href="https://maximumred.blogspot.com/2006/04/development-of-capitalism-in-nz-part-4.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">peasant family mode of production,</a> from which rent would be extracted by the global capitalist mode of production.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">What is named the Peasant Family Mode of Production (PFM) in <em><a href="https://maximumred.blogspot.com/2006/03/development-of-capitalism-in-new.html" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">Development of Capitalism in New Zealand,</a></em> arises at the expense of the Māori Lineage Mode (MLM), but both are subordinated to the Capitalist Mode (CMP) in its extraction of rent (the labour value produced on the land).</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">Both submodes struggled to evolve, but the MLM faced a disadvantage as it has lost its best land. It becomes a source of cheap labour for the growth of the PFM creating a basic class division between the white petty bourgeoisie and Māori subsistence surplus labour that persists to this day founded on land theft justified by a racist ‘civilising mission’ culture.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">Meanwhile the PFM divided into poor, petty bourgeois and capitalist farmers as the majority faced debt or bankruptcy while a minority increased their <a href="https://situationsvacant.blog/2020/12/25/aotearoa-land-of-the-wrong-white-rent-seekers/" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">share of the rent</a> by employing farm labour.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">We can now explain why the ongoing debate around the Treaty is immaterial so long as Māori land rights are not the objective. If the fraud is the expropriation of communal land as a result of the land wars, then that stolen land must be returned to the Māori owners.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">So it is time to dispense with the political theatre of Waitangi Day set aside for rehearsing old arguments about the Treaty unaware of the subterranean rumbles of the ongoing clash of modes of production.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">The Māori leader who came closest to Marx in understanding that the colonisation of New Zealand was part of an international assault on indigenous peoples to subordinate their societies to imperialism, was Te Whiti o Rongomai. He saw the theft of the land and its money price as a necessary condition of the capitalist mode of production, and his solution was equally clear – occupation of the common land of hapu and iwi to defend the Māori lineage mode of production.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">Today the minimum demand to honour the Treaty must be the abolition of private property in the land through its nationalisation by the state. This would confront the petty bourgeois racist culture head on and allow the majority to determine land policy by means of leases with conditions that respect Māori collective use of the land, and the respect for nature in the face of climate catastrophe due to global warming. </p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;"><a href="https://livingmarxism.blog/2011/08/18/towards-a-socialist-polynesia/" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;"><strong>Towards a Socialist Polynesia</strong></a><strong></strong></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">Of course, this is expressed as honouring the right of Te Tiriti for self-determination which in the Māori context means tino rangatiratanga. We have written about <a href="https://situationsvacant.blog/2022/09/04/the-end-of-capitalism-maori-self-determination-and-the-future-socialist-republic-of-aotearoa/" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">de-colonisation</a> at length from the 1970s on. We argued for Māori self-determination in <em>T<a href="https://livingmarxism.blog/2011/08/18/towards-a-socialist-polynesia/">owards a Socialist Polynesia</a> (1982) </em>in response to the impact of the Springbok tour and Donna Awatere’s book <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/document/45511/donna-awateres-maori-sovereignty" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;"><em>Māori Sovereignty</em></a> which shuns Marxist analysis of land rights for a petty bourgeois cultural critique of white racism.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;"><em>What makes ‘honouring the Treaty’ even more explosive today is the wave of radical Māori youth coming up against a reactionary white supremacist political barrier fuelled by the </em><a href="https://www.cwgusa.org/?p=3021" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;"><em>terminal crisis threatening global capitalism</em></a><em>.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">As that crisis is unloaded by the ruling class onto marginalised workers, poor farmers and youth, the contradiction breaks through the surface of society as the class struggle over land rights. That struggle will unite all workers and empower them to end capitalism and build a socialist world.</p><p><strong style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px;">Forward to the Revolution!</strong> </p>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-7517165948213008422024-02-19T12:48:00.001+13:002024-02-19T18:06:41.236+13:00Argentina in terminal crisis - for a Workers' Government!<span id="docs-internal-guid-32a6ad39-7fff-952e-2558-2a8652b7a32d"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjNSZIqLWMMoTpm5Toi_4cKY8XMrP--6PAHxT5X87J9mmnrRx1Zx7Je1GTXEGDkECR3C0T-JITPGK23wll7Ri1dntc66mSLtdDOwjBfsiupeAgFp2Eda4zvxTmNk9-KX8sAOASsQLOJq71vQKaj9HGt-jRW6LV-Jcqaac0jqWOpCjYRg-Y9LS0d6w" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="627" data-original-width="946" height="380" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjNSZIqLWMMoTpm5Toi_4cKY8XMrP--6PAHxT5X87J9mmnrRx1Zx7Je1GTXEGDkECR3C0T-JITPGK23wll7Ri1dntc66mSLtdDOwjBfsiupeAgFp2Eda4zvxTmNk9-KX8sAOASsQLOJq71vQKaj9HGt-jRW6LV-Jcqaac0jqWOpCjYRg-Y9LS0d6w=w698-h380" width="698" /></a></div><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><p dir="ltr" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The crisis in Argentina is the necessary result of the terminal crisis of global capitalism in its death agony. We say the crisis is terminal because capitalism can no longer reproduce itself when it is destroying its conditions of existence in desperation to escape Marx’s basic law, the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall (LTRPF). Yet there is no escape. The only way out for the imperialist powers is to download their crisis onto the semi-colonies which means the backs of the most exploited workers and poor farmers and force them to pay for the crisis.</b></span></span></span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><b><br /></b></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>The mounting escalation of global debt and stagnation of value creation gives no way out for capital other than attacking workers with extreme shock treatment - a forced depression in which jobs and living standards are destroyed along with the destruction of nonprofitable industry and business. History has thrown up Milei as the executioner of the workers, and there is no way out but the fight to destroy capitalism before it destroys us. The alternative is either socialism or fascism. For workers to live, capitalism must die! </span></span></p><span><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>Milei can’t solve the bosses’ crisis</span></span></p><span><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>The terminal crisis has thrown up Milei in a desperate attempt to make the working masses pay for the bosses’ crisis. Climate change is unforgiving especially to capital intensive, mono-cropping agricultural models which leave entire regions vulnerable as production for the world market replaces production for local consumption. Over-extended in debt to the IMF, the finance fraction of Argentina's ruling class has made a jump from the popular front to outright reactionary proto fascist solutions. This bloc of Argentina’s ruling class with its US masters can no longer depend on the Peronists to contain the masses and have opted for Melei to impose massive cutbacks in jobs and social spending to make the workers pay for the national debt. These conditions have been met by an upsurge in working class anger. </span></span></p><span><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>The US is pushing for a Bonaparte who can lead from above to impose austerity but maintain a balance of class forces. So far Trump and Bolsonaro have proven to be lumpen Bonapartes who cannot fulfill that task. Milei is already the most lumpen of all. Such is the terminal crisis he cannot even maintain a balance between the fractions of the national bourgeoisie. So far his edicts have blown up in his face. His anti-communism, dollarisation and rejection of deals with China are facing resistance from the Peronist fraction which can offer de-dollarisation deals from China and the BRICS+ and to bring agribusiness and the union bureaucracy into a new popular front with China. </span></span></p><span><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>What about the Workers</span></span></p><span><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>On January 24th the masses showed they are willing and able to fight! The leadership of the workers movement however, while quick to unfurl their red flags, initiated the Day of Action as a “pressure relief valve” more than a workers uprising. The FITU and its 5 constituent self- identified Trotskyist parties, act to divert the mass upsurge in defense of workers’ rights rights into their electoral project, a throwback to Bernstein and Kautsky opposed to the revolutionary method of Luxemburg and Trotsky. They have squandered 10 years of Argentina’s workers’ fight to build mass organs of extra-parliamentary power. Today workers’ councils, modeled on soviets as the basis for dual power, are at the top of the agenda! </span></span></p><span><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The vanguard workers supporting FITU and other left organizations must break the stranglehold of decomposing currents of Morenoism and Altamarism. The main strains of left reformism (PO, PST and the LIT-CI etc.) who still lay claim to the legacy of Trotskyism, </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">have long sold out to capitalist rule.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> Altamira in 2017 cast the PST as “Podemos in diapers' which in turn called the PO propagandists. This rare moment of theoretical clarity did not alter the fact that both currents are drowning the masses in the Kautskyan marsh. </span></span></p><span><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>The nature of the FITU ‘united front’ is an unprincipled agreement, burying its differences and betraying internationalism on every burning acid test! The FITU has no agreed position on the Russo-Ukrainian proxy war between the Western and Eastern imperialist blocs! Since the outbreak of war we have called for a NEW ZIMMERWALD drawing on the legacy of Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht to fight against the inter-imperialist proxy war and for workers’ revolutions to end and prevent war. </span></span></p><span><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>Despite the infighting in FITU none of its adherents nor its electoral strategy remotely qualify as the United Front strategy of the 1923 congress of the Third International, or the 1938 Transitional Program of the Fourth International! Commanding tens of thousands of votes and a few parliamentarians, their Leninist pretentions are exposed as propping up electoral gains in a bourgeois parliament. Again electoral, national pacifist Kautskyism!</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>A new party and a new revolutionary workers’ international to end the crisis of revolutionary leadership is the order of the day! That party has to be rooted historically in the Argentine experience with a fully developed revolutionary program integrated into an international transitional program. Only such a program can turn bankrupt reformist electoralism into the revolutionary rostrum of Liebknecht, Luxemburg, Lenin and Trotsky. Those who know this on the factory floor should begin organizing to take back your unions today! From that vantage you can see your revolutionary road to socialism and take it!</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span><b>Enter China</b></span></span></p><span><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The international crisis of capitalism, its terminal crisis, requires the balancing of the IMF debt and trade imbalances on the backs of the workers across the Global South. Loans and currency swaps from China were used to pay back IMF debt in Yuan and</span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/argentina-use-imf-money-pay-back-part-currency-swap-with-china-sources-2023-08-23/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> IMF loans have been used to repay China</span></a><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">! Workers carry the gold of one imperialist master to the banks of the other and back again while they rape our soil and enslave us with debt! For the working class to eat we must defeat not just the Austerity but its root cause imperialism. China is making its play to use finance capital and trade deals to counter the IMF and the Dollar debt draining wealth to Wall Street banks. </span></span></p><span><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">China may win the ‘left’ wing of the Peronists and layers of the Trade union leadership and left organizations to its “progressive” pose as the fair players on the international economic stage. We say China is not an oppressed semi-colony. Rather it has emerged as a great imperialist power in a </span><a href="https://www.cwgusa.org/?p=3149" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">bipolar world</span></a><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> challenging for supremacy in surplus value extraction from the Global South - Argentina included. Don't fall for it!</span></span></p><span><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>Enough pressure relief “Days of Action” intended to pressure the left faction of the bourgeoisie against the right and ultra right! The bosses’ governments come and go, but all agree on one thing - make the workers and poor farmers pay for the crisis. We say vanguard workers must build our class’s revolutionary party armed with a transitional program. With these tools workers can create their own future based on a centrally planned economy, under workers self management which exposes the bosses as obsolete and makes them pay!</span></span></p><span><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>The Transitional Program</span></span></p><span><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><b><span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">To win, Argentine workers, </span><a href="https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/argentina-land/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #1155cc; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">landless farmers and ranch hands</span></a><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">, must build mass assemblies of the rank and file (base), </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">form workers councils in every agricultural town, industrial center and working class neighborhood. Build workers' s</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">elf-defense guards to fight the fascists and defend the mass movement to expropriate foreign and national capitals; cancel the foreign debt and reorganize the economy under workers control! Build socialism by igniting regional revolution that unites the industrial, mineral and agricultural might of all of Latin America! Prepare the indefinite general strike which poses the question of which class rules creating the conditions for for a workers’ government to expropriate the expropriators. To win, it is necessary to build a revolutionary party and program able to guide workers in the struggle to seize state power! </span></span></b></p><span><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>Jobs for all and a living wage now! </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>For the Sliding Scale of Wages and Hours enforced by price and neighborhood committees committed to survival of our class, something the Federations present leaders never have done! </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>For class struggle caucuses to carry out the renovation of our unions with ever more militant class struggle leaderships and immediate recall of class betrayers.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>Down with Milei and all the bourgeois politicians. They must all go, and not one remain!</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>For the Indefinite General Strike! Form strike committees in every factory town and workers neighborhood! </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>Build workers self defense squads, from armed pickets to increasingly coordinated workers militias against the fascists and the capitalist and state thugs. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>Convene a national congress of the workers base to set up workers councils across the country!</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>For a workers’ government based on workers’ councils and workers’ power! </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>Abolish the Debt! </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>Expropriate Big Capital, Capitalist Firms national and international and run them under workers control! </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>Smash the Capitalist State, servant of the stock markets and imperialist powers! </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>For a socialist federation of South America! </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span>For a new revolutionary workers party in Argentina integrated in a workers’ international - the united world party of revolution based on the method and program of Trotsky’s 1938 Transitional Program. </span></span></p></span><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p></div>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-89644972522575962812023-12-11T16:59:00.002+13:002023-12-11T16:59:36.964+13:00Class Struggle 147 Summer December-February 2023/24<p> </p><p style=" margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block;"> <a title="View Class Struggle 147 Summer 2023-24 on Scribd" href="https://www.scribd.com/document/691427131/Class-Struggle-147-Summer-2023-24#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" >Class Struggle 147 Summer 2023-24</a> by <a title="View dbedggood's profile on Scribd" href="https://www.scribd.com/user/30150756/dbedggood#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" >dbedggood</a> on Scribd</p><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" title="Class Struggle 147 Summer 2023-24" src="https://www.scribd.com/embeds/691427131/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-kL3k5nIQGnGpevdbXJ14" data-auto-height="false" data-aspect-ratio="0.7080062794348508" scrolling="no" id="doc_26578" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-22479660103248286842023-12-06T12:32:00.000+13:002023-12-06T12:32:49.536+13:00Zionism: Pro-Imperialist, Anti-Bolshevik and Proto-fascist<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiPosXvg-Xq8bbrueLsKC0nVc__qpLVpitKz-mEXOL0EKPBhkSLeaZID9H9-DHvpm4IYfWpl58EbnKOu0mT50xgCj6dNXAJA12J3IkZKbFxVBof7MxrOb5gKpb6PJfb1TAGU8o87xQa5WXT_KWZbJ1hsSxlIwCFC7XpWvFoNilcqGktPEp_Txc4tw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="377" data-original-width="540" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiPosXvg-Xq8bbrueLsKC0nVc__qpLVpitKz-mEXOL0EKPBhkSLeaZID9H9-DHvpm4IYfWpl58EbnKOu0mT50xgCj6dNXAJA12J3IkZKbFxVBof7MxrOb5gKpb6PJfb1TAGU8o87xQa5WXT_KWZbJ1hsSxlIwCFC7XpWvFoNilcqGktPEp_Txc4tw=w643-h395" width="643" /></a></div> <div><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #565656; font-family: Lato; font-size: 13px;">P<b>alestinian residents of the town of Ramle raise their hands in surrender to Israeli soldiers on July 11, 1948. Photo: <a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/analysis/71-Years-of-Nakba-Palestinians-Continue-to-Suffer-The-Catastrophe-20190514-0016.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Reuters</a></b></em><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; font-weight: 700;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; font-weight: 700;">Introduction: Zionism must go!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank opens the prospect of a rapid acceleration of imperialist rivalry to redivide the world between the Western Bloc led by the U.S. and the Eastern Bloc led by China. The opening of this new front between the Blocs will likely spread across the whole of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) joining the existing fronts and creating new ones threatening World War III. These Blocs originated at the end of the Cold War when in 1989-91 Russia and China were finally brought to their knees forcing the ruling bureaucracies to embark on capitalist restoration. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Yet this historic defeat for workers was far from the ‘end of history’ as the victory of Western capitalism over Eastern ‘communism’. Russia and China withstood imperialist recolonisation and emerged as new imperialist powers. This set in motion a new bipolar phase in the long running dynamic of inter-imperialist rivalry for control of Eurasia. Both Western and Eastern Blocs had no option but to advance their interests at the expense of their rival but now under conditions of the economic decline of the Western Bloc relative to the rising Eastern Bloc. This saw the Western Bloc forced to go beyond diplomacy and economic sanctions to increasingly embark on a succession of proxy hot wars and invasions, from Yugoslavia in the 1990s, to Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2000s, Syria and Libya in the 2010s, Ukraine in the 2020s and Palestine today. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">It is within this context that we can understand the character of the war in Palestine today and consider its consequences for the wider geopolitical realignment of imperialist forces. Israel at the level of economic relations is not different from any of the other settler colonies that came into existence to build bourgeois nation states to protect their own national capital. However, since it came into formal existence in the post WWII war period of world-wide so-called decolonisation, it has special characteristics that must be explained. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">We will show that Israel’s ‘exceptionalism’ is due to the historic collaboration of the Zionist organizations with the imperialist ruling classes, including not only the British but also the fascists Mussolini and Hitler. The Zionists’ agreements with European leaders were based on the ideology they shared with the imperialist ruling classes, that Jews as a people were incompatible with the national characters of European nations. They then made pacts with these ruling classes, notably the Nazi regime, to deport Jews to Palestine, their proclaimed ‘homeland of Israel,’ and proceeded to build military organizations to displace the Palestinians. Immigrants to Israel were selected to favor capitalists and petty bourgeoisie committed to the Zionist cause. As a result, Jewish workers who joined working class united fronts to resist fascism in Europe were betrayed, as were the millions of Jews who suffered a genocide under fascist rule.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The formation of a settler state in 1948 was thus based on the economics and ideology of the Zionist bourgeoisie at the expense of Jewish workers worldwide. This had suited the economic interests of the British who helped create favorable conditions for the Zionists to build the administrative and military elements of their state in the post-WWI period. And with the post-war settlement following WWII which divided Europe between the Atlantic powers and the Soviet Union, the U.S. readily adopted Israel as a ‘land-based aircraft carrier’ to act as a forward military base of the U.S. in the Middle East. Overnight the Anti-Defamation League converted to Zionism. And once the extent of Middle East oil was understood generally by U.S. imperialism, the Zionist state project was approved and its existence guaranteed.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">In the 75 years since, Israel backed by the U.S. imperialist Bloc has helped stabilize the Arab states allowing the Western Bloc to intervene at will. The Zionist’s reward has been the constant encroachment on Palestinian land by any means necessary right up to October 7, 2023. What is ‘exceptional’ about Israel then is its special role in sharing U.S. ‘exceptionalism’, that is, its impunity in projecting economic and physical expansion in Palestine by means of a brutal military occupation. This expansion was justified by the Zionist ideology of the ‘chosen people’ and led to the systematic dehumanization and genocide of the Palestinian people.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Then October 7, 2023 happened. In the 21st century, Capital’s terminal crisis in destroying its conditions of existence has intensified inter-imperialist rivalry, forcing the downloading of the costs of the crisis onto their allies, their client states, and finally onto the oppressed working masses. The class contradiction between Zionist settler colonialism and its oppressed Palestinian subjects intensified to breaking point with Hamas’ breakout from the Gaza concentration camp, revealing the hollowed-out fragility of both the declining U.S. imperialism and its military proxy, Israel. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Lenin said that a revolutionary crisis arises out of the failure of the bourgeoisie to rule in the old way, colliding with the working masses’ refusal to be ruled in the old way. The Hamas uprising signaled the disruption of the longstanding special relation between the U.S. and Israel, and tested the strength of this special relation, and in turn, relations with the Arab regimes of MENA. The cumulative build-up of military attacks on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank about to be ‘normalized’ by an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia sparked off Hamas military action. The Zionist’s reaction was to reach deep into its reactionary proto-fascist ideology of ‘blood and soil’ and to bring on the final solution – the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">That a genocide by the Zionist state was not stopped by the U.S. and its close allies, demonstrates to the world’s workers and oppressed that the imperialist ruling classes cannot rule in the old way with impunity. Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’ has been rejected by the masses for its incredible brutality. The Zionist ideology which projects its own anti-Semitism onto its opponents is exposed as cynical and hypocritical. The ‘chosen people’ cannot hide behind their holocaust. They must decide, do they condone genocide, or reject Zionist ideology? </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The Palestinians represent the vanguard of the world revolution in resisting their ‘dehumanization’ as ‘human animals’. There is no moral equivalence between the occupying Zionist state oppressors and the occupied stateless Palestinian people. Palestinians are fighting a war of national liberation which can succeed only if they win the right to return to the land from the ‘river to the sea’. The world’s workers must join forces with them in the fight for self-determination, leading the struggle to build an international United Front against imperialism and its political allies. To prevent the imperialists, West and East, turning this liberation war into one more proxy war like Ukraine, this united front must build a new party of socialist revolution with a transitional program to create soviets and workers’ governments everywhere. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Can the U.S. or China Blocs Free Palestine? NO!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The war on Gaza is realigning the two Blocs at a rapid rate as it reflects rising pressure on the fault line between Europe and Asia in West Asia. The ‘geopolitical’ experts note that the military invasion of Gaza and the armed settlers actions in the West Bank by Israel marks a ‘historical shift’. <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The narrative from the West sees this as the ultimate test of ‘Western Values’, i.e. human rights, democracy and freedom from ‘terror’, against the axis of evil – Islamics, communism, terror. So, the Western imperialist powers stand or fall on Israel’s right as a nation state to ‘defend itself’ against Islamic terrorism.</em></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The counter-narrative from the East is that this is the ‘end of civilization’ understood as the reign of the European/Anglo-American powers which has lasted for centuries. Israel is a settler colony and does not have the right as an occupying power to wage war against a stateless people, let alone one it is occupying, or to deny Palestine the same national rights under existing international law, UN resolutions etc,. Moreover, if the West is really defending its values of democracy and freedom, perhaps it should be taking Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC), as it does with Russia over alleged war crimes in Ukraine. And it should object to the IDF invasion of Gaza causing rising mass deaths of women and children, going beyond ethnic cleansing, to actual genocide.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">What both the U.S. and China Blocs have in common, is the conception of world geopolitics where states compete through diplomacy, economic or military action, and arrive at a new balance of power, or ‘settlements’, of the stronger over the weaker. The assumption on both sides is that this process is based on ‘reason’. Political analyst <a href="https://asiatimes.com/author/pepe-escobar/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Pepe Escobar</a> is a good example of such thinking. He conceives of a world where the disturbances of a rational balance of power results from ‘irrationality’. That ‘irrationality’ means nations acting in their own interests against others which blowback to damage their interests. The current classic case is the West fighting a proxy war to expand NATO in Ukraine at the expense of Russia and the multi-polar Bloc aligned with China. This war is ‘írrational’ as it backfires and strengthens that bloc at the expense of the Western Bloc. For Escobar the Eastern bloc is rational in seeking negotiation and settlement of differences short of initiating wars. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Therefore, Israel as a military proxy of the Western Bloc conducting a genocidal war against Palestinians is ‘irrational’. It cannot advance its interests when it causes a massive blowback from the multi-polar Bloc, including most of the MENA states. The solution must be a re-balancing of both poles as part of a rational global order. So we see China, Russia, and the BRICS lining up behind Palestine to demand a UN controlled ceasefire to allow a negotiated settlement – a Palestinian state (apartheid statelet!) alongside an inevitably Zionist Israel! On the other side, the U.S., UK and its EU allies are so arrogant they don’t see the ‘irrationality’ of going further into debt financing Israel’s expansionist war and failing to put a stop to it.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Clearly the trans-Atlantic capitalist elites still have nostalgic delusions in a glorious historic Eurocentric hegemony over Asia and the Global South. This zombie-like Euro elite fears the loss of its declining hegemony as its zero to the sum of the China Bloc. This fear is real because <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">while geopolitics may be the Great Game for Eurasia, the real player is the global working class that has never been reduced to a spectator in some conspiratorial game between ruling classes. </em></span>This class exists as the historic protagonist for a new world which ends imperialism and its wars, when the only war is class war. It is the class struggle that forces the imperialists to go to war over their spheres of interest. In the last analysis it is the terminal crisis of capital awakening the working masses that will put an end to ruling classes and their world wars. It is the profit motive which drives great power rivalry beyond the abstract rationality of equilibrium, to the material reality of the class struggle for the survival of the fittest. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">In the end it is the need for energy that drives the profit system. And it is this ever increasing energy consumption of capitalist production exhausting the world’s energy resources that is destroying the ecological equilibrium on Earth. So there is nothing ‘rational’ or ‘balanced’ about either pole in this bi-polar world continuing this destructive rampage against nature and humanity. </em></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The great powers fight over access to cheap energy, raw materials and labor power, necessary for the production of surplus-value and profits. The failure of the U.S. Bloc to accumulate profits in the 21st century to match the rate of growth of the China Bloc explains the current power struggle. The terminal crisis of capital in the 21st century. expresses the fundamental contradiction of capitalist society against nature which makes capitalism destroy itself, opening the road for socialism. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">This means today that there is no solution to the century-long war of Zionism against the Palestinians that can be negotiated by the imperialist Blocs that will bring freedom and democracy for the masses. The only ‘rational’ solution capable of stopping such genocidal wars is the victory of the masses in the class war against global capital to stop its destruction of the planet. The masses must support Palestinian self-determination against both imperialist Blocs and all their client state proxies’ endorsement of reactionary capitalism, transforming this struggle as the Permanent Revolution to overthrow the Zionist regime and install a Workers’ and Peasants’ Government.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">What is Zionism? </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The Zionist origins from the liberal imperialist Theodor Herzl to Vladimir Jabotinsky of the ‘revisionist’ current is an unbroken thread down to Netanyahu. We will show how Zionist ideology develops by both reflecting and rationalizing its material base as a developing settler state. Most working class Jews understood Zionism as pro-imperialist, pro-Nazi and anti-Bolshevik for economic reasons. So they had little interest in bourgeois nation building. Zionism arose as a bourgeois project late in capitalist development when most Jews were already assimilated into capitalist social relations. Fascism was the reactionary throwback of failing finance capital bent on destroying the political unity between working class Jews with the broader working class. The creation of Israel by the imperialists in their economic interests meant that the Zionist ideology had to adapt in order to keep pace with their desired role forIsrael in the decline and degeneration of capitalism during the epoch of imperialism, and now sinking into its terminal crisis. Though its basic claims of its ideology are unchanging, their expression has to become more violent, fascist-like, and its religious rationalizations more bizarre and extreme.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Understanding Zionism’s campaign to equate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, requires an examination of its historical record. Documents reveal not only that anti-Semitism gave rise to nationalist Zionism but that it was not the Jewish people’s only option nor their first choice. It was, from the start, the Jewish capitalist class’s solution to capitalism’s effects on the Jewish populations in the ‘Pale of Settlement’ across Eastern Europe in the age of nation building and to the irrationalism of imperialism in crisis. It emerged, as an ideology, among Jewish intelligentsia and was championed by bourgeois Jews seeking a home to build their wealth and soil upon which they could plant and defend their industries and capital. As a capitalist class project it was not readily adopted by the Jewish masses. But they, or more precisely the Jewish worker’s labor power would be needed by the Jewish capitalist and their youth as cannon fodder to fight for the nation wherever he set up shop. Would that Jewish capitalist’s profits be assimilated by the national capital of the Great Powers? Or, could a national homeland be found for Jewish national capital? </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">In the late 19th and early 20th century pogroms across Eastern Europe and Ukraine killed 150,000 Jews foreshadowing the coming Holocaust. Zionism, the ideological response to pogroms, was unsuccessful in winning broad support among Jewish people until after Hitler’s ‘final solution.’ Having rejected Jewish refugees for years the allied victors stood shamefaced. The allies had no plan for restitution of Jewish property. Jews and other survivors were shuttled from concentration camps to Displaced Persons (DPs) camps. Restrictions on Jewish immigration would only be slightly loosened in the UK and USA. The British realized a flood of immigration to Palestine would stoke the fears of the indigenous Palestinians so they stymied <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/exodus-1947" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">The Exodus</a> at the port of Cyprus threatening to send the DPs back to Germany. A standoff ensued, lives were lost and the British backed down. In the U.S. a token lifting of immigration quotas, to save face, was too little too late. By the time the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/09/searching-for-refuge-after-the-second-world-war" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Displaced Persons Act </a>was revised in 1950 the majority of the displaced Jews had emigrated to occupied Palestine. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">“Never Again!” The anti-fascist slogan attributed to Jews liberated from Buchenwald, was politicized to bind world Jewry and Zionism as one. Stalin’s recognition of Israel was the fulfillment of Churchill’s fight against Bolshevism for the Jewish soul. In turn and with UN sanction Zionism gained international moral authority: any opposition to the Zionist colonial settler state and its nation building project became by agreed bourgeois definition–anti-Semitic.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Israeli revisionist historian Benny Morris an avowed ‘two-state solution’ Zionist, instructs those attempting to understand the ‘Rise of Zionism,’ to consider “age old millenarian impulses,” the “return to Zion,” “bound up with the cosmic, messianic theme of collective redemption,” as an ideology in search of its moment; that moment arrives at the Diaspora when it is confronted by the national consolidations of Europe and its effects on populations in the Eastern European “Pale of Settlement” tortured with endless anti-Semitic abuses, insults, and pogroms. [Benny Morris <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/93685801/Righteous-Victims-Benny-Morris?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=bing&utm_campaign=Scribd_Bing_Search_Beta_NB_US&utm_adgroup=Dynamic&utm_term=scribd&utm_matchtype=b&utm_device=c&utm_network=o&msclkid=dd1d835f9da41f17532ee60344b705cc" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict. 1881-2001</em></a> pg. 14-15]</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The claim that Zionism represents all Jews, a claim made since the 19th century to justify the need for a homeland, encountered spiritual, religious and working class opposition. For the Hassidim Erez Yisrael was spiritually the land of God within, the inner voice heard as wisdom which emerges through Talmudic study, prayer, ecstatic dance and song. Such practice would usher in the messianic age and the Third Temple could then be rebuilt. Such holdovers from a dying age would have to be overcome for an emergent Jewish bourgeois class to become a ruling class. Waiting for self actualizing spiritualists and the return of the messiah was not sufficiently expeditious to keep pace in the age of nation building. And Jewish ideology has a habit of being written and rewritten as per current conditions. The fate of the eternal souls of Jews exiled in Babylon is debated by Talmudic scholars [<a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-land-of-israel-in-classical-jewish-sources/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">in Ketubot 111a</a>], not all of whom agreed but some do that, “[H]e who resides in Babylonia, it is as if he resided in the Land of Israel.” <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Spiritual arguments for remaining in the Diaspora had to be defeated among the Jews and the secular liberal intelligentsia of the Great Powers. And so they were</em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">No less an authority on the intentions of the almighty than Golda Meir, summed up the Jewish God’s role in geo-political affairs as follows, <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy.” </em>[<a href="https://libquotes.com/golda-meir/quote/lba1z7y" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Libquotes</a> Le Monde October 15, 1971]</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The Jewish bourgeoisie found in these “millenarian impulses” its lever, with which it could assert its class interests. A theological story existed; its <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">zeitgeist</em> needed to be attached to a movement responding, seemingly, to the material needs of all Jews; a national movement for the ‘New Jew’ to uplift himself into the modern world, away from the unending pogroms. This period in history, the rise of capitalist imperialism, saw finance capital march across the world’s periphery. Outmoded economic classes, social relations and institutions in Jewish communities would be destroyed as the conditions for their existence were replaced by new social relations and class realignments. The big banks, industrialists, large factory towns, corporations and large merchants undercut the economic basis of shtetl life. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The masses of Jews who emigrated were not attracted by Zionist millenarian and messianic themes married to nation building. The middle layer professionals and large numbers of workers emigrated to the West embraced assimilation, spoke the local language, engaged in secular lives and served adopted nation states as citizens. Large numbers of workers and shtetl Jews across the ‘Pale of Settlement’ advocated autonomy and for ethno/religious/national rights inside the multi-ethnic/multinational states where they lived; this they debated and put in the political programs of their organizations. Among the Jewish workers, and portrayed demonically by history, internationalist socialists and communists fought to defeat the parasitism of imperialism, the chauvinism of nationalism and the chaos of imperialist wars by socialist revolution for workers’ control of the means of production in a free association of workers united as an international class without masters!</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">How did Jewry vote? Of course there was no direct plebiscite to choose between Zionism, assimilation, autonomy, and socialism. Rather, as is common among people suffering economic distress and in fear for their lives they voted with their organizations, their publications and their feet! What did that vote look like?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The so-called first <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“Aliyah”</em> (the ‘ascension’ to Zion of the first wave of settlers,) was made between 1880’s and 1901 by “twenty to thirty thousand people, most of whom eventually returned to Russia or headed to the West.” [Morris pg. 19]</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">While thousands of first generation ‘practical zionists’ (called “Olim”, those who ascend) cycled through Palestine a newly de-classed and proletarianized mass headed to New York and points West! </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“Between 1880 and 1924 twenty four million people immigrated to America. Included in that great mass of immigration were, primarily, 2.2 million Russian Jews.”</em> [<a href="https://jewishmag.com/85mag/usa8/usa8.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Jerry Klinger</a> Jewish Mag: The Russians Are Coming The Russians are Coming]</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">We are not idealists. We recognize that every social theory and twist of ideology and theology reflects the interests or perceived interests of given social economic layers navigating their peculiar conditions as they unfold. ‘Great Men’ do not make history themselves and while having a hand and voice in the making of history they are rarely more than the best representatives of the currents and tendencies within the social class they act on behalf of. Because the historiography, though never ending, is sufficiently available and well informed by primary sources for objective readers to come to their own conclusions, our reliance on a mere smattering of the thoughts, utterances and acts of ‘Great Men’ is not meant to write a new history but rather to illustrate for (if not to bludgeon) our readers with the necessary background source documentation proving that anti-Zionism is not in and of itself anti-Semitism. Zionism was from the start reconciled to an ‘inevitability of anti-Semitism wherever Jews would intermix with non-Jews’ and tied itself, as a millenarian colonial settler and project to the imperialist’s various geostrategic and military campaigns in the colonies and semi-colonies, in particular exploiting people and resources in the areas now called the Global South. Think for a moment on Israel’s relationship with apartheid Rhodesia and South Africa.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">We will look at early Zionism and its orientation to European powers using both the Zionists and the leading imperialists’ own arguments, to show that the <a href="https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/the-iron-wall-a-definitive-new-translation/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Iron Wall</a>, leading to today’s Iron Dome was proposed and initiated in full expectation of a perpetual state of war! But before we review the intertwined intentions of Herzl and Churchill, Jabotinsky and Hitler, we briefly look at the Jewish ‘problem’ which arose in Eastern Europe during the 18th to early 20th century.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/jewish/leon/ch7.htm#d" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Abram Leon</a>, in The Jewish Question, summarized the social condition of the Jewish people:</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“The entire situation of Judaism in Eastern Europe is explained by the combination of the decline of the old feudal forms and of the degeneration of capitalism. The social differentiation which took place in the village as a result of capitalist penetration brought about an influx into the cities of enriched as well as proletarianized peasants; the former wanted to invest their capital; the latter to offer their labor. But the openings for the placement of capital were as slight as those for work. Hardly born, the capitalist system already showed all the symptoms of senility. The general decay of capitalism manifested itself in crises and unemployment within the countries of Eastern Europe; by the closing of all the outlets for emigration outside their frontiers. Seven to eight million peasants were landless and almost without work in “independent” Poland. Placed between two fires, the Jews were exposed to the hostility of the petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry; who sought to find a place for themselves at the expense of the Jews. “Jewish positions are particularly threatened by the urban Polish bourgeoisie and by the rich peasants who seek a solution for their difficulties through a fierce economic nationalism, whereas the Polish working class suffering from permanent unemployment, seeks a remedy for its poverty through social liberation and puts its reliance upon economic and political solidarity rather than upon a sterile and murderous competition ….”</em> [<a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/jewish/leon/ch7.htm#n1" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Chapter 7</a>]</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The Jews like all other ethnic groupings were tossed hither and thither as peoples were displaced and declassed. Every nation’s social classes were torn to their essential elements as the world economy was restructuring in capitalism’s image.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The struggle over the soul of the Jewish people, as if a mass of people could have ‘a soul’ was of concern to Winston Churchill. He summarized what was in actuality a class division among the Jews as a struggle between the competing etheric forces. The forces of good were the elevated Jewish ethics, the foundation of civilization, the demonic forces were a “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">sinister confederacy…reared up among the unhappy populations where Jews are persecuted….</em>” These demons included Karl Marx, Trotsky, Bela Kun, Rosa Luxemburg and Emma Goldman. He argued that “…<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">a Jewish State under the protection of the British crown</em> <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">…would…be in harmony with the truest interests of the British Empire.</em>” He saw the international class struggle behind “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">…the fury with which Trotsky attacked the Zionists….</em>” Churchill was writing the imperialist’s propaganda against the ‘threat’ of Bolshevism concluding: “<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The struggle which is now beginning between the Zionist and Bolshevik Jews is little less than a struggle for the soul of the Jewish people.” </em></span>[Churchill, Winston February 8, 1920 Zionism vs. Bolshevism. A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People pg. 23-7 of 51 Documents ed. Lennie Brenner]</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Zionism political instrument of the Jewish Bourgeoisie? </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Anti-Semitism in Europe had its material basis in the economic occupations Jewish people were relegated to across the Diaspora. In Christian dominated economies usury was both a legal necessity and a clerical sin; Jews, ‘hopelessly heathen’ with unsalvageable souls, were ceded the role of banker. Feudal wars, rising city states, early nation building and their requirements for money lending were fertile ground for the emergence of a Jewish class of merchants, traders, bankers and eventually industrialists. As a social layer with a common religion, multiple Yiddish dialects and limited legal options, Jews formed a merchant bourgeoisie serving an economic role as lenders, merchants and traders. No doubt Jews often fell out of favor! Scapegoated as Christ killers, this strange and clannish lot, occupying the very money lender’s tables Jesus famously overturned, provided an easy target upon whom despots could displace the frustrations of the economically distressed. This is a classical but primitive materialist history of anti-Semitism that takes no account of the Jewish peasantry, nor of the urban artisan who also suffered the pains of anti-Semitic laws and pogroms.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Burning Jews, witches and other heathens did little to rectify conditions but the criminality of the act bound landowners, peasants, participant artisans and debtors together in their self righteousness and anti-Semitic rage, normalizing and reinforcing a false consciousness, an irrational ideology where dehumanizing the ‘other’ became accepted as the inevitable consequence of the Jewish (others) presence among the ‘civilized nations,’ cities, and villages. Agreement on a solution to the Jewish problem was made between imperialism’s ‘civilizing agents’ including Churchill and Balfour, not too busy shouldering the “White Man’s Burden” in Africa and Asia to make common cause with Zionism’s founders and warriors, including Herzl, Weizmann and Jabotinsky. They agreed that assimilation was more cause than solution for the Jewish Problem and resolved that the removal of Jews from Europe for the colonization of Palestine was mutually beneficial. It was understood that Palestine would exist, as a special colony within the empire, with no special effort made at first to reconcile Jewish and Arab claims to the same real estate. Later the British would make this worse.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Decades before Herzl, Moses Hess, once a collaborator with Marx, became an early Zionist. In his work <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/jewish/rome-jerusalem.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Rome and Jerusalem: The Last Nationality Question</em></a><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> </em>(1862), he foresaw the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe preventing assimilation as a course toward Jewish liberation. The rise of national liberation movements in the Middle East, he expected, would challenge the Ottoman Empire. He argued that if the Jews built a state in the “heart of the Middle East [it would] serve Western Imperial interests and at the same time help bring Western civilization to the backward East.” </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">It was obvious to Herzl, Weizmann, Balfour and Churchill that such a project would serve imperial interests. Again consider Churchill in 1920:</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“Of course, Palestine is far too small to accommodate more than a fraction of the Jewish race, nor do the majority of national Jews wish to go there. But if, as may well happen, there should be created in our lifetime by the banks of the Jordan </em><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">a Jewish State under the protection of the British Crown,</em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> which might comprise three or four millions of Jews, an event would have occurred in the history of the world which would, from every point of view, </em><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">be beneficial, and would be especially in harmony with the truest interests of the British Empire.</em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">”</em> [<a href="https://archive.org/details/WinstonChurchillZionismVsBolshevismStruggleForTheSoulOfTheJewishPeople1920" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Winston Churchill Feb 8 1920 Zionism vs. Bolshevism. A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People</a>]</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">But to be successful Zionism would have to defeat assimilationism and autonomism as the dominant condition, and platform of most Jews. The pogroms played no insignificant role in convincing many, especially those with means, to give up hope for assimilation. One such thinker, Dr. Leo Pinsker, rejected assimilation and argued in his <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26291719" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Auto-Emancipation: A Warning to His kinfolk by a Russian Jew</em></a> (1882) that pogroms confirmed that despite proving themselves patriots in their chosen lands they would always be “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">plundered and dishonored</em>” and that “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">we [will]dare not defend ourselves</em>” that mobs would remind Jews over and again that they are all “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">nothing but vagrants and parasites, outside the protection of the law.</em>” Like others, Pinsker found nothing ‘illogical’ in persistent anti-Semitism, rather the Jews ‘unnatural and abnormal condition,’ “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">lacking territory they lacked substance</em>” threatening and irritating as they competed with Christians for professional and economic gain. Only a Jewish homeland could lead to ‘auto-emancipation.’ His eye was not on Palestine but possibly somewhere in North America. [<a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/93685801/Righteous-Victims-Benny-Morris?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=bing&utm_campaign=Scribd_Bing_Search_Beta_NB_US&utm_adgroup=Dynamic&utm_term=scribd&utm_matchtype=b&utm_device=c&utm_network=o&msclkid=dd1d835f9da41f17532ee60344b705cc" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Morris</a> pgs. 15-17] </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Zionism, since Theodor Herzl, has been the national project of the Jewish bourgeoisie, projecting its ‘civilizing role’ as moral and essential for the survival and elevation of the Jewish people; ‘a people so degraded to its culturally unpleasing state by separation from a homeland and miscegenation.’ <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">To succeed in becoming the undisputed national ideology of the Jewish people it had to defeat not only assimilation and autonomy but also the working class alternative. </em></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Based on lived experience, socialist Jewish workers and intellectuals adopted the method of historical materialism to discern a program for liberation. They discovered that it would require class solidarity of all the oppressed peoples of the world and was dependent on the unity of the working class leading internationalist class war to overthrow capitalism. From Zionism’s earliest days it was opposed by the Jewish majority, the working class, many of whom became socialist revolutionaries who organized Jewish unions, published <a href="https://brill.com/display/title/15909?language=en" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">voluminous socialist </a>journals in Yiddish and built socialist parties including sections of the Bund, the Russian RSDLP and parties of the 2nd International. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Zionism vs the Bund? The class divide among the Jews</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The Bund and the mass Jewish socialist workers movement’s history is one the Zionist and compliant Western historians, media and politicians want to erase. The existence of this movement was the bane of imperialism and fascism. <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/jewish/jewish-labor-bund-58.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Jewish Labor Bund: 1897-1957</a> (NY, 1958) records that in the interwar years in Poland, the Bund had active branches in every town and city which published regular Yiddish journals and organized strikes and self defense against the implementation of Nuremberg laws. Many Zionists seeing the futility of their program are reported to have turned to the Bund for self defense. Tens of thousands of Bundists were victims of the Holocaust. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">It was Zionism’s political task to win both world Jewry and imperialist benefactors to their project. Bankers had to be convinced of the value of a loyal Jewish outpost in Palestine. World Jewry had to adopt a supra-class national consciousness embracing a mystical obligation of spiritual renewal by a return – to the ‘Promised Land.’ Soul-renewal mandated by God and only available in the Promised Land, in the eyes of a modern secular observer, has marked parallels to the “blood and soil” spirit of Nazi <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lkisch_movement" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Volkism</a>. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The Zionist Federation of Germany addressed the new German state in its credo of June 21, 1933, finding in Nazi Volkism a kindred spirit…,</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Point #4 “Zionism believes that a rebirth of national life, such as is occurring in German life through adhesion to Christian and national values, must also take place in the Jewish national group. For the Jew, too, origin, religion, community of fate and group consciousness must be of decisive significance in the shaping of his life.” </em>[A Holocaust Reader Lucy Dawidowicz pg 150-5 also in Brenner 51 Documents]</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The story of the uplifting of Jewry was thereby coupled to the colonial settler project as a moral imperative. The uplift of Jewry would serve all the benighted nations who would benefit from their messianic return to the promised land.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The fallacy of national purity and the impermanence of borders was apparent to the Jewish workers, who in their main, were attracted to the workers movement, its trade unions and workers circles and workers press. Organizationally and politically the Jewish workers movement existed in opposition to the bourgeois Zionists, who in their writings likened themselves to the ‘benign’ imperialists civilizing the ‘darker continents.’ The mythology of “Blood and Soil” exploded, for the Jewish masses in the ‘Pale of Settlement’ during the age of nation building. There was no eternal soul in the soil of the nation as was made clear to all who experienced their homes, villages and cities, shifted accordingly with troop movements and back room negotiations determined their futures on redrawn maps:— now Poland, now Ukraine, now Austro-Hungary, now Russia. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Neither the Jewish shtetl nor the Jewish quarters in towns and cities escaped the class stratifications created by the rise of capitalism and industry. As the Jewish clerical, technical, professional, and proletarian layers stratified, assimilation into capitalist class reality was not a choice. Only a small proportion of the 8.5 million European Jews in 1900 were well off professionals and capitalists; the majority were poor city dwellers. [Kovel, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Overcoming_Zionism.html?id=eXAMAQAAMAAJ" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Overcoming Zionism</a> pg. 30] </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Could Zionism hold together a community increasingly divided by class, emigration and assimilation into competing nation states and Great Powers? Could the mythology of “Chosen Ones” beckoned to the “Promised Land” by an almighty Yaweh, gain sway among peoples being modernized by capitalism’s consolidation? The rise of capitalism, the bourgeois democratic and scientific age, required the defeat of theocratic authority. Jews joined the ranks of the enlightened secular. The god myth could continue as a cover story but it no longer held weight to move the Jewish population from their European homes, so another catalyst was provided by anti-Semitism and Zionism adapted that to its project. Or would a cold, calculated school of Zionism cut to the chase and define the course of Zionism to the present genocidal assault on Gaza and the continuing brutalities in the West Bank?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">“Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized.”</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Vladimir Jabotinsky, revisionist Zionist praised by Mussolini as a fascist, derided as ‘vegetarians’ Zionists who believed their Arab cousins could be won peacefully to welcome the colonists. Claiming no animus towards the Arabs, he coldly declared in his essay <a href="https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/the-iron-wall-a-definitive-new-translation/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">The Iron Wall</a> that: <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized.” </em>He had no doubts about bribing the Arabs with money or railroads! He knew there was no such thing as benevolent imperialism; he was a brutal realist.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">To win the debate against the Zionists whose elevated ethics and morality were challenged by the task of nation building he argued…,<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“We cannot offer any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in return for Palestine. And therefore, there is no likelihood of any voluntary agreement being reached.”</em> Like Churchill, Jabotinsky identified the moral good as being served by the Jewish establishment of the Jewish nation where the good Jew could flourish. Vegetarianism would not suffice! The project called for meat eating, butchery and the Iron Wall!</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“Zionist colonization must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population–behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.</em>” – Jabotinsky, <a href="https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/the-iron-wall-a-definitive-new-translation/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">The Iron Wall</a></p><div class="wp-block-image" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #565656; font-family: Lato; font-size: 13px;"><figure class="aligncenter size-full is-resized" style="box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; display: table; margin: 0px auto;"><a href="https://i0.wp.com/www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/zionism-002.png" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><img alt="" class="wp-image-3344" decoding="async" height="600" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/zionism-002.png?resize=500%2C750" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 600px; margin-bottom: 20px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: bottom; width: auto;" width="400" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption" style="box-sizing: inherit; caption-side: bottom; display: table-caption; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"><b>1930 United Israel Appeal Poster</b></em></figcaption></figure></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The philosophical continuity of the Likud governments runs back to Jabotinsky and is every bit as blunt. To counter the accusation of tarring all of Zionism with the brush of the fascist Jabotinsky, the record shows the gap between the words, intentions and actions of the so-called center and left Zionists and Jabotinsky was never significant.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">David Ben Gurion, first prime minister and a left/center labor Zionist never shied from bluntly stating the ruthless task at hand.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">“<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">We must expel Arabs and take their places.</em>” [<a href="https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=587816272&hl=en&sxsrf=AM9HkKmOsoUe4GLnE5KldKFerH9XJqQDMQ:1701731672418&q=inauthor:%22Shabtai+Teveth%22&tbm=bks" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Teveth</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=587816272&hl=en&sxsrf=AM9HkKmOsoUe4GLnE5KldKFerH9XJqQDMQ:1701731672418&q=inauthor:%22Shabtai+Teveth%22&tbm=bks" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Shabtai</a>, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985.] </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">“<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.</em>” [David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.]</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">We could produce a catalog of similar offending quotes from across the spectrum of Zionism but that work has been done over and again <a href="https://forward.com/opinion/197422/7-things-missing-from-israel-s-facebook-movie/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">here</a>, <a href="https://www.arabnews.com/node/220313" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">here</a>, <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/netanyahu-calls-arabs-wild-beasts-while-announcing-israel-wall-plan" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">here</a>, and <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape//socialist-viewpoint-us/sept_03/sept_03_18.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">here</a>. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The Jewish population was making its choices, either making common cause with imperialism or joining the workers revolution to fight anti-Semitism and all backwardness. Unable to wait for the socialist revolution or a Jewish homeland millions fled persecution, most to the U.S. Many assimilated, adopting Western cultural norms and few held on to Eastern European culture outside of synagogue. Many of those who remained sided either with the Zionists or the Bundists along class lines over the fate of Jews under fascism.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The Zionists sought economic independence of their capital from national constraints imposed by the capitalist governments across the Diaspora. The ironic lesson of the movement of the borders across the continent illustrates for the oppressed the fallacy of nationalism. The Bundists were not nationalists (though some said they were); they identified as working class fighters for socialist universalism. They rejected Zionist supra-class national unity (Klal Yisrael) and emigration to the ‘Holy Land’. The Zionists accepted anti-Semitism as the natural reaction of the ‘civilized’ West to the unkempt, recently declassed and proletarianized hordes on the run from pogroms and poverty. The Bundists fought anti-Semitism with a struggle for legal minority status in the nations they lived in. The Bundists adopted the people’s language of Yiddish as their common language. To unite a Jewish nation, the Zionists resurrected Hebrew, a long dead language relegated to use only in the synagogues for centuries. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">While the Zionists navigated between the competing imperialists in search of a benefactor; the Bundists participated in the 1905 Russian Revolution, sent representatives to the Kienthal anti-war conference (2nd Zimmerwald,) were the only Jewish party to participate in the 1917 Soviets and fought in the Red Army. Indeed Bundist unions and Jewish intellectuals played a proportionally oversized role in the socialist revolution and its leadership and the founding of the Third International. “The membership of the Bund in Russia grew constantly. By the time of the October Revolution in 1917 it numbered some 40,000 members resident in 400 localities.” [<a href="https://brill.com/display/title/15909?language=en" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Bund Archive</a>]</p><div class="wp-block-image" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #565656; font-family: Lato; font-size: 13px;"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized" style="box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; display: table; margin: 0px auto;"><a href="https://i0.wp.com/www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/zionism-003.png" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><img alt="" class="wp-image-3345" decoding="async" height="600" sizes="(max-width: 940px) 100vw, 940px" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/zionism-003.png?resize=940%2C1448" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/zionism-003.png?resize=940%2C1448&ssl=1 940w, https://i0.wp.com/www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/zionism-003.png?resize=620%2C955&ssl=1 620w, https://i0.wp.com/www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/zionism-003.png?resize=768%2C1183&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/zionism-003.png?resize=997%2C1536&ssl=1 997w, https://i0.wp.com/www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/zionism-003.png?w=1024&ssl=1 1024w" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 600px; margin-bottom: 20px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: bottom; width: auto;" width="390" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption" style="box-sizing: inherit; caption-side: bottom; display: table-caption; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kiev_electoral_district_(Russian_Constituent_Assembly_election)&action=edit&redlink=1" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><b>1917. An election poster of the General Jewish Labour Bund hung in Kiev</b></a></em></figcaption></figure></div><p class="has-text-align-center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; text-align: center;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> Inside frame: “Vote List 9, Bund”. </em></span></p><p class="has-text-align-center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; text-align: center;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Bottom: “A democratic republic! </em></span></p><p class="has-text-align-center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; text-align: center;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Full national and political rights for Jews!” </em></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">It is their ghosts who haunt Zionism! In their hundreds of thousands, arms in hands, they fought the fascists, anti-Semites and pogromists while the Zionists sat on their hands advocating emigration to Palestine and armed integration into various imperialist forces instead of building mass actions in the streets and putting arms in the hands of Jewish workers to defend themselves</span>.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/jewish/jewish-labor-bund-58.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Jewish Labor Bund </a>recorded its understanding of Zionism:</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“Zionism was from its inception primarily a product of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism was its parent, its driving force, its obsession. According to the fundamental theory of Zionism, anti-Semitism is a peculiar disease which has infected-or can infect-all or almost all non-Jews in any country. The mere presence of Jews among Christians is an irritant which generates anti-Semitism, for which there can be no remedy. Therefore the only way to solve this problem-the most important problem of the Jewish people throughout their history–is for Jews to leave the countries of their residence and establish their own state in their historic homeland of Palestine.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Bund is based on the opposite concept namely that anti-Semitism is not a mysterious and perennial evil. Anti-Semities has its cause in the economic, political and psychological conditions of society and, like any other human evil, it can be cured by changing the conditions which brought it about. Accordingly, the Bund maintains that the Jewish problem is part of the general problem of mankind and can be solved only by the improvement of the lot of humanity as a whole, not by any special panaceas for Jews.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Instead of an exodus, the Bund, therefore advocates greater cooperation with the non-Jewish world, especially with other underprivileged and suffering peoples. Instead of Fear and suspicion of non-Jews inculcated by Zionism, the Bund offers faith in mankind and in the brotherhood of all men. Instead of nationalistic justice, which is often oblivious to the suffering of those outside a particular group, the Bund teaches international justice which combines justified Jewish claims with respect for the rights of other peoples.”</em> [The Jewish Labor Bund pgs 17-18]</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The Bundists identified with the philosophical conquests of secularism, historical and dialectical materialism, while the Zionists adopted the irrationalist ideology of racial purity of the fascists and European imperialists. For example, the Nazi ideal of Aryan purity and the role of European imperialist settler colonialism in Rhodesia and South Africa were foundational in the revisionist Zionist project. Jabotinsky, founder of Netanyahu’s political movement, the Likud, militantly opposed assimilation and ‘race mixing,’ counterposing pure Jewish blood lines and Jewish soil as the solution to anti-Semitism. Even today, under Zionist laws, <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/civil-marriage-in-israel/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Jewish purity</a> of couples is a legal requirement for a Jewish couple to get married. Interfaith couples must seek other options such as civil weddings abroad. The son or daughter of a Jewish father and <a href="https://jel.jewish-languages.org/words/516" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">shiksa</a> (gentile) mother may be allowed (by birthright law) to emigrate to Israel and be drafted to serve in the IDF but is not pure enough to marry!</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Indeed the fight against anti-Semitism requires the defeat of national chauvinism and xenophobia which can only be defeated by the internationalist class unity of all workers, oppressed people and poor farmers. Such a fight, by its very nature, is the class struggle of the working class against capitalism and all its national state formations! Realizing this truth, Zionists launched an ideological class war against revolutionary Marxism, which they saw was attracting and organizing the newly proletarianized layers of the Jewish poor and many of the most brilliant Jewish intellectuals. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Despite the work of the anti-war internationalists of Jewish socialist Bund, against the German SPD’s betrayal of voting for war funding in 1914, one hundred thousand Jews ended up in the Kaiser’s army. Tragically just like workers fighting workers across the front lines for their national capitalist state, Jews fought Jews across the front lines for warring imperialisms. Indeed, likewise, Chuchill praised the Jews who fought for King and country.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Ben-Gurion proposed to the Ottoman empire that Jewish divisions be organized to fight for them but was rebuffed. Vladimir Jabotinsky in turn organized the Zionist ‘<a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/jabotinsky_vladimir" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Mule Corp</a>’ in 1915 to fight <a href="https://youtu.be/OUgKUdBZQfQ?si=EDFdqCXOmy9UWg1q" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">on behalf of the British,</a> seeing action at Gallipoli and Nabalus in a bid for favor in acquiring Palestine. “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The unit was composed of Egyptian Jews, alongside </em><a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/jewish_responses_to_the_war_east_central_europe" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">East-European Jews</em></a><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">, predominantly Russian subjects expelled by the Turks from Palestine at the outbreak of the war.</em>”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The fallacy and racist trope, updated by the Okhrana as <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">The Protocols of the Elders of Zion</a>, that the Jews controlled both the decaying capitalist West and the Bolshevik East worked its magic uniting German, Italian and Jewish fascists in an ideological, economic, political and military war on the side of imperialism and against both assimilation and the Russian Revolution and the threat of its spread. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The Holocaust became the singularly Jewish tragedy that could be used to legitimate the cause for a national homeland. It was the answer to the problem the Zionists had of explaining why Israel could not accommodate the Palestinians. The Holocaust gave the Jews special rights as a landless, oppressed people, long subject to pogroms and genocide to claim victimhood that could trump the rights of the Palestinians. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Zionists shopped around the contending imperialist powers for a benefactor to concede land in Palestine. They used the scapegoating, anti-Semitism and ultimately the Holocaust to consolidate the national ideology over all social layers. </em></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Zionists collaborate with fascism?</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Post-Versailles, Jabotinsky oriented toward the fascists. They never mobilized a Jewish army against Hitler! On June 23, 2023 <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-06-21/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/zionist-military-org-efforts-to-recruit-nazis-in-fight-against-the-british-are-revealed/00000188-d93a-d5fc-ab9d-db7ae0ea0000" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Haaertz</a> released documents of the Stern gang’s attempt to win German support with arms for the defeat of the British and the “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">establishment of the historical Jewish state on a totalitarian national basis, in an alliance relationship with the German Reich, [is] compatible with the preservation of German power,…</em>”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Efraim Zetler, a member of Stern’s Lehi Militia, “…<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">was interrogated by Haganah fighters roughly two weeks following the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, where Nazi officials deliberated on the execution of the </em><a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/final-solution-overview" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Final Solution</em></a><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">. Securing Nazi support is believed to have been suggested two years prior by Avraham Stern, the Lehi leader who championed aggressive opposition to British governance.</em>” Stern maintained that Britain was “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">enemy no.1</em>” and that Nazi Germany was no enemy of Israel. See the <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/efforts-zionist-militais-recruit-nazis-against-britain-revealed-israel-archives" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Middle East Eye</a> account of the Haaretz revelations.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Does this throw you? In fact it follows from the 1933 policy of the Nazi Ministry of Economic Affairs if you were well off, the Zionist organization for Germany could get you to Palestine for 15,000 Marks immediately; for 50,000 you could depart later at a time you chose. Likewise, you could transfer your property to Palestine. Needless to say, for Jewish workers, this was no small sum. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">In August of 1933 the Reich Ministry of Economic Affairs published the text of a decree to transfer Jewish property to Palestine…</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">“<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The decree, which is numbered 54, and is dated August 28th, states that an agreement was concluded “with the Jewish bodies concerned,” for “promoting Jewish emigration to Palestine…”pg 47</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“The Reichsbank is for this purpose opening two special accounts for the Bank of Temple Society, it states, in favor of the Anglo-Palestine Bank.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“It is explicitly emphasized that these accounts cannot be used for other purposes than for investments in Palestine. A special Trustee Corporation has been founded for advising prospective emigrants.</em>” [“<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Agreement for Transferring Property from Germany to Palestine: Details of the Three Million Mark Agreement</em>”<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"> </span>The Zionist Record South Africa September 20, 1933<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"> </span>pg. 47 (Brenner, Lennie, 51 Documents)]</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">But <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/01/us/a-rabbi-honors-the-red-armys-jewish-veterans.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">half a million Jewish soldiers served in the Red Army to </a>fight fascism, 200,000 of whom were killed in battle or prison camps. Their deaths alongside the millions killed in concentration camps would be used by the Zionists to drag the tattered beleaguered remnants of European Jewry to fight in Palestine, somewhere they never had intention of going in the first place! </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">After the Holocaust the founding of the Jewish colonial settler state was conditioned with a fortress mentality. The permanent militarized occupation to crush Palestinian resistance and the class stratification elevating Jewish workers a few rungs above those Palestinians allowed to work has co-opted and bought off the large majority of the settlers. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Blood and Soil: It’s all about oil. Anglo/American Zionism turns the Mandate into an armed Settler State. Or winning the imperialist franchise….</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Jabotinsky’s contenders for Zionist leadership failed during World War two to realize their twin tasks, to get the fascists to open up a mass migration of Jews to Palestine and to create a flourishing trade between Germany and Palestine. However the war changed that. The British still controlled the Mandate, but the U.S. now had at least two reasons to push for a UN handover to the Zionists. One was to get an ally in the post-war settlement between the allies against the USSR able to act as a military outpost in the Middle East. The second was the discovery of new oil fields in the region. In the interregnum between the discovery of oil in the U.S. (Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Texas, California) and, Baku, and its eventual discovery in the Gulf (Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi-Arabia), the U.S. imperialists, American Jews and European Jewry had little interest in the Zionist project before a dispossessed mass suddenly needed a place to exist. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The post-war settlement did little to alter this. But this changed by the time the Cold War began in earnest in 1948. The U.S. intervention in the Greek civil war caused the Yugoslavs to break with Stalin and when the Marshall plan pushed into Eastern Europe the buffer states had to be transformed into deformed workers’ states. The war had meanwhile accelerated the search for oil and the Allied bloc’s need for a beachhead in Palestine led to the handover of the Zionist project to the U.S. by the British, whose Empire was now left bankrupt. The armed militias of the Zionists had already driven Arabs out of much of Palestine in the 1948 Nakba. Britain gave up its Mandate and the post-1948 map of Palestine reveals Israel had annexed around two thirds of Palestine. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The Zionist state was now a reality but the question of its legitimacy remained. Of course under bourgeois ‘right’ no state can be sovereign or free if it occupies another state. But the war had provided a trump card for the Zionists. Though they collaborated with the Nazis to undermine the workers resistance to fascism and did nothing to resist the Nazis, this was quickly forgotten against the overwhelming fact of the Nazi Holocaust – the genocide of the Jews. This by itself seemed to guarantee the legitimacy of the new state – however there was the inconvenient fact that in 1948 elsewhere there was a rush of colonies to win their national independence. So the Zionists needed more than the Holocaust to justify their settler colonization of Palestine. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Of course one such argument was that Israel was also ‘decolonising’ by taking over from Britain a part of the former Ottoman Empire. So with this monstrous fabrication Israel becomes an independent sovereign nation state, with bourgeois rights such as democracy, land rights, and the right to ‘defend itself,’ while simultaneously denying all Palestinian rights! Naturally the Anglo-American Zionists in business and the media spread this propaganda. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">But this image was built on a faulty foundation, Israel never had a ‘decolonization policy’ as demonstrated by their military intervention on behalf of the French and British during the Suez Canal crisis of 1956 to stop Egypt from nationalizing the Suez Canal. Zionism never had a ‘good neighbor’ policy, it was destined, like Moses Hess predicted, to serve imperialism’s interests. The Suez episode marked the demise of the UK’s power in the region and henceforth, the U.S. would become the new benefactor, lord and master. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The newly anointed state was sustained by the massive arming by the U.S. so that each time the Arab states got involved in war with Israel or the Intifadas blew up, these wars were legitimated by Israel’s right to defend itself! On that basis Israel was free to act as the U.S. enforcer in its military adventures in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) states, ignoring UN resolutions and ‘international law.’ Ultimately therefore, Israel’s ‘exceptional’ status as a ‘decolonising colony’ was its dependence on the U.S. ‘exceptionalism’, that is, its global hegemony. For that reason, U.S. weakness in decline is necessarily reflected in Israel’s weakness as a client proxy militarized state.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">To drive home the case for national victimhood, the Zionists had to convince the world that they were not a colonizing power, but the chosen people decolonising Israel by occupying the British Mandate. Britain had occupied Palestine as part of the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and administered the state on behalf of the League of Nations – that well known ‘den of thieves’ – and was reluctant to hand over ‘decolonisation’ to the Zionists. Look at how Jabotinsky recognizes the significance of the Balfour Declaration: </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“What is the Balfour Declaration for? What is the [British] Mandate for? Their meaning for us is that an external force has taken upon itself the obligation to create in the country such conditions of government and protection, under which the local population, irrespective of its wishes, would be deprived of the opportunity to interfere with our colonisation administratively or physically. And all of us, all without exception, urge every day this external force to fulfill this role firmly and uncompromisingly.”</em> [Jabotinsky The <a href="https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/the-iron-wall-a-definitive-new-translation/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Iron Wall</a>]</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">But what angered the Zionists most was the plan to share Palestine with the Palestinians. Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin (a Likudite and disciple of Jabotinsky) before his rise to legitimacy as a revered world leader proclaimed: “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">We intend to attack, conquer and keep until we have the whole of Palestine and Transjordan in a Greater Jewish State</em>”. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">So the Zionists mobilized their militias to harass the receding British and force a handover of the state. This was achieved in 1948 when the militias launched the Nakba, attacking villages, killing thousands, driving perhaps a million Palestians out of the greater part of Palestine. Far from the act of a decolonising people, the Zionists acted as colonizing oppressors to build a new nation on the national territory of Palestine. Harry Truman recognised the new state of Israel almost immediately, followed by the UN in 1949. Clearly the special relationship between Israel and the U.S. was instrumental in legitimizing in the eyes of the world the founding of a settler colonial state while the rest of the developing world was fighting for national liberation. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">It is no accident that the Zionists treated the Palestinians as inferior or subhuman.</em></span> <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">There has always been a Euro-centric racist strain in Zionism. </em></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The early Zionists campaigned for national and ethnic purity. This was confronted daily by the fact that there is no uniquely Jewish genotype, a DNA that links the Ashkenazi to Sephardim and the Mizrahi! Jews are Black, Brown White and Asian! Jabotinsky, of course got his knickers in a twist about miscegenation when considering the demography of the ‘Promised Land’ to be conquered. He queried the assimilationists, “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">But how this will happen and what will be the nature of this new mixed race; will it consist only of the white races or will it admit also the Negroes?</em>” [51 Documents Brenner pg. 17]</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The Dreyfus case confirmed for Herzl that assimilation was futile, as he saw anti-Semitic’ discrimination followed Jews in their newly assimilated positions. This alienated existence could, in the Zionist plan, only be negated by protecting racial purity in the “Promised land” as the national homeland. For all the talk of freeing world Jewry to raise up the ‘New Jew’ freed from cultural assimilation we find today that of Israeli Jews over 20 years old, according to <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/religion-has-outsized-role-in-israel-yet-most-of-its-jews-arent-really-observant/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Israeli statistics</a>, 45% are secular, 33% observant and 10% orthodox. Most Ashkenazi are relatively indistinguishable from Europeans and Americans in their tastes and lifestyles. Even the racism of the West is reproduced as <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32813056" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Ethiopian</a> and <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-730393" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Mizrahi</a> have struggled for years against structural racism and prejudice.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">It’s clear that the Zionist ideology tracked the creation and development of Israel in relation to the Palestinians, the Arab states and its imperialist sponsor the U.S.. From the time of the British Mandate, it counted on, depended upon and today still rests upon the imperialist West (in particular the UK/US and France) to sustain it. The expressed support by Churchill, already in 1920, with his praise of Jews who rejected Bolshevism and the person and leadership of Trotsky, is indicative of a conscious alignment of class interests. [<a href="https://archive.org/details/WinstonChurchillZionismVsBolshevismStruggleForTheSoulOfTheJewishPeople1920" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Winston Churchill Feb 8 1920 Zionism vs. Bolshevism. A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People</a>]</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Evolution of the relation of Zionism with US imperialism</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The final aspect of the adaptation of Zionism to the special relationship of Israel with the U.S. in the post WWII period is that of making Zionism a constituent feature of U.S. imperialism. Here we are speaking of the working class defense of U.S. imperialism as the world’s peacekeeper and bearer of democracy and freedom in the Cold War against ‘communism.’ Support for Zionism is the equivalent of an article of faith for Democrats and hence, for the labor bureaucracy. Erstwhile Israeli Communists and some socialists made a bloc with center and right wing Zionism, and in the U.S. they found their mirror image in the labor Zionist phenomenon. Defending its colonial settler state as an armed outpost becomes one with defending U.S. imperialism. The championing of the new state by the UN, the U.S. and some especially well-placed and talented propagandists all combined in the developing Cold War to cement a “Zionism” of Jews and gentiles in the portraits of conventional (bourgeois) success and U.S. patriotism. Television and the enormous library of World War II film made possible what has been termed a “<a href="https://archive.org/details/HolocaustIndustry" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Holocaust Industry</a>” of heretofore unthinkable scope of indoctrination.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Raised on Zionism’s slogan, “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">a people without a land for a land without a people,</em>” a generation of U.S. Jews, only a few years away from mere subsistence, were extorted to dig deep to support emigration that would afford Jews safety and make a desert bloom. The greening of the desert and the indoctrination of Jewish youth across the Diaspora went hand in hand. Buying Jewish National Fund memorial trees, a cursory tale of the Diaspora from Babylon to the concentration camps was retailed, and singing the Hatikva became the norm in Hebrew schools and Hebrew summer camps. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Stalin’s support for Israel, which seems to be a complete secret from the ranks of today’s neo-Stalinists, was derived in part from his own anti-Semitism and in part from a desire to make difficulties for the UK at a time when it was preoccupied with its troubles in India. Thus we saw Pete Seeger sing songs popularizing the life of the kibbutzim. Most Americans do not know about the rotten immigration position of the USA, the 1924 Immigration Law quotas and how they did not let Jews escape to the USA. Even the British did better than the U.S. did. Bourgeois support for Zionism in the later 1940’s hid the truth of the Ku Klux inspiration of the immigration quotas, corresponding to then-trendy concepts of race and eugenics among the U.S. ruling class of the pre-Civil Rights movement era. Hardly any one talks about the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-turned-away-thousands-jewish-refugees-fearing-they-were-nazi-spies-180957324/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">St. Louis</a>, the ship which no one let dock to let off the fleeing German Jews.</p><div class="wp-block-image" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #565656; font-family: Lato; font-size: 13px;"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized" style="box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; display: table; margin: 0px auto;"><a href="https://i0.wp.com/www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/zionism-004.png" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><img alt="" class="wp-image-3346" data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" height="705" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 940px) 100vw, 940px" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/zionism-004.png?resize=940%2C705" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/zionism-004.png?resize=940%2C705&ssl=1 940w, https://i0.wp.com/www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/zionism-004.png?resize=620%2C465&ssl=1 620w, https://i0.wp.com/www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/zionism-004.png?resize=768%2C576&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/zionism-004.png?w=1000&ssl=1 1000w" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; margin-bottom: 20px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: bottom; width: 600px;" width="940" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption" style="box-sizing: inherit; caption-side: bottom; display: table-caption; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The St. Louis Jewish Refugees turned away at the port of Miami 1939</em></figcaption></figure></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">“Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs.” – Kissinger</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The U.S. hid behind its <a href="https://immigrationhistory.org/item/1924-immigration-act-johnson-reed-act/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">1924 Johnson Reed immigration Act</a> quotas and only later after oil was discovered all across the Middle East did Roosevelt decide upon his support for Zionism. Why did he suddenly discover Zionism? Because U.S. geologists found oil in 1938 in Saudi Arabia. Gulf Oil found it in Kuwait and Mobil found it in Iraq. A pipeline existed for a dozen years between Habbaniya and Haifa (i.e.1935-48) which was ultimately closed by the Iraqis. There was a battle over the pipeline due to the Nazi-supported uprising against the British puppet in Iraq in 1941. History records this as the battle for the Habbaniya oil field of 1941. In September 1939 when Kriegsmarine Grandadmiral Raeder heard the war started he realized Germany would lose because they hadn’t got enough oil. Oil had become the commodity incomparable, or as Daniel Yergin wrote “<a href="https://www.danielyergin.com/books/theprize" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">The Prize</a>.”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">An account of the then-secret wartime meeting of FDR and King Abdul Aziz in <a href="https://www.history.com/news/fdr-saudi-arabia-king-oil" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">history.com </a>shows an early interconnection in U.S. foreign Policy circles between increasing Jewish settlement in Palestine and security of strategic oil supplies.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, saw Saudi oil and the national security/welfare of the U.S. as umbilically linked and even proposed that the federal government establish direct control over all oil resources owned by American companies in Saudi Arabia,” Montgomery says.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">There were also signs that the British were trying to take control over Chevron-Texaco, so part of Roosevelt’s goal in meeting the Saudi king was strategic. </em><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">As Montgomery says, FDR knew it “would serve U.S. national interests in oil security long-term</em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">.” [our bold ed.] </em></p><div class="wp-block-image" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #565656; font-family: Lato; font-size: 13px;"><figure class="aligncenter size-full" style="box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; display: table; margin: 0px auto;"><a href="https://i0.wp.com/www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/zionism-005.png" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><img alt="" class="wp-image-3347" data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" height="400" loading="lazy" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/zionism-005.png?resize=600%2C400" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; margin-bottom: 20px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: bottom;" width="600" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption" style="box-sizing: inherit; caption-side: bottom; display: table-caption; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia with Franklin D. Roosevelt on the USS Quincy Egypt February 14, 1945</em></figcaption></figure></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">FDR met king Abdul Aziz ibn Saud in 1945 and told him there should be a national homeland for the Jews and expressed the notion that it should be in Palestine.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The <a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/175048" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">King responded</a> <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“that the Jews should be ‘given living space in the Axis countries which oppressed them’ rather than Palestine. In response, ‘The President remarked that Poland might be considered a case in point. The Germans appear to have killed three million Polish Jews, by which count there should be space in Poland for the resettlement of many homeless Jews.’”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">...“Ibn Saud responded that he opposed ‘continued Jewish immigration and the purchase of land [in Palestine] by the Jews.’ The king insisted that ‘the Arabs and the Jews could never cooperate, neither in Palestine, nor in any other country.’ President Roosevelt ‘replied that he wished to assure his Majesty that he would do nothing to assist the Jews against the Arabs and would make no move hostile to the Arab people.’ </em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">...“Roosevelt’s remark ignited a firestorm of criticism in the American Jewish community. “One wonders why Arab [leaders] were consulted about the fate of the Jewish National Home,” the American Zionist leader Dr. Abba Hillel Silver complained. “Were the Jewish people consulted about the fate of Iraq, or Syria, or Saudi Arabia.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Three years later Truman elaborated a policy to control and discipline the oil producing regimes with the colonial settler fortress state. The U.S. bourgeoisie got on board as ‘<a href="https://religionmediacentre.org.uk/factsheets/factsheet-christian-zionism/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Christian Zionists</a>’ and this reinforced the exclusionary immigration policy, i.e. the government was still refusing to let ruined European Jews immigrate to the U.S. These were the rabid Cold War days and you never heard what Lenni Brenner later revealed about the Zionists’ dealings with the Nazis; that was a subject they didn’t want to talk about when everything was anti-communism. That the U.S. went back on its word to the Saudi monarch, that they would not make hostile moves against the Arabs, wasn’t a subject of note either.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">So the Israeli war on the Palestinians and the surrounding Arab states was cleverly sold as part of the bourgeois “decolonization” of the European powers’ empires to those with no idea of the true events. The resemblance was a superficial camouflage of what was in fact the exact opposite of “decolonization.” The fact that Palestine had been a British colony was hyped. The bigger truth that Israel was the triumph of colonial settler invaders exactly when the oil monopolies needed them as a border army was hidden. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The San Remo Conference attended by the French and British and other victors of WWI, on April 25th, 1920 they signed an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Remo_conference" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">oil agreement</a> carving up and sharing out Turkish Petroleum. Business before pleasure, the partitioning of the Ottoman empire could wait until August that year. Movietone newsreel exists on <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">YouTube</em> of the French and British high commissioners ceremoniously starting the pumps on the <a href="https://youtu.be/xjZFhq8-U_c?si=3jryUSbcHQbmDgF8" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Habbaniya-Haifa oil pipeline in February,1935</a>. The Rashid Ali coup in Iraq of 1941 attempted to deny this source to Britain, but the support extended by Hitler and Mussolini to Ali was ineffective. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The biggest pool of all, even down to today, was found under Saudi Arabia by the geologists and drillers of the CASACO consortium of five U.S. oil companies in March, 1938. CASACO became ARAMCO in 1944. By the time Roosevelt met King Abdul Aziz it had already been long apparent to the “7 Sisters” oil firms that control of all sources of oil on the capitalist world market was essential to the ability to support its price! So the U.S. went back on FDR’s word after just three years, leaving little doubt who holds the power in America. Zionism was all about blood and soil. But under the soil was big oil. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">BUT Fascism???? Only technically not fascism!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Churchill, the spokesman, on this subject for both the Anglo and American ruling classes, was preoccupied throughout his career with preventing and then defeating the Bolshevik revolution. This mandate was picked up by the Zionists and shared with the Italian and German fascists. Thus we make the case above for Zionism as anti-Bolshevik and pro-fascist. It remains to be seen if Zionism has plumbed the depths of its racist colonial settler national chauvinism and emerged under terminal crisis as full blown fascism to realize its historic mission defending Israeli finance capital. Will they succeed as a bulwark against Permanent Revolution into the indefinite future? Everything will depend on the workers’ subjective factor across the region.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Is the evolution of Zionism in its current form under Netanyahu qualitatively fascist? Or has it always been proto fascist in search of its own crisis-ridden finance capital? The expulsion of Palestinians was always the objective and now it is happening again. Is this because Zionism has had to adapt to the terminal crisis of capital as a settler colony, which crisis it experiences as an existential threat revealing its inherent barbarity in service of a panicking national bourgeoisie? </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">We argued against the International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction (FLTI) in 2009 that Zionism is not fascist despite having long associations with fascists and sharing many characteristics with fascism. It lacks the vital ingredient in that the Israeli working class is not yet a revolutionary threat to the rule of finance capital.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">“<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Nevertheless, despite its history, its complicity with Nazism, and its occupation of Palestine, the Zionists are not fascists. They are extreme racist nationalist colonial settlers who in many ways resemble fascists. But since the Israeli working class is also Zionist there is no need for the Israeli bourgeoisie to impose a fascist reaction to smash any communist movement among Israeli workers. When Israeli workers turn against Zionism and unconditionally support the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, then we will see the Zionist regime resort to fascism.</em>” – Living Marxism, “<a href="https://livingmarxism.blog/2009/03/17/is-zionism-fascism/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Is Zionism Fascism?</a>”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The extent or level of barbarity and dehumanization offender states subject occupied or warred upon peoples and nations to are not elemental in a historical materialist definition of fascism. The genocidal brutalities carried out against Palestine are dwarfed in magnitude by U.S. imperialism’s brutalities in the Philippines, Japan, Korea and Vietnam etc. The racism and dehumanization of whole populations, concentration into viciously policed ghettos, pogroms, concentration camps, and disproportional mass incarceration are all elements of the democratic bourgeois state as evidenced by the U.S., the British and the French imperialists. Were Puerto Rico, Guam or Hawaii, Guadalupe, or Martinique to act up or get out of hand we would expect U.S. or French forces to assert their authority with all the brutality deemed necessary.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Special laws targeting Jewish economic and legal rights were elemental in the lead up to the Nazi final solution and today the Palestinians inside the Green Line are subject to dozens of special laws to limit their legal and economic power. Black and Brown folk in the democratic U.S. have suffered similar restrictions without the U.S. capitalist class requiring fascism. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The Palestinian working masses do represent a threat but they have not organized a politically independent working class organizational threat. In large part because the majority of the Jewish workers are not receptive to a united Jewish /Palestinian Workers Party. Their loyalty to Zionism pushes the Palestinian workers into the shadow of the bourgeois nationalists. The October 7th events showed the limits of an isolated military incursion without a coordinated working class united front to strike against the entire state. Tactically it may have mobilized the opinion of the Global South and driven the wedge deeper into the Zionist hold on the Jewish youth in the Diaspora, but without the program of Permanent Revolution the threat is missing– its Bolshevik leadership. (Even Churchill knew that.)</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">As for the elements of a corporate state that fuses finance capital with state capital to keep overall capitalism afloat against the collapse of industry and the threat of worker occupations…is that the case with Israel’s economy? The industry shows no sign of collapsing requiring state ‘intervention’; workers’ occupations are so far not even a threat.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Fascism in Israel would shut down all opposition in the press, academia and the class struggle. Today there is not much opposition from the Jewish working class and the Palestinians inside the Green Line are restrained and ironically academics, mainstream and alt-media still issue stories that are more highly censored in the U.S. than in Israel. And only this summer we saw mass demonstrations against the Likud government consolidating unconstitutional powers.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The definition of the ideology of fascism has been summed up by an anti-Marxist academic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T_98uT1IZs" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Ryan Chapman</a> on <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">YouTube</em> to a pithy statement : “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">We think with the blood of our nation.</em>” By that measure the Zionists can be equated with the fascist ideology. Marxism explains that fascism is always waiting in the wings, that fascist power is employed in the streets to crush the threat of the working class taking power and it is employed as a regime as punishment for the workers not having taken power.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Leon Trotsky wrote in 1932 (“<a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">HOW MUSSOLINI TRIUMPHED</em></a>”):</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">“<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">At the moment that the “normal” police and military resources of the bourgeois dictatorship, together with their parliamentary screens, no longer suffice to hold society in a state of equilibrium – the turn of the fascist regime arrives. Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie and the bands of declassed and demoralized lumpenproletariat – all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">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 …</em>”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">But holding an ideology is one thing, using its state power to crush the working class with authoritarian measures is not always necessary.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Trump appeared as a wannabe fascist dictator, he had executive power for four years, but fascism was not necessary to protect capitalism from popular revolt. Likewise, Israeli citizens’ persistent and mass anti-Netanyahu demonstrations earlier this year were never a threat to the Zionist project, only to the illusion that democratic institutions are capable of eliminating corruption and providing an independent judiciary. October 7th provided Netanyahu a reprieve from the pressure but he has no need to continue to assert authoritarian controls on citizens. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Fascistic, authoritarian control of information flows, brutal disregard for human rights and sanctioned extra-legal murder of occupied peoples, journalists, and political oppositionists are all recurrent elements of liberal democracies, such as have been employed by the U.S., Britain and France against oppressed people at home, in their colonies and semi-colonies. Zionism claims to have established the only liberal democracy in the Middle East and in comparison to the behavior of its benefactors it complies with tradition. Even to the point of having incipient or proto-fascists administering their ‘bourgeois liberal democracy.’</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">We claim the basic characteristics of Zionism in and out of power are pro-imperialist, anti-Bolshevik, colonial settler state myth-and nation-builders. As an ally of fascism which defines its international work, what is Zionism today in Israel? We say that Zionism is proto-fascist. We use <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1954/mar/15.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">James P. Cannon</a>’s 1954 article on fascism which argues that capitalism in decline keeps its fascist layers available for counter-revolution when it can no longer rule in the old ways. So while the Zionist state is not yet fascist, the compounded terminal crisis guarantees that the conditions will arise to make fascism the last resort of the Israeli finance capital. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The qualifier ‘proto’ fascism is used here to mean the same thing as incipient fascism. Moreover, Zionism has been in ‘proto mode’ for a long time as the degeneration of the capitalist mode of production makes it certain to be unleashed. We know that the ruling class will fail to rule in the old way, the regime’s weakness and desperate resort to genocide shows that it knows it has to smash all resistance. We also know that the Palestinians will keep fighting, and that now they have the support of the Arab masses, the masses in the Global South, broad layers of alienated Jewish youth, and important layers of radicalizing workers in the imperialist countries. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">But critically, these layers need to form an alliance with all radicalizing Jewish workers’ and anti-Zionists inside occupied Palestine.</em> The revolutionary traditions of the Bundists who joined the Bolsheviks must be revived in historic Palestine to unite Jewish, Arab, Christian and secular workers. This will break the congealed Zionist popular front where Zionist workers have been pulled right into support for any number of bourgeois parties, none of whom can mount a movement that can strip power from the far right Likud and even further right parties, and behind them their international co-thinkers in an international popular front, as the U.S. and Chinese imperialists attempt to resolve the war with a regime change and new bantustans. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The ostensible opposition parties all support or acquiesce in Zionist agendas, even as some hopelessly ‘represent’ two-state plans in the Knesset. So as revolutionaries we have to confront this objective situation with the building of the new world party of socialism that exposes the neo-Stalinists, neo-Maoists, and fake Trotskyists, all of whom fail to raise the <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Transitional Program</span> for workers’ democracy, workers’ power and workers’ states to overthrow the bourgeois states and the global capitalist system. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">How to defeat Zionism</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">By necessity our party and program is international. For socialism the national program is insufficient. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Our program must call for building the multi-ethnic revolutionary workers party uniting Hebrew and Arabic speaking workers inside the Green Line and in the occupied territories. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Our party exposes the fallacies of Zionist nationalist program and the limits of Arab nationalism’s programs in liberating the region from the dominant and competing imperialist powers. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Our party unites the Jewish and Arab workers against becoming proxies in Great Power politics by bringing the politics of Permanent Revolution to the front of all workers struggles and struggles of the oppressed. We fight species extinction and against Capitalism and its offspring wars, climate catastrophe and economic depressions. Today to secure democratic reforms of society only the self-organized productive class in society can deliver! </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">IDF Out Now from Gaza and All Occupied Territories! Stop the bombing now!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Release all Palestinian resistance fighters! This means all those in “Administrative Detention” too! Free All the Kids snatched from the streets!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">For International Worker actions to strike Israeli shipping at the ports! For Labor Political Strikes against Israel’s genocidal war! Transport and Port Workers: Refuse to Handle All Military Aid to Israel! </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Victory to the Palestinian resistance! Break the economic blockade of Gaza! For Labor-Organized International Aid With Distribution Under Palestinian Workers’ Control!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Smash the Apartheid walls and closure system checkpoints! Build a secular multi-ethnic worker’s militia to defeat the IDF! For an international working class military bloc with the resistance fighters of today. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Down with U.S. imperialism! Abolish U.S aid to Israel! Close U.S. foreign military bases! Bring the fleets home! To do so, troops must form enlisted persons unions and a “Let’s go home” movement.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">For a multi-ethnic revolutionary Workers Party uniting Arab and Hebrew workers inside the Green Line and in the occupied territories. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Our party must fight against Jewish-only trade unions both inside the Histadrut and outside to demand its expulsion from the </span><a href="https://www.ilo.org/europe/countries-covered/israel/lang--en/index.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">ILO</span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">. Build class struggle caucuses fighting to break from Zionist racist practices and ideology. Build multi-ethnic trade unions! Same Work, Same Contracts on both sides of the Green Line!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">For socialist revolution to establish a workers government based on workers councils and an armed, multi-ethnic workers militia!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">For workers control of production and its management for use, by means of a democratically formulated central plan. Open the Books! Stop capital flight. For a state monopoly of foreign trade.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">A workers government must fight for: </em></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">For Palestinian National Independence by Socialist Revolution to break the chains of Imperialism.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">The expropriation of the Imperialist and national Capitals by the Working Class for its use under its plan! Full employment. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">For massive public workers to raise Arab communities housing, utilities, transportation, educational, medical facilities, water and food distribution to parity with Jewish communities. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Ensure the right to return for all expelled people and their descendants. For the return of all confiscated properties. For rebuilding and return to prior inhabitants all destroyed housing and agricultural plots.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">For Women’s Liberation through Socialist Revolution! For freedom of sexual orientation! For full democratic rights for Lesbians and Gays!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Freedom of the press, internet, the right to assembly and religious privacy. For secular marriage rights. For passports and state identification in two languages without ethnic or religious identification. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">For a secular, multi-ethnic Socialist Palestine! For a Socialist Federation across MENA! </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Build the Revolutionary Workers International! For the World Socialist Revolution!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">–<b> International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency (ILTT) December 4th 2023</b></em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Sources:</span></p>Asia Times <a href="https://asiatimes.com/author/pepe-escobar/">Pepe Escobar</a> <br />British white paper 1939 Backtracks on Balfour <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/british-white-paper-of-1939/">Text of the British White Paper of 1939 | My Jewish Learning</a><br />Cannon, James P. <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1954/mar/15.htm">Fascism and the Workers’ Movement</a> 1954<br />Chapman, Ryan <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T_98uT1IZs">FASCISM: An In-Depth Explanatio</a><br />Churchill Zionism Vs Bolshevism The Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People <a href="https://archive.org/details/WinstonChurchillZionismVsBolshevismStruggleForTheSoulOfTheJewishPeople1920">Winston Churchill ” Zionism Vs Bolshevism; Struggle For The Soul Of The Jewish People” 1920</a><br />Damning quotes from The Forward (a Jewish independent journal) <a href="https://forward.com/opinion/197422/7-things-missing-from-israel-s-facebook-movie/">https://forward.com/opinion/197422/7-things-missing-from-israel-s-facebook-movie/</a><br />Damning quotes Arab source <a href="https://www.arabnews.com/node/220313">The old will die and the young will forget: David Ben Gurion | Arab News</a><br />Damning quotes Zionist Leaders dehumanizing Palestinians <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/netanyahu-calls-arabs-wild-beasts-while-announcing-israel-wall-plan">Netanyahu calls Arabs ‘wild beasts’ while announcing Israel wall plan | Middle East Eye</a><br />Hess, Moses <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/jewish/rome-jerusalem.pdf">Rome and Jerusalem: The Last Nationality Question</a><br /><a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/jabotinsky_vladimir">International Encyclopedia of the first world war </a><br />Jabotinsky,Vladimir The Iron Wall <a href="https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/the-iron-wall-a-definitive-new-translation/">The Iron Wall – a definitive new translation | Jewish Voice for Labour</a><br />Jabotinsky, Vladimir <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/jabotinsky_vladimir">https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/jabotinsky_vladimir</a><br />Kovel, Joel <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Overcoming_Zionism.html?id=eXAMAQAAMAAJ">Overcoming Zionism</a> <br />Mondoweiss Review of State of Terror <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2016/10/terror-thomas-suarez/">‘State of Terror,’ by Thomas Suárez – Mondoweiss</a><br />Morris, Benny <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/93685801/Righteous-Victims-Benny-Morris?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=bing&utm_campaign=Scribd_Bing_Search_Beta_NB_US&utm_adgroup=Dynamic&utm_term=scribd&utm_matchtype=b&utm_device=c&utm_network=o&msclkid=dd1d835f9da41f17532ee60344b705cc">Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict. 1881-2001</a> <br />More damning quotes <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape//socialist-viewpoint-us/sept_03/sept_03_18.html">https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape//socialist-viewpoint-us/sept_03/sept_03_18.html</a><br />Religion Media Center fact sheet on Christian Zionism <a href="https://religionmediacentre.org.uk/factsheets/factsheet-christian-zionism/">Factsheet: Christian Zionism – Religion Media Centre</a><br />Sinkoff, Nancy. <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/327/oa_edited_volume/chapter/2592996/pdf">Out of the Shtetl: Making Jews Modern in the Polish Borderlands</a>.<br />Brown Judaic Studies, 2020. <br /><a href="https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=587816272&hl=en&sxsrf=AM9HkKmOsoUe4GLnE5KldKFerH9XJqQDMQ:1701731672418&q=inauthor:%22Shabtai+Teveth%22&tbm=bks">Teveth</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=587816272&hl=en&sxsrf=AM9HkKmOsoUe4GLnE5KldKFerH9XJqQDMQ:1701731672418&q=inauthor:%22Shabtai+Teveth%22&tbm=bks">Shabtai</a>, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985.<br /><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-06-21/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/zionist-military-org-efforts-to-recruit-nazis-in-fight-against-the-british-are-revealed/00000188-d93a-d5fc-ab9d-db7ae0ea0000">https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-06-21/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/zionist-military-org-efforts-to-recruit-nazis-in-fight-against-the-british-are-revealed/00000188-d93a-d5fc-ab9d-db7ae0ea0000</a><br /><a href="https://brill.com/display/title/15909?language=en">The Bund Archive</a><br /><a href="https://youtu.be/OUgKUdBZQfQ?si=EDFdqCXOmy9UWg1q">The Zion Mule Corp</a> on YouTube<br />Trotsky, <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm#p2">How Mussolini Triumphed</a><br />USHMM encyclopedia: Article <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/exodus-1947">The Exodus</a> <br />Wikipedia Bund Poster <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kiev_electoral_district_(Russian_Constituent_Assembly_election)&action=edit&redlink=1">1917. An election poster of the General Jewish Labour Bund hung in Kiev</a><br />Zionism in Holocaust Poland L Brenner chapter 21 Age of Dictators <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/mideast/agedict/ch21.htm">21. Zionism in Holocaust Poland</a></div>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-70185445750536780332023-10-12T14:41:00.000+13:002023-10-12T14:41:09.254+13:00 FOR PALESTINIAN LIBERATION BY PERMANENT REVOLUTION<p> <br /></p><div class="sq-post-meta" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #565656; font-family: Lato; font-size: 13px;"><ul style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 15px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: inside; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px;"><br /></ul></div><p class="has-text-align-center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; text-align: center;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><img decoding="async" height="416" loading="lazy" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/u2eWUFN9hSdw_xJ1NnDYLjSlwWcWEyvVsYmYkYe67j2CUI9PLWPj0YZJGeouqyF5xQgJjAg4Eur9nCCQjd_GVWFm_ZcOoBI7CONGuZ8JLs2Lz8zFAwpAUvilHAIOMkzGmUeHOCThL1SpWb8SvoW3na4" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; height: auto; margin-bottom: 20px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: top;" width="624" /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The Hamas led uprising <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">was not</em></span> an unprovoked act of terror but a response to ongoing Israeli terrorism. Near <a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/09/more-200-palestinians-killed-2023-israel-detains-lions-den-leader" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">daily killings of Palestinians by settlers and the IDF</a> escalated this last month into <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/17/israeli-forces-attack-palestinian-worshippers-at-al-aqsa-mosque" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">religio-fanatical Zionist attacks</a> on worshipers at the Al Asqa mosque. Since the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/9/the-deir-yassin-massacre-why-it-still-matters-75-years-later" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Deir Yassin</a> massacre and the <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/bombing-of-the-king-david-hotel" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">King David</a> hotel bombing the Zionists’ project has been militarily directed terror against civilians. It has always been a land grab by force of arms. To date every acquiescence, negotiated or under duress, has brought further encroachment. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Occupying Palestinian’s homes and farms, denying citizenship, and personhood, continues today with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/world/middleeast/israel-settlements-west-bank.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">unending displacement</a> backed by the full weight of the <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/us-carrier-strike-group-headed-203340840.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">US Navy</a>. Resistance to the combined weight of the U.S. military and the U.S. funded IDF may appear futile, but it is not even a choice, it is a matter of survival. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The coincidence of the colonial settler project with the geo-strategic interests of the US is as undeniable as is the culpability for the decades long war on the Palestinians. The tail does not wag the dog! Zionism made its deal with Western imperialism in 1948 to be the militarized fortress against the Arab revolution in MENA, today an installment on that bill comes due; and Jewish and Arab workers pay the blood price! </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">This unresolved hotspot of the international class conflict has long been the U.S. directed Zionist outpost in MENA blocking the completion of the Arab national democratic revolution. Because the upsurge of the national democratic revolution in 2011 did not become the permanent socialist revolution to end imperialist control of the region, MENA is now in a tug of war between the declining hegemon the US/EU led imperialist bloc vs the rising arbiter of international relations the China/Russia imperialist bloc. On the ground suffering the consequences have been the dispossessed Palestinian people whose right to resist occupation is undeniable in any context except the world view of the oppressor states. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The 2016 UN security council resolution<a href="http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/2334" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> 2334</a> identified Israel’s settlement activity as a “flagrant violation” of international law.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Not even the Washington Post<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/28/dueling-histories-debate-over-historic-palestine/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> hit job on this map</a> can hide the theft of Palestinians land. No matter how the Zionist settler population portray themselves as victims, on the ground the walled off territories do not lie! Today there is no independent Palestine, the indigenous people are denied citizenship rights, and live as refugees at the largess of the occupier, corralled into ghettoized districts in perpetuity as mainstream Zionism <a href="https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-tro-manualssearch&ei=UTF-8&hsimp=yhs-manualssearch&hspart=tro&p=calls+to+wipe+out+palestine&type=Y243_F867_222433_041423#id=4&vid=5950ccfdab78024b723a8fedb486a561&action=click" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">debates the final solution</a>. </p><div class="wp-block-image" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #565656; font-family: Lato; font-size: 13px;"><figure class="aligncenter" style="box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; display: table; margin: 0px auto;"><img alt="" decoding="async" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/XsMrJN2dizy2r-JJecQH2jz9mPS-kYpwq8CMcCOuZwhfC7a5wcd1NBoXaUqwATjHDZNYQzZ0kMxUoVGq1jy-u-dGPpzIcevzcBQrVZg_jaYP1-XATyiHHtp9tX2uj9idg9DUF_QoaGDalufX6CtGR9E" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; margin-bottom: 20px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: bottom;" /></figure></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Washington Post fails to disprove this map!</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Zionists justify their right to colonize with the propagandistic slogan every Jewish child has been taught for 100 years claiming Palestine, “…is a land without people for a people without land.” The Zionist assertion that Palestinians as a people, “do not exist” is a generally accepted fact in the United States, despite pro-Zionist historian <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/93685801/Righteous-Victims-Benny-Morris?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=bing&utm_campaign=3Q_Bing_Search_Beta_NB_US&utm_adgroup=Dynamic&utm_term=scribd&utm_matchtype=b&utm_device=c&utm_network=o&msclkid=bf0acb12617c12121e7dae36306819aa" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Benny Morris’s</a> citation that the Muslim population of Palestine was 10x the Jewish population in 1914. The persistent justification of the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/15/nakba-mapping-palestinian-villages-destroyed-by-israel-in-1948" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Nakba</a> by the Nazi Holocaust unites the imperialist Democrats with the Ultra MAGA Republicans today in a war they can both get behind. Never mind that the Christian Nationalist’s leading MAGA are confirmed Jew haters whose commitment to Zion is based on the fanciful dreams of a second-coming and a Jew exclusive rapture when Jerusalem is returned to the Jewish people (thus Trump is the savior’s assistant). </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">There has been no backing down from expanding the illegal settlements, as reported by AP settler violence<a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestine-settler-bedouin-displacement-violence-un-108e11712310b5ea099dbded7be8effb" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> displaced 1,100 Palestinians since 2022</a>. The fact that Israel can shut off water, food and power and extract collective punishment against an occupied population demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed. For 75 years the Palestinians, generation after generation, have lived a refugee existence, ghettoized and denied self-determination. The international working class must stand with the oppressed against their oppressor. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">In the war between the oppressor Israel, the semi-colonial military outpost of the US in MENA revolutionary workers stand with the oppressed Palestinians. To win, the working class needs its own politically independent mass workers party to lead the national liberation struggle in going over to become the socialist revolution. Only a revolutionary working class party and international can lead the oppressed masses past the pitfalls, roadblocks and divisions of sectarianism, chauvinism, racism and patriarchy. Today these forces, meager, isolated and disorganized as they are, find themselves in struggle alongside the Hamas militants. While the entire political project of the working class is counterposed to the program of Hamas, Hezbollah and the PLO, the US military backed onslaught by the IDF at this moment requires revolutionary workers to make a military bloc with Hamas fighters. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">And while we fight the U.S. military and IDF on every front, we also conduct a political struggle to expose the tactical blunders, misguided strategic goals and ideologies of the nationalist leaders in order to win the working masses to build their vanguard party. The revolutionary workers participating in the armed uprising do not countenance rape and murder of innocents. Terrorism, worse than being morally repugnant and criminal, is counterproductive, it alienates hard won allies, pushes victory further into the future as the IDF reigns hell and fury in deadly bombardments. Anti-Zionists will support the war of national liberation against the IDF but do not tolerate Jew hating violence. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The IDF has long since ensured that even tactical non-violence is impossible. The U.S. corporate media erases history when the IDF kills American citizens. How and why <a href="https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-tro-manualssearch&ei=UTF-8&hsimp=yhs-manualssearch&hspart=tro&p=Rachel+Corrie&type=Y243_F867_222433_041423#id=4&vid=c88b547d4773c54b567f3d83a5a0bdfd&action=click" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Rachel Corrie</a> was killed and how journalist <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/5/11/23067365/shireen-abu-akleh-palestinian-journalist-killed-israel" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Shireen Abu Akleh’s</a> murder is demonstrative of how the IDF treats non-violent resistance and reporting eradicates the arguments of the Gandhian whiners who blame victims for not turning the other cheek. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The long term failure by the nationalist leaders to complete the national democratic revolution and stop the Zionist encroachment sows frustration among the masses and the youth. Only the workers revolution can defeat imperialism and that is not their agenda. Hamas has no path to victory yet needs to dissipate the frustration of the masses who want their war of national liberation. To win this war the crisis of leadership must be resolved in the struggle for the proletarian party in order to take control of the war and run it with the working classes methods of strikes, occupations and struggles over control and distribution of production. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Palestinian self-determination can only be won by the working class taking the leadership of the national liberation struggle and turning it into a fight for socialist revolution. Hamas, like the capitalist nationalist leadership of the Irish Republican Army of the 20th c, has every right to conduct the war of national liberation as it sees fit; but just as the limited nationalist program of the IRA failed to defeat British Imperialism, <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Hamas’s class political program</a> is a capitalist theocratic anachronism which dooms those who place faith in their leadership to failure.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">FOR THE ALL PALESTINE GENERAL STRIKE! </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">USA HANDS OFF PALESTINE!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">IDF OUT OF GAZA AND OCCUPIED TERRITORIES!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">FOR INTERNATIONAL WORKER ACTION TO STRIKE ISRAELI SHIPPING AT THE PORTS!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">TO COMPLETE THE ARAB NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION MAKE THE PERMANENT REVOLUTION!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">FOR A SOCIALIST FEDERATION ACROSS MENA! </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">BUILD THE REVOLUTIONARY WORKERS INTERNATIONAL!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency (ILTT) October 10 2023</em></p>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-10263036692134222052023-09-28T14:27:00.000+13:002023-09-28T14:27:13.825+13:00Can the UAW Strike Become Labor’s Next Giant Step?<p> </p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEigJ3JP_cNbGU0Qb_wd341AJLSrhQiliJHeCKIAfatkDPEqowFa5drGKHkgNE3MYAvQ0zoCBodK1ykpSbTzstF-F2I0BWWcVueUQTfFN10GY4dQ_2MNkk8FQuOhPqxl91e_ONDgpygmWvbthsEy77ZCHSZV6BRq_KMv59YghyqzQDBSOp1LdXTMbQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="882" data-original-width="1320" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEigJ3JP_cNbGU0Qb_wd341AJLSrhQiliJHeCKIAfatkDPEqowFa5drGKHkgNE3MYAvQ0zoCBodK1ykpSbTzstF-F2I0BWWcVueUQTfFN10GY4dQ_2MNkk8FQuOhPqxl91e_ONDgpygmWvbthsEy77ZCHSZV6BRq_KMv59YghyqzQDBSOp1LdXTMbQ=w643-h430" width="643" /></a></div><br /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px;">In the aftermath of COVID, labor has been trying to catch up. Not only from the runaway inflation and interest rates but from the givebacks, wage freezes, lockouts and furloughs suffered in the 2008-2011 global economic crisis. The crash was used to enforce austerities on workers around the globe. The Obama/Gettlefinger deal bailed out the industry so it could be restructured on the backs of the taxpayers and workers. UAW lost its COLA, the defined pension plan, tiers were implemented, wages were slashed, and for kickers the Obama/Biden deal blocked the right to strike until 2015. Profits soared but wages did not. Now the crisis of the world economy, climate catastrophe and inter-imperialist wars are exploding across the lives of all workers. The UAW members feel the heat and need a new direction which brings not only rank and file democracy but a class struggle strategy to win workers power! </span><p></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">While the U.S. empire faces a decline in relative and absolute economic power the leaders of both parties pound the war drums against China. Patriotism is obsolete where investment capital is involved, the Big Three are invested all across the globe; ALL it means is an excuse to make YOU sacrifice for their benefit! The last thing we need to do is acquiesce in the offshoring and the gradual decline of membership that made possible a labor aristocracy that ate the lunch of workers the world over, especially those overseas. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Two things happened since our parents’ time when they were sold the idea that a U.S. world empire was good for everyone. Balance of payments deficit became a balance of trade deficit and now the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall is in control of the productive economy and Wall Street and the banksters seek their superprofits in fictitious, speculative values. It makes NO SENSE and there is no reason to be put up to opposing foreign workers or their well-being. Anti-Asian hysteria and UAW indifference made possible the crushing of the Korean auto strike. We should make this clear as we strike “our own” robber barons.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The bosses on Wall St., in the corporate media and in the Democratic Party love a certain type of union leadership, a leadership prepared to sell out the members and ignore the class-wide implications in the class struggle, potentials of each negotiation and strike. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Listen to how the former CEO of Chrysler, looks back nostalgically at Ron Gettelfinger’s sell out in this <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/13/business/auto-strike-uaw-mark-fields/index.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">CNN</a> hit piece against a UAW strike…,</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“…Nardelli recalled the ‘wonderful relationship’ he and other auto execs had with Ron Gettelfinger, who led the UAW during the Great Recession.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">‘Without Ron’s support, the three of us — Ford, GM and Chrysler — would not have been able to make it through that challenging period when the financial institutions melted down and took us with them,’ Nardelli said.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Today labor and management are walking to the brink and hoping each other blinks. The UPS, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-west-coast-port-workers-ratify-contract-agreement-2023-08-31/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Longshore</a>, and American Airlines pilots’ contracts all resolved with wage increases which, while larger than the bosses wanted, do not make up for what has been lost or secure future increases guaranteed to keep pace with inflation. They were resolved by labor leaders who not only blinked, but were not prepared to stand up with the backbone the membership expected. Members were feeling militant, came out for practice pickets, worked to rule, applied slow down tactics and most expected to strike. But workers were swayed by somewhere between 32% and 40% increases over long agreements and the Big Three took note.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">So we know that the 40% demand and the end of two tiers are not only possible but realistic, something the shareholders have already factored into their portfolio rebalancing. The call for a shorter work week is a response to frustrations of the masses over the toxic work day, <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">but it will take an all out strike, calling out the entire union and spreading the strike across the entire working class to win a shorter work week for all</em></span>! With the 97% strike authorization Fain has the power but is not preparing the union for such a fight! As reported in the<a href="https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2023/09/22/uaw-president-to-give-update-friday-just-before-noon-deadline-imposed-on-big-three/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> Detroit Click</a>, “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Fain has indicated that the union is willing to be flexible on its demands in order to reach a deal….The UAW was initially demanding a more than 40% wage increase, and has since dropped it to a 36% increase.</em>” Why doesn’t the membership know what “progress“ with Ford means? </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The bosses, the mortgage lenders, credit card companies, landlords, finance capitalists and price gougers of all stripes are calculating, right now, how to gouge us out of any wage gains we make. <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">WE NEED A SLIDING SCALE OF WAGES AND NO RETREAT ON THE COLA!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">We also know that unless new wage gains spread across the industry and the entire working class, a downward pressure on wages persists among the unorganized and lower wage workers. They can become the bosses’ scabs and fodder to break the union with non-union shops building Teslas, Toyotas and EV batteries. To win, to sustain and accelerate our wins we need to generalize this strike by sending UAW organizers into the unorganized shops at home and abroad to organize this industry wall to wall, including the open-shop South.</p><p class="has-text-align-left" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Biden claims to be the most pro-worker president ever. “Record Profits,” he said, “requires record contracts…, .” We remind workers it was the Obama/Biden/Gettelfinger deal that dug us into the hole in the first place. It was under their watch the GM/Toyota deal closed plants, opening the way for the anti-union Tesla to muscle into the Fremont, CA NUMMI plant. Thousands of ex-UAW workers lined up for work at Tesla’s scab wages and in unsafe and unhealthy conditions. This while Musk was being courted by the Silicon Valley crowd and toasted as a visionary by the capitalist class and the politicians of both parties. <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">We 100 times prefer an industry-wide </span><a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/amersocialist/genora.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">sit-down strike</span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"> to a one-time Presidential photo opp on a picket line!</span> The sitdown is the effective means of securing a better living. The photo opp is Biden campaigning for next year for nomination by one of the bosses’ parties. Workers don’t have a party, something you should address. Will he do anything about your sisters and brothers being laid off? He broke the rail strike and caused the UPS Teamsters to cave in. What is Fain up to?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">To win, workers need to employ class struggle methods to unite the entire working class against the union busters and the political parties who cater to them. We know the Republicans hate unions while the Democrats will almost always show up at the Labor Day picnic to eat the workers beans. Their modus operandi is to allow our leaderships minimal access as long as they are committed to reigning in the militancy of the membership before it gets out of hand. And when push comes to a little shove, the Democratic Party will join with the GOP to clamp down on labor struggle such as with the 2022 rail negotiations. <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">The Biden administration and both political parties played their real role as strikebreakers by imposing contracts on the rail workers with the threat of capitalist state repression waiting in the wings.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The eyes of the entire working class are on the UAW right now as it is launching the second tranche of strikes after one week on the picket lines. With the authority of the 97% strike vote, if the UAW made this a class-wide fight and called for all workers who have lost ground to unite in struggle, this strike could be the next Giant Step for labor. The UAW strike has broad majority support today as do other labor struggles. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Will Fain provide the necessary leadership to win? We do not know if his caucus is prepared to switch its strategy in time. Winning takes solidarity in action which means breaking Taft-Hartley and other anti-labor laws which outlaw solidarity strikes. The Democrats have allowed these anti-labor laws to stand for decades; they are treated as untouchable. Unions cannot win by abiding by those laws. Workers as a class must be politically independent. If a political labor conference were called to unite all workers around the strike, to launch organizing drives and solidarity strikes and put up independent labor candidates today they would get a broad hearing and launch labor’s next Giant Step. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">We’ve seen support for a GENERAL STRIKE in the event of a government shutdown next week. We support this; there’s corruption everywhere we look and banksters plotting another crash. We need a politics that smashes Taft-Hartley and all anti-labor laws and both organizing drives and general strikes logically make a workers’ government possible. We need a workers government that will never go on strike against us! Would Fain support such class political independence? </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">When asked on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVc9EW31hws" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Face the Nation</a>, UAW president Shawn Fain said the union has not endorsed Biden, putting it on Biden to show in action that he deserves it. The strike, he said, will be won on the picket line not by the intervention of politicians! At this new moment of accelerating class conflict, when the political failures of the twin parties of capitalism to address the crisis are increasingly apparent to all, he did not take advantage of the moment to call for working class political independence! Instead he threw Biden a soft ball, <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/gma/uaw-president-announcement-strike-deadline-103659326.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">inviting him to join the picket line</a>, and Biden went for it. This is the set up to keep the UAW and the working class locked into the capitalist Democrats.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Militant trade unionists, and revolutionary socialist workers, however, must disagree with brother Fain who makes support for the capitalist Democrats optional while welcoming Biden to the picket line. We say this is time for labor to proclaim its organizing drive and its political independence. To win this battle we have to reorient labor. Right now Fain’s popularity in the working class is strong. Enthusiasm for the strike can be leveraged into a class wide offensive from the shop floor to the halls of power. A call by Fain for a hard break from the Democrats would breathe life into the new militancy and excitement into the working class. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Against Chauvinism:</span> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">For decades the capitalist class has pitted U.S. workers against the workers of the world. Demonizing immigrants and workers abroad for taking ‘our work.’ Indeed the UAW has been enlisted in and willingly participated in chauvinist “Buy American” campaigns. In their simplicity these campaigns direct the anger of workers away from the corporations who outsource and close union factories moving the work to Mexico, China and hard to unionize areas in the poverty stricken Republican states of the south east. Weakened and unwilling, the UAW did not vigorously attempt to organize the unorganized south or campaign to unite workers of the world in a fight for the same contract for the same work. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Today GM employs only 49,000 workers in the US while employing 58,000 workers in China. Repatriated profits go to the big shareholders while the capitalist media and politicians of both parties (who GM contributes to) stoke anger and hatred for China. It is a ruse, don’t fall for it. Our real enemies are not the Mexican or Chinese workers; it is those who closed our factories, sent the jobs away, and the bosses and owners there: where foreign auto strikes are broken by their bosses, our bosses win on their investments and push our wages down. </p><p class="has-text-align-center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; text-align: center;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike</em></p><p class="has-text-align-center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; text-align: center;"><img decoding="async" height="351" loading="lazy" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/TQfQbpJHD8kwBkzvktKQMMID4c8AeHALKTBdOA6T8dWguYENMXDZ4rzf371_g-dbxZHE7oDO5G-G1vgYy0BICUmShU_efcmK9qZl3iJVx8Ij1CW-nSRcxKDe5U-U6M5dC4cz2w0n9doAn4UfI_KPRpw" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; height: auto; margin-bottom: 20px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: top;" width="624" /></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">For a Class Struggle Leadership of Our Unions!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">In order for workers to win it requires solidarity, militancy, organization and leadership.Those worker leaders who want to fight with one hand tied, or not even fight at all need to be replaced with a leadership thrown up by the ranks who will. Bringing out only part of the union disperses union power and undermines class solidarity. More than that, a union leader who is merely a “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">trade union secretary</em>”, focusing on narrow economic demands undermines the power of the whole working class. The UAW strike (just like the derailed UPS strike), could be turned into a fight for the whole working class and the oppressed who have been hit hard: Blacks, women, Latinos, immigrants, the unemployed and the other specially oppressed. And there needs to be a perspective to extend the strike internationally, into Mexico and China for example. <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">We call on union militants to build class struggle caucuses within our unions based on a political program of </em></span><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/index.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">transitional</em></span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> demands of today to fight for leadership both on the shop floor and within the official union leadership!</em></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">This will take a new class struggle leadership that can envision a world beyond capitalism. Objectivists, economists, reformists and anarchists line up to promote this moment as the spontaneous empowerment of the working class. Where this empowerment exists apart from their pronouncements we can’t say, unless it’s just a theory, something to make conversation. Revolutionary socialism rejects objectivist spontaneism which results in uncritical adulation of every upsurge. They report on the struggle but with no intention of building a class struggle leadership which escalates towards political independence. We say, the path to victory is not via spontaneity and struggles confined to minimum economic demands. And those who remain opposed to workers launching their own party outright, or with excuses such as, “now is not the time,” are traitorous interlopers and the transmission belt of bourgeois ideology and pessimism into the workers movement. To win the workers must take advantage of this moment when the unions poll higher than the politicians to build our own workers’ party and new workers international to press the fight for workers’ governments.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Modern Workers Struggles are Inherently Anti-Racist</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><a href="https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/striking-uaw-members-fight-man-outside-stellantis-plant-claiming-he-yelled-racial-slurs.amp?fbclid=IwAR3IgttyFEe1gy2KjTwq6orzHhqoO4Xj3C1UVfFmojN-H5duqyvmDZmhAZY" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">UAW pickets</a>, largely Black, were yelled at with racist slurs and physically attacked by a man and his family, and this and other accounts of physical attacks are documented in conditions where nazis parade openly. Workers are left to their own initiative, which as a legal matter is proscribed and all such engagement, even vocal, is discouraged by leadership. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">“Leadership” organizes zero physical response and no defense against such attacks, exactly after the fashion of liberal politicians’ 100% reliance on the police. Of course constabulary model police departments hunt perpetrators after the fact! The history of police strikebreaking has been flushed; the mantra now is they’re the saviors of democracy, (Jan. 6th, etc.) <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Ergo we need armed, trained workers’ self-defense and a uniting of these pickets into union-based Labor-Black-Brown Community Defense Guards! </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Fight for Socialism</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“The revolutionaries always consider that the reforms and acquisitions are only a by-product of the revolutionary struggle. If we say that we will only demand what they can give, the ruling class will give only one-tenth or none of what we demand. When we demand more and can impose our demands, the capitalists are compelled to give the maximum. The more extended and militant the spirit of the workers, the more is demanded and won. They are not sterile slogans; they are means of pressure on the bourgeoisie, and will give the greatest possible material results immediately.” </em><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/05/backwardness.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Leon Trotsky: The Political Backwardness of American Workers (1938) (marxists.org)</em></a></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Today, to survive the terminal crisis of capitalism, the environmental crisis, and the unfolding inter-imperialist conflict and hot wars, the working class needs political independence borne out of class struggle to unite the entire working class against the rule of the capitalist class.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">A class struggle leadership could use this moment to call for a national organizing drive and a congress of labor’s representatives to launch a fighting workers labor party. <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">A fighting workers party would be tribune of all the oppressed and organize with class struggle methods in every work place, school and community against repressive anti-labor laws that outlaw solidarity strikes which can become general strikes.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Such a party would not be limited to electoralism, but linked to the unions and oppressed communities it would launch a class wide debate on how a working class program could resolve the basic contradictions of capitalism wherein all production is social but the gains and profit are private. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">A <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">transitional program</a> to resolve this contradiction would end joblessness by implementing 30 hours work for 40 hours pay, end homelessness, poverty and hunger with trillions of dollars for public works programs, including environmental restoration and transition to clean energy sources. Child care, bodily autonomy, educational opportunity and care for the aging and infirm would all be addressed by a workers party arising out of class struggle. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Our party would demand easy credits (at tolerable interest rates) for families and small businesses against the bankers currently driving up loan rates. Our party would demand the opening of the books to expose the parasitic nature of the corporations, the collusion of the insiders and politicians, and show cause to the entire working class for the nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy, without indemnification and under workers control. To win these demands, a fighting workers labor party will organize disciplined and armed labor defense guards as the masses are mobilized to win by means of general strikes, occupations and industry takeovers. Likewise inter-imperialist conflict and the forces of destruction, the war industries, threaten human survival. They turn our tax dollars into their war profits in Ukrainian and Russian bloodletting and have no interest in ending it. Against this inherently self-destructive element of imperialism workers need a dual defeatist attitude toward war. To win peace the UAW and all labor organizations must take the lessons from the failure of the socialist workers to prevent WWI. We endorse the example of the Left Zimmerwaldists who waged revolutions against that war and won. Like them, we must declare, “<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Our Main Enemy is At Home!</em></span>” We must say to the workers of the world we unite with you, not our capitalist bosses!</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; font-weight: 700; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Build strike committees that unite strikers and workers in each district/region.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; font-weight: 700; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Build class struggle caucuses in every union. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; font-weight: 700; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Hold a conference of all workers in the struggle to resolve questions of tactics and strategy.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; font-weight: 700; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">For an all out strike! Bring out all the UAW! Seize the plants! Revive the sit-down strike!</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; font-weight: 700; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Smash Taft-Hartley in the streets! Revive the solidarity strike! Build the general strike to unite with all workers on strike and/or organizing. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; font-weight: 700; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Turn the strike momentum into an organizing drive across the industry and internationally. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; font-weight: 700; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Defend immigrant workers’ fight to organize labor on both sides of the borders!</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; font-weight: 700; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Against Anti-Chinese racism stoking the fires of war.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; font-weight: 700; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Picket lines mean don’t cross- for Labor Black/Brown self defense against scabs, racists and cop interference. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; font-weight: 700; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Turn the 2023 strike wave into a fight for political independence. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; font-weight: 700; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Jobs for all! 30 hours work for 40 hours pay.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; font-weight: 700; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">For a sliding scale of wages and prices under control of workers’ wage and price committees.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; font-weight: 700; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Nationalize the commanding heights of the economy without indemnification to be run under working class control.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; font-weight: 700; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">For a fighting workers labor party to fight for a workers’ government!</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; font-weight: 700; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">For socialism and a planned economy against the anarchy of production and the forces of destruction of world capitalism.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">CWG-USA, September 23, 2023</em></span></p>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-90393244039758101942023-09-15T23:30:00.001+12:002023-09-21T17:37:28.524+12:00AOTEAROA: FOR A WORKERS’ GOVERNMENT<p><br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi1DDn_kZ3vtH6zBcBpVHIqUZ4TE_TOLTtukZELZeIhqGPSVAhQqBAdvyaiSr9xygRaEUf8om8K2YPi2KIWyDgoxvVZdQIe9dim9wioN_XyhYCSUvjIcIUcgqKrV6auHaUCI9NFTtHPriOD1iott090eS7UIzEEFzzMWXJDu33nzoUo6Hk67XyEfA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="800" height="327" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi1DDn_kZ3vtH6zBcBpVHIqUZ4TE_TOLTtukZELZeIhqGPSVAhQqBAdvyaiSr9xygRaEUf8om8K2YPi2KIWyDgoxvVZdQIe9dim9wioN_XyhYCSUvjIcIUcgqKrV6auHaUCI9NFTtHPriOD1iott090eS7UIzEEFzzMWXJDu33nzoUo6Hk67XyEfA=w643-h327" width="643" /></a></div><p></p><p> <span face="Ubuntu, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-size: 16.9px;">NZ is a neo-colony, nominally politically independent since it ceased to be referred to as a ‘dominion’ of Britain in 1945. Yet NZ never had a national revolution and its ‘dominion’ status was never repudiated. The ‘dominion’ has passed from Britain to the two giant post-war imperialist powers, the declining US, and the rising China. By definition, the political independence of neo-colonies is a lie, as they remain subordinated to their neo-colonial masters. What passes for politics in NZ remains determined by imperialism, expressed most directly through the politics of the various governments which hold parliamentary power. The upcoming October 2023 election provides an opportunity to analyse what power, if any, governments can exercise independently of imperialism. What are the limits to that independence? Does it make any difference that the Labour Party is more non-aligned historically, and today inclined towards China and the BRICS, while the National Party is historically aligned with the US? We argue here, that despite such differences, and the degree to which left and right centre governments are aligned with China or the US, in the last analysis it doesn’t matter. The only force that can liberate NZ from imperialism, East or West, is the revolutionary working class, as part of the global formation of Workers’ Governments, East and West, North and South. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;"><strong>NZ as a Neo-colony of Imperialism</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">To explain what us going on in NZ we have first to understand its position in the global economy. This is what sets the conditions determining its economic development and in turn its political and cultural dynamics. To survive, capitalism must increase its share of the wealth produced by labour. The definition of a neo-colony is a country which has formal political independence but remains dominated economically by one or more imperialist powers. For Marxists, a country that remains dominated economically cannot be politically independent. </p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">The history of successive government in NZ proves this point. NZ has always been politically dominated by imperialist finance capital, that of Britain in the interwar period, and increasingly the US and China in the post-war period. Since the end of the post-war boom profits have fallen and never recovered. The end of the boom in the 1970s exhausted the limits of Muldoon’s Keynesian economic nationalism, forcing the Lange government to impose its neo-liberal counter-revolution in the 1980’s. While neo-liberalism has increased the share of profits at the expense of the share of NZ workers – topped by the NZ$ <a href="https://www.1news.co.nz/2021/12/13/wealthy-nearly-1-trillion-richer-since-covid-began-hickey/" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">1 trillion transfer of wealth</a> from labour to capital during the height of the Covid pandemic 2020-22 – it is not enough to save global capitalism’s terminal decline. US and Chinese imperialism have no option by to increase their exploitation of their neo-colonies, including NZ, downloading the cost of their terminal crisis onto workers and poor farmers.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">In the case of China, NZ produces mainly raw materials with little processing. It sells milk products, raw timber, and allows China to invest in agricultural production with a similar level of processing. NZ imports mainly finished manufactures from China on the basis of competitive price. Is this no more than the normal operation of comparative advantage globally or does this amount to economic domination? It depends on the how much China is in the position to extract surplus profits from NZ both in NZs export to and imports from China.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">NZ is also a neo-colony of the US – NZ has long been part of the Anglo-American Cold War story against Russia and China. But NZ is not yet committed to the inner security circle of AUKUS. Nevertheless, the US dominates NZ security and political relations, sharing Western Eurocentric ‘values’ – <a href="https://situationsvacant.blog/2023/02/17/aotearoa-lets-decolonize-our-rip-shit-and-bust-capitalism/" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">‘rip, shit and bust’.</a> More recently it has invested heavily in tech startups and NZ state and corporate security and ‘cloud’ services. (eg Amazon). NZ is taking a relatively neutral line on the war. It didn’t join with the other 5 eyes in Iraq or Afghanistan. It waits for the UN OK to send ‘peacekeepers’ or ‘trainers’. In terms of the economic reality shaping the political, the NZ bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie are rent seeking realists.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">The foreign policy of the NZ Labour Govt is dominated by trade favouring China and its BRICS partners while resisting US military ultimatums. Current government officials have made at least two visits to India to further trade relations (expand) and recently visited Saudia Arabia and the UAE for new bi-lateral deals. All are now members of BRICS which indicates Labour’s willingness to associate with the BRICS trading bloc despite pressure from the US – including the recent visit of US neo-con secretary of State Blinken. While both major parties put profits first, the National and ACT both have long term political and cultural relationships with the US during the Cold War.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">ACT (Association of Citizens and Taxpayers) was founded by Labour Party who resigned who formed ACT after failing to push the Lange Government to enact the full-on US led neo-liberal counter-revolution to destroy the economic influence of the Soviet Bloc. The failure to reduce the Russia and China as pawns of the West didn’t stop the rot of US economic decline. Biden’s ‘neo-conservative’ proxy war against Ukraine to split Russia from China is its last desperate act to revive US imperialist hegemony. This warmongering threatens to escalate rapidly and draw NZ into a new world war. Given its political interests a NACT government in power would be more likely than a Labour led coalition to sacrifice trading relations with BRICS and cave into US political pressure to make war with China. To what extent will this different orientation in foreign policy towards East and West imperialist blocs, determine NZ’s domestic politics?</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;"><strong>Governments Left, Right and Centre</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">The upcoming elections in NZ are designed to highlight the apparent differences between a Labour led left-centre government and a National led right-centre government? This makes good political theatre in which governments appear to serve the interests of conflicting classes. In fact, both parties historically have converged on the political centre representing the petty bourgeoisie and its modern ally the bureaucratic administrative middle class that together serve the bourgeois ruling class.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">The popular belief that a National led coalition will be hostage to the ultra-right ACT party, or a Labour led majority be hostage to the Greens or Māori Party, actually works in the opposite direction. These ideological outliers painted as ‘extremes’ create the fear that tiny minorities will dictate the political agenda. Yet the reverse is the case. The ‘extreme’ minorities are locked into almost identical centrist majority governments which manage ‘middle NZ’ in the class interests of the national bourgeoisie and its imperialist masters. Meanwhile, the working-class majority becomes disillusioned in the parliamentary circus, disaffected in bourgeois democracy, and <a href="https://situationsvacant.blog/2022/02/19/how-workers-are-used-as-fascist-fodder-to-create-a-fascist-state-to-smash-the-socialist-revolution%ef%bf%bc/" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">potential fascist fodder.</a></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">This is the classic argument for the popular front between workers and bosses which prepares the way for fascism. The Ardern coalition govt showed this. In its first term, NZ First’s centrist populist stance was the excuse used by Labour for not delivering on its ‘transformational’ election promises. In Labour’s second term the Covid pandemic saw the coalition make a huge wealth transfer from workers to capitalists on the pretext of stabilising the economy. If a Labour/Green/Māori Coalition wins in October 2023 it will be no less a popular front based on the woke, liberal middle class, in bed with corporate capitalism.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">Would a Left centre coalition be the ‘lesser evil’ compared with a NACT victory? No. Both left and right blocs depend on not scaring the centre to prevent the ultra-left Greens/Māori and Ultra-right ACT from running the government. Yet the minority parties cannot dominate government when the centre is the centre of political gravity occupied by an electoral majority committed to liberal democratic capitalist government. Revolutionaries call liberal democracy ‘bourgeois democracy’ since all such governments are committed to the fiction of ‘democracy’ to hide the bourgeois ‘dictatorship’ of the ‘bourgeois’ ruling class.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">So, while the ult-right ACT and center-left Greens express the politics of the disaffected middle-class and petty capitalists, both are ultimately directed at their common enemy – the organised and independent working class. Their parliamentary solution is the popular (or peoples’) front between workers and the bourgeoisie in a national unity government. If the upcoming elections throws up such a popular front it is the outcome is likely to be a hung parliament where National and Act to form a government must enlist NZ First Winston Peters as king maker, reversing his role in the previous Labour coalition.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">If the left bloc between Labour and the Greens needs the numbers to form a government, it will be the leftist Te Pāti Māori that will act as the ‘kingmaker’. It remains to be seen, in this eventuality, whether TPM will accommodate to Labour and Greens middle class or refuse Confidence and Supply and risk losing a vote of no confidence. The neo-liberal counter-revolution decimated organised labour particularly Māori, and created a whole new class of petty bourgeois now hostile to the working class. This accounts for the shift in Labour from a bourgeois workers party to an open neoliberal capitalist party during the 1980s. We argue that a party that incorporates workers and petty bourgeois capitalists together is a popular front party serving as the ‘shadow’ of the big bourgeoisie. That is why no genuinely workers party claiming to represent Māori and Pākehā can give such a popular front any political support without helping prepare the defeat of workers as a class. We can illustrate this danger when workers are fooled into voting for NZ First to prevent National from compromising with ACT in the hope that Peters will defend the interests of workers, Māori and Women.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;"><strong>NZ First Racist Populism</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">Peters is a scurrilous right-wing populist who loves to position himself as kingmaker in the centre of politics to keep governments of left and right honest. Despite his Māori heritage, Peters is an advocate of Eurocentrist white supremacy that defends the legacy of settler colonialism. His constituency is the aging ‘one people’ assimilationist rump scared of change under Left and Right governments which agree on woke post-modern capitalist globalism. Peters frightens his flock with his conspiracy theory that separatist globalism is caused by Marxist cultural wars over ‘race’ and ‘class’. Never mind that globalism is the face of the imperialism that dominates neo-colonial NZ and the mortal enemy of Marxism. Peter’s opportunism casts <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78Kb06bGfC0" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">imperialism and Marxism</a> as cultural warriors in bed together.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">Behind this subterfuge, Peters real target is the white racists fear of racial ‘separatism’, that is ‘brown power’, as represented by ‘co-governance’ or ‘power sharing’ under Te Tiriti. Specifically, the culprit is the ‘Marxist Globalist’ UN token resolution on Indigenous Peoples’ Rights adopted by both National and Labour. National sat on the resolution and then dumped it when the red flag of the reactionary ‘one nation’ assimilationist crowd was raised. Labour, ever committed to Te Tiriti tokenism, tried to appease the woke left and legislate for the token co-governance, before sidelining it with the departure of PM Ardern, proving that under Labour, Te Tiriti will never be honoured. Not because Labour will probably be defeated this election but because it’s focus groups and the woke media both rejected co-governance.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">However, it is women who have most to lose by voting for NZ First. NZ First has an ostensibly liberal position on women’s rights. It proposed the legalisation of abortion (2020) be put to a referendum. It postponed the undemocratic attempt by Labour and Greens to pass legislation implementing sex-self ID. Today, Peters has come out in support for women’s rights, especially to their own spaces such as toilets, and women’s sports. However, NZ First supports women’s rights from a conservative standpoint. It opposes men and women changing sex because that disrupts the historical relationship of the sexes in marriage and the family. Taken together, with its white supremacist patriarchal agenda, it supports traditional roles for women in which they are historically subordinate. If women vote for NZ First on the issue of Women’s Rights, it may get across the 5% threshold and enable a center-right popular front government to take power. </p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;"><strong>Te P</strong><strong>ā</strong><strong>ti M</strong><strong>ā</strong><strong>ori, Women’s Rights Party, Workers Now!</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">TPM stands for the honouring of the Tìrìti O Waitangi. Yet the Treaty cannot be honoured without self-determination which means restoring iwi land rights, self-rule and political equality. No capitalist government left, right or centre, will grant Māori self-determination. This was proven when Labour, which had led the reform process on the Treaty in the 1970s, baulked over Māori ownership of the Foreshore and Seabed (F&S). TPM was preceded by Mana Motuhake when Matiu Rata rebelled against Labour’s neo-liberalism and joined with the NLP as part of the Alliance in 1990. TPM was formed in 2004 when Tariana Turia split with Labour over the F&S.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">Our position then was to reject parliament and occupy the F&S. Of course, TPM did the opposite becoming a coalition partner with the National Party of John Key for three terms! In 2011 Hone Harawira split from TPM joining with union leader former Alliance MP Laila Harre in a coalition of his Mana Party with the Internet Party of Dot Com! The Mana Party was a progressive left party, but as a mini popular front of Māori, unionists, and tech millionaires dissolved when Harawira lost Te Tai Tokerau in 2014. TPM was reborn in 2020 under the leadership of former Labour MP John Tamahere as treaty-centred and economically leftwing, calling for taxes on wealth and land speculation. </p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">We recognise TPM today is a radical reformist party representing the interests of Māori as an oppressed people. Its leadership, while drawn from the labour bureaucracy and Māori middle class, is acting like the chiefdoms such as Te Whiti’s representing collective Treaty rights by raising demands that cannot be met short of an end to capitalist society. The demand for self-determination under the Treaty means the restoration of Māori land use rights, self-rule, and political equality. No capitalist government would enact them. TPM’s land tax on the unearned increment is in effect the nationalisation of the land as a use-value rather than a commodity producing rent. But for this to happen the end of money as capital, that is, no more than a measure of labour time, would demand a state bank replacing private banks. TPMs program calls for a Workers’ Government to enact economic equality based on equal shares in a planned economy in a socialist Aotearoa.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">Similarly, the <a href="https://womensrightsparty.nz/" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">Women’s Rights Party</a> and Workers Now! are radical reformist parties, in the tradition of the Suffragettes and women’s organised labour. Of necessity, women’s defence of the fundamental rights in the 19<sup>th</sup> and 20<sup>th</sup> century faces a counter-revolution in trans ideology, allowing men the right to be women and proving that the bourgeois right of free speech and association can only be realised by permanent or socialist revolution. These radical left parties of women and workers who have split to the left from social democracy should be given critical support by workers provided they don’t prop up a popular front with the Labour Party and the Greens. We call on these parties to reject any political endorsement of the ruling capitalist parties, including confidence and supply agreements, and to use parliament like Lenin and Liebknecht advocated, as a ‘tribune’ or rostrum where communists stood to raise their revolutionary platforms for a Workers’ Government, to take power, overthrow capitalist and patriarchal modes of production and to fight for socialism. <strong></strong></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;"><b>From Capitalist NZ to Socialist Aotearoa</b></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">We have argued that New Zealand is a neo-colony of imperialism, first of Britain up to WW2, and since then, of the US and China. We do not link the word Aotearoa to this neo-colony but reserve it for a socialist republic as part of a wider Pacific federation of socialist republics. To make the transition from neo-colony to socialist republic it is necessary to fight for the <strong>permanent revolution</strong>. From Marx in 1848 to Trotsky in 1940 permanent revolution means that it is the working class alone that can end capitalism and create the conditions for socialism. The fight to defend and extend bourgeois rights cannot succeed without the overthrow of the bourgeois ruling class, and its replacement by the proletarian ruling class.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">Workers need an independent workers’ party with a transitional program. We have shown how such basic demands cannot be met by parliamentary means in this age of imperialism. In fact, what rights remain are being eliminated. No capitalist government, no matter how many indigenous, workers and women are in the cabinet since the centre ground committed to stable capitalism strangles any real resistance. Workers Now, and Women’s Rights Party are in the fight for a new mass workers party where both sexes, and all peoples, Māori, Pacific, Asian, African and European belong. He task of a mass workers party is to fight for workers’ democracy in a Workers’ Government based on the independent working class organisations of all workers and peoples.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">The Te Pāti Māori is also in this fight. Despite its middle-class leadership, its fight for Māori self-determination cannot be realised under capitalism short of permanent revolution. All are staunchly defending basic bourgeois rights of Māori and women workers who make up the huge majority of the reserve army of labour. Yet this fight can be won only by breaking with the labour bureaucracy in politics and the unions, and with the bourgeoisie and its state machine. That is, breaking from the popular front regimes that tie workers to the bosses. These rights can be won only by the independent working-class party, uniting wage workers, contract workers, and unpaid workers, armed with its transitional program, as the only class capable of ending capitalism and building a socialist society in harmony with nature. </p><p style="background-color: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px; line-height: 19px;">September 13 </p>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-74468081750521162212023-09-15T22:48:00.001+12:002023-09-15T22:48:35.815+12:00Class Struggle 146 September-November Spring 2023<p> </p><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" title="Class Struggle 146" src="https://www.scribd.com/embeds/671334499/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-ZzUfe1h1fUfO3PFS57jQ" tabindex="0" data-auto-height="true" data-aspect-ratio="0.7080062794348508" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe><p style=" margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-72692942252731908392023-08-22T14:49:00.004+12:002023-08-24T17:05:07.849+12:00Zimbabwe: Economic Crisis, State of the Working Class, Forthcoming Elections, and Urgent Tasks<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEimlPpCjGww2bw4X6vESC1uOHgy-Eqm7Xs5BdBI6i2fze4LEvMG_FhL4STf2ycHubM3QEqi35mmYwGEHlQ3l1A40WpblHUexnehorqdnxkaM9ZBvJ-lxXqgIHIsbnjqWhph4ldclyZ_gh8fI2nzAzZMgQKEWd96bxoi8FwIh_A8QceCr1kBjsA7CA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="437" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEimlPpCjGww2bw4X6vESC1uOHgy-Eqm7Xs5BdBI6i2fze4LEvMG_FhL4STf2ycHubM3QEqi35mmYwGEHlQ3l1A40WpblHUexnehorqdnxkaM9ZBvJ-lxXqgIHIsbnjqWhph4ldclyZ_gh8fI2nzAzZMgQKEWd96bxoi8FwIh_A8QceCr1kBjsA7CA=w651-h437" width="651" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ECONOMIC CRISIS</strong></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></strong></div><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In June this year President, Emerson Mnangagwa announced the next election dates. So all workers must consider the state’s balance sheet. The <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/455296/national-debt-of-zimbabwe-in-relation-to-gross-domestic-product-gdp/" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; color: #f3686d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">national debt to GDP ratio</a> explodes year over year peaking to 102.33% in 2023, with our lives in hock to imperialist finance capital year over year into the future. Zimbabwe experienced another round of hyperinflation hitting a high of <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/inflation-cpi" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; color: #f3686d; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">175.8% in June</a> retreating in July to 101.5% . This is how our ruling class imposes its debts on us, as long as we let them.</p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This is the second time, the other was last year around the same period, that in a short space of time the incomes of workers were wiped out by over 500 per cent with prices of basic goods and services ballooning at an absurd pace whilst incomes remain stagnant. Their debt imposed on the masses poses the question. For the working class to survive the capitalist system at home and imperialism must die. The working class needs to take control of wages and prices! Only the Revolutionary Workers Group(RWG) has a program to stop inflation. Our transitional program completes the national democratic revolution, it breaks the debt trap by workers self management and control of the big national and foreign businesses, industries, mines, and lands. </p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The immediate background to this is the neo liberal policies of the second regime which devalued incomes and savings by equating the values of the local currency and that of the US dollar in 2018 followed by a directive scrapping the use of other currencies other than the local one without express permission via the law. We need the laws to be written by and for the working masses, the poor and landless farmers. Our transitional program creates a bridge to the masses writing the laws that govern the economy, and that bridge is through class struggle, self-organisation and political independence from the capitalist class both foreign and domestic. </p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Through these raft of policies the state ensured that business and government made massive profits and surpluses respectively whilst the working masses continued to pay for the crisis through devalued wages right through the Covid-19 era. Internationally the last five years have generally been characterised by slow growth and a recession during the Covid-19 era with governments, from imperialist centres and semi colonies, resorting to attacks on incomes and working conditions to navigate the crisis of falling profitability. </p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">STATE OF THE WORKING CLASS</strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The state of the working class is dire. De-industrialisation and informalisation of the economy has drastically reduced the numbers and quality of employed workers. Workers in formal employment now constitute a minority of the working population which is dominated by informal or self-employed workers with a large number of unemployed on the margins. This objective situation has weakened the working class coupled with subjective actions by leaders which have rendered the class redundant and docile in the face of attacks by capital. Very few trade unions are still standing up to attacks by both business and capital as they force on the working class the burden of paying for the crisis of capitalism in a subdued semi colony. </p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The situation has been made worse by the capture by the ruling party in alliance with its Chinese and Russian masters of a leading faction in the main trade union federation the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) at the 2021 congress resulting in the up to now dominant pro main opposition, Citizens Coalition For Change(CCC), faction being vanquished. Despite being aligned to the opposition the former leaders engaged in actions which despite being insufficiently prepared provided opportunity for deepening and broadening fight backs.</p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Today even token action has become taboo with the last nail in the coffin being the suspension of a militant trade unionist on spurious charges in desperate attempts to weed the federation of any alternative voices. The recent call by workers for action against useless local currency(ZWL) wages and in support of a petition to stop the president from signing the Labour Amendment Bill was actively sabotaged by the federation. Workers should organise themselves on the ground to conquer unions and a federation which are independent of various wings of imperialism through total workers control and militant action.</p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">FORTHCOMING ELECTIONS</strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">On 23 August presidential, legislative and council elections will be held. This will be the second time Zimbabweans go to a poll since the advent of the post-coup second republic. In the 2018 elections we called on workers to boycott the plebiscite as a contest between bourgeoise parties in which workers had no viable representative. Our assessment is that the election is heavily tilted in favour of the ruling party which has manipulated the pre-election environment as well capturing the election management body, Zimbabwe Election Commission (ZEC), despite its core base of the peasantry and beneficiaries of mining claims and residential stands in the cities and peri urban areas. South Africa Federation of Trade Unions(SAFTU), in its statement on the elections, acknowledged that the elections will not be free and fair and are essentially a contest between parties that represent the reigning and rising wings of imperialism. The opposition CCC enjoys massive support across the population especially from workers, informal workers, unemployed youths and urban poor. A large number of the peasantry also support it. The continued economic crisis and absence of a viable working class alternative have all worked in favour of the opposition despite its pro-capital and impractical Manifesto.</p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The chances of the opposition in this election can, to an extent, be favoured by the relative access to rural areas, digital innovation and cracks within the ruling party and regime which can manifest in the conduct of ZEC, the courts and security apparatus. Its greatest challenge will be the entrenched apathy among its support base and its organisational capacity as a result of shambolic primaries and sidelining of key leaders and groups. To its credit CCC did survive an onslaught to capture and/or crush it by the ruling party using an array of strategies soon after the death of its founding leader in 2018. It has emerged as a strong petit bourgeoisie party rising on the desperate support of the working class and poor masses eager for “change”. Despite the economic crisis and huge support, its ascendancy to political power depends to the extent to which ZEC, the courts and security forces are “pressured” to respect the will of the “people” by the working masses, ruling party factions, observers and most importantly the different wings of imperialism.</p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LEFT DIVISIONS ON PARTICIPATION OF WORKERS</strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Three distinct positions have emerged on the attitude organised labour, the working masses, youths/students, progressive movements, radical intellectuals and socialists should take on the impending elections. Two are on extreme ends with one occupying the middle space. The first one is that ‘…<em style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">let us fully and unconditionally support the viable opposition, CCC, as the best foot forward to defeat the regime and usher in democracy first. Everything else, including key </em><em style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">workers’ demands</em><em style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, would follow from this</em>.’ No conditions just hope for the better thus giving the opposition a blank cheque. This position is being propelled by the pro opposition bureaucrats with some workers in tow. The second, and middle of the road, position is, that ‘…<em style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">despite the character of the main opposition and facing a formidable and ruthless dictatorship workers cannot stand aside and have to offer conditional support to the viable opposition, CCC, by tabling workers demands to it</em>.’ The main reason for this is the entrenching of an authoritarian dictatorship of the military supported regime that has closed all democratic space through crushing protests and strikes as well as persecuting and jailing activists and workers. A section of the working class and socialist organisations champion this call. They argue that not doing so will alienate the left from the workers still under the grip of liberal illusions.</p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The last position characterises elections as a bourgeoisie democratic ritual more so if it is a contest between capitalist parties. In the absence of a workers or centrist party workers would be called on to boycott the elections and concentrate on building their forces to fight neoliberalism and dictatorship in alliance with progressive sectors of society. It argues that, firstly, it is naive for workers to think that merely participating in an election being run by an authoritarian and neoliberal coup dynasty (waiting for turns to rule) can usher in a new government. Secondly, it is disingenuous to suggest that a new petit bourgeoisie neoliberal (anti-worker) government brings about democracy and good conditions for workers.</p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It is true that workers still have faith in CCC because of its roots in the working class but we cannot run away from the fact that once in power CCC will not serve workers but capital so it is our duty to point out clearly that a CCC victory will not fundamentally change the situation of workers. The condition of workers can only be transformed through struggle. It is not in dispute that we are in a semi-colonial authoritarian state presided over by a comprador bourgeoisie class managing the economy on behalf of both Western and Eastern imperialism and local capitalists whilst looting massively. It is doing everything to close the democratic space and take away workers rights simply because that is demanded by imperialism facing acute crisis coupled to late primitive accumulation.</p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Crony capitalism” is small fish compared to traditional, historic capitalism and imperialism despite its apparent concrete and immediate form. It is expressed as anachronistic “primitive accumulation” which involves overt looting and corruption, actions that have been disguised by the big mafia through legal and ideological smokescreens. The basic proposition is that the working class should not rely on elections to change its situation. Instead it must take it upon itself to organise and lead the fight for basic social and economic rights and interests. </p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">TASKS OF REVOLUTIONARIES FACING MONOPOLY CAPITALIST STATES</strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The level of democracy corresponds to the economic stability of a given country. It is naive to think that any new leaders would be neutral on labour and democracy issues especially now when the capitalist system threatens human existence and nature. An example is Zambia where the “liberal” Hichilema is already closing democratic space by blocking the opposition from holding rallies as the economic situation begins to deteriorate with the price of basic goods like mealie meal skyrocketing. The form of a bourgeoisie regime or state does matter to the working class in proportion to its level of organisation and preparedness to fight. </p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In Egypt and Sudan workers played a key role in bringing down brutal dictators despite subsequent retreat as a result of insufficient organisational and ideological independence. The crisis of the working class in Zimbabwe is a crisis of working class leadership. A liberal state can change into a dictatorial one and vice versa due to objective conditions and not subjective choices. Why do workers have to wait for elections to fight a dictator who is in charge of the elections when it could have unleashed the mighty power of the working class? What we are seeing is the deliberate design by labour leaders to ignore basic working class principles only to stampede behind a liberal regime as part of a counter-revolutionary global popular front with imperialism. </p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What then should be the attitude of revolutionaries to an election in which there is no workers’ alternative yet the issue of protecting the democratic space is of great importance? The ruling regime has become so vicious and brazen that in the near future it would be almost impossible to organise if workers do not act in time. The recently passed Labour Amendment Act makes it impossible to engage in a lawful strike whilst punishing severely anyone involved in collective job action, the bedrock of working class resistance and advancement of its interests. Other laws have been enacted to criminalise receiving support and solidarity from outside as well as making it impossible for community organisations to operate. What is more threatening is the lurking military faction of the regime waiting for total control and imposition of deep attacks on workers on the basis of a militarised state like Rwanda and Thailand. That would spell doom for the workers and must be resisted. </p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">URGENT TASKS</strong> </p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Workers should not wait for five years to fight dictatorship and poverty through a popular front with an anti worker petit bourgeoisie party that is controlled by Western imperialism through the Brenthurst Foundation, a rabid anti worker outfit. Any call for support of the main opposition is a deliberate ploy to deliver the working class to imperialism disarming them for imminent struggles ahead, no matter the outcome of the elections. A united, mobilised and independent platform of workers alongside other exploited and oppressed groups can fight the dictatorship better. </p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Workers must fight and defeat partisan bureaucrats tying them to different imperialist wings thereby demobilising them. Ultimately, the question of working class action is a question of leadership and workers control of unions. We cannot rely on China to resolve our problems brought to us by western exploitation. Workers need to organise councils in the factories, build the unions and councils and coordinate them across Southern Africa that fight and are managed democratically, up to and including the insurrection by a Government of Workers and poor Farmers!</p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We recognise the counter-revolutionary character of the situation that requires us to advance our program of building an Anti-imperialist United Front(AIUF) of Southern African workers and poor farmers to resist the imposition of a regional and global Imperialist Popular Front(IPF) behind rival imperialist blocs East and West. For us in the first instance this is a matter of fighting imperialist proxy wars and building the international party to overcome the crisis of revolutionary leadership by means of militant propaganda for Trotskyism and Leninism. </p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">For a sliding scale of wages and prices and employment for all who can work; working conditions should improve for all workers!</strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">For the introduction of state projects to employ all the unemployed; central and local government must stop the attacks on vendors!</strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Land must be distributed to all poor peasants together with a state bank to provide inputs to all small farmers! </strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Jobs for all with a reduction in working hours until all who want to work can find a job! </strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">To provide jobs for all big and imperialist assets must be nationalised and put under workers control and self-management!</strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Workers form action committees to lead the resistance to the growing attacks on the wages and working conditions of the poor and the livelihood of the majority poor! </strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We call for free and quality health care, housing and education for all!</strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Workers break with CCC and ZANU (PF) and form a worker’s party that truly champions the interests of workers and poor masses!</strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Workers form rank and file bodies to lead action in all unions and break with the reformist trade union leadership!</strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">For a workers state that defends workers and peasants against the local and foreign capitalists!</strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">No to US/EU and China/Russia imperialism fronted by the two leading parties! </strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">No to reformism, centrism and fake Trotskyism, build a fighting socialist party!</strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">For a workers and peasants’ government on the basis of the armed people to implement decisions that benefit the workers and the poor!</strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">For an African socialist revolution as part of the international revolution that alone can guarantee a better life for all!</strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">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!</strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></strong></p><p style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">First Published in <i>Revolutionary Workers Group of Zimbabwe</i> Blog <a href="https://rwgzimbabwe.wordpress.com/2023/08/21/zimbabwe-economic-crisis-state-of-the-working-class-forthcoming-elections-and-urgent-tasks/">https://rwgzimbabwe.wordpress.com/2023/08/21/zimbabwe-economic-crisis-state-of-the-working-class-forthcoming-elections-and-urgent-tasks/</a></span></strong></p>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-33006934606430226782023-08-21T13:50:00.000+12:002023-08-21T13:50:30.119+12:00BRICS in Africa and Tasks of the Revolutionary Left<p><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoSut5dHbEsKfJVzGPzTJ1KkD_Ix63xrEyNMQJzdyaIXWLmkJhH7t0-qG7_KIo2XD4piTrMGqQO9H0Yn_qEgMWawaa4K4cipv5HEddoehFRLc6VOmg7SPz3oUzxRi9MtX8yMZLzBeGj69tyzvnBqh5CQKqiEsJhblY7cPptmwmAaw2dJzS0Kiqqg/s283/BRICS%2015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="178" data-original-width="283" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoSut5dHbEsKfJVzGPzTJ1KkD_Ix63xrEyNMQJzdyaIXWLmkJhH7t0-qG7_KIo2XD4piTrMGqQO9H0Yn_qEgMWawaa4K4cipv5HEddoehFRLc6VOmg7SPz3oUzxRi9MtX8yMZLzBeGj69tyzvnBqh5CQKqiEsJhblY7cPptmwmAaw2dJzS0Kiqqg/w606-h314/BRICS%2015.jpg" width="606" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white;">I</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px;">n a few days’ time BRICS nations, comprising two emerging imperialist powers and three advanced semi colonies, will meet in South Africa (SA). For the first time, one of the leading members of the grouping, Vladimir Putin of Russia, will be absent following manoeuvres by traditional imperialists, using the International Criminal Court (ICC), to disrupt the gathering. The meeting takes place at an important juncture in the development, or rather degeneration, of global imperialism. The proxy war in Ukraine, pitting NATO and Russia over the control of Eastern Europe, is the main feature of imperialist tension and aggression in frantic attempts to salvage the sure decline and death of capitalism without regard for the fate of humanity and nature. Many semi colonial states have applied to be part of the grouping and in most likelihood will be admitted.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The bloc is an international alliance of former deformed/degenerated workers states and former western colonies and semi-colonies for the purpose of projecting the economic and strategic interests of China and Russia as emerging imperialist nations engaged in a vicious war with their western counterparts for the extraction of surplus value and guarantee of key resources. One subject likely to be on the Agenda in South Africa is ‘de-dolarisation’. BRICS members and prospective members are building closer trading relations paid by currency swaps. Brazil (and Argentina which is a prospective member) are already paying for imports with their own currencies. The UAE and India recently agreed to trade in oil with their own currencies. The effects will be to trade with partners without being forced to use the US$. The advantage of de-dolarisation is that it undermines one basic mechanism which exploits the oppressed countries. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The US$ is a fiat currency which is overvalued due to its role as a reserve currency. This undervalues other currencies relative to the US$ allowing a transfer of value from oppressed countries to the US. As more nations are attracted to the new trading bloc the US$ will gradually devalue weakening the financial hegemony of US imperialism. Whether de-dollarisation brings genuine economic independence to the BRICs nations from Russia and China remains to be seen. As imperialist powers they cannot afford to allow the genuine national self-determination of their economic partners. Of course, as agents of Russia and China, those in government and the labour movement in the oppressed members of BRICS, and who bought and paid for, promote the narrative of a multipolar world based on equality and sovereignty, using this prospect to sell BRICS membership to the masses as the road to national independence and freedom. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The attitude of so-called Marxists on the nature of China and Russia informs their position on the war in Ukraine and has influenced their characterisation of the role of BRICS in semi colonial countries like South Africa. Failure to recognise the imperialist nature of the two states has led to either defense of these countries as “progressive” anti-imperialist nations fighting for a “fair” multi polar world or exaggerating the influence and hegemony of the west. Either way the implication of such a view on the role these nations are playing in semi-colonial states is that they play a progressive role that is beneficial to them all. Nothing can be further from the truth. The relationship with Russia/China is one of unequals riding on the misery of workers and poor peasants who are affected by poor working conditions and displacements to make way for extraction of vital mineral resources and surplus value.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The SA Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is an excellent example of the new “progressive” popular front between a radical petit bourgeoisie party representing the ”Pan African” section of the national bourgeoisie in alliance with Chinese and Russian imperialism hiding behind the facade of mutual benefit. Malema is open about his admiration for Cuba as a model for future economic development in South Africa. China has found a reliable partner in the EFF which uses clever rhetoric to hoodwink the masses shifting focus from the African National Congress(ANC) which is reluctant to sever ties with Western Imperialism and the Maoist Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (SRWP) which has failed to build a strong mass base in the working class. The bureaucrats of the South Africa Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) have delivered the workers to the dead end of the EFF-China/Russia Popular Front to ensure a compliant and distracted labour force. As in Cuba and other Bolivarian states this alliance comes at the cost of workers’ rights and acute exploitation. Petit bourgeoisie radical nationalist parties like the EFF have anchored themselves on pseudo Marxism with their radical rhetoric capturing thousands in the working class. An example of China’s influence on political parties across Africa is that of the leader of the Socialist Party of Zambia, allies of SRWP, who has openly voiced support for the bourgeoisie Zimbabwe African National Union(ZANU-PF) in the coming elections. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Recently a coup took place in<a href="https://www.arabnews.com/node/2356471/world" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> Niger</a> ousting the pro France president and government. The coupists claim they were forced to act as a result of the deteriorating security situation in the country, a key reason given by other western African countries which have experienced a coup recently, Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso. Burkina Faso’s coup regime supports the coup in Niger and injects a <a href="https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/07/30/burkina-faso-ibrahim-traore-sankara-imperialism/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">strong advocacy</a> for the Cuban and Boliviarian ‘revolutions’ in Latin America which are strongly tied to Chinese and Russian imperialism. We argue that the <a href="https://livingmarxism.blog/2014/11/02/brics-around-the-neck-of-the-proletariat/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Bolivarian model </a>has, along with the formation of BRICS, been a strong inspiration for national revolutions in Africa. We would predict more coups in Africa that hold up the Bolivarian/BRICS example as a guide to their participation in the dominant existing global imperialist popular front. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Soon after the coup France and other western countries together with ECOWAS condemned the coup and urged for restoration of civilian rule. <a href="https://savageminds.substack.com/p/whats-happening-in-niger-is-far-from" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">France and ECOWAS</a> have shown their intent to intervene militarily if civilian rule is not restored. This latest coup, showing <a href="https://www.arabnews.com/node/2356471/world" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">popular </a>hatred for France and support for Russia, is just the latest expression of the ongoing degeneration of Western imperialism which has caused untold suffering on the masses and ravaged the region through continuing war. The working masses are facing the brunt of the war and economic crisis through slave wages and high prices as France, along with other imperialist nations, want to shift the cost of paying for the structural crisis of capitalism to the shoulders of workers and the poor masses. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The coup is a pre-emptive tactic by a section of the local bourgeoisie to forestall popular revolt and direct anger to a wing of imperialism whilst leaning on another wing as the basis for maintaining capitalist relations against the threat of revolution. Popular support for the coup is a reflection of the desperate situation workers and the masses find themselves in and yearning to break free of the exploitative and oppressive environment they find themselves in. The only solution to the crisis of capitalism in a semi-colony is the permanent revolution that combines national liberation with socialist revolution in Niger as part of a socialist West Africa. We oppose the coup and call for the independent mobilisation of workers and poor masses against both the Bouzoma government and the coup government both representing wings of imperialism suffocating the country. This position arises from a correct view that contemporary global capitalist society is essentially characterised by the fight between traditional and emerging imperialist powers over resources and surplus value.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">In SA the ANC and its spinoff the EFF arose out of the historic settlement to trade in the military struggle for bourgeois democracy in 1995. Since<a href="https://www.cwgusa.org/?p=224." style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> SA joined BRICS</a> in 2009 it has pinned its hopes on China to break out of its subordination to Western Imperialism. 14 years later that dream has become a nightmare as the ANC regime is now not only the lapdog of Western imperialism but also China and Russia. The working people are locked into this imperialist popular front by the regime and by its corrupt unions incorporated in the state. In Zimbabwe ZANU-PF does China’s bidding legislating against Western sanctions, and against workers’ rights to meet the terms of China’s win-win deals. Here is the evidence that the BRICS model for development is a trap that denies the working masses any say in their future. This must not be the future of the Sahel and the whole of Africa where the military regimes are allowed to build new popular fronts with Russia and China. To smash the armed popular fronts like ECOWAS we call for independent workers’ organisations to form a continent-wide anti-imperialist united front capable of defending itself from military repression. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Marxists, opposed to Stalinists and centrists, should start from the basic position that China and Russia have transformed to become imperialist states exporting excessive finance capital for their own interests and using comprador bourgeoisie governments in semi-colonies and labour bureaucrats to protect and advance their interests. We argue that this relationship is that of an international popular front tying the working masses to the imperialists through the national bourgeois regimes. Against this popular front which exploits the masses desire for national independence to draw them into this popular front, revolutionaries must counter-pose the Anti-Imperialist United Front (AIUF) to break workers and oppressed from the bourgeois regimes and the imperialist powers they serve. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">How will this struggle take shape? In West Africa we see the military leadership as one fraction of the national bourgeoisie substituting itself for the people. Marxists have no confidence in military rule which, like Sisi in Egypt, or Mnangagwa In Zimbabwe, imposes an authoritarian regime with the barest of democratic figleaves hiding their subservience to imperialism. Marxists warn against military regimes and their bourgeois and petty bourgeois nationalist agendas. <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">We are for building an international united front of workers, poor peasants and rank and file soldiers in every country to take the power into our own hands, to join hands across national borders and fight to complete the unfinished bourgeois democratic revolution as the Permanent Revolution. </em>The theory of permanent revolution is our guide for socialist action in a semi colony dominated by two wings of imperialism. Alliances like BRICS and NATO serve these different wings in a rush to maximise production and super-exploitation.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">To provide jobs all big and imperialist assets must be nationalised and put under workers control and self-management!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">For workers action committees to lead the resistance to the growing attacks on the wages and working conditions of the poor and the livelihood of the majority poor!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Workers form rank and file bodies to lead action in all unions and break with the reformist trade union leadership!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">No to US/EU and China/Russia imperialism fronted by local bourgeoise parties!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">No to reformism, centrism and fake Trotskyism, build a fighting revolutionary socialist party!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">For workers and peasants’ government on the basis of the armed people to implement decisions that benefit the workers and the poor!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">For an African socialist revolution as part of the international revolution that alone can guarantee a better life for all!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">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!</span></p>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-45566294651601907112023-08-19T17:47:00.001+12:002023-08-19T17:47:57.733+12:00Bipolar World - Socialism or Extinction! Down with Capitalist War! For a Socialist World!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgAUGdHbfLLXmiHG48msUSjo36KkYGHc0-YGHsZVvVQqJ1ixm48f6fWfUnC8rs2h1hB2874uQHGCMHtgmVkAEZKrhlyct9FStsKpSumyYSWfivcmZjgmTuhNBpoGdPCTESftVNwOmYluIiTJMy2530G2iRmX5mBJX_xU-muisX7akaE6aueaNzALw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="971" data-original-width="1491" height="417" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgAUGdHbfLLXmiHG48msUSjo36KkYGHc0-YGHsZVvVQqJ1ixm48f6fWfUnC8rs2h1hB2874uQHGCMHtgmVkAEZKrhlyct9FStsKpSumyYSWfivcmZjgmTuhNBpoGdPCTESftVNwOmYluIiTJMy2530G2iRmX5mBJX_xU-muisX7akaE6aueaNzALw=w664-h417" width="664" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"> <b>The 1917 February Revolution in Russia was led by striking women</b></div><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; font-weight: 700;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; font-weight: 700;">From Crises to Wars</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">As Marx once said the old order is dying but the new order is yet to be born. Capitalism is a finite society which goes from its birth in Europe in the late 18<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">thC</span> to maturity in the late 19<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">thC </span>century, the ‘Late stage’ capitalism in the 20<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">thC </span>finishing in ‘End Stage’ capitalism in the 21<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">stC</span>. The basic contradiction between Capital and Nature brings the death sentence to Capital. As the contradiction intensifies it speeds up events driven by class struggle. Capital’s destruction of the material conditions for its own existence becomes visible as chaotic forces such as slumps and ecological collapse. There is no way out for the ruling class. It can no longer rule in the old way because the working masses have nothing to lose and refuse to be ruled. Workers refuse to starve or die in wars of mutual destruction to give the breath of life into capitalism. As Trotsky said, workers are natural dialecticians, they see the objective reality of capitalism destroying itself, creating the chaos of destruction of nature and humanity, and subjectively begin to become conscious of the necessity for socialist revolution.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The new socialist order exists inside the dying capitalist order in embryonic form as the precondition for socialism. The working class is now the big majority, and its advanced productivity can produce enough material plenty for a good life for all. But while it is <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">conscious of itself</em>, it is not yet <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">conscious for itself</em> as the only class capable of building a new socialist order. Workers need an international revolutionary party and program based on Trotsky’s <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Transitional program</em> of 1938 that subjectively transcends the objective situation. The program teaches them that class struggle will prove that even their most basic needs for life and liberty cannot be met short of the overthrow of the capitalist system. Yet since capitalism will not die of its own accord it has to be overthrown. In what follows we outline our method and program for making that historic transition from the death agony of capitalism to the birth pangs of socialism. We begin with the analysis of the war in Ukraine.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">The Lessons of the Ukraine War</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The war in Ukraine is the chaotic manifestation of the underlying contradiction between Capital and Nature exploding to the surface in the inter-imperialist war for Ukraine. <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism – the epoch of crises, wars, and revolutions.</em> The war is the result of the terminal crisis that leads to war which in turn creates the conditions for revolution. Lenin, in <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Imperialism; the Highest Stage of Capitalism</em>, argues the limits to profitability in the advanced capitalist countries forces them to export surplus capital to the colonies to extract enough labour value, by driving down the value of wages, to restore the rate of profit in the ‘motherland’. Marx explains in<a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch13.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> Capital</a> that this is caused by the Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall (LTRPF) due to the rising ratio of Constant capital which does not create value, to Variable capital which does produce value (c/v). The export of surplus capital is a counter-tendency to the LTPRF and drives the redivision of the world among the big powers competing to maximise super profits/absolute rent.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Ukraine is a perfect example. Applying Marx’s law, in the post WW2 boom period the US and the EU powers experienced falling profits. To create the conditions for a new boom in production it was necessary to massively destroy existing c and v as the equivalent to another world depression or world war to restore the rate of profit. Neoliberalism was launched in the 1980s to ‘restructure’, i.e., destroy fixed assets and wages in the semi-colonial world and the imperialist heartlands. But the real prize of neoliberalism was the restoration of capitalism in Russia and China in 1992 opening up the former Degenerated Workers States (DWS’s) to world capitalism and a massive devaluation of c and v. Yet by 2000 the Western Powers had failed to replace the state monopoly capitalist (SMC) regime in Russia then under Putin and gain access to devalued assets. Similarly, in China they succeeded in opening up the restored capitalist economy for Western investment, but failed to break the monopoly state’s control over its banks and key economic sectors. Even the ‘boom’ of the 1990s was due more to credit and speculation than real value growth. All up neoliberalism failed to return the<a href="https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2012/07/11/gravity-the-higgs-boson-and-the-law-of-the-trpf/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> rate of profit</a> to the post-war boom level and the so-called “End of History” was history.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Neoliberalism privatised state-owned property and drove down wages in the existing capitalist states, but ultimately failed to re-colonise the newly restored capitalism of the former Soviet Union and capitalise on the re-valuing of assets and labour to counter the Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall (<a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch13.htm#:~:text=The%20hypothetical%20series%20drawn%20up%20at%20the%20beginning,continuously%20rising%20organic%20composition%20of%20the%20total%20capital." style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">LTRPF</a>). So long as the former DWS’s resisted colonisation by Western imperialism it was Russia and China which capitalised on their massive territories and economic resources beyond the super-exploitation of Western finance capital. The US/EU then resorted to an aggressive expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe and the Baltic States, using the membership of Georgia and Ukraine as a weapon to provoke a war. The object was to bankrupt, force a regime change and breakup Russia as a stepping stone to recolonising the ex-Soviet Union (SU) and the whole of Eurasia. This plan backfired dramatically as Russia’s economy is now<a href="https://unherd.com/thepost/russias-economy-is-outperforming-germanys/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> growing faster</a> than Germany’s. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The imperialist ruling classes are in denial. Ideology and the propaganda war in both camps dress up their imperialist rivalry with slogans about personal/national freedom (US) and equality/win-win (China). The reformist left pimps the bourgeoisie’s propaganda – for US imperialism or for Russian and Chinese imperialism. This is the<a href="https://www.cwgusa.org/?p=3103" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> social imperialist left</a> – living off the super-exploitation of their colonies and semi-colonies. Most advocates of US social imperialism defend Ukraine from Russia on the grounds of supporting Ukraine’s independence. Those who deny the proxy character of the inter-imperialist war, put Ukraine’s national rights ahead of defeating US militarism. US social imperialists justify the killing both Ukraine and Russian workers in uniform in a war which risks breaking out into nuclear war.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">In reality, inter-imperialist war sharpens the contradiction between bourgeois democracy/ equality, and the underlying <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">bourgeois dictatorship</em>. It exposes the hypocrisy of praising Western democracy against Eurasian dictatorships when both evolve into imperialist<a href="https://www.cwgusa.org/?p=3021" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> monopoly capitalist states</a> to manage inter-imperialist war. US military invasions since 1991 push the propaganda of ‘democracy and freedom’ against Russia’s ‘equality and sovereignty’ and China’s ‘socialist win-win’ narratives. All are crisis-driven projects that serve their bourgeois sovereign ‘right’ to restore profits by any means necessary. The cannon fodder gets no say in this proxy war in Ukraine as it affects both individual rights and national rights of minorities. Ukraine’s right to national self-determination, and the rights of national minorities such as Russian speakers in the Donbass, are sacrificed to the inter-imperialist war. This subordinates these national rights to the reactionary right of rival imperialist powers to go to war over Ukraine to decide which one will exploit the strategic resources of their victims. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Geopolitics: From Eurasia to Africa and Latin America</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Imperialism arises from the shift from competitive capitalism to monopoly capitalism where finance capital concentrates and centralises into fewer, bigger imperialist powers to create<a href="https://www.cwgusa.org/?p=3021" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> state monopoly capitalism</a>. As mentioned above, it is the reaction to the limits set by nation states by exporting capital to capture super-profits and absolute rent to counter the crisis of falling profits. But 100 years later when neoliberalism has failed to restore profits, the structural crises of the 20<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">stC </span>Late Capitalism has become End Stage Capitalism’s terminal crisis in the 21<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">stC</span> as it crashes into the limits imposed by Nature. We define the <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">terminal crisis</em> as capitalism destroying its conditions of existence. It can no longer activate <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch14.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">measures to counter the LTRPF </a>without destroying nature. The terminal crisis spreads from the top to bottom to download the cost of the crises onto the workers and poor farmers in the semi-colonies and the imperialist rivals, as they compete for the shrinking sources of strategic resources.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">As the terminal crisis intensifies it picks up speed and spreads globally creating the impression of chaos among nations. But ‘chaos’ is a bourgeois tag which does not penetrate to the underlying causes of the terminal crisis which is the decay of global capitalism. Lacking a Marxist analysis, <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">the bourgeois fail to see that their national sovereignty like their individual sovereignty is a fetish.</em></span> Nations were formed to protect national capital, but capitalism since the late 19<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">thcC </span>was forced by the LTRPF to escape national borders to restore the rate of profit. All wars since have been in the interests of one or other imperialist power. That is why the war in Ukraine cannot be a war confined to Ukraine and Russia and must overflow into a global war. It is currently the major front marking the fault line between Europe and Asia – a proxy war on both sides that must spread to other fronts across other continents to repartition the world and reset the imperialist pecking order. We scratch below the surface of trade deals, coups, special military operations and there we find the US/EU facing off against China/Russia. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The speed and intensity of this global war drive cannot be explained other than by Marx’s dialectical method. The US and EU powers as declining imperialisms exhibit a failing capacity to produce value at home caused by the LTRPF. The export of excess profit to compensate for falling profits at home then determines their relative competitiveness in the world market. To make super-profits abroad the US and EU have to build branch plants in countries with cheap labour and compliant states. As we argued above the US/EU were desperate to recolonise the SU and China as new sources of strategic resources and markets to save their massive capital stocks from devaluing. They poured in masses of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to take advantage of the natural wealth of these countries only to be faced by protectionist barriers imposed by a newly evolved form of state monopoly capital. The outcome is that the US/EU economies in decline not only failed to recolonise them, they had to face the prospect of failing to compete with them on the global market.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">As the war in Ukraine heads for a stalemate Russia and the US are negotiating with advanced weaponry over a new border between Eastern and Western Ukraine. Both are under pressure from their allies to end the war. The EU cannot sustain more economic damage from the blowback from the war and China has to make preparations for what it sees as the coming war with the US. The US sees China as its mortal enemy globally as each competes to expand their spheres of influence at the expense of their rival. The Ukraine war on the Eurasian front is now ‘pivoting’ into a wider war with Russia and China in East Asia over several fronts. While Taiwan is the main target as the US Pacific ground zero, South East Asia and the whole Asia Pacific is being drawn into the fallout. In Europe, Poland is mobilizing at the Belarus border as Wagner parks its troops there. At the same time new fronts are developing in Africa and Latin America. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Such fronts in South East Asia and the Asia Pacific are being built to encircle China as the US bullies countries in the region to sign up to NATO East to oppose China’s growing economic influence. The object is to boost friendly regimes like Myanmar and regime change unfriendly ones such as Thailand. Australia’s Labor Government is in AUKUS and NZ is attending the meetings of NATO East. In East Africa the latest coup in Niger has thrown up a new front where a proxy war between US/France and Russia for control of its uranium appears certain. The US has long supported Uganda and Rwanda in a covert war in the DRC to contest China’s grab of vital minerals like diamonds and Cobalt. Other African countries are being forced to take sides or stay neutral.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">In Latin America the US is bullying Brazil and Argentina to abandon BRICS as the BRICS meeting draws closer. In all the Latin American regimes, the fractions of the bourgeois that side with one or other great powers, will create opportunities for the US to intervene to stage color revolutions and coups that end in proxy wars. All these wars are blatantly about whether the US or China dominates the control of global strategic resources like uranium, gold, lithium etc., to further plunder the Global South and impoverish its peoples.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">As the global terminal crisis of capital deepens, imperialism unloads the cost of paying for its crisis onto the shoulders of the poor masses of the global south. They have no choice but to fight for their existence. In the past the Western powers subdivided the world into their own spheres of interest. Both world wars arose when a declining power Germany went to war to rebuild its global position. Today, the whole West is in decline. Germany’s GDP has fallen behind Russia as it pays the price of the EU backing the US/NATO war on Russia. Ironically Russia has taken its place as the economic sanctions and the Ukraine war has forced it to develop a close strategic alliance with China.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">So, while Western imperialism declines, the new imperialism of the East continues to grow. In End Stage capitalism as we have argued, all wars will tend to become a world-wide war with many fronts. <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Since both imperialist blocs are equally destructive of humanity and nature, both must be opposed by the world’s workers. Yet the revolutionary left either does not recognise Russia and China as imperialist, or retreats to the defence of one against the other as being the more ‘progressive’, suppressing the organisation of an independent working-class position on imperialist war.</em></span> We now move to an analysis of the prospects for a growing resistance to inter-imperialist wars, to the alliances between imperialism and pro-imperialist bourgeois regimes, and the need for the new world party of socialist revolution and program necessary to lead the global masses to overthrow imperialism and build socialism.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">The Global Imperialist Popular Front</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The vast majority of the ostensible revolutionary left include those from Stalinist, Maoist or centrist Trotskyist origins. They are the modern Mensheviks who believe that imperialism has the capacity to be reformed in stages. This strategy calls for popular fronts, in which workers ally with the progressive petty-bourgeoisie and the liberal bourgeoisie, to take the parliamentary road to managing any crisis in the interests of workers. Historic examples abound of such <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">imperialist popular fronts</em> (IPF) betraying the workers to imperialism and preparing the ground for fascist reaction. Both WW1 and WW2 were sold to workers by Mensheviks as gigantic IPFs. Workers were rallied around the national flag of one or more imperialist powers against the enemy imperialist powers. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The historic betrayal of the Menshevik 2nd International in not opposing WW1 was condemned by Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky at the<a href="https://livingmarxism.blog/2022/04/02/for-a-new-zimmerwald-2/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> Zimmerwald</a> conference in 1915. Lenin and Trotsky guided the Bolsheviks through the first four Congresses of the Comintern to counterpose the Anti-Imperialist United Front (AIUF) to the IPF. The Stalinised Comintern after 1924 transformed the AIUF of the Second Congress into an imperialist popular front. Stalin’s first great betrayal was the ‘block of 4 classes’ with the bourgeois KMT which led to the massacre of the leadership of the Communist Party in 1927. Later, following its ultraleft block with Hitler against the German revolution in 1933, Stalin flipped into a popular front with social democracy and the centre parties in the European imperialist states to forestall socialist revolutions in Europe and prevent the political revolution against the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">It was in this period that Trotsky warned that in Latin America the Popular Front Party (PFP) was the governmental form of the IPF, betraying the revolution in Latin America in the interwar period. With the rise of Russia and China in the 21<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">stC</span> our tendency was the only one to argue that the<a href="https://www.cwgusa.org/?p=695" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> Bolivarian movement</a> of Chavez joined with Castro’s ‘socialism’ in the ALBA states, to form an IPF with the emerging Russian and Chinese Imperialism. The rise as a ‘progressive great power bloc’ was sold to the masses as the ‘socialist 5<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span> International’ alternative to Western imperialism, and an escape route from the crisis of capitalism wrought upon the global south entirely by the US/EU powers.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">We predicted that the Bolivarian IPF would become an<a href="https://www.cwgusa.org/?p=1088" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> example</a> for more betrayals across all the continents. The Mensheviks in the West (aka social imperialists) put off action to defeat their own ruling classes into the future. In Ukraine, the Russophiles pretend that the war is <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">not</em> a proxy war between imperialists because Russia is not imperialist. Those who recognise Russia and China as Great Powers refuse to acknowledge that they are imperialist in the sense of plundering the Global South for strategic resources and pumping out surplus value immiserating the working masses. They say Russia is only defending itself from US regime change and NATO encroachment with the help of China and other allies. They conveniently pass the task of defeating US imperialism to Russian workers in uniform in a military front with their national bourgeoisie. It is not surprising then, that as the war spreads to more fronts on other continents, that the prevailing position in the Global South is inspired by the Bolivarians. The US hegemon is held responsible for all the reaction in the post-WW2 period and Russia and China are progressive states defending themselves.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The formation of two blocs around the US/EU and Russia and China exist only because members regard theirs to be the more ‘progressive’. We have seen how this applies to the Western bloc’s propaganda proclaiming dedication to democracy and human rights. It is equally clear in the Eastern Bloc. If we take the case of BRICS+ which is undergoing rapid expansion, we hear the same message from the pro-Russia/China national bourgeoisies. It runs like this. <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">‘Russia and China do not sanction or threaten to go to war with their partners. They do win-win deals where both sides get a fair share of the profits. Their models of economic development since the restoration of capitalism continue that of the Soviet policy of economic and military aid. It represents the historical model for the Global South where state to state deals are done without political strings attached.’ </em>The bi-polar military front opening up over Niger vindicates this model when the Coup leader preaches the evils of US/French colonialism and the benefits of alignment to Russia.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">This Bolivarian model is presented flamboyantly by Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in South Africa. He campaigns like an African Hugo Chavez for a united Africa which can become equal partners in the development of capitalism with the help of Russia and China. His statement that “Africa is open for investment” is clearly directed mainly at them because, unlike Western imperialism, they supposedly do not behave like imperialist powers. We reject the popular front narrative of Russia and China engaged in win-win diplomacy and economic fair shares with their colonies and semi-colonies. The slogan of multipolarity rather than bipolarity<a href="https://www.cwgusa.org/?p=224" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> is a cover for BRICS</a> as a union of oppressor and oppressed countries as if they were equals. We argue that the win-win deals are between the imperialist ruling classes and the semi-colonial ruling classes whose ‘fair shares’ in the plunder cost the workers and poor farmers their lives.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">‘Win-win’ deals or ‘fair shares’ steals</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Let’s unpack the delusion of the ‘win-win-fair shares’ model which sends the message that Russian and Chinese imperialisms are ‘progressive’. Much of the appeal of this model is the history of both as ‘socialist’ states. Julius Malema speaks effusively of China’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. We heard that often from Castro and Chavez. We argue that all that remains of this legacy today is the centralised bureaucratised capitalist state. The <a href="https://www.cwgusa.org/?p=3021" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">state monopoly capitalism</a> (SMC) of Russia and China is subject to the law of value and defends that law. Their states’ ability to moderate the free market is designed to maximise profits in the interests of state capital-in-general. In other words, any advantage they have in competing with the US/EU powers owes nothing to ‘socialism’, past or present.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">It took Western imperialism 200 years from birth to maturity to become imperialists exporting capital to super exploit the world’s workers to restore profits. China (and Russia after the lost decade of the 1990s) has had to take the same path from restoration of the market to a high-tech global value chain in 30 years. But it is the same imperialism, the same relations of production, and the same underlying laws of motion. It follows that as SMC regimes Russia and China must compete with their Western rivals to prevent the LTRPF from driving down profits. This means that any sharing of profits with partner regimes will be based on China’s own experience of capitalist development but presented as ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.’ Aid and debt forgiveness then is made to appear as part of a state socialist plan to gain popular approval for equal shares in ‘progressive’ win-win state-to-state deals. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Therefore, mimicking China’s developmental plan requires similar SMC regimes. State-to-state deals between Russia and China and their economic partners must share the ‘characteristics of state capitalism’. In the name of ‘state socialism’ the partner states will eliminate the problem of private property, a major unnecessary cost to capital, by nationalising property rights. Malema is a big fan because he knows that the ‘win-win’ deals depend on taking the workers along.. To win popular support for ‘state socialism’ the working masses must believe that they will get a fair share of the win-win deals like Chinese workers with the provision of infrastructure, jobs, health, housing, living incomes etc. shifting millions out of poverty. China was able to do this by allowing Western imperialism to profit from FDI with cheap inputs from Chinese and global labour in exchange for technology transfer. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">But critically, China never allowed imperialist private direct investment to spread from high tech manufacturing to control of the state, finance and state-owned land. Russia since 2000 has rolled back foreign investment to restore a centralised state-run economy. But now Russia and China are becoming their imperialist partners, they will not be able to retain sufficient value to control the economy except as the agents of imperialism. So while Russia and China’s partners in the Global South may technically become economically independent but not as Malema promises on ‘our terms’, rather ‘their terms’. <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Those terms will be dictated by the making of profits that are necessary to allow Russia’s and China’s stock of surplus capital to be reproduced at a long-term profit rate that allows the further accumulation of capital. Any apparent ‘advantages’ over the US/EU bloc resulting from win-win deals with Russia and China of the US/EU will be determined not by goodwill, or ‘socialism’ but by the efficiencies of state capitalist long-term planning.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Therefore how can Russia and China deliver on promises made by the client regimes to the working masses? There are many risks. The ‘long term’ plan is subject to constant disruption by the terminal crisis of capital, the prospect of unending wars, and more importantly, revolutions. The terminal crisis affects all imperialist states, democratic or autocratic. Russia and China are not immune from the terminal crisis of capital, made worse by climate emergency and the threat of more pandemics. Capitalism on its last legs and nature on the brink of collapse does not contribute much to reducing the risk of permanent crises leading to war and revolutions. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Therefore, any advantages that Russia and China have to displace the US/EU as the ‘lesser evil’, if not ‘progressive’ imperialist bloc, are subject to economic laws of motion that will mobilise an intensified class war between the capitalist and working classes on every front. This high risk of mounting class struggle is factored in by all imperialists when preparing contingency plans for risk management of investment. The new imperialists carry some soviet era goodwill baggage with them which once exhausted cannot offset the risk of the working masses rising up in revolution. This baggage has the name of the IPF used to trap, disarm and divert workers from revolution. This raises the urgent necessity of building an international anti-imperialist united front (AIUF) to challenge and smash the counter-revolutionary IPF. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">The Anti-imperialist United Front</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">AIUF is a UF of workers and poor peasants against imperialism that embodies the permanent revolution in the epoch of imperialism. We recognise that after Lenin’s death the Stalinists turned it into a pro-imperialist popular front. For this reason, Trotsky abandoned it for his concept of permanent revolution after the defeat of the Chinese revolution in 1927. But it remains an accurate concept today, provided it consciously excludes petty bourgeois and bourgeois forces in the UF.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">We justify this practice first, by Lenin’s characterisation of the epoch as imperialist where national self-determination is not possible without the defeat of both the national bourgeoisie <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">and</em> their imperialist masters. Second, by our recognition that Lenin shared Trotsky’s concept of<a href="https://www.cwgusa.org/?p=3021" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> permanent revolution</a> in Russia which Trotsky, after the lesson of China, then applied to all the colonies and semi-colonies. Only revolutionary workers can resolve the unfinished program of the bourgeoisie by means of international socialist revolution. Hence the AIUF applies the method of the UF to the theory/program of permanent revolution in the epoch as a whole.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">This is why in the first decade of the 21<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">stC</span> End Stage capitalism, when the new imperialisms of Russia and China are presented as the ‘progressive’ or ‘socialist’ friends and partners in the revolution, we opposed the Bolivarian IPF posing as a AIUF in front of the masses to trap, defeat and divert the workers and poor farmers. Hence, we recognised the Venezuelan PSUV and the Cuban Communist party as the same reactionary<a href="https://redrave.blogspot.com/2009/12/chavez-5th-column-international.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> Popular Front Parties</a> (PFP) that Trotsky identified in Latin America in the 1930’s. And this is exactly the model adopted in all colonial and semi-colonial bourgeois regimes in Asia and Africa. In fact, they describe the class composition of all ‘populist’ parties including the Peronist party, the South African ANC, and the Communist Party of China (CPC). In every case it is necessary to confront the PFP as the agent of imperialism with the AIUF to break the workers and poor peasants from the petty bourgeois and bourgeois classes. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The AIUF therefore is formed politically to break the workers from the bourgeois PFP particularly when it controls the government and hence legislative power. The object is not to create an independent workers’ party to contest elections but to build a revolutionary party. The AIUF can critically support workers’ parties inside government unless they are in a governmental popular front where the bourgeois partner dominates and provides an alibi for betrayal. <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">When workers parties put up candidates they stand as tributes to promote the program, not to join in parliamentary circuses.</em></span> Revolutionaries do not spread illusions in worker majorities, or in workers’ ministers, pushing a government to the left. This is the classic strategy of all shades of reformists who believe that workers can take power by winning control of the parliamentary executive. The object is not to participate in the government but to smash workers’ illusions in reforms and break workers from the PFP.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Marxists know that the state is the organising committee of the bourgeoisie. State power is not concentrated, nor separated, in the legislature, executive and judiciary. Bourgeois parliaments are the democratic front for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Once exposed the dictatorship will dispense with democracy and resort to the use of state forces to repress revolution. Therefore, the AIUF must be based on the independent organisations of the working class. It must be armed to defend itself from state and parastatal institutions/forces in order to win dual power and prepare for socialist revolution. Yet while the AIUF is the unity of a workers’ front for an action, specifically to break and destroy the popular front, it is composed of workers at different levels of consciousness. Reformist workers and trade union conscious workers remain trapped at the fetishised level of relations of exchange. <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Revolutionaries use the AIUF as a tactic to put transitional demands on the reformist leadership of the labour movement to expose their role as agents of the class enemy and transform the reformist workers and trade union conscious workers into class conscious proletarians. </em></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">From War to Revolution</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The AIUF to be effective has to be guided by revolutionaries. And revolutionaries cannot exist outside a revolutionary party and its revolutionary program. The revolutionary party is the subjective force acting through its program to change objective reality. The AIUF is a tactic in the Transitional Program to break workers from the bureaucracy and from the bosses. We argue that the AIUF arose out of the discussion around the<a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/aug/26.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> Left Zimmerwald Manifesto</a> of 1915 which called for the defeat of both imperialist sides in war. In 1916 Liebknecht made his famous demand, “workers turn your guns on your own ruling class.” The Left Zimmerwald program on the war was summed up first as “turn imperialist war into civil war”, and second, “build a new international” to replace 2<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">nd</span> International which liquidated itself into social imperialism and social chauvinism.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The 3<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">rd</span> international was therefore also conceived at Zimmerwald. The AIUF tactic was next applied in the Bolshevik program that led to the October Revolution in Russia and the formation of the 3<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">rd</span> International in 1920. The Left Zimmerwald program was now part of the Bolshevik Party program “to turn the guns of the workers and peasants” in uniform on the Russian imperialist ruling class. After the February revolution led to the fall of the Tsar, the Bolsheviks applied the AIUF against the bourgeois Provisional Government. It was put to the test against the counter-revolutionary coup attempt by the white Russian (Tsarist forces) led by General Kornilov in August. The Bolsheviks formed a tactical military bloc with the bourgeois government against Kornilov to prove to reformist soldiers and trade unionists that the bourgeois government’s real class enemy was the Soviets not the Tsarists backed by the imperialist powers.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Then came the “turn imperialist war into civil war”. As the embryonic Red Army, the Soviet forces easily outmaneuvered and defeated the Kornilov coup as a preliminary to the Civil War that began almost immediately after the revolution. Workers and poor peasants staged the insurrection in October 1917, formed a workers and poor peasants’ government, and negotiated for peace at Brest-Litovsk with the German high command in the attempt to spark the revolution in Germany. This tactic did not wholly succeed as the Germans invaded southern Russia occupying around a third of the old Russian Empire, forcing an end to the negotiations on March 3<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">rd</span> 1918. As a result, this changed the character of the war in Soviet Russia into that of the national defence of the revolution in the Civil War against the imperialist powers.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Moreover, the Bolshevik’s stalling tactic at Brest-Litovsk may have helped incubate the<a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/broue/1975/germrev/index.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> wave of mutinies</a> in the German armed forces that first broke out exactly eight months later in the navy at Keil on 2rd November 1918, setting off the German Revolution. Armed soldiers and workers set up soviets in several parts of Germany and turned their guns in their defence. But there was no revolutionary general staff to take the next vital step of armed insurrection, that is, to aim their guns strategically at the ruling class. The soviets were suppressed by ‘special forces’ of the defeated Germany army led by proto-fascist white guards. What was lacking was the next vital step, an established Bolshevik-type party that could stage the break from the treacherous social democracy which formed the popular front Weimar Republic.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The small Spartacist League of Luxemburg and Liebknecht came too late and was too small to make a difference. The general staff, revolutionary party and program, was missing in action. The ruling class suppressed the German revolution but feared its return unless the Soviet Union was destroyed. The imperialist powers buried their differences after the capitulation of Germany, invaded the Soviet Union to wage a civil war from 1918 to 1921, until they met an historic defeat at the hands of the Red Army. This stalemate made another world war inevitable, once more creating the conditions for revolution out of crisis and war to decide which class rules. The old world was still dying, the new world was born, but smothered by “all the old shit” of the old world.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The AIUF tactic was first formulated officially by the 3<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">rd</span> International led by the Bolshevik Party at its<a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj2/2011/isj2-130/riddell.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> Fourth Congress</a> in November 1922. It was part of the turn towards the United Front (UF) as a result of the failure of the workers revolution to spread to Europe and the rest of the world. The Congress balance sheet of this failure isolated the missing ingredient. It was the inability to break the social chauvinist and social imperialist IPF between workers and the bourgeoisie formed by the SPD as part of the executive of the new Weimar Republic. The way forward from 1922 was through the application of the United Front tactic led by Bolshevik-type parties in all the European powers to win the majority of reformist workers to class consciousness and the revolution. However, at that point the revolution was already isolated and degenerating under the influence of a growing bureaucratic leadership under the influence of the weight of the peasantry. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">As the revolution degenerated under the influence of the bureaucracy, it became the task of Trotsky, and the Left Opposition, to take up the battle for the UF against the PF in the years between the WW1 WW2 against the bureaucracy in the SU and the rise of fascism. After the victory of fascism in Germany in 1933 Trotsky set out to build a new international. It was founded in 1938 on the<a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> Transitional Program</a> based on the method of dialectics which shone through the writings of this period, many published in the book <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/idom/dm/index.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> In Defense of Marxism</em></a><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">.</em> Here we have the living Marxism of Lenin and Trotsky raising the flag of the vanguard party firm in principle but flexible in tactics, preparing for WW2 and arming the worlds’ workers with the program to stop the war by turning our guns against the ruling classes and the imperialist war into civil war.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The application of the AIUF in WW2 continued that of WW1 but was now strengthened by the lessons learned by the victorious Bolshevik revolution. Two demands were fused together at its heart; <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">the dual defeatist position in inter-imperialist war to turn the war into a civil war, and the unconditional defence of the Soviet Union. </em>Dual defeatism required the arming of the working class to join with the ranks in the military to turn their guns on the ruling class. Revolutions in the imperialist states would empower the international workers army to unite with Russian workers and soldiers and stage a political revolution against the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union. In the US Trotsky devised the <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/prs2-pmp/appx-pmp.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Proletarian Military Policy</em></a> to arm the trade unions and unionise the official army. It was grounded in the lessons of the historic betrayal of 1914, the Manifesto of the Zimmerwald left of 1915, the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, and of the defeats of the German revolution at the hands of social democracy, Stalinism and fascism.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">These are the ‘principles’ of the program against imperialist war rooted in Marxism that are the basis of any assessment of the application of the AIUF in WW2. All the preconditions for turning war into revolution were there in the program, but not in practice. The vital factor, the revolutionary leadership of the 4<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span> International after Trotsky’s death, was lacking. The assessment of our<a href="https://livingmarxism.blog/2015/01/12/declaration-of-the-proletarian-faction/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> tendency</a> is that even more so than during WW1, the Bolshevik-type party was missing in action. Despite valiant struggles against the imperialists, Stalinists, and their own ruling classes, by the militant ranks, especially in <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Greece and Indo-China</a>, the leadership of the main sections in the US and Europe capitulated to social chauvinism, and the war against fascism. Instead of turning their guns against their imperialist ruling classes the leadership of the 4<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span> International turned their guns on the fascists in an IPF with imperialism and the Stalinist Soviet Union. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The lessons learned from this history of the AIUF in its struggle against the IPF are what shape our response to the war in Ukraine as the first of many wars towards a 3<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">rd</span> Imperialist war. In summary, we call for a New Zimmerwald and a new Proletarian War Policy embodying the principles of Lenin and Trotsky in a new AIUF. The old world still lives in all its reactionary barbarism and its counter-revolutionary IPFs. There can be no confusion here. The conditions for international revolution are now so overwhelmingly objectively present in the capitalist destruction of its ecological foundation in nature. Humanity survives only in the capacity of the working masses to put an end to rotten capitalism. Yet the subjective will of the working masses which is bursting through the cracks to rise up, overthrow capitalism and restore nature in harmony with humanity, is blocked by the liquidation of the revolutionary Marxist party and its program. The new revolutionary international is still missing in action. We call on all those exploited and oppressed of the world who yearn to complete the world revolution that began in1917, to unite with us in our call for a<a href="https://www.cwgusa.org/?p=2979" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> New Zimmerwald</a>. Together we can build an AIUF to smash the imperialist ruling classes and their client states and create a new World Party of Socialism to organise workers, poor farmers and all oppressed peoples internationally, for the fight to make a new world to save the world!</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency – ILTT, 18 August 2023</em></p>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-54956570878677867842023-06-21T16:25:00.005+12:002023-06-21T16:27:56.330+12:00Class Struggle 145 Winter June-August 2023<p> </p><p style=" margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block;"> <a title="View Class Struggle 145 Winter June-August 2023 on Scribd" href="https://www.scribd.com/document/654389861/Class-Struggle-145-Winter-June-August-2023#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" >Class Struggle 145 Winter June-August 2023</a> by <a title="View dbedggood's profile on Scribd" href="https://www.scribd.com/user/30150756/dbedggood#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" >dbedggood</a> on Scribd</p><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" title="Class Struggle 145 Winter June-August 2023" src="https://www.scribd.com/embeds/654389861/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-8qFE9fGTIMYWSHsfDD0Y" data-auto-height="false" data-aspect-ratio="0.7080062794348508" scrolling="no" id="doc_1439" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-82321634613738346942023-05-04T12:04:00.008+12:002023-05-04T18:02:07.333+12:00Yes, comrades, China is an Imperialist Power. An Open Letter to South African Workers and Small Farmers<p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhNpBD3wuJ3_00VgzvggGUg3rZGTntYABIVqjv0hCvf_8AJg6a0Uy8ss1bGofCtC6eG6zbRvag_LPg81Ao4a-ZKm3_ZQGD0slO-2vVWejXXS6QVMeMUAhQSeAoXMwae34BMEpPbHvh3TOcndj_x6YMT47AeeQmbsvnwpgSOib-CBwDQfXu4qr0" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="640" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhNpBD3wuJ3_00VgzvggGUg3rZGTntYABIVqjv0hCvf_8AJg6a0Uy8ss1bGofCtC6eG6zbRvag_LPg81Ao4a-ZKm3_ZQGD0slO-2vVWejXXS6QVMeMUAhQSeAoXMwae34BMEpPbHvh3TOcndj_x6YMT47AeeQmbsvnwpgSOib-CBwDQfXu4qr0=w594-h299" width="594" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-94b5a7a4-7fff-cb5e-c15f-e58aa5592551"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.284; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Comrades, we are writing this open letter to raise the important question of China’s influence in the world today, and specifically in Southern Africa. Without a clear understanding that China is imperialist and engaged in inter-imperialist rivalry with the US led block of imperialists, workers and poor farmers are disarmed in the class struggle leading to defeats which setback the revolution and make the catastrophic prospects of economic slump and ecological destruction much more likely. We need to fight the counter-revolutionary influence of all capitalist/imperialist powers, recognising the class enemy, and their treacherous agents in the labour movement, and organising independent workers organisations from unions, councils, self-defence militias to Workers and poor Farmers’ Governments. </b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.284; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Back in November of last year, a member of our tendency (International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency) was visiting South Africa. He had discussions with the Shaun Magmoed branch (SMB) of the RSWP (Revolutionary Socialist Worker Party) on the question of China’s influence in South Africa, especially its corrupting influence on the leadership of the NUMSA union and the SRWP. We were invited by one of its leading members, Cde Shaheed Mahomed, to write a response to the resolution (</span><a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cwgusa.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2023%2F05%2FReform-vs-revolution-in-Numsa-23.10.2022.pdf%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR3fM1rc5sV1PWalqo--6x_VTyLYzMg6qCa560yeG3kwvGI8fbrI75gKKds&h=AT3LMDJQsjl0xV66iYVHWyAh44_JUz8jEttll8KY-9PpYMAt5qO1IGrEY0FNsq9jiz7HeajKDHugblGJ6B-hmzSj_01ZNTHtBX6fRoTbFMD_EG4gx014Hf8TmRHXKFnWBwU" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reform vs Revolution</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) on the question being discussed in the branch. We wrote the letter quickly and got acknowledgement it had been received, but heard nothing more about it. We viewed the letter as part of an internal discussion, but in the light of events since then, we are obliged to publish it in this Open Letter. (See </span><a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cwgusa.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2023%2F05%2FFor-a-Workers-Government.pdf%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR0NUxDHE--8pA2PtVxpYf2fXCLN2di-VTQq_ESzL2ZyK-oIXo1IwBn6IZo&h=AT0SsewXauQhn8X0tFfjh6XqbvkHw6nw83N9_St9uL_G0zGOxzp_Kgyvc5MMNT9wkaEI4_zCSzfivOsxopJ82EQAqv7FDYJbc5dqZOGHSGsCkfHWTAdM2hwewOoOv3-zLkU" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘</span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For a Workers’ Government’</span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">).</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.284; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First, the SMB took the threat of China seriously when evidence showed that the NUMSA leadership under Irvin Jim had been corrupted by a rich individual with clear links to the CPC. As we said in our letter China’s influence in the labour movement must be challenged and the unions rebuilt under the control of the rank and file. Despite assurances that our contribution would be discussed and answered, no further communication with us about their intervention in the SRWP took place. Nor was any comment forthcoming on the</span><a href="https://www.cwgusa.org/?p=3060" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ILTT Report on South Africa</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> written by our comrade on his visit which dealt at more length with China’s influence in the economy and the labour movement, and with the inadequate worker resistance to it.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.284; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In both documents we make clear our view that China’s influence in SA is as an imperialist power, that its corruption of the leadership of NUMSA is clear, but is not being effectively resisted by workers who are disarmed by confusion over China’s character. That confusion was evident in the SMB. Its resolution characterised China superficially as a capitalist semi-colony acting as the agent of imperialism. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.284; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Today China is awash with many imperialist companies. Apple has its production facility in China and according to the Economist Newspaper only 2%of the value of its sales go back to China. This is not a Socialist state but a semi-colonial capitalist state under the thumb of imperialism. China today is the mass production facility for imperialism with very low wages and harsh conditions. It has helped imperialism spearhead the de-industrialisation of the rest of the world.” (</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reform vs Revolution</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.284; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We stated that a correct understanding of China was urgently needed to build effective worker resistance in the unions and for building a revolutionary party to lead the vanguard against imperialism and its national comprador agents. This confusion over China’s imperialist character seems to have led to impotence in the SMB in its attempt to take on the union bureaucracy and its Maoist connections.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.284; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To transform the SRWP (or any new party that becomes necessary) into a mass workers’ party independent of the bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie we need a Marxist party to form the left wing of the SRWP, based on a Transitional Program (TP) for a Workers’ Government. That is, comrades, for a Workers’ Government! </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(See critique of SRWP in</span><a href="https://redrave.blogspot.com/2020/04/workers-unite-historic-task-of-workers.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Workers’ Unite”).</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Already, in the revolutionary period up to 1924, Trotsky’s</span><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/ffyci-2/24b.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">report on the 4th Congress</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of the COMINTERN insisted that the party program must always be crowned with the comrades’ demand for a Workers’ Government.” (</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For a Workers’ Government</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then, four months later, we saw an exchange of letters (</span><a href="http://www.flti-ci.org/english/china/2023/april/corresp-wivl.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once Again on the China Question</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) between Cde. Shaheed of the WIVL (who as we noted above is a leading member of the SMB in Cape Town) and the FLTI. Cde. Shaheed wrote:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dear FLTI Committee</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Could you send us your latest analysis on China, as some of the local groups are starting to raise the question that it is imperialist?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Greetings comrades.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shaheed Mohamed</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WIVL (9 April)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, it appears that the silence of Cde. Shaheed and the SMB in response to our intervention in November may have masked an ongoing discussion about China which remains unresolved. The fact that in April the Cde had to appeal to the FLTI to provide him with a reply to those questioning China’s role as imperialist we see as significant, first, because it indicates that no serious response to China’s influence in NUMSA was underway. Secondly, because the Cde as a member of the WIVL was affiliated to the FLTI when we (as HWRS and CWG – now in the ILTT) had a dispute over China which led to a split in 2010. While we do not want to waste time over an old dispute, the FLTI raises it again to convince Cde. Shaheed that its position has not changed. Since that position was always wrong, and counter-revolutionary in its consequences, we have to once again deal with the ‘China Question’ as a matter of urgency. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On April 11 the FLTI replied to Cde. Shaheed,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Comrade Shaheed,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 12pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We have read your note asking for our views on the current situation in China. Not only in Africa, but also internationally, very many left currents coming from the former Trotskyist movement, affirm that China has become a "new imperialist country", while the old Stalinist currents, today again "in fashion", continue to see it as a "market socialism" and, together with the Russia of the butcher Putin, a focus of "anti-imperialist struggle". </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is clear that all those who call themselves "Putin's friends", like those in the Communist Party and other Stalinists in South Africa and throughout Africa, Latin America and the Pacific, are well and truly servants of the IMF and the US imperialist transnational corporations. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(Our emphasis)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Surely you remember that we together produced a pamphlet on China in polemics with the US HWRS and the New Zealand CWG which we jointly elaborated at an FLTI Congress in 2010. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There we defined the key questions of what is still our position, also expressed in our assessment of the fall of the workers' states in '89: after the imposition of capitalist restoration, both China and Russia were left as relatively independent capitalist countries, which gave fresh blood to the imperialist capitalist world market.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But that blood has now run out and imperialism, after successive crises and crashes, is looking for new markets to survive, as the old ones have shrunk, and new colonies and semi-colonies to throw its crisis at</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. (Our emphasis)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As the last decades have shown, imposing capitalist restoration in the former workers' states was not enough for imperialism. Since the crash of 2008, there has been a brutal open offensive by the US in dispute with Maastricht Europe to take over these new markets, trying to recolonize China and Russia for good, while the European glacier nations, Georgia, the Caucasus, the former Soviet Muslim republics, Vietnam and lately also Cuba are already in the process of colonization.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What is clear here is that the FLTI characterises Russia and China as ‘independent’ capitalist states coming out of the fall of the workers’ states which have since resisted colonization. This ‘independence’ allowed China to act as agents of imperialism without submitting to re-colonisation. We can agree to that point but not on its consequences. Independence was the legacy of the workers' states, principally a centralised state and economic plan. However, for the FLTI, this legacy while useful to the imperialist powers, has only two possible outcomes, Russia and China either submit to colonisation (breaking up under imperialist dominance to get ‘fresh blood’) or are overthrown by a workers’ revolution to take power, smash the regime and create a workers’ state.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let us assume that the ‘blood’ the FLTI is talking about is actually ‘value’, pumped out by workers’ labour power in Russia and China, and increasingly in the semi-colonies where they trade and export capital, all of which serves to restore the rate of profit in the imperialist countries. To understand the importance of flows of value we must return to Lenin’s definition of the definition of imperialism as the export of finance capital to colonies and semi-colonies to extract super-profits as a basic counter-tendency to the law of the tendency of the rate of profits to fall (LTRPF) in the imperialist countries.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But how have ‘independent’ countries like Russia and China survived attempts at recolonisation from 1992 to 2023? For the FLTI ‘independence’ means a country is neither imperialist nor a semi-colony. While ‘independence’ can resist colonisation it cannot create the conditions for capital accumulation on a scale that leads to imperialism. This scenario raises the question. What stopped the existing imperialist powers from completing the colonisation process dividing up Russia and China and stopping them from accumulating value in their own right and emerging as imperialist powers?</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our response is that ‘independence’ is not a static state that allows Russia and China to survive recolonisation for 30 years without undergoing a qualitative change leading to their emergence as imperialist powers. Resistance to colonisation was only possible if the restored capitalist state could manage the process of transition by increasing its share of value extracted and accumulated to strengthen its ‘independence’ and at the same time reduce ‘dependence’ on foreign ownership. As against the FLTIs abstract outcomes, colonisation or socialism, we argue that actual resistance to colonisation creates two real possibilities, imperialism or socialism, according to which class is in power and leading the resistance. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thus, when the FLTI, and what is the ILTT today, split over China in 2010 it was because we argued that Russia and China were able to exert control over the extent to which their markets became owned or controlled by foreign interests. From 2000 this allowed these economies to accumulate capital in their own right sufficient to create surpluses requiring capital export. As we noted, the FLTI flatly rejected the view that any capitalist country could make the transition from semi-colony to imperialism, as since WW1 the world was already divided. We said this dogmatic position on China was the ‘Elephant in the room’.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We argued that the historical precedent of former workers’ states restoring capitalism and retaining sufficient political control of their economies to resist colonisation did not contradict Lenin’s view of a world already divided among the imperialist powers. The Bolshevik revolution in 1917 had ‘re-partitioned’ the world between capitalist and ‘socialist’ worlds, and capitalist restoration in 1992 did not destroy the legacy of the former worker states. The strong centralised state apparatus overseeing relatively developed forces of production, was now instrumental in managing the process of restoration. By 2010 it was clear that Russia had largely restored political control of its economy against foreign domination and regulated the flow of value abroad. China in 2008 had already demonstrated that its rapidly expanding state capitalism was both capable of managing FDI (as is the case in all imperialist countries) and yet able to accumulate and export excess capital globally under its ‘going out’ policy.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today the FLTI continues to characterise both Russia and China as ‘independent’ but facing further ‘re-colonisation’. It doesn’t occur to its leadership that the concrete reality of increasing inter-imperialist rivalry is that value is now flowing away from the US imperialist bloc, towards the Russia-China bloc and its expanding BRICS+ trading partners which is now posing a threat to the US bloc. According to the </span><a href="http://www.flti-ci.org/english/china/2023/april/corresp-wivl.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">FLTI:</span></a></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 12pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Our characterization of China today is that, like Russia, they inherited the old gains of the former workers' states which are in the hands of strong native bourgeoisies, associated and totally imbricated with imperialism in their business, on which they depend in the world-economy. In the midst of the world crisis, imperialism is after them and they are resisting to be recolonized. The US in particular does not yet find the strength in its proletariat to go for higher offensives, although the campaign of demonization of China within the US gives it a certain basis for attacks, including military attacks. The encirclement of Russia with the NATO countries is the gun to the head that the US uses in order to surrender Moscow.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">China and Russia, then, are capitalist countries in a state of transition. Either the struggle for socialist revolution and the restoration of the dictatorship of the proletariat under revolutionary forms returns there, or if they continue to be dependent on the world economy, as is happening now, they will be cornered, encircled by imperialism and in the future, colonized.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today we are looking at two scenarios, one where the former workers’ states restored capitalism and remained ‘independent’ despite mounting attempts at recolonisation in trade wars and military wars. The other, where the former workers’ states restored capitalism but whose ‘independence’ was integral to the transition to imperialism. To test these two propositions, we must continue to apply the value analysis of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, in the epoch of imperialism.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The FLTI scenario is based on an empiricist method which fits the facts to its preconceptions. These are that Russia and China are neither imperialist, nor semi-colonies but historical hybrids. It applies the abstract characterisation of ‘independent’ states that exploits on behalf of imperialism, but resists semi-colonisation. Lenin used the term ‘independent’ to refer to several states that were exploited by finance capital, such as Argentina and Turkey, but were otherwise sovereign states. Yet, despite appearances they never had ‘independence’ from imperialism. In the imperialist epoch there were only oppressor and oppressed states. The emergence of new oppressor states could only arise under special as yet unforeseen circumstances. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Such circumstances led to the unprecedented restoration of capitalism in the former workers states. Under these circumstances what does ‘independence’ mean for Russia and China? It can only mean independence from foreign finance capital. What changes have occurred in Russia and China since restoration in 1992 that might justify the claim of ‘independence’ from foreign finance capital? The FLTI argues that such real, concrete independence is not possible since they are trapped as servants of finance capital. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The FLTI argues that since 2000 Russia and China exploited their own workers and increasingly foreign workers, not to accumulate on their own behalf, but to provide cheap labour and raw materials for the US and other imperialist finance capital, on which they are wholly </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">dependent</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. They are cast as throw-backs to the epoch of mercantile capitalism in the 21</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 0.6em; vertical-align: super;">st</span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> century. Russia was a provider of oil and gas. China was a trading state profiting mainly from its trade in imports and exports. They did not invest significantly in raising labour productivity at home and abroad but relied on inefficient state-owned industries and heavy-handed control of the labour markets. Economic surpluses barely covered the external debts. They were exploited by getting less than the full value of the commodities traded or processed on behalf of the imperialist powers, but also exploiters of their own national and foreign labour forces.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In concrete reality, Russia and China for a decade after restoration underwent an historically unprecedented transition. They emerged from former workers’ states briefly as mercantile or comprador powers sourcing cheap raw materials, acting as agents of foreign investors, engaging in a form of primitive accumulation - a take-off stage in managing the transition to capitalism. That process was already being driven by </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">independence </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">from foreign finance capital as foreign investment was wholly subordinated to central state planning of the economy. Surplus value flows abroad were tolerated as trade-offs for the transfer of technology which enabled market reforms including the privatisation of state owned enterprises to increase labour productivity ‘up the chain’. Now the market was setting prices, albeit within the limits of the plan. Russia and China were able to escape re-colonisation and develop the forces of production, accumulating value and excess capital to be invested abroad, thus emerging as new imperialist powers and as rivals of the old.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Russia and China, understood as imperialist powers, can explain what cannot be explained when they are characterised as hybrid states. Their ‘independence’ was due to the legacy of the former workers states which allowed the new capitalist class to resist re-colonisation, create the conditions for capitalist take-off, and the inevitable emergence of imperialism. It is that growing ‘independence’ now backed by an alliance between Russia and China, and the rapidly rising BRICS+ that led the US bloc to provoke trade wars and military wars over Ukraine and Taiwan. This has backfired as the EU and Japan are refusing US dictates to cut off trade and investment with Russia and China. The US bloc is cracking as EU powers face economic ruin from economic sanctions. The Russia-China bloc is stepping into the vacuum left by the decline of the US bloc. There is no question that in the coming inter-imperialist war workers of the world must take a dual defeatist position and arm themselves to turn those wars into civil wars for the socialist revolution.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We trust this open letter will provoke more debate on the status of China in the world economy, including Southern Africa, and arm the workers and poor farmers of the semi-colonial world alongside those of the imperialist powers to reject any hopes attached to any capitalist regime and put all they energy and will to the task of overthrowing the rotten capitalist system.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For workers to live, capitalism must die!</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">ILTT May 1 2023</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt;"><br /></p><br /></span>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-45103143291868834242023-04-30T23:55:00.000+12:002023-04-30T23:55:30.515+12:00 MAY 1ST: APPEAL TO THE LABOR MOVEMENT<b>
BUILD PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM </b><div><b>STOP THE INTER-IMPERIALIST WAR </b></div><div><b>BUILD THE WORLD PARTY OF SOCIALISM </b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlwOwYCzc8uwAuqJyhETmdkptcPLBv-tIM5xoCVLMBZIcspMLBOut8gX3_3T-Z032dVxcCKqOToQO0VAufgjgPaL5sAH1NWf3m7g09uK07PVMelxpeFM6dFGEu2_xbLDJ7SuVgNHJBrE0QpRn6bS73UIfKKAc5ruLeRaj7APcBgpzTBtcspB8/s1000/Vivelacom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="750" height="446" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlwOwYCzc8uwAuqJyhETmdkptcPLBv-tIM5xoCVLMBZIcspMLBOut8gX3_3T-Z032dVxcCKqOToQO0VAufgjgPaL5sAH1NWf3m7g09uK07PVMelxpeFM6dFGEu2_xbLDJ7SuVgNHJBrE0QpRn6bS73UIfKKAc5ruLeRaj7APcBgpzTBtcspB8/w454-h446/Vivelacom.jpg" width="454" /></a></div><br /></div><div> On this May Day, the international working class must ask, “what is the cause of the coming world war and how can we stop it?” As China eclipses the reigning economic and military hegemon (USA), war to redivide the world, despite all pretenses-to peaceful progressive growth, is not only on the capitalist’s agenda-it is their only choice. All the capitalist states prepare for war and are drawn into the unfolding inter-imperialist conflict at the expense of nature and social needs everywhere. The death agony of capitalism commits the world to wars for redivision of resources at the expense of the workers, poor farmers and oppressed. </div><div><br /></div><div> Regardless of the truth regarding direct responsibility for the outbreak of the war, one thing is certain: the war taking place in Ukraine is the result of the inter-imperialist dispute, developing a qualitative leap in the trade war between the United States and China; it is a predatory war for the division of the world and spheres of influence. The commercial war thus becomes a military war, the political one by other means, namely, violence. </div><div><br /></div><div>THE IMPERIALIST WAR with its epicenter in EUROPE has lasted for over a year, all the data and movements of NATO and Russia show that far from ending, it ventures as a war of extermination; the balance after one year of THE SAME is the waste of hundreds of billions of euros destined for the destruction of human lives and infrastructure. Displacement of at least 15 million human beings, far from finished, as the equipment is being prepared for continuity with high possibilities of becoming a global catastrophe. </div><div><br /></div><div>The entire world situation, and consequently also the internal political life of the various countries, are under the threat of war. The approaching catastrophe penetrates the deepest masses of humanity with anguish. Across the planet inter-imperialist conflicts unfold under the hair trigger threat of nuclear war, today in Ukraine tomorrow Taiwan. Capitalism necessitates accumulation of capital at the cost of extinction. As a mode of production its unrestrainable anarchy is destroying nature, the means and forces of production while impoverishing hundreds of millions. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>WHILE THE BOURGEOIS GETS RICHER, MILLIONS OF PROLETARIANS AND PEASANTS SUFFER HARDSHIP AND FAMINE</b></div><div><br /></div><div>War is a gigantic commercial enterprise, especially for the war industry. That is why the “top 11 NATO companies” are the first patriots and the main provocateurs of the war. Yet while we shout the slogans ‘Socialism or Extinction!’ and “For Humanity to Survive Capitalism must Die!”, the treacherous leaders of the workers’ organizations work overtime to keep workers in one imperialist camp of the other. The social patriots of the west deny the US/EU role propping up the right wing Maidan and post Maidan regimes to proxy for their strategic encirclement and containment efforts. The social patriots of the east (including their 5th columnists in the west) perpetuate the myth of a China/Russia led anti-imperialist bloc with the “progressive” national bourgeoisies of the global south, with their working classes disorganized and submissive. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>CHINA IS NOT THE ‘PROGRESSIVE’ FRIEND OF THE WORKERS AND PEASANTS! </b></div><div><br /></div><div>The imperialist war is the continuation and exacerbation of the plundering policy of the imperialist bourgeoisie and their colonial and semi-colonial comprador agents. But the US imperialist bloc is not alone in plundering and dividing the world into their spheres of interest. Russia and China have emerged in the 21st century as rival powers to challenge US hegemony. They are not the saviours that the BRIC bourgeoisies and Maoist labour political bureaucrats claim as the ‘progressive’ multipolar alternative that workers can call upon to rescue rotting capitalism and save their jobs and livelihoods.</div><div><br /></div><div>The restored capitalism in China was able, for a time, to sustain double digit growth, but the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall mocks the CPC’s claims it has resolved the capitalist laws of motion with its hybrid market “socialist” economy; the law of value prevails and Chinese capital is not immune. The accumulation of capital in China is driven by the very laws of motion Marx ascribed to capitalism resisted by workers. After the policy of ‘turning-in', building empty cities and creating real estate debt bubbles at home, to keep its economic engine burning Chinese capital had no choice but to go outwards. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), outward foreign direct investments which includes unsustainable loans across the global south and into Europe, are objectively anti-labor, union busting and debt burdening all under the guise of ‘Win-Win’ mythology embraced by RT ‘socialists’, the Boli-bourgeois, Stalinists, M-L’s and layers of the comprador bourgeoisie across the global south. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>We explode the myth that China and Russia’s economic expansion is a reformist, progressive escape route for capitalism. They cannot escape capitalism’s fundamental contradiction between nature and capitalist society. </b>The class struggle between the social forces and social relations of production, sets the limits to capital expansion. Increasing investment in high tech to raise the rate of exploitation drives down living standards for the masses below subsistence and throws workers onto the rubbish heap. Capitalism cannot produce enough value to maintain profits. Rising mountains of debt can never be repaid and will disappear like bad bets in the global casino. Debt is a symptom of capitalism facing its terminal crisis. The circuit of capital is broken, the forces of production are destroyed along with the ecological basis for human life. </div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>THE ENEMY IS THE BOURGEOISIE AND IS AT HOME! </b></div><div><br /></div><div>The struggle of the proletariat against the imperialist war is the continuation and exacerbation of the class struggle. Thus, we are witnessing a new bankruptcy of civilization, political reaction, depression, inflation, economic crises, famines, human displacements, degradation. But nature is also in danger and with it, humanity. </div><div><br /></div><div>Drought and extreme heat waves pushed 2.3 billion people into food insecurity in 2022, the majority in Africa and the Asian continent, according to the balance presented by the WMO, which cites the case of India and Pakistan as especially problematic, whose agri-food systems were practically exhausted due to the lack of water, a wave of food insecurity that, added to the supply problems derived from the war in Ukraine, has hit 20 million people in this area. All of this is symptomatic of capitalism’s long developmental decline into terminal crisis over the imperialist epoch. </div><div><br /></div><div>The 1923 projection of the capitalist curve by Trotsky argued booms would be shorter and busts would be deeper as the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (TRPF) accelerates across all capitalist economies. The rise of fictitious finance capital (speculation) over industrial (productive) capital expands the claims on social surplus at the expense of the workers. Capitalism both in the imperialist centers and the semi-colonial resource rich states deepens the drive toward war for re-division of the spoils. Neither “neo-liberal” privatization schemes nor the monetary money supply and interest rate schemes have been successful at resolving the crisis. In turn the the bosses put the cost of the crisis on the working classes, the poor and oppressed nations.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>FOR A NEW WORLD PARTY OF SOCIALISM! </b></div><div><br /></div><div>The fundamental content of the politics of the proletariat is therefore the struggle against imperialism and its war. The fundamental slogan of this struggle since the Zimmerwald Left in 1915 is "The main enemy is at home" whether in an imperialist country or in a semi-colonial country. We reject all capitalism’s attempts to divide and rule the workers and poor farmers. Before exhausting, or drowning humanity in blood, capitalism poisons the world atmosphere with toxic vapours of national and racial hatred; we already see this as a product of the migratory displacements that seek to escape from the bombs and the kamikaze drones that fly over the cities, but also from the bad governments that enslave us, while their cynicism goes as far as the prohibition of migration and the imprisonment in false shelters or internment centers, where proletarians are detained for the mere fact of being.</div><div><br /></div><div>This system must perish, open your eyes, learn not to forget, not forgive and not give in to the exploiters, to those who humiliate us, to those who subordinate us, to those who deny us the slightest possibility of existence. Imperialist war changes the situation and intensifies the class struggle, but it does not change either our objectives or our program for socialist revolution. </div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>DEMANDS </b></div><div><br /></div><div><b>We need a new Zimmerwald Left to mobilise the anti-imperialist left in an international workers united front to smash the imperialists’ warmongering international popular front! </b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>We need to unite the workers of the world, against national, ethnic and gender divisions! </b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>We call for enlisted person's unions in Russia, Ukraine and all NATO countries to strike and fraternize as class brothers and sisters.
Expose the commanders, elect your own officers and abandon the projects of the imperialists! </b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>The commanders and imperialists do not fight for your national liberation!
To win national liberation the victorious class struggle of socialist internationalism is required, not the patriotic fiction of unity with your boss! </b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>We need a new party of world socialism to lead the fight to turn the imperialist war into a class war for socialist revolution! </b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>We need a world party based on the method and programmatic content of the Transitional Program of 1938.
We need to unite the workers of the world against national, ethnic and gender divisions! </b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Power for women workers, for the youth and all the oppressed sectors of the working class! </b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>We are for the class struggle unions, the workers' councils, the workers' militias, etc., that fight and are managed democratically, up to and including the insurrection by a Government of Workers and poor Farmers! </b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>For a world union of socialist republics! </b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>------------------------------------------------</b></div><div><b>Liga Che Communista (Ar)
International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency/Tendencia Trotskista Leninista Internacional
(CWG NZ/Ao, CWG USA, RWG (Zim), GTR (Br)) </b></div><div><b> April 30 2023</b></div>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-34897675710243581742023-03-17T14:36:00.001+13:002023-03-17T14:36:24.430+13:00Class Struggle 144 Autumn March-May 20123<p style=" margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block;"> <a title="View CS144-Autumn-2023-4 on Scribd" href="https://www.scribd.com/document/631754512/CS144-Autumn-2023-4#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" >CS144-Autumn-2023-4</a> by <a title="View dbedggood's profile on Scribd" href="https://www.scribd.com/user/30150756/dbedggood#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" >dbedggood</a> on Scribd</p><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" title="CS144-Autumn-2023-4" src="https://www.scribd.com/embeds/631754512/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-Ss37OQOR8m7FXgZAQRQ2" data-auto-height="false" data-aspect-ratio="0.7068965517241379" scrolling="no" id="doc_49604" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-51107686974098169882022-12-09T13:07:00.004+13:002024-02-11T14:22:47.813+13:00Class Struggle No 143 Summer 2022/23<p>https://www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Class-Struggle-143.pdf</p><p><br /></p>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-65922947974629697752022-08-12T16:31:00.001+12:002022-11-06T12:01:49.545+13:00Can China Rescue Global Capitalism? The Terminal Crisis Unfolds from Sri Lanka to South Africa and Beyond<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg36qXqQApCnqAMITrng8Rw8WNtGhwqAhiP63rohPZGWE52aWxlj37Ysepxz0vvoTPEVMh0joqwsfrHfNDEMueasLVKndopJQcUu7IEE0TRJ-mD5i8SXUkE4XiQMwEleNDuoOMILLIheJbcnhfGyzdGxBSJpLR_srsKTMiM0rYNUlzHLlKdjqE/s1600/SriLanka.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="343" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg36qXqQApCnqAMITrng8Rw8WNtGhwqAhiP63rohPZGWE52aWxlj37Ysepxz0vvoTPEVMh0joqwsfrHfNDEMueasLVKndopJQcUu7IEE0TRJ-mD5i8SXUkE4XiQMwEleNDuoOMILLIheJbcnhfGyzdGxBSJpLR_srsKTMiM0rYNUlzHLlKdjqE/w746-h343/SriLanka.png" width="746" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; text-align: start;"> Sri Lankans protesting in front of the Presidential Secretariat in Colombo on 13 April (Wikipedia, AntonO)</em></div><p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; font-weight: 700;">Intro </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Bourgeois celebration of the arrogantly proclaimed “End of History” has been waning. The second “American century” has hit unplanned for and unexpected headwinds. The period of clear sailing, for unchallengeable and unassailable US/NATO military power and economic control of the semi-colonial world and the Global South has hit a wall. That wall was the slow and steady rise of the Russia/China imperialist bloc led by China’s mass of capital sent by “Belt and Road” looking outward for return on investment that the ‘turn to the interior’ could not provide. China’s economic engine (exploiting 6-700 million proletarians in China alone) is buttressed by Russia’s vast expanse, natural resources, nuclear arsenal and military prowess as integrated into the CSTO, BRICS and SCO projects. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Warned and informed by cold warriors like Kennan, Brzezinski and Kissinger, the western imperialists have only themselves to blame for their surprise. But what of the working masses, the proletarians upon whom the future of humanity depends? How has the international working class been prepared for the crossing of the Rubicon from a mono-polar world to one of what promises to be decades long inter-imperialist conflict? The bi-polar world conflict presented, for the bourgois strategists, as a series of geo-strategic standoffs, including but not limited to Syria, Yemen and the Ukrainian steppes. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Hidden beneath the surface we see imperialism’s terminal death march to keep the masses in line. Countering the geo-pol strategists, Marxism warns the workers that these hotspots are counter-revolutionary wars against resurgent permanent revolution, objectively necessitated by the unfinished tasks of the national democratic revolutions in all the dependent nations. The workers movement suffers decades of a crisis of leadership. The counter-revolution and restoration of capitalism in Russia and China created an ideological tailspin giving rise to social imperialism, social chauvinism, right populism, fascism and social patriotism. It is the task of vanguard workers and revolutionary socialists to examine and expose this crisis of leadership to the masses who are daily being driven to the barricades and the front lines of the imperialist wars and class wars theoretically and organizationally unarmed while led by class traitors. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The degeneration of Trotsky’s Fourth International left the workers as unprepared victims of cross class popular fronts from Bolivia in 1952 to Sri-Lanka in 1964. The Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) entered the Bandaranaike government only for the party and vanguard workers to be slaughtered by the thousands. The Stalinists, Mensheviks, tankies, M-Ls and other revisionists never had a pretense to any kind of working class independence and have dragged the workers in and out of one failed popular front project after another. This deadened class consciousness to the point where half the international worker’s movement supports (backhandedly and with gobs of qualifiers) either Putin and Xi or Zelensky and NATO. Red flags have been folded up and put back in the closet, the international proletariat is mobilized under either the Blue and Yellow or the White Blue and Red. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">This leaves the masses rising up against consequences of the exploding debt trap without class conscious leadership. We have trade union leaders enforcing their bloc’s with the bosses by means of bureaucratic centralism from South Africa (NUMSA-COSATU) to the AFL-CIO with its social patriotic agenda integrated with the CIA. Where is the democratic centralism of the revolutionary proletariat needed to break the logjam-where is the New International needed now more than ever? </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Imperialist Debt Traps </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Who laid the debt trap for the Sri Lankan masses? The <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/china-wild-card-sri-lankas-debt-crisis-84851676" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">west points at China</a> while China’s apologists point back. One <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6jyU9xTi64" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">BBC reporter helps China make their case</a> blaming the victim, in this case Sri Lanka. Is Sri-Lanka just the tip of the melting ice-berg? Are its particularities really that unique? Aren’t most loans (from both the east and west) knowingly extended and entrusted to mini-despots committed to ensuring repayment, exploitation of commodified labor power and resource extraction by means of repressive labor laws, austerities and militarization? Of course they knew. Didn’t all the creditors know sovereign bond markets could not sustain the hyped up interest burden once the coupons came due? Of course they knew the <a href="https://www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-with-the-highest-default-risk-in-2022/#:~:text=In%20May%202022%2C%20the%20South,but%20ultimately%20failed%20to%20pay" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">default risk</a>! </p><figure class="wp-block-image" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #565656; font-family: Lato; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><img alt="" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/erC_Zi3dYznX6CImB_9SIGMVF1Tt_3SYQrqdtxlkxC4iUfxwhZKLF7Q_YF9H1ErGYwWoCdUEgyKNmOyx21yhClguHtCS9FwqQrFTpaSeN_YEqaHeSmy-sl9mtzF34T5WktwfQiFUy1b4utAQ3xPm96s" style="border-radius: inherit; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; height: auto; margin-bottom: 20px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: bottom;" /></figure><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The big creditors know how deeply they put semi-colonies in debt–yet they extend their exposure because the dynamics of capitalism leaves its administrators no other choice than to put the overproduced capitals back ‘to work’ exploiting opportunities internationally. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">To counter the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, the over accumulation of capital must find an outlet. The sovereign bond funds and loans for technology and military equipment that turn around and buy back from the lender. The zombie projects that wither and to lesser degrees the corruption which infuriates the masses all build up debt with compounded interest that must be paid regardless! The comprador capitalists and their corrupt politicians cut the deals, skim their cut and pass along the cost of debt in labor conditions, oppression and austerities the masses are made to bear–but only as long as the working masses willingly tolerate the arrangement. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The decade of ‘easy money’ flowing from quantitative easing in the west and the ‘Win-Win’ and Belt and Road projects emanating from Beijing <a href="https://voxeu.org/article/china-s-overseas-lending-and-war-ukraine" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">peaked around 2016</a>.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><a href="https://voxeu.org/article/china-s-overseas-lending-and-war-ukraine" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">https://voxeu.org/article/china-s-overseas-lending-and-war-ukraine</a></p><figure class="wp-block-image" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #565656; font-family: Lato; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><img alt="" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/fvL03NMZa8Dji4HjNKvSMw6_LDFqz2_Dd5ZQJbm9gtqbeFzfZlv7N6p1oDObIvR03mKzL_ZPN_aYZ3p8usv5POifsOLjkNfjME_0qCEd1qIPmbRhhnUA-3F6qJu4iNTPCqWwotU-D4XAaK2T8orHw1k" style="border-radius: inherit; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; height: auto; margin-bottom: 20px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: bottom;" /></figure><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">China’s entry into the Great Game for an imperialist’s portion of the Global South came out of the same necessity of all imperialists: the need to keep the overaccumulation capital flowing. For the last to the game all the cycles of the world market of boom and bust are amplified. The Chinese central bank looks at its books today full of distressed debt. </p><figure class="wp-block-image" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #565656; font-family: Lato; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><img alt="" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/6tfUoacHqKU9tLY17Qq_odEADwM7aXJwz6hahb7kVlZarh3i3Kdz8HtMXlHS2vUx0xhhgw8v4LH44BL4ivy4oJ1CCrkd9e_R1HsCKv8MO1IeCz7QMH0szqz-7lFZtXW3itzT_MWX3BZbvDO95rGdkXI" style="border-radius: inherit; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; height: auto; margin-bottom: 20px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: bottom;" /></figure><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The IMF is pressuring China to sit down at the table and take its lumps alongside the rest of the big boys again in Sri Lanka as it was forced to do in Zambia. What are the choices for the creditors? The indebted want moratoriums and cancellations but “<a href="https://voxeu.org/article/china-s-overseas-lending-and-war-ukraine" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">nominal write-downs are rare</a>”. China like the rest of the parasites prefers restructuring, interest and term readjustments, debt for equity swaps, long term leases –anything to assuage the bankers’ desire to keep the loan on the books as active receivables. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The big dogs at the IMF, World Bank, Asia Development Bank are caught in a monumental international ‘<a href="https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2022/06/10/the-scissors-of-slump/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">debt trap</a>’ of their own making, and <a href="https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2022/07/21/is-china-headed-for-a-crash/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">China is neck deep</a> in it both abroad and at home. Clearly China did not plan for this eventuality, although they should have, having at their service the largest brain trust of experts formally trained in Marx’s crisis theory. To manage the debt impostions in the private sector <a href="https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2022/07/21/is-china-headed-for-a-crash/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Michael Roberts </a>takes on the job of advisor to Xi and explains the CPC (Communist Party of China) only choice is to rein in the private capitalist sector using the state to float the boat. Ultimately that means the pain of the few will be shared by the many as the cost of the crisis lands on the masses, something socialism is supposed to prevent. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">But Roberts’ reference to ‘state capitalism’ based on Lenin is wrong. Unlike Lenin’s time in Russia, there is no workers’ state in China capable of reining in the private sector. The state rules on behalf of the capitalist ruling class but has ‘special characteristics’ due to China’s history and recent restoration of capitalism after 1992. The central state ruled by the Maoist bureaucracy deliberately reintroduced the law of value to make the old state-owned sector competitive on the global capitalist market. The former CPC bureaucracy was transformed into a capitalist bureaucracy to manage capitalism, allowing it to rule on behalf of collective capital in the global economy characterized by monopoly capital. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">While Western imperialist states were moving towards a state form that managed monopoly capitalism dominated by private monopoly banks and industries, China was able to use its central capitalist state to defend and extend its monopoly control of its own banks and industries against foreign capital. China’s rapid growth rate since 2000 therefore has to be credited to its state management of the law of value which it dresses up as ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. Of course this neo-Maoist ideology is magnified by its imperialist rivals as the new wave of “reds under the bed’’, and simultaneously lauded by the treacherous Stalinophile Menshevik left as ‘actually existing’ socialism and fed down the transmission ‘belt and road’ to the working masses for their consumption. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">With mass upsurges in Sri-Lanka, the spread from Myanmar and Sudan across Panama and Argentina, all the imperialist creditors tremble at the specter of resurgent communism. They now know that declarations of the “End of History” were nothing but bluster! Today they balance the cost of largess, in terms of incremental caloric concessions to defuse the power keg against the cost of losing it all to successful revolutionary upsurges. Alongside these class enemies, the comprador authoritarian enforcers, the reformists, social democrats, trade union leaders, much of the self identified socialist and communist left work overtime to stop the workers from establishing leadership of the masses with a class independent party and program of action. Thus workers are now on their own to expropriate foreign and national capitals and thereby complete the tasks of national self-determination by permanent revolution that breaks down national borders to crush imperialism. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Without a revolutionary leadership, each upsurge is first met with the popular front to snow the workers with ‘democracy in action’ which without class political independence only prepares the workers for the inevitability of fascism. Promises of democracy to assuage world opinion are made and under new elections that at most deliver a ‘socialism’ of <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“bolsa de familia”</em> to lift the enraged masses from misery to poverty but not beyond. Yet capital has no room and no means to offer the workers anything of value. In this crisis they can offer neither bread nor peace. If workers break with the popular front then capital abandons all vestiges of democracy and crushes the masses. Each downturn produces a ‘red tide’. In the west the red tide is more like a pink wave where social democrats, radical sociologists and other social-patriots rise to the task, but in the Global South as the red flags come out they must be tightly controlled. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">So internationally the imperialist bosses are playing whack-a-mole. The west depends on authoritarians like Rajapaksa, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Duterte/Marcos and Bolsonaro hiding as best they can behind failing veneers of democracy. On the other side the Chinese apply the art of turning “useful idiots” to their ends. For China the task is to have a ‘radical left’ coterie of academics and activists ‘hold high’ the legacy of 1917 and 1949. This is morphed and wholesaled by the leadership from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping into ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’, delivered as Marxism-Leninism’s Gospel truth to the enraged and awakening masses in the Global South who are told the debt collectors from China are their friends and leaders of an anti-imperialist bloc! </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Capitalist Con Men of the ‘Left’: The petty bourgeois politics of the NGOs and the Stalinist Bureaucracy:</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">One such useful idiot rose from working class radicalism as a member of a Maoist caucus of radicalized black autoworkers in 1970’s Detroit to become something of a tech mogul. Thoughtworks’ profile page for founder <a href="https://www.thoughtworks.com/en-us/profiles/n/neville-roy-singham" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Roy Neville Singham</a> shows he has made bank directing multi million dollar projects for the likes of Caterpillar Financial Services with no regard for their armored bulldozers’ role in the death of <a href="https://rachelcorriefoundation.org/rachel" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Rachel Corrie</a> and the IDF’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Corrie" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">demolition of Palestinian homes</a> in 2003. His company and activities became something of a pass-through to left outfits like Peoples Forum, Tri-Continental and CODE Pink in the US and to the 330,000 members strong NUMSA (National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa) and its creation, the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (SRWP). </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">In legal existence since 1987, NUMSA has organized the most militant sector of the South African Working class, standing up against the rightward trajectory of the Tripartite popular front of the ANC-SACP and COSATU which trapped the workers in perpetual subservience to imperialism, allowing a layer of Black capitalists to rise to the top climbing over the graves of the <a href="https://minersshotdown.co.za/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Marikana </a>miners. The Marikana massacre exposed the ANC and now president Cyril Ramaphosa’s anti-working class commitments. At the time of the massacre, Ramaphosa, a former trade unionist and strike leader had become a board member of the Lonmin mine. When Ramaphosa showed up at the miners memorial vigil he was driven off by the workers who held him responsible. He would go on to serve on the executive board of the ANC. Since then he has acquired stakes in many industries; his personal wealth is reported as <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-20767093" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">$450 million</a>-quite a trajectory for a former trade unionist and strike leader! </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Today he cynically preaches class peace as he vows to fight corruption as he campaigns for the “<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-27/ramaphosa-asks-for-lower-wages-firm-investment-commitments" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Framework for a Social Compact</a>”, uniting COSATU and business owners to drive down wages and boost investment. With a third of the working class unemployed the ruling class opposes a ‘basic income grant’ and fears a new “Arab Spring”.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The fallout from the Marikana massacre split the working class internationally between supporters of the multi-class Tripartite popular front and the Justice for Marikana Miners movement. This split was apparent in Oakland, CA when we initiated street action in defense of the Marikana Miners, which led to forums and workshops. NUMSA sent its representatives to a Berkeley venue where the Transportation Workers Solidarity Committee, run by retired ILWU Local 10 militant Jack Heyman, hosted and toasted NUMSA as the emerging vanguard. Noticeably absent from this movement, in particular because they have been in lockstep with the Tripartite regime, were all the local Stalinist and M-L outfits like the Communist Party, Angela Davis’s Committees of Correspondence, the Becker brothers’ PSL and Workers World Party leader Clarence Thomas (ex-president of ILWU local 10 and leader in the Million Man March.)</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">After the 2012 Marikana massacre COSATU expelled NUMSA in 2013. The vanguard of the working class was looking for a new leadership to challenge the capitalist Tripartite regime, which despite its participation in BRICS, was clearly uninterested in shaking free from the imperialist world order, neither from the entrenched Anglo American nor from the new kids on the block, China. <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/opinion/strengthening-economic-co-operation-between-south-africa-and-china-1a74106f-e4e6-453d-9f6b-fd1258e4babf" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Gert Grobler reported in July 2021</a>, “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">China has been South Africa’s largest trading partner for 12 years in a row. From January to May this year, bilateral trade between China and South Africa reached $20.52 bn, growing 65.6% year-on-year…</em>” </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">NUMSA, it was hoped, by vanguard workers internationally, could fill the role providing a revolutionary socialist alternative. Its leader Irvin Jim led the 2019 formation of the SRWP which despite its proclaimed Marxism-Leninism was not able to win more than a small fraction of the NUMSA members to vote for it against the ANC. Only 24,439 voted for the SRWP in 2019 and in the municipal elections of 2021 it floundered again, garnering only 5,444 votes. Could it be the bureaucratic centralism of the leadership and its trajectory away from ‘Leninism toward Maoism’ and embrace of Xi’s China is no more inspiring to the working masses than the official SACP-ANC-COSATU? </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Yet despite all the revolutionary bluster neither NUMSA and SRWP nor SAFTU and their respective leaders Irvin Jim and Zwelinzima Vavi have made a qualitative political break with the ANC, COSATU and SACP. For years they promised to return to the Freedom Charter and the national revolution and to get the revolution back on track. However, neither grouping were able to break from Stalinism’s Menshevik theory and stagist method that tasks the working masses with establishing a nationalist popular front and a rebuilt workers party as envisaged by Joe Slovo to revive the Freedom Charter. There is no fighting leadership that shows the masses the necessity of the permanent revolution, that only under the leadership of a politically independent black working class can the fight for workers power and socialism achieve the lofty yet limited national democratic tasks of the Freedom Charter. Tasks that can only be won by expropriation of foreign capitals and the native white big capitalists and emergent black capitalist class. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The <a href="https://www.facebook.com/1060706544/posts/pfbid02uDphn2N1U7WMicfj89WK18dytKj41rDfN38dJ9PJuXRB9KYCYVaNzcgoYryXYgzkl/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Cape Town SRWP Shaun Magmoed Branch</a> released a statement that argues that the bureaucratic centralism and adaptation of the Maoist method of allying with the entire petty bourgeoisie as opposed to the Leninist method of splitting the poorer/oppressed petty bourgeois from the upper well off petty bourgeois are being enforced, now in real time with the shuttering of New Frame magazine and the refusal to seat delegates critical of the leadership at the NUMSA convention. This is the culmination, they surmise, of the work of the Chinese Communist Party and its operative <a href="https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/the-big-business-of-uyghur-genocide-denial/">Roy Singham</a> and the network of NGOs tying Chinese imperialism to NUMSA, Code Pink, Vijay Prasad at Tricontinental, the People’s Forum and Code Pink as? <br /></p><figure class="wp-block-image" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #565656; font-family: Lato; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><img alt="" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/RAajRQ3iVYiZi9mwpCSM15NMsHPHG2mZv5x8vQw-BjsRlMnUPP-qHzPrEklD04tAprosOuKGQZ7UDziLxwz3mfPIVS2lOOXv495TdIEvhAA1XGd1LuTZRXgiG4z90jCmSYtgIcifRUAVbYrkOHv90Q" style="border-radius: inherit; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; height: auto; margin-bottom: 20px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: bottom;" /></figure><figure class="wp-block-image" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #565656; font-family: Lato; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><img alt="" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/m0Yb643JjuMrHv8mk0sr2-sWmFqx5_iAhhrmq5HYSLm1vmOr61oaEjSC5667Qc4fbQUPxDsG3SRjZqHiqI1-XJxYD69QEOzIsddJ5sCQtpH1KnJB8ST9KdUxeovFJGqgsW2lvajg8CBujqE8ciR99A" style="border-radius: inherit; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; height: auto; margin-bottom: 20px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: bottom;" /></figure><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Workers around the world have to rally against this sellout of NUMSA to remove its Stalinist/Maoist bureaucratic leadership and put a fighting democratic leadership in place. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Under the bureaucratic rule of Irvin Jim’s Stalinist/Maoist leadership of NUMSA treats the SRWP as its political wing. Here we have the treacherous labor bureaucracy threatening to take control of the whole labor movement, collaborating with the China led BRICS – (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa soon to include Iran). The war in Ukraine has caused the West to close ranks temporarily, but far from weakening the Eurasian Block, sanctions have pushed the BRICS into a huddle – just take the fact that they now all buy Russian oil or gas. China and Russia are in a different league from the semi-colonial BRICS as rising imperialist powers. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Most of China’s economic growth flows from its ability to use its state capitalist regime to accumulate capital by outcompeting its imperialist rivals. It tries this on with the soft-power of ‘win-win’ deals that promise FDI on terms that pretend to be a peaceful extension of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ rather than the grubby Western abuse of the semi-colonial world. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">But soft power is not credible without recruiting the labor bureaucracy in the semi-colonies to con workers into playing along with this lie. Workers do not buy the lie and know what super-exploitation is (take the case of the Rössing miners in Namibia whose union was busted by China.) But when they fight back against the popular front they meet a reactionary union leadership that drops its fake Marxism- Leninism and apes the Bonapartist bourgeois regimes of Xi, Putin, Modi, Bolsonaro, and Ramaphosa. They become mini Bonapartists spouting the Maoist Xi line of ‘win-win’ socialism to justify expulsions, thuggery, and fascism as the order of the day. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Terminal crisis offers no way out for Capital. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Forward on the road to socialism!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">As the terminal crisis unfolds it can only lead to a dead end for capital. The counter-tendencies to the LTRPF come up against the reality that capital cannot create enough new value out of our labor to make a profit on the vast pile of accumulated dead capital. Ultimately all the counter-tendencies depend on increasing the rate of exploitation of labor to plunder nature to restore the rate of profit. But this depends upon the willingness of the workers and poor farmers to pay for the crisis with their lives and livelihoods. Neither the Western imperialists that drag workers into war against the “red menace”’, nor the Russian and Chinese imperialists who enlist the support of the petty bourgeois enemies of the workers to trap them in Stalinist/Maoist patriotic fronts to fight their wars, can restore falling profits. The mounting pile of debt in both the imperialist and semi-colonial world and the repression of the working masses worldwide will explode and bring capitalism face to face with the fearful ‘specter’ of communism. We face the rapidly approaching crossroads leading to socialist revolution or human extinction. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Socialist revolution will not happen without a mass working class conscious of the necessity for socialism. As we see in Sudan, Sri Lanka and elsewhere, when workers rise up against the oppression of inflation, debt, hunger, war etc., the counter-revolution prevails unless the workers are organized and mobilized by an internationalist revolutionary party. Most urgently, workers around the world must rise up against the fifth-column labor collaborators that sell out the workers and poor farmers to endless wars and inevitable human extinction. They must be thrown out, and fighting, democratic unions built, backed by workers councils and self defense militias, capable of defeating the Bonapartist and fascist regimes, smashing the bourgeois states and imposing workers governments capable of ending capitalism and opening the road to socialism!</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency (ILTT), 08/02/2022</em></span></p>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-26257426021028018282022-07-22T23:22:00.000+12:002022-07-22T23:22:24.367+12:00Ukraine: For a New Zimmerwald!<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg-O8m8K5p2T1bv5mzk9TaiZn3HvDcfxqmIFekoD1U9O-vhkslvPKKgCsxxxLQ4IgkwXICra-WRqFW6S-tx94466Gxhf5O361uxkqMUQBjowM6gJphi3jfB4Qw25lJV8RCJDEYIl5U7yJdYTWxlE4FxsmrzFw3T5ukFXI9dCq9fIEAlf1gDLJ8" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="176" data-original-width="286" height="348" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg-O8m8K5p2T1bv5mzk9TaiZn3HvDcfxqmIFekoD1U9O-vhkslvPKKgCsxxxLQ4IgkwXICra-WRqFW6S-tx94466Gxhf5O361uxkqMUQBjowM6gJphi3jfB4Qw25lJV8RCJDEYIl5U7yJdYTWxlE4FxsmrzFw3T5ukFXI9dCq9fIEAlf1gDLJ8=w634-h348" width="634" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="sfsibeforpstwpr" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #565656; float: left; font-family: Lato; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 5px 0px; width: 710px;"><div class="sfsi_plus_Sicons" style="box-sizing: inherit; float: left; position: relative;"><div class="sfsiplus_norm_row sfsi_plus_wDivothr" style="box-sizing: inherit; float: left; min-width: 25px; width: auto;"><div class="sfsi_plus_wicons shuffeldiv " style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; display: inline-block; float: left; height: auto; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 5px; padding-top: 5px; position: relative; width: 40px; z-index: 0;"><div class="sfsiplus_inerCnt" style="box-sizing: inherit; float: left; outline: 0px; position: relative; width: 30px; z-index: inherit !important;"><br /></div></div><br /></div></div></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">The inter imperialist conflict over Ukraine: Is it a proxy war?</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"> The real complexity examined.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Central to debates among workers and ‘socialists’, as they respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, are questions of sovereignty and national self determination, the nature of the state, and the fascist threat both in Ukraine and Russia. The left is divided on the question: is Ukraine an independent state fighting imperialist invasion, or is Ukraine a semi-colonial proxy in the inter-imperialist ‘Great Game’ for Eurasia. Is the ‘Great Game’ being fought out by imperialist blocs seeking control of Ukraine for economic and geo-strategic reasons of their own, or does Ukraine have sovereignty to conduct a ‘just war’ of self defense? </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">In the age of modern war the ruling classes’ internationally accepted legal definitions of war serve humanity or provide imperialism with its ‘plausible deniability’. The working class needs its own understanding of wars that reject imperialism’s assertions of ‘clean hands’ as it conducts hybrid, limited, economic, and proxy wars. We will show that the imperialist think tanks and academics’ own examinations of proxy relationships prove NATO and the west have crossed their own lines into direct participation despite their claims to having no boots-on-the-ground or planes in the air; claims which have been called into question during the writing of this article. We will expose those ‘socialists’ who have stretched the limits of credulity by accepting the imperialists definitions of war, objectively shirking their internationalist duty to lead class war against imperialist war. Instead, objectively they have entered into a military bloc with NATO and Zelensky, that tethers the workers movement to their ends, objectively abandoning the class struggle. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">To do this we will examine the path of the fascist militia’s coup at the EuroMaidan through its integration into the National Guard and Territorial Defense Force (TDF) and the socialists’ abandonment of the fight for workers self defense in deference to the TDF. We will recount that Ukrainian chauvinism against Russophones and minority populations triggered the war over Donbas. We will show that the war in Ukraine is the extension of the war with the separatist republics. We will argue that the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) ‘s fight for self determination became compromised early in the conflict when they became dominated by reactionary Russian operatives, whose use of Soviet era sloganeering and symbology confused many into thinking they were conducting a legitimate struggle for self determination and a return to socialism. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">We will argue that despite the struggle of the DPR and LPR being usurped by Russia, the people’s right to self determination in the form of Independent Workers Republics is still the key to unlocking Eurasian proletarian unity and defeating imperialism. We will show that the fascist militia hardened in the war from 2014-2022 have been integrated into the capitalist state under a neo-liberal capitalist regime which now restricts the democratic rights of the working class and population under martial law. While the right to self-determination of the DPR and LPR is not recognised by Ukraine, Ukraine cannot be free. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">In our publications we have argued that after the counter-revolutions and capitalist restoration in the former USSR and China, they were able to <a href="http://www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2014-07-JUL-Class-Warrior-Vol-001-No-6.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">escape their subordination</a> to the west and emerged as an <a href="http://www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2014-11-NOV-Class-Warrior-Vol-001-No-7.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">imperialist bloc</a>. Our main task here is to show that Ukraine, a semi-colony, cannot be independent until it frees itself of its semi-colonial character by means of permanent revolution-socialist revolution that overthrows the capitalist state and unites workers internationally to declare ‘war against war’–class war against imperialist wars. We will show that Ukraine is today a proxy of the west, that Lenin’s fight for proletarian independence in the struggle for self determination and Trotsky’s method of permanent revolution are applicable and proven true today; the capitalist regimes of semi-colonies cannot achieve self-determination subordinated to either imperialist bloc and that <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">the socialists that put off the struggle against the capitalist state and western imperialism during imperialist wars and wars of national liberation objectively stab the workers in the back. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">We support the right of the Ukrainian workers to fight independently for national self-determination to defeat imperialist invasion (Russia) and subordination to imperialist exploitation (US/EU) as they are used as cannon-fodder conscripted by the capitalist Ukraine state. At the same time we support the right to self-determination of Donbass and the Crimea, including secession. The people of these regions have the right to carry out their struggle for self-determination against one or the other imperialist power and their proxies. Our Action Program for the defeat of imperialism both east and west (see links <a href="http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=2958" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">letter to workers and soldiers</a>) containing our program against the war and our <a href="http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=2930" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">May Day appeal</a> for a New Zimmerwald explain further.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Failure to understand that this war is a proxy war, particularly among those who do see Russian imperialism, arises from a failure of method – i.e. dialectics – which leads to the separation of the national question and the class question. The national question was essentially the class question in both Lenin’s position on national self-determination and Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution, demonstrating that the national bourgeoisie was no longer progressive and incapable of winning national independence from imperialism. We will ask why these groups, especially those which see Russia as imperialist, reduce the class question to a tag attached to the national question, which they argue is predominant, even to the exclusion of any class-political independence. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">For this is exactly the class question, demonstrating which class (and its thinking) is leading the opportunist capitulation to forces <b>opposed</b> to socialist revolution!? For the petty bourgeois opportunist, prostrate adaptation to nationalism is the norm, and has been almost since the death of Trotsky. For these treacherous forces the prospect of socialist revolution is forever receding further into the future, and this has been their leitmotif since capitulating to national chauvinism during <a href="http://www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/ON-THE-MARXIST-PROGRAM.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">World War Two</a>. <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Crisis of Leadership of the proletariat remains the crisis of the degeneration of the Fourth International. </em>The further decay of the quality of leadership of the workers’ movement facing the terminal crisis of capital, sees discussion of programmatic ideas snuffed out by social-patriotic Menshevism-equivalents. We are far along in the death agony of capitalism, and exactly now in this Ukraine crisis these forces remove historical materialism from discussion, reminding us of Kautsky in exile proclaiming the ultimate invincibility of liberal parliamentarism!</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">The Inter-imperialist character of the Ukraine war dominates</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Today the world is at war in an inter-imperialist conflict for control of the semi-colonial world, their markets and securing spheres of dependency. The hegemonic US/EU/NATO imperialist bloc’s orientation to, and subordination of, Ukraine, accelerated since the Euro-Maidan, is militarily challenged by the competing Russia/China imperialist bloc, which if it is to advance internationally, must secure its near periphery-both for economic and geo-strategic reasons. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">We say the inter-imperialist conflict is overarching and predominates, not just in Ukraine but across the globe. The war cannot be understood outside the growing confrontation between the two imperialist blocs. There is no other explanation for the Eastward movement of NATO since the fall of the USSR, for the refusal to negotiate a solution as demanded by Russia, and for the deliberate use of hitherto extreme economic sanctions against Russia in response to its invasion. Those who think it’s not a proxy war have no appreciation of the meaning of imperialist as understood by Lenin and are blinkered by NATO propaganda. Those who think it is not an inter-imperialist conflict because there are apparently no NATO troops’ boots-on-the-ground have a great number of facts contradicting their position, as we will show. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The working class cannot accept imperialism’s limitation of war to those doctrines of direct and indirect war in the age of hybrid, limited and proxy wars. Western imperialism has for years prepared its forces and procurements for “limited wars.” Semantic squabbles of sects over the character of the war diminish the cultural and international significance of Ukraine’s existence while losing sight, one-sidedly of the long term conflict in its global dimension. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Invariably, in times of war, observers quote Clausewitz explaining that, “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">War is simply the continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other means.</em>” Workers should not take Clausewitz on faith either. Lenin showed that war is the extension of politics which is the extension of economics. In the imperialist epoch it is the competition for super-profits which drives politics and leads inexorably to war. Today the inter-imperialist conflict is a terminal unending war, the continuation of “political intercourse” as class war as each imperialist bloc acts to send workers to war to use them as cannon fodder. Patriotic fronts divert workers and squash the proletarian revolution to prevent workers from escaping the trap of patriotism and turning their guns around on their own ruling classes, defeating counter-revolution and making international proletarian revolution.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">We will show that to liberate Ukraine the international workers movement needs to change this entire picture, to suppress this war and its spread, to put an end to its cause requiring the rallying of revolutionary Marxism to its historic program, for the national liberation to be won by permanent revolution, which is why we need to begin with a new Zimmerwald that founds a new revolutionary workers International.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">As Trotsky said in <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/04/ukraine.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">The Problem of the Ukraine</a>:</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“At the beginning of the last imperialist war the Ukrainians, Melenevski (“Basok”) and Skoropis-Yeltukhovski, attempted to place the Ukrainian liberation movement under the wing of the Hohenzollern general, Ludendorff. They covered themselves in so doing with left phrases. With one kick the revolutionary Marxists booted these people out. That is how revolutionists must continue to behave in the future. The impending war will create a favorable atmosphere for all sorts of adventurers, miracle-hunters and seekers of the golden fleece. These gentlemen, who especially love to warm their hands in the vicinity of the national question, must not be allowed within artillery range of the labor movement. Not the slightest compromise with imperialism, either fascist or democratic! Not the slightest concession to the Ukrainian nationalists, either clerical-reactionary or liberal-pacifist! No “People’s Fronts”! The complete independence of the proletarian party as the vanguard of the toilers!”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Securing the imperialist fatherland</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">To obfuscate the obvious, Putin, like every authoritarian propagandist, writes a national chauvinist narrative based on partial truths and lies. In this case: a very real US/NATO western encirclement strategy, a phony mission of denazification (in Ukraine-Azov and Right Sector; but not at home - Dugin’s Eurasia dream and international white power movements, etc.), and denial of Ukrainian national rights as if national self-determination was only ever a Bolshevik ploy (a ploy aimed at uniting nations in permanent revolution, in fact); Putin’s lies serve as justifications for aggression to the Russophiles and Putin-pals. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The restoration of capitalism in Russia acted against the peripheral republics’ continued integration into a united Russian state. The Russian national capitalist class needed the former Tsarist empire, the ‘prison house of nations’ to be secured for internal imperialist super-exploitation, lest they be subordinated and made semi-colonies of the west. Throughout the non-Russian former USSR the national question, and its corollary, proletarian permanent revolution is back on the agenda. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Putin’s life mission is to extinguish hotspots of national resistance in the near periphery and the imposition of super-exploitation by the Russian capitalist class. Putin is the leader of the new restorationist bourgeoisie, he proves with his verbiage that he is not a mad man but the chosen Bonapartist administrator of Russian imperialism. Since restoration, in order to secure the wealth of the former USSR, the Kremlin is constantly engaged in navigating and putting down one national upsurge after another, upsurges driven by the international economic crisis laid atop the privatizations and austerities of capitalist restorations. More and more, those upsurges will have the potential to explode into direct wars to resubordinate what may become the proxies of the west, such as in Ukraine. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Paul Goble writing at <a href="https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/11/putin-puts-his-entirely-statist.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Window on Eurasia blog</a> notes that for Putin and the Russian state ideology: </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“If states recognize self-determination, it exists; if they don’t, it doesn’t.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">That position allows Putin to make the claims he has to Ukraine’s Crimea, but what it demonstrates if indeed any demonstration were needed is that for Putin, the rights of peoples are irrelevant and the powers of states are paramount, with the former only in a position to make a claim if a state backs them.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">In Putin’s world, few peoples would ever be able to assert a right to self-determination unless they could attract at least one state and probably the state within whose borders they found themselves to support them, reducing a fundamental right to a contingency on the policies of states who may in fact be their oppressors.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">It is a bitter lesson no less true now than at any time since 1914 that national self-determination and peace is only possible as a product of the socialist revolution. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">And on the other side the not so invisible hand of the CIA and Western imperialism</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-02-25/ukraine-cia-insurgents-russia-invasion" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">LA Times on February 25</a> this year reminded readers that not only had the CIA been <a href="https://www.audacy.com/connectingvets/news/what-is-the-cias-covert-stay-behinds-in-ukraine" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">training special forces</a> in Ukraine since 2015 but that they were preparing for the insurgency now unfolding behind the Russian lines. <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/cia-trained-ukrainian-paramilitaries-may-take-central-role-if-russia-invades-185258008.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Yahoo news reports</a>, “<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Going back decades</em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">, the CIA has provided limited training to Ukrainian intelligence units to try and shore up an independent Kyiv and prevent Russian subversion, but cooperation “ramped up” after the Crimea invasion, said a former CIA executive.</em>”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The Euromaidan was the reactionary consolidation of the Orange Revolution. The capitalist restoration led to a face off between western capitals and Russia’s new capitalists over who will control the economies of the former Soviet Republics. Russia was winning out against the west in Ukraine, Belarus, and the CIS countries. As the Balkans were crushed and the Baltic states were absorbed by the EU, Ukraine was an outlier and was still up for grabs. Yanukovich was unable to meet the IMF’s demands for debt service after the 2008-2009 recession and in his rebuff to the EU his fate was sealed. The masses took to the streets to demand non-payment to the IMF, but the western agents, long prepared for leading a rightist, anti-Russian revolt, co-opted what became the Maidan, and the snipers finished off the original thrust. The Euro-Maidan broke the logjam blocking the break from Russia, and Ukraine re-orientated to the EU. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The fascists and right wing crushed the independent left. The rise of Ukrainian ethno-chauvinism and laws against use of Russian language drove the eastern provinces into revolt. The instincts of the people for socialist revival were progressive, and their demands for self-determination and resistance against the fascists was supportable, but it was quickly usurped by Russia which crushed the budding proletarian independence. Even before the shooting began in the East, the proxy war had begun by other means in 2014.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Middle Class Muddleheads Today</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">From Biden and the heads of state of Europe to the broader left and the majority of the workers movement the level of participation by the west keeps the war “just” and imperialist only on one side. The line is drawn at strategic offensive weaponry and boots on the ground! Cross that line and the character of the war changes, we are told. Thus the Fourth Internationalists provide Biden his plausible deniability just as they deny the working class its revolution. We will show that in the age of hybrid war, by western imperialist politicians’ own words and by their militaries’ calculated cultivation of the strategic proxy option in Ukraine, the claim to have clean hands in this latest phase of the face off is pure hypocrisy-pablum to keep the masses in check.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Much of the “Trotskyist” left hangs its hat on the claim that the current conflict is not currently a direct inter-imperialist war and that Ukraine is defending its sovereignty, is independent and not a proxy.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The LIT-FI (and the FLTI-for that matter) identify Russia and Ukraine as dependent nations. For the LIT-FI, because NATO has ‘no boots-on-the-ground’, and until it does, the character of the war is not inter-imperialist or even imperialist but one of aggression by Russia which they explain is a just war for national independence by Ukraine. (Like the FLTI, they explain Russia serves as an agent of western imperialism-against permanent revolution as in Syria & Kazakhstan-but not so in Ukraine); So they support the right of Ukraine to get its arms where it will (NATO). The LIT-FI like the Spartacists (ICL) say when NATO boots hit the ground the character of the war changes to imperialist, i.e. NATO vs dependent Russia and defense of Russia becomes the proletarian order of the day. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The Political Bureau of the FI sees Russia as imperialist and Ukraine as dependent thus supporting Ukraine against the invading imperialist, but does not support NATO weaponizing Ukraine. And in the FI periphery, the<a href="https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article7678" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> ITO</a> characterizes three wars contemporaneous (the cold inter-imperialist war, the national war over Donbas, and the imperialist invasion) with the ‘just national war of self defense for self determination of Ukraine” as the primary, overshadowing the inter-imperialist character, specifically because there is no direct intervention by western imperialism. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">To justify calling for NATO arms to Ukraine’s “resistance” the <a href="https://litci.org/en/debate-with-the-political-bureau-of-the-fourth-international-and-gilbert-achcar/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">LIT-FI</a> edits dialectics out of Rudolf Klement’s “<a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol1/no1/printact.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Principles and Tactics in the War</a>”. In “progressive wars” it is valid for the workers of the imperialist countries to demand “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">direct and effective military support toward the progressive cause…</em>” The first unstated assumption is that the capitalist Zelensky led war is “progressive” rejecting the proxy relationship between US/EU/NATO and the Ukraine regime. With this logic, they, like the ITO, elevate the national character of the war above its international character. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The LIT quotes Klement on the necessity for workers in imperialist countries to demand arms to the progressive side, but they mangle and ignore the meaning of the qualifying clause “controlled by it” which means<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> the arms should be controlled by the working class</em></span> not the military industrial wing of the ruling class.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“In the imperialist countries, which are allied with the countries that are waging progressive and revolutionary wars, everything boils down to this: that the proletariat fights with revolutionary means for a direct, effective, military support, </em><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">controlled by it,</em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> towards the progressive cause (‘Planes for Spain!’ cried the French workers). (bold our emphasis ed.)</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Klement is thus enlisted by the LIT-FI in their polemic against Gilbert Achcar of the Political Bureau of the Fourth international which draws its line in the sand <a href="https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article7540" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">against western “boots-on-the -ground or a No-Fly Zone </a>or delivery of fighter bombers while favoring the delivery of “defensive weapons to the victims with no strings attached” (anti-tank and anti-aircraft). Thus, while not calling for sanctions, the workers movement should not call for them to be lifted. [!] </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">More honest than most of the Left, at least on this point, Achcar <a href="https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article7571" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">poses the question:</a> can anti-imperialists support a resistance led by a right wing government? Leaning on Lenin (no reference needed) Achcar declares just struggles against national oppression must be supported “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">regardless of the nature of its leadership</em>”. For Trotsky, Lenin’s actual position is that the leadership of the Fourth International retains the right to criticize this national leadership in order to educate the international working class to take the lead in the national struggle to overthrow capitalism by means of permanent revolution. (Trotsky, <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/05/think.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Learn to Think</a>). </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><a href="https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article7685#nb9" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Tassos Anastassiadis</a> of the Greek section of the Fourth International (Anametrisi) in a massive mea culpa and political flip flop, makes the case for the just defensive war against the imperialist invader, proclaiming the agency of the Ukrainian masses to prosecute their just war regardless of the momentary intersection of their, the people’s interests, and those of the western imperialists (who hypocritically “suddenly feign interest”) and Ukraine’s regime and capitalist ruling class. For Anastassiadis, the western imperialists’ participation and the national capitalists’ leadership does not turn the war into an “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">indirect war of the powerful (inter imperialist)….</em>” Declaring the people are not pawns, and they are able to claim their own political agency, cannot justify his conclusion that this is not<em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> a ‘war by proxy”</em>. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">So there you have it. The ‘momentary intersection of interests’ is a euphemism for <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">the patriotic front</span> which includes western imperialists. For Anastassiadis it is true because workers have a ‘mystical’ agency which makes being used as cannon fodder in their class interest. It is so, because we said so, and because we desire the defeat of the Russian intervention by the people and mass movement, not by their capitalist leadership. Because we raise demands against the IMF debt repayment, (like the Ukraine Social Movement), and refuse aid which has an extortionist character (as if that’s possible) the political independence of the masses from their bourgeoisie is therefore established. Poof, no inter-imperialist war. Some proof that is! The leadership of the Political Bureau of the FI brought the Greek comrades into line after admonishing them for repeating Putin propaganda, and as shown above they dutifully complied with wishful thinking, that the proxy war is in the workers’ interests in this ‘momentary intersection’. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Most self described socialists echo the Ukraine Social Movement’s (USM) demand to abolish the debt to IMF loans, while at the same time claiming that the ‘resistance’ defends Ukrainian independence (both from Russia and IMF). But none or few (we haven’t found them yet) show that the workers in Ukraine are attacked by both the Ukrainian capitalist state acting as a proxy, pawn of the US/NATO/IMF on one side, and the Russian imperialist invasion on the other. Even the Ukrainian Social Movement (USM) refers to the fight of competing national capitalist parasites (both Russian and Ukrainian) for control of Ukraine and opportunity to exploit its workers. But even with this understanding, most like the USM, chart no independent path for the working class to end war and the cause of war-by fighting for the revolutionary party and socialist revolution. None fight for class war against imperialist war. Where, we ask again, are the Leninists of the Left Zimmerwald?!</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Fake Left warming their hands on the National Question</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">We won’t find the Leninists in the workers movement from social democracy to the peace groups. Nor among the self-proclaimed revolutionary Marxists who are typically opportunist and provide cover for one imperialist bloc or the other. Those in the camp of Ukraine provide cover for Biden’s campaign to deny direct participation even as he pursues NATO expansion. While those in the camp of Russia join in either the Putinite denial of Ukrainian national existence or the tale of NATO victimization of Russia, and the anti-imperialist nature of the DPR/LPR and Crimea breakaway whose “self-determination” they promote and defend, denying the actual leadership/control which now comes directly from Moscow. We call these the two social-imperialist fake lefts warming their hands on the National Question. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">On <i>Marxmail </i>listserv we read the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), Oakland Socialist and Michael Karadjis agree the demand of the eastern provinces for self determination is no longer progressive. We will argue that it is exactly because the demand was usurped by Russian Imperialism that it is the duty of the revolutionary Marxism to defend the right to self-determination as the method of winning the national revolution to permanent revolution under the slogans:<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"> For an Independent Soviet Donbass! </span>alongside the demand <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">For an Independent Soviet Ukraine! </span>to do battle with the bourgeois lie that national sovereignty and self determination are truly their program. Biden’s program is to throttle Russia and diminish its power to project force as a prelude to a world war against the China/Russia bloc. This is the clear message of the<a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_196144.htm#:~:text=NATO's%20core%20tasks-,2022%20Strategic%20Concept,carry%20out%20to%20address%20them." style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> Madrid NATO meeting</a> which is rallying international support to launch a prolonged war on Russia and China.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The “14,000 dead” during the 2014-2019 war in the East have become a political football at first thrown downfield by those in Ukraine demanding support to press the war. They pointed their fingers at Russia. Then the Putinites put it on Ukraine. Then the investigators showed that the bulk of the deaths were soldiers and a majority from Russia, a minority from Ukraine (mostly the rightist battalions) and a minority civilians (some 3,500). This painted a different picture putting the politics back in play. So the RCIT upped the game showing that some 3 million civilians have fled, implying that the new republics had nothing to offer. Roughly half went to the west and half fled to Russia. Ignoring the fact that civilians always run from war if they can! <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">See </em><a href="https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/theses-on-donbass/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">RCIT</em></a><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> and </em><a href="https://mkaradjis.com/2022/06/16/on-the-fantastic-tale-that-the-ukrainian-army-killed-14000-ethnic-russians-in-donbas-between-2014-and-2022/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Michael Karadjis</em></a><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><a href="https://oaklandsocialist.com/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Oakland Socialist</em> </a>was not alone as they gushed over the influx of volunteers to defend the Ukrainian state from the Russian invasion after seeing the photos of everyone from children to <a href="https://twitter.com/i/status/1493001855521202185" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">grandmothers being trained to fight by Azov Battalion</a> members seen here with the Nazi Wolfsangel insignia. Behind the honcho’s Oakland Mayoral campaign, John Reimann rallies Anarchists of note and the 3rd Camp to support for NATO arms and the <a href="https://ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/2022/03/02/join-the-resistance/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Ukrainian state</a>!</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/04/ukraine.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">We hasten to point the readers’ attention to something that Trotsky in 1939</a> had to say about fascism and nationalism in Ukraine:</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“At the beginning of the last imperialist war the Ukrainians, Melenevski (“Basok”) and Skoropis-Yeltukhovski, attempted to place the Ukrainian liberation movement under the wing of the Hohenzollern general, Ludendorff. They covered themselves in so doing with left phrases. With one kick the revolutionary Marxists booted these people out. That is how revolutionists must continue to behave in the future. The impending war will create a favorable atmosphere for all sorts of adventurers, miracle-hunters and seekers of the golden fleece. These gentlemen, who especially love to warm their hands in the vicinity of the national question, must not be allowed within artillery range of the labor movement. Not the slightest compromise with imperialism, either fascist or democratic! Not the slightest concession to the Ukrainian nationalists, either clerical-reactionary or liberal-pacifist! No “People’s Fronts”! The complete independence of the proletarian party as the vanguard of the toilers!”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The Ukrainian Social Movement told us, the ILTT, not to worry about the Nazis because they had been incorporated into the National Guard Units (NGU) and are part of the Ministry of internal affairs. Indeed that process has been ongoing since 2015 and the <a href="https://medium.com/voices-of-the-armed-forces/operation-orbital-explained-training-ukrainian-armed-forces-59405d32d604" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">United Kingdom running Operation ORBITAL</a>, along with Canadians, European and US trainers have been acutely aware that they were <a href="https://declassifieduk.org/uk-commanders-in-ukraine-met-neo-nazi-linked-national-guard-to-deepen-military-cooperation/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">training a wide array of fascists</a> incorporated into the Ukraine NGU. Today, i.e. in June, 2022, we learn of the role of the mercenary <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/mozart-group-veterans-training-ukrainians-fight-russia-war-1699212" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Mozart group</a> in training Zelensky forces in a parallel formation opposite Russia’s Wagner Group of mercenary contractors.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Earlier <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/us/politics/russia-ukraine-military.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">The NYT reported</a> that as of March 3rd, alongside 170,000 active troops and 100,000 reservists and territorial defense forces, “Thousands of civilians are also now enlisting. Since the seizure of Crimea by Russia in 2014:… </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“…(T)he United States has provided more than $3 billion in weapons, equipment and other supplies to Ukraine’s armed forces since 2014. In those eight years, U.S. military advisers, including Army Green Berets and National Guard troops, have trained more than 27,000 Ukrainian soldiers at the </em><a href="https://www.dvidshub.net/feature/jmtgu" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Yavoriv Combat Training Center</em></a><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> near Lviv in western Ukraine.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The U.S. <a href="https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-ukraine/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">State Department</a> statement on security cooperation with Ukraine shows a deep level of integration into NATO as a “keystone in the arch of security”:”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“Since 2014, the United States has provided more than $8.3 billion in security assistance for training and equipment to help Ukraine preserve its territorial integrity, secure its borders, and improve interoperability with NATO.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Ukraine participates in multiple bilateral and multilateral military exercises with the United States, EU, and NATO Allies to include Rapid Trident, Sea Breeze, and Cossack Mace.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><a href="https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/2022/04/calls-for-ukraine-debt-relief-grow-as-imf-and-world-bank-provide-fresh-loans-amidst-crisis/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Ukraine’s debt</a> to western lenders ran to $56.7 billion at the end of 2020, according to the IMF. Doubtless this figure is a fraction of Ukraine’s debt 7 months later. There are voices among imperialist influencers and the fake left calling for a Ukrainian debt payments moratorium and/or cancellation. Borrowing more to finance the war AND make debt payments ‘doesn’t make sense’ to Congressman Jesús “Chuy” García. Now the U.S. and NATO are donating weapons but also, behind Biden’s “arsenal of democracy” speech “lending” weapons, explicitly referring to Lend-Lease in WW2 when asking Congress for more. So Ukraine is a puppet dependency as much as South Viet Nam ever was. Only puppet states ever get ‘donations’ of 150,000 rounds of 155mm artillery ammunition.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Fascists of Euro-Maidan transition to lovers of American style freedom! </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">From a “just cause” to a “Just War”</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">So who are these Territorial Defense Forces? They are the Maidan Self Defense incorporated into the state by <a href="https://uacrisis.org/en/2390-maidan-self-defense" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Order №2</a> of the leader of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andriy_Parubiy" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Self-Defense Andriy Parubiy</a>. Wikipedia reports that in 1991 Parubiy founded the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social-National_Party_of_Ukraine" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">fascist Social-National Party of Ukraine</a> (later this changed its name to Svoboda, i.e. ‘freedom’) and further reported on his supposed drift to the center-right and subsequent election to parliament multiple times on the ballot lines of various “center-right” parties. The cabinet portfolio of the Interior, i.e. in fact, this was Arsen Avakov, a founding member of “the People’s Front” along with Parubiy, and Zelensky kept this neo-fascist in this post until July 2021! </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">In 2014 Radio Svoboda carried <a href="https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/25255305.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">video of the February 6 fascist march on Kyiv</a> and Parubiy’s call for 40,000 to join the ranks of the Ukraine Self Defense League to “effectively” oppose the regime- i.e., to oust Viktor Yanukovych. Andriy Levus, deputy commandant of the Maidan self defense is quoted at the <a href="https://euromaidanpr.wordpress.com/2014/02/08/the-council-of-maidan-self-defense-organizes-united-revolutionary-army-throughout-ukraine/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Euromaidan Public Relations</a> blog: </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“Self-defense has become our offense. Beginning today, self-defense is the resistance. We emphasize that we are preparing a plan for non-violent, but very active, resistance. We will fight local corruption, we will make an effective lustration, we will wage our own information war. We will have our own active revolutionary army. Beginning today, every self-defense fighter is not only a guard, but also a revolutionary political soldier.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Surely the political character of the Euro-Maidan was up for grabs at the beginning but not for long. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/15/john-mccain-ukraine-protests-support-just-cause" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">John McCain</a> showed up and declared:</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“These people love the United States of America, they love freedom – and I don’t think you could view this as anything other than our traditional support for people who want free and democratic society.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">At the same time he made clear the understanding of geo-politics shared by Putin, Kissinger and all hands in the “Great Game”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“There’s no doubt that Ukraine is of vital importance to Putin. I think it was [Henry] Kissinger, I’m not sure, [who] said that Russia, without Ukraine it’s an eastern power, with Ukraine it’s a western power. This is the beginning of Russia, right here in Kiev.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">And on February 20th, 2014 these people who “Love the United States” pulled off a false flag operation from a sniper’s nest killing 89 and injuring a hundred more and blaming Yanukovych.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Ivan Katchanovski, professor at the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa published his research and conclusions at the <a href="https://jordanrussiacenter.org/news/the-maidan-massacre-in-ukraine-revelations-from-trials-and-investigation/#.YrS3oOzMI1K" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Jordan Russian Center</a>, later picked up by <a href="https://mronline.org/2021/12/11/the-maidan-massacre-in-ukraine/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">MR Online</a>: </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“This massacre of protesters and police during the Euromaidan mass protests on February 20, 2014 not only constituted a major crime and human rights violation, but also contributed to a cascading series of events. These included the overthrow of the Ukrainian government, the start of the civil war in Donbas, Russian military interventions in Crimea and Donbas, the Russian annexation of Crimea, and, ultimately, major and protracted conflicts between Ukraine and Russia, on the one hand, and Russia and the West, on the other. The Maidan massacre trial and investigation produced overwhelming evidence that Maidan protesters were massacred by snipers at Maidan-controlled buildings, rather than by government snipers or Berkut policemen — who were nevertheless charged with the crime.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The right had quickly gained control of the protests and ousted Yanukovych.<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"> </span><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Ironically the protests started in opposition to Yanukovych’s refusal to join the EU, in particular because of odious loans from the IMF and its demands that he impose austerity to make good on the loans! </em></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">In Vol 1 No 9 of <a href="http://www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2015-09-SEP-Class-Warrior-Vol-001-No-9.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Class Warrior</a> (Fall, 2015) we wrote:</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“When defensive demands for local autonomy arose in the east they were an expression of the workers movement in retreat after the Maidan, a cultural retreat, a military retreat and a retreat into the waiting arms of Russian imperialist chauvinism. In the first months of the Peoples’ Republics the Permanent Revolution was fighting its way to the fore as the self expression of the masses in their assemblies, their military self defense operations and incipient demands for nationalizations. These activities all further enraged the Kiev neo-liberal/fascist bloc on the one side, and with Permanent Revolution nipping at his heels, Putin went into overdrive on the other. Kiev sought to crush the Peoples’ Republics and Moscow sought to usurp their leaderships to stop the proletarian trajectory of their revolution; reject and stop the Permanent Revolution moving east or west by installing their lackeys over the workers’ heads.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Can any Marxist who understands that the class nature of the state is determined by the property relations the armed bodies defend actually believe the Ukraine state established post Maidan is progressive? How then do they explain all the organizations that have been banned! </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Under the heading “<a href="https://ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/2022/03/02/join-the-resistance/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Join the Resistance</a>” the Ukraine Solidarity Committee (composed of ‘socialist’ groups in the UK) promotes the idea anti-authoritarians can organize ‘their own’ detachments within the framework of the Territorial Defense Forces. In our conversation with leaders of the Ukraine Social Movement they insisted that the rightist militias are now integrated into the National Territorial Defense and have “no right to independent action.” We also were told that the Azov Battalion numbered no more than 900 and were no longer anti-Semites. Any self respecting worker needs more and better evidence than the USM provided. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"> “<a href="https://time.com/5926750/azov-far-right-movement-facebook/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Time</a>” magazine writes of their leader Andriy Biletsky…, </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“Ukrainian police had long treated his organization, </em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_of_Ukraine" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Patriot of Ukraine</em></a><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> [ed. note: Biletsky was the leader of this, the parent group of the Azovs, which was their “security” organization)], as a neo-Nazi terrorist group. Biletsky’s nickname within the group was Bely Vozhd, or White Ruler, and his manifesto seemed to pluck its narrative straight from Nazi ideology. Ukrainian nationalists, it said, must “lead the white nations of the world in a final crusade for their survival, a crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen,” a German term for “subhumans” with roots in Nazi propaganda.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The Ukraine Social Movement (USM), in public discussions and on its web sites, does not spell out a workers revolutionary program that breaks with defense of the bourgeois state in its pose as the nation. They seek <a href="https://rev.org.ua/right-to-weapons-how-can-leftists-support-ukraine/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">NATO arms</a> for the “Ukrainian Armed Forces” and “the Territorial Defense Forces” and refer to these as the “resistance,” as if they are an independent workers resistance and representatives of the struggle for national self determination; not a word that they were the spawn of the Euro-Maidan fascist self defense identified above. They downplay the fascists battalion as having been put under control of the national army, they do not warn the working class that armed fascists are an existential threat to the working class. To this they respond that across Europe and in the US fascists have a much larger presence. Not a hint of the necessity of workers’ political independence, the struggle for workers to take power, any understanding that the bourgeois state cannot deliver actual national independence or that socialism is desirable on any score, let alone the first principle of abolishing class peace with a class war on the bosses that suppresses the inter-imperialist war! </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The fake left conveniently neglects to fight for a <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/prs2-pmp/swp-pmp.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Proletarian Military Policy</a> (PMP) to challenge the state for control of the military, as if the war led by the Zelensky regime can win even a semblance of national sovereignty.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Trotsky argued, in the PMP, that to defeat imperialism and fascism the working class needed to run the military, in other words the workers had to control the state and wage revolutionary war.. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“We fight against sending the worker-soldiers into battle without proper training and equipment. We oppose the military direction of worker-soldiers by bourgeois officers who have no regard for their treatment, their protection and their lives. We demand federal funds for the military training of workers and worker-officers under the control of the trade unions. Military appropriations? Yes—but only for the establishment and equipment of worker training camps! Compulsory military training of workers? Yes—but only under the control of the trade unions!”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Members of the USM interviewed by “Tempest” on June 24, 2022 in <a href="http://europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article63066" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Solidaire Sans Frontieres</a>, report on torture and rape “parties” in the Russian occupied areas, the imposition of ideological pressure in the occupied areas (but not in Ukrainian controled areas), and report that Russia can’t find quislings to serve as local authorities in the occupied areas. They also report on the anti-labor legislation and neo-liberal laws signed by Zelensky, on deteriorating economy, half the population lost their jobs, a lack of food, water and medicine as the population is dying from lack of supplies, the food rotting in silos that can’t make it to market, on the 5.1 million refugees who escaped to Europe and the millions of internally displaced. Zelensky, they expect, will lose his popularity, under the current conditions of martial law, austerity and the lack of progress in the war as well as his defense of “oligarchic capitalism” with an “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">almost religious faith in free market [capitalism].</em>” </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The ethno-nationalism, anti-Russophone chauvinism, and historic oppression of the minorities (the Crimean Tatars, Jewish people, Pontic Greeks, and the Roma) they claim is overcome in the “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">common resistance has empowered the various national minorities</em>” who have “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">joined in the war effort, …and are fighting alongside everyone else as equals.</em>” Despite recounting the disingenuous role of the imperialist west in an attempt to push Ukraine to cut a deal ceding territory for peace (Macron, Kissinger), that Zelensky’s attempts at negotiation with Putin were rebuffed and the observation that “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Putin will only negotiate with Washington and Beijing’</em>‘, that Putin wants to redraw the world map with the big imperialist powers, the USM practices only limited struggle against the capitalist state. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Alona Liasheva concludes that with his immense popularity, “</span><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">[I]n the current situation, it makes no sense to protest Zelensky.</em></span><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">”</span> Rather the USM concentrates on its campaign against foreign debt (tying their demands to those of the global south also indebted to IMF), for sanctions against Russian oil and gas, collecting money for humanitarian relief and support of refugees and immigrants (including those of the global south) being discriminated against and exploited by European capitalists. The international left, we are told, should listen to the people of Ukraine. These representatives of the USM are a little more circumspect in not even mentioning or directly calling for NATO to arm the “resistance”, as we were told in our conversations with USM representatives in (MARCH or APRIL) noting the closer relations of TEMPEST to Gilbert Achcar (Political Bureau of the Fourth International). </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">The state of “democracy” and economy in Ukraine</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Is the Ukraine state post Maidan a bourgeois democracy? Is the nation independent and sovereign (as the USM members told us) capable of navigating its way to steer clear of subordination to either imperialist bloc? Is the state sufficiently secure to afford a modicum of democratic rights the working class demands? Or has the capitalist class utilized the fascist threat, ethno-chauvinism and extreme nationalism to repress the working class and subordinate the nation to the needs of the local capitalist class and their international benefactors?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">We first look at the <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/country/ukraine/freedom-world/2021" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Freedom House report on Ukraine</a> to address these questions.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“Ukraine in 2021 was marked as </em><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">partly free </em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">gaining a</em><a href="https://freedomhouse.org/reports/freedom-world/freedom-world-research-methodology" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> score</em></a><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> of 60/100</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">With the exception of a </em><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">ban on the Communist Party</em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">, there are no formal barriers to the creation and operation of political parties. New political parties organize frequently.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Ukraine’s oligarchs exert significant influence over politics through their financial support for various political parties, and lobby for the appointment of loyalists to key institutional positions.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The elections were deemed generally competitive and credible, despite some problems. Voting was again impossible in Crimea and separatist-held parts of Donbas. Consequently, the elections filled only 424 of the 450 seats. Additionally,</em><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> approximately one million Ukrainian citizens are unable to vote because they do not have a registered address.</em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> An Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) election monitoring mission cited some irregularities, including </em><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“widespread vote-buying, misuse of incumbency, </em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">and the practice of exploiting all possible legislative loopholes” that contributed to inequalities among competitors. Voting and representation are hindered by factors including discrimination that discourages their political participation, the conflict in the east, lack of identity documents for many Roma, and rules against running as an independent for many local, district, and regional offices. Internally displaced persons (IDPs), of which there are over 1.5 million, face legal and practical barriers to voting. Societal discrimination against LGBT+ people affects their ability to engage in political and electoral processes.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">In September 2020, the Constitutional Court ruled that a prominent anti-corruption agency created by the ruling party was unconstitutional and shut down multiple investigations that had been opened by the agency. </em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The constitution guarantees freedoms of speech and expression, and libel is not a criminal offense. The media landscape features considerable pluralism, and open criticism of the government and investigation of powerful figures. However, business magnates own and influence many outlets, using them as tools to advance their agendas. President Zelensky has received significant support from media outlets controlled by banking magnate Igor Kolomoisky.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Journalists continue to face threats of violence and intimidation in 2020, and Ukraine’s courts and law enforcement agents often fail to protect their rights.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The constitution and a 1991 law define religious rights in Ukraine, and these are generally respected. However, smaller religious groups continue to report some discrimination. Vandalism of Jewish structures and cemeteries continues. Acknowledging one’s atheism may result in discrimination.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Trade unions function </em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">in the country, but strikes and worker protests are infrequent, as </em><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">the largest trade union, stemming from the Soviet-era labor federation, lacks independence from the government and employers in practice.</em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> Factory owners are still able to pressure their workers to vote according to the owners’ preferences.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Ukraine has long suffered from </em><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">corrupt and politicized courts,</em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> and recent reform initiatives aimed at addressing the issue have stalled or fallen short of expectations.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Although due process guarantees exist, in practice individuals with financial resources and political influence can escape prosecution for wrongdoing.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The government has made little progress in meeting domestic and international demands to investigate and prosecute crimes committed during the last months of the Yanukovych administration in late 2013 and early 2014, which included the shooting of protesters.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The trafficking of women domestically and abroad for the purpose of prostitution continues. IDPs are especially vulnerable to exploitation for sex trafficking and forced labor.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Labor laws establish a minimum wage that meets the poverty level, as well as a 40-hour work week and workplace safety standards. However, workers at times go unpaid, and penalties for workplace safety violations are lenient.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">What follows is a capital B bourgeois assessment of Ukrainian freedom from a no-friend-of-the-union-movement source, AKA a class enemy thinktank: </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The <a href="https://www.heritage.org/index/country/ukraine" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Heritage Foundation</a> ranks nations “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">economic freedom</em>”. The 2022 ranking is based on the year mid-2020 to mid-2021. Their method amalgamates “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">12 freedoms from property rights to financial freedom</em>”. Among the 45 European countries, the Heritage Foundation identifies Ukraine as ranked 44th, one below Russia and one ahead of Belarus. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">In the ranking of labor rights, Ukraine 60.7 USA 75.8 Italy 70.4, New Zealand 70.5, Samoa 71.6, South Africa 71.1, </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Corporate tax rate is very friendly at 18% compared to the UK at 19% Denmark at 22% , Japan at 23% </p><figure class="wp-block-table" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #565656; font-family: Lato; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; overflow-x: auto;"><table style="border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px; width: 710px;"><tbody style="box-sizing: inherit;"><tr style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: inherit;"><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">Country</td><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">Corporate Tax Rate </td><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">Income Tax Rate</td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: inherit;"><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">Ukraine</td><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">18%</td><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">20%</td></tr><tr style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: inherit;"><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">UK</td><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">19%</td><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">45%</td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: inherit;"><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">USA</td><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">21%</td><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">37%</td></tr><tr style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: inherit;"><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">Switzerland</td><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">24%</td><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">40%</td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: inherit;"><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">Belarus</td><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">18%</td><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">13%</td></tr><tr style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: inherit;"><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">Brazil</td><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">34%</td><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">27.5%</td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: inherit;"><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">Canada</td><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">15%</td><td style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 20px 10px;">33%</td></tr></tbody></table></figure><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Ukraine’s GDP of $13,110Bn USD and -4.2% growth rate with a negative $868 million USD FDI inflow are all indications of Ukraine weakness. (<a href="https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Glossary:Negative_foreign_directive_investment_(FDI)_values" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Negative values of FDI</a> net inflows for a particular year show that the value of disinvestment by foreign investors was more than the value of capital newly invested in the reporting economy.)</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><a href="https://ukranews.com/en/news/843640-zelenskyy-signs-law-on-labor-relations-during-martial-law" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Ukraine News</a> reports that Zelensky signed the new anti-labor regulations, exposing the anti-working class posture of the capitalist state in the name of national defense.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-suspends-labour-law-war-russia/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Open Democracy</a> reports parliament is passing laws that favor the employers’ rights and restrict trade unions, reducing compensations in event of job losses: “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The new law also gives employers the right to cancel collective labor agreements, and significantly limits the rights of trade unions, reducing their role to one of “civilian oversight” of the new law</em>.”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The social-patriotic USM identify the various restrictions and outline their “concerns” that these <a href="https://ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/2022/03/16/resist-russia-defend-workers-rights/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">new rules</a> restricting workers rights will extend beyond the war. Rather, than calling for mass workers action to stop this legislation, they call on Zelensky to veto these laws, advising the capitalist regime to stay true to the welfare state with an alternate reformist program of limited nationalizations that stops short workers control, that do nothing to organize workers militia and press the class struggle to social revolution and the expropriation or foreign capital. They ask that the May 15th law be vetoed and instead,</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“The Social Movement calls on the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky to veto the draft Law of Ukraine “On the Organization of Labor Relations in Martial Law” (7160) due to its inconsistency with the Constitution and the principles of the welfare state.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">… the restrictions on labor rights can be avoided by achieving legitimate goals in other, more equitable ways. To ensure the defense of Ukraine, it is necessary to confiscate the property of Ukrainian oligarchs on the grounds of public necessity. The capitals of Ukrainian oligarchs must work for the economy! The main goal of the policy at this stage is to unite society in counteracting Russian aggression and to preserve the rights of the affected people as much as possible. Ukraine’s economy will definitely be revived at the expense of state support, proper organization of work and decent wages.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Things are much worse now and the situation has deteriorated since the February invasion. On the June 23, 2022 <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/06/23/hxae-j23.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">WSWS</a> web site reports on bans on multiple left parties.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"> <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“A Ukrainian court has officially banned the activities of the country’s largest opposition party, the Opposition Platform—For Life party…. Ten other pro-Russian and left-wing parties were included in Zelensky’s ban, among them the Socialist Party of Ukraine and the Party of Shariy led by the popular Youtube </em><a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/05/12/plrx-m12.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">blogger Anatoly Shariy</em></a><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">In addition to legally banning the party’s activities, the court also stated that the party’s property and assets will be confiscated by the State Treasury.</em>” </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">We already see the rights and prerogatives of the trade unions to represent their members collectively under attack by the state, with <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-suspends-labour-law-war-russia/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">war emergency</a> curtailments enacted in March and <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraines-new-labour-law-wartime/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">more threatened in May</a>.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">This is the state that the USM, Oakland Socialist and other international tendencies say the U.S. taxpayer should send arms and supplies to without any guarantees that those arms are put in the hands of the workers and controlled by the trade unions and will not be supplied to fascists who will turn them against workers tomorrow. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">So who in their right mind, propagandist shills excluded, can read the above and still want us to believe Ukraine is a “sovereign,” “independent” state and not a proxy of the west pure and simple and even a sacrificial weapons test range? Lost in the commentary of the bourgeois media is the real existence of Ukraine, denied immediately by Putin’s “operation,” denied long-term by NATO’s plan for years of war leading up to “war fighting with nuclear-armed peers”!!!</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">The “Resistance” is what, exactly…</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Many ‘socialists’ join the Ukrainian capitalist state in demanding NATO arm the resistance. A resistance which is clearly subordinated to the Ukrainian capitalist state (Zelensky regime) shrugging off the political independence of the working class and the task of the working class vanguard to press the class struggle to take power to defeat war and the cause of war. Rather the socialist revolution, rarely mentioned since it is now a crime to advocate it (!), is put on the back burner until after the war by much of the western left as they say they support it, exactly as Stalinism proposed in the Spanish civil war. Social chauvinists, on both sides of the war twist and turn to keep the workers as cannon-fodder for the belligerents. Do any of the pro-war left dispute the military experts’ forecasts of years of war? Perhaps sensitive to exhaustion, but maybe fearing German defection from Biden’s forever pledge if the volk freeze without heat in December, Zelensky says he hopes it will be over by winter.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Those who identify with the cross class peoples’ resistance recognize it as being under the control of the capitalist state currently imposing martial law; or should recognize that fact. Reprimanded as Ultra-Left are the internationalists demanding socialists fight for an independent working class-led resistance. The ‘just war’ social-imperialists deny that only an independent working class resistance, which identifies all the imperialist powers as enemies of national sovereignty, can lead the national resistance to the permanent revolution, which alone can defeat the imperialism at the front (Russian invasion) and at the rear (US/UK/EU/NATO) by defeating the enforcers of the IMF debt and smashing the schemes of the oligarchs propping up the Zelensky regime with class struggle methods. Zelensky like every other proxy in history denies being an agent dependent on western imperialism, as if in a world carved up by imperialists a capitalist Ukraine is sovereign and the war is one of national self determination, a just war, not just flotsam in the “Great Game”–the struggle of the great imperialist powers for Eurasia. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Biden and the west jump through hoops to claim plausible deniability that the US/NATO bloc are not at war (directly or indirectly) and we see reformism happy to take his word for it. By universal acclaim and agreement (deniers invite nuclear Armageddon), indirect wars involving a principal engaging their proxy/agent through provision of equipment, training and actionable intelligence does not qualify the principal actors as belligerents. Putin says he’s carrying out a “special military operation.” These are two idiomatic expressions of “alternative facts.”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Apologists for Western Imperialism on Proxy War</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">As examined above the various leaders of the workers movement declare the agency of the masses is inviolate and manifests as “the resistance,” that the intersection of the aims of the resistance with western imperialism’s aims and the aims of the Zelensky regime are not determinate, that the resistance against the Russian invasion is a just war deserving the support of the international working class as if it were a war of national liberation like Vietnam, China vs Japan or the Kurds vs everyone.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">What do the western imperialists say? Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, for years two heartbeats away from the presidency traveled to Kyiv with ‘progressive’ darling of the U.S. left Barbara Lee and others to assure Zelensky “security, economic and humanitarian assistance” was on their legislative agenda. Pelosi assured Zelensky, “<a href="https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/ukraine-conflict/1651392839-pelosi-visits-kyiv-pledges-us-support-until-victory-is-won" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">we are here until victory is won</em></a><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">.</em>” </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-10/russia-ukraine-war-putin-s-right-that-u-s-is-waging-a-proxy-war" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Hal Brands</span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">, </span><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, </span><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">writing at Bloomberg is quite candid: </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“</em><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Russia is the target of one of the most ruthlessly effective proxy wars in modern history. And the less U.S. officials say about it, the better.</em></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Proxy wars are longstanding tools of great-power rivalry because they allow one side to bleed the other without a direct clash of arms.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The key to the strategy is to find a committed local partner — a proxy willing to do the killing and dying — and then load it up with the arms, money and intelligence needed to inflict shattering blows on a vulnerable rival. That’s just what Washington and its allies are doing to Russia today.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Brands, warns the user of the proxy strategy, <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“The way to wage a proxy war is to maintain a conspiracy of silence. The target state is more likely to refrain from retaliating if the other side can resist taking a victory lap.” </em>Something the State Department forgot when the Russian Generals started dropping like flies. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">And get this! Robin Wright writing in the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/ukraine-is-now-americas-war-too" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">New Yorker</a> May 1, 2022….</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">“<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">..</em><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">.in just over nine weeks, the conflict has rapidly evolved into a full proxy war with Russia</em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">, with global ramifications. U.S. officials now frame America’s role in more ambitious terms that border on aggressive. The goal—backed by tens of billions of dollars in aid—is to “weaken” Russia and insure a sovereign Ukraine outlasts Putin….</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">….Throughout our history, we’ve learned that when dictators do not pay the price for their aggression, they cause more chaos and engage in more aggression,” the President told reporters on Thursday…. </em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">….(As Politico noted, the new aid is about half the size of the entire Russian defense budget—and also more than half of the U.S. State Department’s annual budget. Over the next five months, U.S. aid to Ukraine will average more than two hundred million dollars a day.) The investment, Biden said, was a small price “to lessen the risk of future conflicts” with Russia.</em>””</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Of course considering the summary statement of the June, 2022 NATO conference in Madrid, the only debatable part is the risk reducing motive!</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Writing in May, 2018 <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/05/21/why-engage-in-proxy-war-a-states-perspective/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Daniel L Byman</a> at the Brooking Institute Center for Middle East Policy explained why proxy wars are used: </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“A proxy war occurs when a major power instigates or plays a major role in supporting and directing a party to a conflict but does only a small portion of the actual fighting itself.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">States use proxies for many reasons. For the United States, the issue is often cost: Locals fight, and die, so Americans do not have to.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">States often deny that they are supporting proxies—</em><a href="https://www.newsweek.com/putin-waging-proxy-war-against-west-ukraine-816226" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Russia, for example</em></a><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">, claims not to be involved in Ukraine despite funding an array of groups opposed to the government of Kyiv, arming and supporting them with its own forces.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Afghanistan was not a proxy war because US troops and coalition troops did the majority of fighting …</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Yemen is a proxy war because Iran is providing the weapons and funding but not troops to the Houthi…</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">In Syria Iran proxies include Lebanese Hezbollah and Shiite militias in Iraq…”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Fred Kaplan writing at <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/04/ukraine-nato-russia-proxy-war.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Slate on April 29, 2022</a> noted that <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">The conflict has become a proxy war between NATO and Russia, with more risks for everyone involved.</span> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“This shift in the West’s approach to the war was first signaled on Monday, when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the United States’ goals in the war were not only to protect Ukraine as a democratic, sovereign country but also to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/25/russia-weakened-lloyd-austin-ukraine-visit/">'weaken'</a> </em><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Russia as a military power. This has been obvious for some time, but even some U.S. officials were surprised to hear Austin express the fact so explicitly.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Among the academic advisors to imperialism author Tyrone L. Groh, writing in chapter two of <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Proxy War The Least Bad Option</em>, defines proxy war:</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“Although similar in some ways to donated assistance, proxy war is different in two important ways. First, proxy war is a form of military intervention with the specific intent to intentionally influence the affairs of another state through the use (or threat) of violence. Rather than intervening directly to influence the outcome of the intrastate conflict, an intervening state backs a local actor to do most of the fighting on the ground….The relationship between an intervening state and its proxy is hierarchical; the proxy subjugates its interests to that of the intervening state because of its inability to act on its own.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Principles and agents in a proxy relationship have their own distinct and sometimes correlative interests, yet despite independent interests the agent party in the relationship is defined by dependency. Today Ukraine is dependent on NATO for arms, training, intelligence, humanitarian and financial aid. Yet across the left the agency of the masses in resistance is argued to prove there is no proxy relationship. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Michael Karadjis argues <a href="https://mkaradjis.com/2022/05/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Ukrainians not fighting for western imperialism’s aims but their own</a>:</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“But if the US aims to weaken Russia via supporting this Ukrainian resistance, that is not a choice made by Ukraine; Ukraine did not invade Russia to give the US an avenue to weaken Russia. Russia invaded Ukraine; if Ukraine’s resistance allows the US to weaken Russia by aiding it, Russia can thank Putin for that.” </em> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Karadjis applies the, ‘who struck the first blow’ method of defining the character of war… ignoring the ongoing belligerency as not only precursor to, but extension of, the current war…. Karadjis argues that Ukraine is not a proxy because it has “independent” aims…it ignores the decades of ‘capacity building’ prior to the Maidan and which has been stepped up since. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Karadjis’s argument fails to show the war is not a proxy war. In <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Proxy Wars Suppressing Violence though Local Agents</em>, Eli Berman and David A. Lake, more advisors to imperialism, examine proxy war, its value and limitations. They examined cases where the <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">interests of the principal and the agent in a proxy relationship do not necessarily align</em></span> and the principal need to leverage rewards and punishments and/or suffer power asymmetries in attempts to steer the agent to elevate the principals end above or alongside their own (i.e. US and Pakistan, Bin Laden and the porous borders). (<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Berman & Lake, p. 294</em>) </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Berman and Lake examine relationships between the principal and the agent that emerge: the principal can influence the agent more than the agent can influence the principal. If the expectations of the agent are not satisfied their option is to adjust their effort-shirking directives, as the cost of the situation to the principal increases, “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">the advantage of the proxy in suppressing disturbances becomes ever more important</em>”, and the agent must navigate carefully as their closest constituency is their supporters at home. Sovereignty being the “<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">the highest aspiration of many states, and being cast as a client, puppet, or stooge controlled by Washington is a likely death sentence for at least some foreign leaders. Discretion serves both agent and principal. …actors do not think of themselves as agents</em>” (<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Berman Lake ps, 298-299</em>)</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">In defining the principal-agent relationship Berman and Lake offer these definitions:</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“the principal might be a counterinsurgent, the government of a neighboring country, or the government of a great power interested in minimizing disturbances arising from another country.” And the agent “an agent (or proxy), a subordinate whose actions the principal might influence, and who can suppress disturbances at lower cost than the principal can (when acting directly). This agent can serve as the principal’s proxy in minimizing disturbances.” (Ibid p. 11) </em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Intelligence and the Proxy relationship</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Provision of military intelligence is one element defining proxy relations. The report on May 4, 2022 in the NYT article <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/04/us/politics/russia-generals-killed-ukraine.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Helping kill Russian Generals </a>demonstrates the intersection of the agent and the principals’ military interests. On top of debt peonage to the IMF, semi-colonial subordination, dependency on the west for military equipment, training, the inclusion and peripheral integration under the security umbrella of NATO and the EU pushes the needle deeper in the proxy zone.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“Ukrainian officials said they have killed approximately 12 generals on the front lines, a number that has astonished military analysts.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The targeting help is part of a classified effort by the Biden administration to provide real-time battlefield intelligence to Ukraine. </em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The United States has focused on providing the location and other details about the Russian military’s mobile headquarters, which relocate frequently</em><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">U.S. intelligence support to the Ukrainians has had a decisive effect on the battlefield, confirming targets identified by the Ukrainian military and pointing it to new targets. The flow of actionable intelligence on the movement of Russian troops that America has given Ukraine has few precedents.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">American officials have acknowledged publicly that the United States began giving Ukraine actionable intelligence in the run-up to Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Just days later in the May 8 Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/07/us-spies-ukraine-russia-military-intelligence" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">U.S. intelligence told to keep quiet over role in Ukraine military triumphs</a>, after the beans were spilled, Biden’s team tried to walk back the claims after the backslapping was done and the victory laps were run. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“…unnamed officials [are quoted] as saying that US intelligence was instrumental in the targeting of Russian generals on the battlefield and in the sinking of the Moskva flagship cruiser on the Black Sea.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">And on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/25/us/politics/commandos-russia-ukraine.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">June 25 the NYT</a> reported that NATO, CIA and US trainers and advisors have had their boots-on-the-ground all along. We have yet to hear the “no boots on the ground” crowd pipe up on this violation of their main assertion that the west is not directly involved and that this is not an inter-imperialist war and that Ukraine is sovereign and not a puppet and proxy. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“Much of this work happens outside Ukraine, at bases in Germany, France and Britain, for example. But even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some </em><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country </em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, </em><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">directing much of the vast amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces</em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">, according to current and former officials.</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">At the same time, </em><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">a few dozen commandos from other NATO countries, including Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, also have been working inside Ukraine.</em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> The United States withdrew its own 150 military instructors before the war began in February, </em><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">but commandos from these allies either remained or have gone in and out of the country since then</em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">, training and advising Ukrainian troops and providing an on-the-ground conduit for weapons and other aid, three U.S. officials said.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Why Sanctions are Economic War </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">In this period of inter-imperialist conflict, all wars between nations are ultimately reduced to inter-imperialist rivalries. The oppressed countries have increasingly less freedom of movement between the rival imperialist powers. Imperialist rivalry expresses itself in the first level as diplomacy which when it reaches its limits becomes an economic warfare. Only when economic warfare fails to resolve the conflict in favor of one imperialist power does it become necessary for the shooting war. We already have shown that NATO/Russia have gone through the diplomatic path (Minsk) which ultimate failure produced the laying down of the gauntlet by Russian invasion. The immediate response of NATO and the west was to impose economic sanctions which escalated rapidly to the point where the economic assets of the Russian Central Bank were frozen and are now likely to be confiscated for the rebuilding of Ukraine. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The whole purpose of sanctions was not to deprive western finance capital’s ability long-term to invest in and profit from business in Russia. It was to overcome insoluble barriers to that objective. Sanctions halted most western investment in the short term as part of a proxy war over Ukraine to bring the Russian economy to its knees and open the door to US imperialism into Eurasia. That is, to finally realize the prize it anticipated with the collapse of the USSR but was so cruelly denied by the rise of Russian imperialism. The US was intent on limiting the war to a proxy war in Ukraine to avoid escalating it as a general European war to involve NATO and risk a nuclear war. This shows that to achieve its objectives the US/NATO deliberately provoked the war on Ukraine to justify major sanctions designed to isolate the Russian economy from the world capitalist economy. Right on cue, the Defense Secretary Austin said the objective is to weaken Russia… implying its hold over the other former Soviet republics. Of course we add, so as to re-divide and rule as the economic prime directive in the age of imperialism. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The left can rule these out of court as normal non-military methods, but are they separated from military action in reality? The western commentariat can talk about ‘Proxy war’ but neither they or the left takes into account front and center the role of sanctions. The unprecedented NATO sanctions in reaction to the war are manifestly designed to weaken Russia, arouse opposition to Putin’s regime, and defeat it in war so as to further its aims of regime change and break-up of the CIS. The threat to impose sanctions on China for failing to condemn Russia for ignoring the rule of law and the rights of nationals, has been judged inappropriate for now, but it has prompted NATO (and its ‘allies’) to expand its operation to the Pacific to prepare for a looming confrontation with China over Taiwan. Here it’s clear the military definition of proxy war is too narrow and outdated. Hybrid war covers not only cyber war, drones, and satellites, but also economic sanctions and intelligence, but which have a direct effect on the conduct of war. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">As we said in <a href="https://www.cwgusa.org/?p=2918" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Defeat the imperialist war! For an Independent Workers Ukraine!</a> (March 25, 2022):</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">“<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">We argue here that NATO is in this war with both feet because sanctions are political and economic warfare! The argument that US/NATO are not at war with Russia, besides denying covert activities, denies that sanctions are war. The denial also gives the “what-aboutists” grist for their mill. An element of our argument is that sanctions are exactly what they are designed as-acts of war. </em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Sanctions are a modern version of the ancient strategy of siege warfare. Credit where credit is due, but nothing new here.</em>”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">National self determination is not possible short of Socialist Revolution </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">In the footsteps of Trotsky, the US Socialist Workers’ Party published its position on the 2nd World War in the 1943 “<a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/ww/1943-ww05.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Perspectives and Tasks of the Coming European Revolution</a>”. In it the SWP makes clear that the self-determination of any one European country is only possible as part of the free nations of Europe within a Socialist United States of Europe. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“The proletarian revolution may begin in one country, but no European country can make its way out of the war and the catastrophic crisis of contemporary civilization by itself alone. A victorious revolution in any single European country would immediately be compelled to defend itself from military attack by the imperialists and would have to appeal for international proletarian aid by revolutionary means. In the ensuing struggles it would not be possible to maintain the outlived and arbitrarily drawn borders of the existing national states and the proletariat has no interest in attempting to do so. The national state which once provided the historical arena for the development of the productive forces has long since become a reactionary fetter upon them. The unpostponable historical task of the European peoples is the revolutionary destruction of the reactionary national state and the creation of the Socialist United States of Europe. Peace, security and prosperity can be assured only by the economic unification and socialist collaboration of the free nations of Europe. The only power capable of solving these tasks is the revolutionary proletariat. The central unifying slogan of its fight is “The Socialist United States of Europe.” </em><a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/ww/1943-ww05.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Perspectives and Tasks of the Coming European Revolution –1943</a></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Despite the degeneration of the Fourth International, this remains the position of revolutionary Trotskyists today. On<em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> Marxmail</em> (a US based Marxmail listserv), Marv Gandell (no association with the ILTT) writes:</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“When Trotsky proclaimed his support for Ukrainian self-determination, it was conditional on that struggle being led by the socialist proletariat. This was consistent with the Bolshevik view that the bourgeoisie had exhausted its historic mission as an agent for change both in relation to its own absolutist monarchies and to the struggle for national independence from foreign imperialist powers. This understanding was encapsulated in his call a “united, free and independent workers’ and peasants’ Soviet Ukraine”.”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Gandell puts forward the historic Leninist/Trotskyist proletarian position on self-determination. This position assumes the revolutionary movement of the working class exists and is a force that can chart its own independent course. In circumstances where the consciousness of the workers of the oppressed nation is influenced by nationalism, the duty of the workers of the oppressor nation is to support the rights and the struggles of the workers of the oppressed nation. Only in this way can a united internationalist, class-political independent movement advance, putting socialist revolution in prospect. Self-determination then becomes a real product of the social transformation. This identifies self-determination as a bourgeois-democratic right that only the proletarian revolution can deliver in the era where the bourgeoisie no longer has any progressive role to play.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">How the fake left abjures proxy war and falls for the patriotic front </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">We observe the fancy dance of the RKOB of Austria, who see a non-imperialist Ukraine as sovereign and independent(!) Here they tail the USM and the forces of the “Sunflower Caravan.” This is nothing new for RKOB, who continue in the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (LRCI) method of support to western imperialist “democracy” expansion, whether it be Yeltsin or Bosnian “independence”. The RKOB has gone on to apply this method in favor of the bourgeois “republic” against the military in <a href="http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=1183" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Thailand</a> and <a href="http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=755" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> Egypt</a>. They find bourgeois democracy and reasons to support it in convenient places, with serious questions then continuously raised about how they oppose the stageist program of Stalinism.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Covering their backs with centrist phrases we find the RCIT responding to Putin’s invasion in much the same way as most of the opportunist left – selling out to social imperialism. Class war is subordinated to the patriotic popular front. They refuse to recognise the imperialist intervention of US/NATO as sufficient to characterise the war as a proxy war. In <a href="https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/global/the-current-nato-russia-conflict-and-the-anti-imperialist-tasks-of-revolutionaries/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">January this year they wrote</a>:</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“This combined and contradictory character of the war in the Ukraine and the global tensions between the Great Powers can provoke a change in the nature of the war. It can transform its character from a just war of national defense into an inter-imperialist proxy war. If such a transformation would take place, revolutionaries would be obligated to change their tactics and to stand for the defeat of Russian imperialism </em><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">as well as of the pro-Western imperialist proxy in Kyiv.</em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> </em><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">But this is only a possibility in the future and revolutionaries base their strategy on the facts of today and not on speculations about tomorrow.</em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">(ed. note our bold)”</em></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">What criteria will be necessary to change the character of the war? The ITO says the change will occur when NATO forces the Ukraine army to fight to the death, rejecting any attempts by Russia to negotiate a ceasefire which includes the right to self-determination for Donbas and Crimea. This position correctly recognises that one nation cannot be free while it oppresses another, but ignores the fact that the war of oppression against Donbas already began in 2014. The RCIT does the opposite. It abandons its former defense of the right to self-determination for “all peoples” of Ukraine to fall into line with the Maidan aspirations for a united, independent bourgeois Ukraine. It cynically employed a numbers game to deny the right of the Russophones to self determination, which we previously noted was triggered by the post Maidan rise of Ukrainian chauvinism, by the fascist assaults against trade unionists in Odessa and against the use of the Russian language in the east. This exact same social development gave rise to today’s Ukrainian national army. A fact lost on social-imperialists generally. Such is their self-righteousness they brazenly hide behind Ukraine’s national rights while lying about the reality of NATO’s proxy war!</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">As we already explained in past statements, the RCIT characterizes both camps – NATO as well as Russia – as imperialist. We consider the conflict between these powers as reactionary. The same is the case with the conflict between the Ukrainian government and the so-called “Donbas Republics” (i.e. the Russian-controlled territories in Eastern Ukraine) as both act as proxies of Great Powers. In all these conflicts, socialists have to oppose both sides as equally reactionary.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">The <a href="https://www.ituc-csi.org/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">International Trade Union Confederation</a>, which claims to be building workers power, raises illusory bourgeois peace slogans. First they accept the capitalist status quo leaving the imperialist Russian state and the capitalist proxy Ukraine state intact calling for a ceasefire and <a href="https://www.ituc-csi.org/call-ceasefire-ukraine" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">negotiated settlement</a>. To this they add “<a href="https://www.ituc-csi.org/ilo-workers-group-statement-on-ukraine" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">for a free, sovereign and democratic Ukraine</a>”, a popular slogan, which on the face of it appears every freedom loving worker should support, but peel it back and it is little more than a call for integration of Ukraine into the world of imperialism and semi-colonies with Ukraine surviving the war as a dependent nation subordinated to western imperialism. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Rather than calling on the international working class to turn the national struggle into a proletarian struggle for power-turning the imperialist war into a civil war and spreading national independence through permanent socialist revolution, they “call on governments around the world to work together towards an unconditional withdrawal of Russian military forces from the territory of Ukraine, and to promote the ideals of common security, starting with an immediate ceasefire…” Workers internationally must agree on the demand for the unconditional withdrawal of Russian Military forces; the <a href="https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_844625/lang--en/index.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">International Labour Organization (ILO)</a> calls for common security and immediate Russian ceasefire. This effectively and objectively tells workers that they have no independent role other than putting their faith in the capitalist governments working “together toward an unconditional withdrawal”, meaning workers should seek security under the imperialist NATO umbrella of “security” and leaves the workers disarmed in the face of the armed fascist battalions and spate of anti-worker laws. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">In Conclusion</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">We have demonstrated that proxy wars are disguised inter-imperialist wars. We argue that the failure of the workers movement to fight the war in Ukraine as a proxy war and substituting a national war amounts to a betrayal of the world proletariat. It allows the ruling class to get away with calling the shots on its own terms and conscripting workers to once more fight workers in the interests of the imperialist ruling classes. This betrayal has its roots in the betrayal of the Second International on August 4, 1914, the Third International that betrayed workers to Hitler and imperialism, and the betrayal of the Fourth International during WW2 after the death of Trotsky at the hands of Stalin. This left workers without a revolutionary international party to advance the development of the postwar class struggle capable of realizing the opportunities that arose from the war as world revolution. Worse it exposed workers to an increasingly reactionary rule of capital over the world’s workers. In all of these wars workers were trapped as cannon fodder fighting against one another under the influence of national chauvinism.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Just as <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/10/imperial.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Trotsky compared WW2 to WW1</a> as a continuation of the same war, but with differences, we compare WW2 with the conditions for world war today. The similarities Trotsky adduced are that each war is the result of the failure to resolve the crisis of capitalist profitability by the imperialist re-division of the last war. The differences are first, the degree of objective decay of capitalism, including the hold of reactionary national consciousness over workers expressed as a declining bourgeois democracy and the rise of fascism, and second, the degree of subjective capacity of the revolutionary proletariat to end all capitalist wars by means of world socialist revolution. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">Today, facing a 3rd World War we see the continuation of war to re-divide the world again by imperialist war made objectively sharper now as rotting capitalism is finally destroying it’s life support system. . Capital faces a terminal crisis in which the basic contradictions are exploding objectively as the destruction of nature. The countervailing tendencies are no longer open to capitalism to revive the falling rate of profit as the conditions for its own existence are being destroyed.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">At the same time, the crisis of revolutionary leadership has allowed the bourgeoisie to impose an ever more reactionary consciousness on workers which finds its expression finally in the rise of fascism. Against this, the subjective capacity of the working class is weaker, despite mass spontaneous resistance movements, due to the absence of a revolutionary international leadership. The task of revolutionaries then is to grasp this reality and inject it into the class struggle, to explain the terminal crisis of capital, the inevitability of imperialist war and proxy war, and the treachery of the fake left that acts to trap workers in the popular patriotic fronts as cannon fodder, strangling its capacity for class independence. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;">But this task cannot be completed without building a new revolutionary International that unites class conscious workers to provide subjective leadership against the reactionary objective forces of destruction. That is why we call for a new Zimmerwald to rally all antiwar workers to the cause of world revolution and revive the struggle for a new revolutionary International. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Lato; font-size: 20px !important; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency (ILTT), 07/17/2022</em></span></p>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-75908412288524988442022-07-15T16:55:00.000+12:002022-07-15T16:55:57.035+12:00Draft: On the Marxist Program (work in progress)<p style=" margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block;"> <a title="View On the Marxist Program on Scribd" href="https://www.scribd.com/document/582648422/On-the-Marxist-Program#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" >On the Marxist Program</a> by <a title="View dbedggood's profile on Scribd" href="https://www.scribd.com/user/30150756/dbedggood#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" >dbedggood</a> on Scribd</p><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" title="On the Marxist Program" src="https://www.scribd.com/embeds/582648422/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-RVZoReDuCiqPdQkTii17" data-auto-height="false" data-aspect-ratio="0.7080062794348508" scrolling="no" id="doc_71783" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-12431742982334925472022-06-04T11:49:00.004+12:002022-06-04T11:52:27.822+12:00Class Struggle 141 Winter (June-August) 2022<p style=" margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block;"> <a title="View CS 141 Winter 2022 on Scribd" href="https://www.scribd.com/document/576944173/CS-141-Winter-2022#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" >CS 141 Winter 2022</a> by <a title="View dbedggood's profile on Scribd" href="https://www.scribd.com/user/30150756/dbedggood#from_embed" style="text-decoration: underline;" >dbedggood</a> on Scribd</p><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" title="CS 141 Winter 2022" src="https://www.scribd.com/embeds/576944173/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-Med06ZP7dhIM5N0ryJWp" data-auto-height="false" data-aspect-ratio="0.7080062794348508" scrolling="no" id="doc_60969" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-5666639748243635382022-04-30T10:06:00.003+12:002022-04-30T10:08:58.201+12:00 May Day 2022! Only Class War Can End Imperialist War!<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhqGHYNXWqsByBBkKTiEU8s0sGi396xtxGsmKA1jMe2rXO4JIHQRC0z1nY8-2vHc3eZc7msOugamq8YiEYw_ewKqSgsX7GAuLoXrRYXhqb7zxVAd2AufCviNfKIS19ymt8jAVrHe0epZgGxYRmYPsWr_9UUJRhpPu-sQR6JThcedfRdSOH4dRI" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="313" data-original-width="602" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhqGHYNXWqsByBBkKTiEU8s0sGi396xtxGsmKA1jMe2rXO4JIHQRC0z1nY8-2vHc3eZc7msOugamq8YiEYw_ewKqSgsX7GAuLoXrRYXhqb7zxVAd2AufCviNfKIS19ymt8jAVrHe0epZgGxYRmYPsWr_9UUJRhpPu-sQR6JThcedfRdSOH4dRI=w597-h293" width="597" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="sq-post-content" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #565656; font-family: Lato; font-size: 13px;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><b><span style="color: #565656; font-size: 13px;">People attend an </span><a href="https://www.onmanorama.com/news/world/2022/02/26/russian-attack-ukraine-anti-war-protests-moscow-saint-petersburg-interview-russian-citizen.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #231f20; font-size: 13px; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">anti-war protest in Saint Petersburg,</a><span style="color: #565656; font-size: 13px;"> Russia on Thursday after Russian President Putin authorised a military operation in Ukraine. </span><span style="color: #565656; font-size: 13px;">Photo: Reuters/Anton Vaganov</span></b></span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">This May Day the workers of the world face once more war between imperialist powers that could easily escalate into a Third world war. The causes of this war are well known to Marxists – imperialism is capitalism in decline, parasitic on workers and nature. When the parasite exhausts its host, nature, there is no way out but to destroy everything it has created including its support system, the biosphere. So the ruling classes of rising great powers challenge the declining powers for hegemony over the ruins of civilization. Humans, the vast majority of which are workers and farmers, are part of nature and they too are expendable. This terminal crisis of capitalism is what has brought us to the war in Ukraine.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">In this war we cannot take sides between the warring imperialists without being part of that destruction. Marxists have always seen socialism as rising out of capitalism as its legacy for a classless society. But Marxism itself is in such a crisis that it, like communism, and socialism, has become twisted into a justification for workers sacrificed as cannon fodder to resuscitate capitalism. We say NO! Marxism is the legacy of scientific socialism which empowers workers and farmers to oppose imperialist war with their class war. Workers have the power to smash what is left of rotten capitalism and create that new classless society that restores harmony with nature. But first we must organise to unleash that class power necessary for the task. That is why on this May Day we call for a New Zimmerwald, an anti-war movement that turns imperialist war into socialist revolution! The survival of humanity rests on it!</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Why we need a New Zimmerwald today</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">We are for a new Zimmerwald because the farcical betrayal of Marxism by the fake left today over the war in Ukraine is an echo of the tragic betrayal of Marxism by social democracy on August 4<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span> 1914. Zimmerwald marked the split by the left from the 2<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">nd</span> International over its capitulation to war.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Zimmerwald kept the legacy of Marx alive. It took as its starting point Marx’s view in 1850 that the bourgeois revolution was no longer progressive and must be replaced by the proletarian revolution. Sixty-four years later <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">the Zimmerwald</em></span><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"> Left made socialist revolution its policy against imperialist war.</em></span> It explained that the opportunist capitulation to capitalism by the 2<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">nd</span> International majority was rooted in its celebration of bourgeois democracy paid for by the blood and dirt of imperialist exploitation.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">A century later we find ourselves repeating this episode as a tragi-comic farce where the opportunist left is now bragging about its open betrayals with even more bankrupt phrases than in 1914. The need for a New Zimmerwald to restore Marxism from its desecration at the hands of this gruesome crew could not be more urgent.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, the Western left has been divided over which side to support. Most argue that Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine’s national resistance should be backed by the Western nations. Others blame the US for creating the situation which forced Russia to invade Ukraine to defend itself. In effect, the majority of the left supports one or other imperialist power in this war in the name of the national independence of Ukraine. This is a lie. No semi-colony can win national independence until liberated from imperialism and capitalism. <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The war is an inter-imperialist war which uses workers as pawns in deciding the pecking order of the imperialist powers. </em></span>We argue that inter-imperialist war prevents the self-determination of nations unless workers transform inter-imperialist wars into civil, that is, class wars and world socialist revolution. Only then will the permanent revolution allow nations and peoples to freely express their right to self-determination. That is why we call for an “independent Soviet Ukraine” now.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Social imperialists</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Those who support Russia do it mostly because they don’t see Russia as an imperialist power. For them, Russia is a semi-colony or ‘independent’ state, subordinated to and therefore oppressed by, Western (especially the US) imperialism. Therefore these ‘tankies’ support the right of Russia to defend itself against the expansion of US and NATO in Ukraine. They present Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">lesser evil</em> to US/EU/NATO dominance of Ukraine which has installed a puppet fascist regime. (<a href="https://ntici1938.wordpress.com/2022/03/08/acerca-de-la-guerra-entre-rusia-y-ucrania/ine:%20%7C%20NTI-CI%20(wordpress.com)" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">NTI-CI</a>)</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The other social imperialists either see the US/EU/NATO bloc as the lesser evil to the Russian invaders or as not belligerents until they put boots on the ground or planes in the air. For them Russia may or may not be imperialist, but its invasion against Ukraine’s ‘national sovereignty’ makes it an oppressor state. Russia’s defeat, then, even at the cost of Ukraine’s subordination to US/EU/NATO, is seen as the lesser evil. (ITO,Tempest)</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Thus, the opportunist left finds itself in the opposing camps of either the US/EU/NATO bloc or the Russia/China bloc. <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">On both sides the left has capitulated to social imperialism</span>, the political position that defends democratic imperialism while benefiting from exploitation and oppression of the exploited and oppressed colonies and semi-colonies. </p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Much less has been heard from those revolutionaries who are for the defeat of both imperialist blocs in the war in Ukraine. The Leninist position on war between two semi-colonies calls for dual defeat and for the unity of their workers and poor peasants in an anti-imperialist war, i.e. a class war against all capitalist forces. Where semi-colonies act as proxies for imperialist powers, we call for the defeat of both the imperialist ruling classes and their proxy bourgeois regimes. By proxy we mean an imperialist power using a colonial or semi-colonial national bourgeoisie to wage a war as a means of advancing its aims in defeating an imperialist rival. We base our position on Lenin, Luxemburg, Liebknecht and Trotsky who agreed as the leaders of the Zimmerwald Left in 1915 to oppose workers taking sides in the First World War as a war between imperialist powers.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">The Zimmerwald Left</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">They agreed that in a war between two or more imperialist powers, that is, an inter-imperialist war, workers should be for the defeat of both sides’ ruling classes at the hands of their own working class. Instead of taking orders and going to war to kill one another in the interests of their bosses, workers should regard their own ruling class as their main enemy. This position is called ‘dual defeatism’ meaning that it is in the interests of workers that their own capitalist rulers are defeated. </p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Most of the left is social imperialist and does not believe in the necessity (or even the possibility) of workers revolution. The petty bourgeois Menshevik intelligentsia tasks itself to lead the workers to this false and demoralizing conclusion. In reality the social imperialist left believes imperialism is a social policy they can tweak to fulfill both the requirement for reforms and lessons in civics for the ‘developing world.’ If pushed from below these petty bourgeois who want to manage capitalism will always blame workers as not ready for ‘the’ revolution.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">But imperialist war itself taught workers that killing one another was barbaric, and by 1918 many were ready and willing to mutiny. In line with the war position of Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg, and the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution, they recognised that armed workers had the power to overthrow the old society and create a new one. This created revolutionary situations as armed workers in several states, in particular, Austria Hungary, Vienna and Bavaria (e.g. Kiel mutiny Germany), attempted to take power.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">In Russia, workers had already taken power in the Bolshevik Revolution. The workers’ state demanded a ceasefire and attempted to make peace at Brest-Litovsk in early 1918 to spark the German revolution. That propaganda coming out of the successful Bolshevik revolution helped fuel the wave of mutinies in late 1918 that set the scene for revolution. </p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The fear of the spread of revolution saw the warring imperialist powers quickly arrange an armistice to release troops to put down the revolutions. The revolutions in Hungary and Germany, lacking a revolutionary party, were easily defeated, but in Russia it was the invading imperialist armies that were defeated in the Civil War. The huge war effort saw the Bolsheviks compromise on their program for international revolution, using wartime methods to suppress the national rights of non-Russian republics, specifically Ukraine, which led to the botched armed invasion of Poland in 1920 and the failure to directly support the German revolution.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Sadly, the economic and political damage done by the Civil War, followed by the death of Lenin, encouraged the unreconstructed Mensheviks in the Bolshevik party to take control and the revolution succumbed to bureaucratic degeneration. <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">The survival of the Soviet workers’ and peasants’ state, even in its degenerated form ruled by the Stalinist bureaucracy, became from that point on, the paramount threat to global capitalism and the target of its political, economic and military adventures.</span></p><div class="wp-block-image" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><figure class="aligncenter size-full" style="box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; display: table; margin: 0px auto;"><a href="https://www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/image-1.png" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"><img alt="" class="wp-image-2934" height="412" loading="lazy" src="https://www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/image-1.png" style="border-radius: inherit; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; height: auto; margin-bottom: 20px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: bottom;" width="300" /></a><figcaption style="box-sizing: inherit; caption-side: bottom; display: table-caption; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em;">Ukrainian edition of the Zimmerwald Manifesto (1915)</figcaption></figure></div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">The Fourth International on War</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The failure of the first Imperialist War to resolve the rise of competing imperialist powers soon created the conditions for the second Imperialist War. Germany, punished by the Treaty of Versailles to pay war reparations paid for by the working class was in constant upheaval and the Weimar Republic could not stop the threat of revolution. In response, the rise of fascism came to a head when the ultra-left Stalinist 3<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">rd</span> International refused to form a united front with social democracy against fascism allowing Hitler to come to power as Chancellor in 1933. This betrayal of the revolution by the Stalinists prompted Trotsky to declare the 3<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">rd</span> International dead and the Left Opposition began to plan for the founding of the Fourth International in 1938.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The new international stood on the legacy of Marx and Lenin marked by the Left Zimmerwald and rallied the healthy forces of Marxism and Leninism around the question of war. The <em style="box-sizing: inherit;"><u style="box-sizing: inherit;"><a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/emergconf/fi-emerg02.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">Manifesto of the Fo</a><a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/emergconf/fi-emerg02.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">urth International on Imperialist </a><a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/emergconf/fi-emerg02.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">War and the Proletaria</a><a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/emergconf/fi-emerg02.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">n World Revolution</a><a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/emergconf/fi-emerg02.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;"> </a></u></em>restates Lenin’s theses on war and self-determination. Trotsky puts socialist revolution, including the political revolution in the Soviet Union on the agenda of the day. The fight for national rights is again subordinated to the international class war. Or rather the national war becomes the class war, that is, a part of the wider permanent revolution. Trotsky writing in 1939 just before the outbreak of the Second Imperialist War writes:</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“At the beginning of the last imperialist war the Ukrainians, Melenevski (“Basok”) and Skoropis-Yeltukhovski, attempted to place the Ukrainian liberation movement under the wing of the Hohenzollern general, Ludendorff. They covered themselves in so doing with left phrases. With one kick the revolutionary Marxists booted these people out. That is how revolutionists must continue to behave in the future. The impending war will create a favorable atmosphere for all sorts of adventurers, miracle-hunters and seekers of the golden fleece. These gentlemen, who especially love to warm their hands in the vicinity of the national question, must not be allowed within artillery range of the labor movement. Not the slightest compromise with imperialism, either fascist or democratic! Not the slightest concession to the Ukrainian nationalists, either clerical-reactionary or liberal-pacifist! No “People’s Fronts”! The complete independence of the proletarian party as the vanguard of the toilers!”</em> <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/emergconf/fi-emerg02.htm" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/emergconf/fi-emerg02.htm</a></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">After the assassination of Trotsky in 1940, the 4<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span> International capitulated on the war against fascism, making democratic imperialism the ‘lesser evil’. The post war-boom reinforced social imperialism allowing a pseudo decolonisation falling far short of national self-determination gaining “flag independence” leaving a comprador bourgeoisie subordinate to imperialism. New imperialist institutions ruled the roost. The Second Imperialist war failed to resolve capitalism’s recurring crises and wars. Stalinism was not overthrown and claimed a greater share in the division of the world by the great powers. The degeneration of the Fourth International adapted to Stalinism and/or third-world ‘revolutionary’ leaders. The healthy forces within the Fourth International were tiny and succumbed to splits and fusions not capable of creating a new international on the program of the Fourth International. The crisis of leadership became the crisis of the Fourth.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">However, so long as the Soviet Union, and China to a lesser extent, survived, they kept alive the possibility of a new society superior to that of capitalism. And even when the cold war to defeat ‘communism’ seemed to be victorious in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">fall</em> of soviet Russia and China did not end the fear of a return of ‘communism’. For one thing while the restorationists in Russia around Yeltsin made much of the end of communism, in China the ruling CCP claimed that socialism adapted to the market was still ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. </p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">For the Western imperialists, who lack confidence in the ability of the ‘leadership’ of the proletariat to suppress revolution, the cold war must be revived against the ghost of ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’. They ignore the fact that Putin is also in favour of ‘de-communisation’ in order to exploit the cold war ideology to confront not only the fear of communism, but the rise of Russia and China as new capitalist imperialist powers. The object is to re-colonise what was lost to global capitalism as the result of socialist revolutions, and pass this off as a continuation of the cold war against ‘communism’. This brings us to the present war in Ukraine, which can now be seen as a continuation of that cold war, but one which has taken the turn towards hot war. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Dual defeatism in Ukraine</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The bourgeois doctrine of self-determination of nations means the democratic right to elect governments to create a national market for national capital. As we know, the limits set by national borders to capital accumulation was the cause of capital export and the rise of imperialism more than a century ago. As capitalism overflowed the limits of national markets (inevitable as capital must expand or die), the stronger nations colonised the weaker nations until the world was divided between the big powers and their ‘spheres of influence’. This has led, several world depressions and wars later, to the current situation in which the US bloc and their client states (NATO, ANZUS etc) are in a zero-sum fight to the death with the Russia/China bloc and their client states (BRICs, SCO etc).</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The fate of semi-colonies (politically independent but economically oppressed) and colonies (still ruled by imperialist powers), is to be occupied, partitioned, and turned into client states of whichever great power wins the political, economic and military wars. Which means when imperialists are competing to dominate semi-colonies to expand their sphere of influence, no one imperialism is more or less evil than the other. They are equally oppressive in search of their privileges. And so is the opportunist social imperialist left desperate to hold onto its privileges. In Ukraine, the right to self-determination, as with all bourgeois rights, emphatically facing the terminal crisis of capitalism, can be realised only by permanent revolution. Lenin, writing in 1914 a few months before the outbreak of war states:</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">“To the workers the important thing is to distinguish the principles of the two trends. Insofar as the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation fights the oppressor, we are always, in every case, and more strongly than anyone else, in favour, for we are the staunchest and the most consistent enemies of oppression. But insofar as the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation stands for its own bourgeois nationalism, we stand against. We fight against the privileges and violence of the oppressor nation, and do not in any way condone strivings for privileges on the part of the oppressed nation….The bourgeois nationalism of any oppressed nation has a general democratic content that is directed against oppression, and it is this content that we unconditionally support, </em><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">at the same time we strictly distinguish it from the tendency towards national exclusiveness; we fight against the tendency of the Polish bourgeois to oppress the Jews, etc., etc…we firmly uphold something that is beyond doubt: the right of the Ukraine to form such a state. We respect this right; we do not uphold the privileges of Great Russians with regard to Ukrainians; we educate the masses in the spirit of recognition of that right, in the spirit of rejecting state privileges for any nation…In this situation, the proletariat, of Russia is faced with a twofold or, rather, a two-sided task: to combat nationalism of every kind, above all, Great-Russian nationalism; to recognise, not only fully equal rights, for all nations in general, but also equality of rights as regards polity, i.e., the right of nations to self-determination, to secession. And at the same time, it is their task, in the interests of a successful struggle against all and every kind, of nationalism among all nations, to preserve the unity of the proletarian struggle and the proletarian organisations, amalgamating these organisations into a close-knit international association, despite bourgeois strivings for national exclusiveness…Complete equality of rights for all nations; the right of nations to self-determination; the unity of the workers of all nations—such is the national programme that Marxism, the experience of the whole world, and the experience of Russia, teach the workers.”</em></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #dd3333; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.5s ease 0s;">https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/</a></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">In the Ukraine today, the proxy war of the national bourgeoisie retains no democratic content, led by the regime resulting from a fascist coup, embarking on a ‘de-communising war’ against the right of Donbass to self-determination, and incorporating fascist militias into its national army. National self-determination today, meaning independence, and economic equality, like all bourgeois rights, cannot be won by a militarised ‘peoples’ front’ as the proxy for US imperialism. It is possible only as the result of the armed workers and small farmers, led by a revolutionary party, overthrowing the capitalist Bonapartist regime, imposing their program, forming a workers and small farmers government, imposing their ‘workers democracy’, overthrowing the ruling classes, ending the imperialist war, and allowing the right of self-determination of all peoples to be realised through political and economic unions or federations of socialist states.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">For a New Zimmerwald and a new International based on the method and program of the 4th International!</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">For a United, Free and Independent Workers’ and Peasants’ Soviet Ukraine!</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">– <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency</em></span><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"> (ILTT)</span></em></p><div class="sfsiaftrpstwpr" style="box-sizing: inherit; float: left; line-height: 18px; margin: 5px 0px; max-width: none; width: 630px;"><div class="sfsi_plus_Sicons" style="box-sizing: inherit; float: left; position: relative;"><div style="box-sizing: inherit; float: left; line-height: 34px; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px;"></span></div><div class="sfsiplus_norm_row sfsi_plus_wDivothr" style="box-sizing: inherit; float: left; min-width: 25px; width: auto;"><div class="sfsi_plus_wicons shuffeldiv" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: black; display: inline-block; float: left; height: auto; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 5px; padding-top: 5px; position: relative; width: 40px;"><div class="sfsiplus_inerCnt" style="box-sizing: inherit; float: left; outline: 0px; position: relative; width: 30px; z-index: inherit;"><br /></div></div></div></div></div></div><br />Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-39433183681217957622022-03-06T08:19:00.000+13:002022-03-06T08:19:19.593+13:00The Dawn of Humanity<p> </p><h2 class="postitle" style="color: #171717; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-transform: uppercase;"><strong><a href="https://situationsvacant.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/cavechauvet30-32000.jpg" style="border-radius: inherit; color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;"><img alt="" class="wp-image-1313" data-attachment-id="1313" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="cavechauvet30-32000" data-large-file="https://situationsvacant.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/cavechauvet30-32000.jpg?w=440" data-medium-file="https://situationsvacant.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/cavechauvet30-32000.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://situationsvacant.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/cavechauvet30-32000.jpg" data-orig-size="440,247" data-permalink="https://situationsvacant.blog/cavechauvet30-32000/" height="466" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 831px) 100vw, 831px" src="https://situationsvacant.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/cavechauvet30-32000.jpg?w=440" srcset="https://situationsvacant.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/cavechauvet30-32000.jpg 440w, https://situationsvacant.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/cavechauvet30-32000.jpg?w=150 150w, https://situationsvacant.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/cavechauvet30-32000.jpg?w=300 300w" style="border-radius: inherit; border: none; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: bottom;" width="831" /></a> </strong><strong><span style="font-size: x-small;">Cave art depicting rhinoceros, Chauvet cave, France. 30,000-32,000 years ago.</span></strong></h2><p style="line-height: 19px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><strong>Chris Night in his review of David Graeber and David Wengrow’s <em>The Dawn of Everything</em> says the book is not about the ‘dawn’ of humanity but its ‘tea time’ around 30,000 years ago. It misses most of humanity’s first 200,000 years of hunting and gathering in Africa before the migration to Eurasia. Oh how boring. There is a reason for that. It erases the ‘first revolution’ won by mothers who used their sex strike to negotiate terms with men, socializing human reproduction to create egalitarian communes surviving many millennia. It projects private property and free market entrepreneurism back in history and cherry picks case studies to reinforce the bourgeois ideology that human nature is fixed for all time in the image of the possessive individual male.</strong></p><figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized" style="height: auto; margin: 0px 0px 1em; max-width: 100%;"><figcaption style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em;">Following Marx, Engels and Luxemburg, Marxists claim that women were the first revolutionaries who managed to create and defend the communal order on the basis of matrilineal kinship over many thousands of years. The overthrow of <a href="https://kritisansar.noblogs.org/post/2016/03/04/engels-was-right-early-human-kinship-was-matrilineal-by-chris-knight/" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">‘mother right’</a> by the patriarchy established the first ‘class’ society. As we fight to end all class society in a future communist society, women’s resistance to the rise of class society in defense of the commune for millennia, offers both inspiration and important lessons for our fight for socialism and the commune today.</figcaption></figure><p style="line-height: 19px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Chris Knight <a href="https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/970/anthropology-and-women-genetic-evidence-is-richer-/" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">comments</a> on Rosa Luxemburg: </p><p style="line-height: 19px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">“In her last book, <em>Einfuhrung in die Nationalökonomie</em>, she argued that “primitive communism, with its corresponding democracy and social equality [was] … the cradle of social development”. She went on to claim that “the whole of modern civilisation, with its private property, its class domination, its male domination, its compulsory state and compulsory marriage [is] merely a brief passing phase, which, because they first formed from the dissolution of primitive communist society, in future will become higher social forms … A communist and democratic society, even if in different and more primitive forms, embraced the whole long past of cultural history prior to present-day civilisation. In this way, the noble tradition of the ancient past, thus holds out a hand to the revolutionary aspirations of the future, the circle of knowledge closes harmoniously, and the present world of class domination and exploitation … becomes merely a minuscule transient stage in the great cultural advance of humanity.”<strong></strong></p><p style="line-height: 19px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Chris Knight’s theory/program of ‘blood relations’ gives more substance to the contested social relations of Marx, Engels and Luxemburg’s concept of <a href="https://libcom.org/history/did-communism-make-us-human-anthropology-david-graeber-chris-knight" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">“primitive communism”.</a> He argues that approximately 40,000 years ago women began a revolution in hunter-gatherer clans by organizing a sisterhood to protect their children from men. They synchronized their menstrual cycle with the full moon and went on a sex strike to compel their husbands to go hunting to provide for the children. This social relation allowed women to resist for many thousands of years the rise of the patriarchy. And it is that undying resistance that survives today in the emerging struggle against the Patriarchy especially in the form of trans-ideology which claims that men can become women.</p><p style="line-height: 19px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">This is an explanation for the recent emergence of <a href="https://situationsvacant.blog/2019/02/17/why-are-transactivists-hostile-to-radical-feminists/" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">trans-ideology today </a>intensifying the backlash against second wave feminism just as capitalism slides into terminal crisis. The crisis this time is more extreme as Capital is destroying nature as the condition for its existence. Facing death Capital pulls out every trick in the book to divide and rule the proletariat. This must include the neutralization of women as part of nature’s fightback against capital over control of children. It is here that we can see the postmodern, idealist and voluntarist reprise of the overthrow of ancient ‘mother right’ behind the trans claims to be ‘menstruators’ and ‘uterus bearers’. Just as the original patriarchs sought to neutralize women’s power in reproducing blood relations by staging men’s menstrual rituals, trans-activists today claim that women do not have the exclusive right to motherhood. (<em>Blood Relations</em> p36-37)</p><p style="line-height: 19px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Since transwomen claim to be ‘women’ they insist the term ‘uterus bearers’ must include men. So the trans-cult is not just woke, or the commodification of sex by a profit-driven new industry, it is the patriarchy attempting to erase the solidarity of the sisterhood grounded in sexual reproduction, and to separate ‘sisters’ from ‘brothers’, to divide the proletariat with charges of transphobia and fascism, taking us all down the road to extinction.</p><p style="line-height: 19px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The original sisterhood solidarity worked for millennia, supported by mother’s brothers and the maternal clan. It was disrupted by men to form the original class society, the patriarchy, which survives today in the continued exploitation and oppression of women as unpaid or underpaid reproducers and producers. We need the return of sisterhood solidarity as an integral part of the working-class struggle for permanent revolution.</p><p style="line-height: 19px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The model of ‘mothers’ brothers’ role in the matrilineal clan relations (see <em>Blood Relations</em> p 26-29) can inspire the solidarity of men with women’s reproductive and productive rights. That means standing up for women as an historic sex class defending nature from capitalist destruction. It means uniting the working class to defend women’s spaces from men who want to invade them. We don’t dispute the right of trans people to identify as men or women. It is their insistence that gender identity replaces sex that attacks the legacy of the first social revolution today as part of the permanent revolution for the new commune. </p><p style="line-height: 19px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><a href="https://www.focaalblog.com/2021/12/22/chris-knight-wrong-about-almost-everything/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">https://www.focaalblog.com/2021/12/22/chris-knight-wrong-about-almost-everything/</a></p><p style="line-height: 19px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><a href="https://libcom.org/history/did-communism-make-us-human-anthropology-david-graeber-chris-knight" rel="nofollow" style="color: #333333; text-decoration-line: none;">https://libcom.org/history/did-communism-make-us-human-anthropology-david-graeber-chris-knight</a></p><div class="sharedaddy sd-like-enabled sd-sharing-enabled" id="jp-post-flair" style="clear: both; padding-top: 0.5em;"><div class="sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled" style="clear: both;"><div class="robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing" style="margin-bottom: 1em;"><div class="sd-content"><ul data-sharing-events-added="true" style="list-style: none !important; margin: 0px !important; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px !important;"><br /></ul></div></div></div><div class="jp-relatedposts" id="jp-relatedposts" style="clear: both; margin: 1em 0px; padding-top: 1em; position: relative;"><div><br /></div><div class="jp-relatedposts-items jp-relatedposts-items-minimal jp-relatedposts-grid " style="background-color: white; clear: left; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16.9px;"><p class="jp-relatedposts-post jp-relatedposts-post0" data-post-format="false" data-post-id="1287" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; overflow-wrap: break-word; width: 204.6px;"></p></div></div></div>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-28225878700279149372022-03-06T08:08:00.000+13:002022-03-06T08:08:01.373+13:00How workers are used as fascist fodder to create a fascist state and smash the socialist revolution<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi0NSHUsER5vV-igJBj_gzU7IVo934xqLUbtmyl3aYpiC3_yFDe9TTljNo52ZJAzto8X7eKG_TCiGR9zmimVk3X9AiBM7apokl9O5xumc3ag0QzV1PF1opJxrMj5JM7KVJCv2XcDrunIMCfugbTAwUqxImKb26NLWQSyJ8k3kP37GtXNmtzlrc=s1164" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="1164" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi0NSHUsER5vV-igJBj_gzU7IVo934xqLUbtmyl3aYpiC3_yFDe9TTljNo52ZJAzto8X7eKG_TCiGR9zmimVk3X9AiBM7apokl9O5xumc3ag0QzV1PF1opJxrMj5JM7KVJCv2XcDrunIMCfugbTAwUqxImKb26NLWQSyJ8k3kP37GtXNmtzlrc=w472-h213" width="472" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="WordSection1">
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="background: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic";">"Freedom Campers" face police line
outside NZ parliament. Once an ‘event’ such as the occupation of Parliament
grounds by Convoy is understood in terms of the class struggle, the task of
revolutionary socialists is clear – build a workers’ antifascist movement!<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
</div>
<span style="background: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-NZ; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-NZ;"><br clear="all" style="mso-break-type: section-break; page-break-before: auto;" />
</span>
<div class="WordSection2">
<p style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">So far there are a range of opinions on <em><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The
Daily Blog</span></em> about the Convoy occupation of Parliament Grounds.
Chris Trotter calls for the police to remove the protestors. John Minto sees
this as a revolt of workers fed up with neoliberalism and the failure of their
political leadership. Bomber is sort of ne</span><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">utral tolerating the ‘clowns’ and
against using the cops to recruit more ‘clowns’. Somewhere in all this the distinction
between the petty bourgeois leadership and the ugly mob is lost.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Let’s go further. This is an ugly mob that demands their
individual rights without reference to the rights of others. But clearly the
mob is one of mainly workers who are the victim of decades of antiworker
attacks. But what Bomber sees as ‘clowns’ is a populist mob hyped up by fascist
demagogues into a confused and distorted expression of the class struggle.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The struggle that is represented by the Convoy on the
Parliamentary lawn is not about the use of violence, or whether most of the mob
are workers. It is about how an international fascist movement is using
declassed workers as fascist fodder to win state power to launch systematic
fascist state violence against the working class.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Appearances are always deceiving. There is much more to the
Convoy than a legitimate protest of angry workers. It is the creation of the
international rightwing project of Bannon and Trump for a white supremacist
fascist movement. The NZ Convoy is part of a global plan to save the white
European world from the rising flood the poor black and brown masses.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">So it is not a question of the mob vs the capitalist state. They
are part of the same project which is how to monopolize state violence to smash
the working class. Fascists are not against the capitalist state, they want to
control it. They want to remove the ‘communist’ Jacinda just like the January
6th attempt by a populist mob to force the US Congress to give Trump the
election victory over the ‘liberal’ Biden. Fascism is a long story.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Fascism is the last-ditch attempt by the capitalist class to
hold onto power and hang onto its wealth in the face of rising mass resistance
against its destruction of society. The effect of this destruction is the collapse
of all the gains that workers have won over generations. Many millions of
working people are thrown out of work into poverty. Having nothing to lose,
their <i>potential</i> power to overthrow capitalism becomes a revolutionary
threat. ‘Potential’ because that threat has first to be organised before it can
be realised.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">So, while globally workers can unite to overthrow capitalism
with strikes and occupations halting the production process, workers remain
divided as a class by income, nationality, religion, race and gender. Identity
politics is one result which erases class identity, ‘declassing’ workers as
bourgeois individuals in the dog-eat-dog market. Unless workers are united and
mobilised against the ruling class and its state, the class enemy will make use
of these divisions and recruit workers as fascist fodder to smash those workers
who so retain their class solidarity and consciousness.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Since WW2 capitalism has undergone a long structural crisis of
falling profits where the share of value produced going to workers has shrunk
relative to the share of profits. Increasing labour productivity has casualised
labour, weakened if not destroyed trades unions and thrown many workers into
self-employment. This declassing of workers sees social democracy move right
into the liberal centre, and those left behind become prey to populist
demagogues who recruit them as fascist fodder against organised labour.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The upshot is what we have today. Capitalism facing terminal
crisis, layers of workers declassed and turned into fascist fodder, prey to
petty bourgeois ‘leaders’ who blame the crisis on the working class and any
govt, labelled ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ even ‘liberal’, destabilised by a
populist mob to get fascist leaders into power.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Once an ‘event’ such as the occupation of Parliament grounds by
Convoy is understood in terms of the class struggle, the task of revolutionary
socialists is clear – build a workers’ antifascist movement!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Fight all attacks on workers on the streets, expose and
discredit the bourgeois funders of fascism like Bannon and Trump, ridicule the
puffed-up petty bourgeois leaders like Eftpostle and Demented who want to bring
down the Labour Government.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Because the ruling class is preparing an international fascist
movement to take state power, we have to defend bourgeois democracy. But only
as a means to advancing the revolutionary struggle, not as a dead end. We never
appeal to the bosses’ state to defend our rights.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">We do it by class struggle methods. We show how
parliamentary democracy is a sham. That the ‘human rights’ demands of the
populists are a delusion. Only a workers’ state can deliver ‘democracy’ and
‘freedom’ from exploitation and oppression.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">So once the socialist left has got its arse into gear, builds
independent fighting anti-fascist militias to dispense with fascism, we will be
prepared for the task of smashing the capitalist state and replacing it with a
workers’ state.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">First published on </span><span style="color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><a href="https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2022/02/13/guest-blog-dave-brownz-how-workers-are-used-as-fascist-fodder-to-create-a-fascist-state-to-smash-the-socialist-revolution/"><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The Daily Blog</span></b></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></b></span><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">13 February 2022<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Berlin Sans FB Demi",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Berlin Sans FB Demi",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Update<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;"><b><u><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">March 2</span></u></b><b><span style="color: #6d6d6d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">. Police managed to break up the camp
in a running battle with protestors. Revolutionaries do not call for the state policing
of right-wing protests as it usually sides with their rotten politics against
us. The suppression of fascist-led protests is the job of the workers
anti-fascist movement! <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-NZ; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br clear="all" style="mso-break-type: section-break; page-break-before: always;" />
</span>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24946101.post-81074468062927441382022-03-06T08:04:00.000+13:002022-03-06T08:04:38.655+13:00ILTT Statement on the Inter-imperialist War in Ukraine<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhQ1vv-bGSSq-woaJpFr9ComFyC5vTgLFAthmf8hxPgvLkHToO6ju0WQ9ZMsJoVNjAk9Jbyafo02eyrISUTdYorvyo3n774UbCmuw6sCalcinRwfEShY9UtrHSKVOmt6GdEh-oh8ibjhUbEPqQl4r0FOMl9kPmw9u73M7oR8clmBnz0CA-ujVo=s1181" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="825" data-original-width="1181" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhQ1vv-bGSSq-woaJpFr9ComFyC5vTgLFAthmf8hxPgvLkHToO6ju0WQ9ZMsJoVNjAk9Jbyafo02eyrISUTdYorvyo3n774UbCmuw6sCalcinRwfEShY9UtrHSKVOmt6GdEh-oh8ibjhUbEPqQl4r0FOMl9kPmw9u73M7oR8clmBnz0CA-ujVo=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; margin-left: 25.1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 25.1pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Up until the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, NATO was
organized as a counter-revolutionary bloc as part of the encirclement of the
USSR and China with NATO, SEATO and CENTO. This bloc was to contain the
degenerated workers’ states and maintain the authority of US imperialism in
Europe been augmented by the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and the AUKUS
tying Japan, Taiwan, Australia and the UK to the US encirclement project.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; margin-left: 25.1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 25.1pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">After the restoration of capitalism in Russia, NATO moved
eastward embracing the color revolutions as Russia wiggled out from under
control of the western vulture capitalists to assert the rule of the oligarchs’
consolidation of economic and political power. Russia sought to consolidate its
sphere of influence despite the loss of the Baltic states. Russia fought back against
the color revolutions and western influence in the former Soviet States,
eventually losing control of Ukraine in 2014.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; margin-left: 25.1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 25.1pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The trajectory of Russia’s emergence as an imperialist power
became evident in 2008 based on the inability of the west to subordinate it as
a semi-colony, its military strength and its ability to subordinate former
Soviet states. The state control of former institutions of the Soviet state
gave the new oligarchs the power to resist subordination to western imperialism
and chart an independent course and act both financially and militarily as a
counter-revolutionary force to put down the permanent revolution in Syria and
most recently Kazakhstan.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; margin-left: 25.1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 25.1pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The German bourgeoisie had split allegiances, which were
reflected both in the NATO 2030 </span><span style="color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><a href="https://www.nato.int/nato2030/index.html"><em><span style="color: #dd3333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Making A Strong Alliance Even Stronger</span></em></a></span><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> and
them </span><span style="color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><a href="https://www.garant.ru/hotlaw/federal/1472577/"><em><span style="color: #dd3333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Russian Strategic Goals 2021</span></em></a></span><em><span style="color: #dd3333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"> </span></em><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">documents
as their dependence on Russian gas exports have played an important role in its
stability. Some in Germany and the west hoped to break Russia from China to
join NATO and push the western imperialist bloc eastward while the Russian’s
looked at Germany as a vulnerable weak link in the western bloc which could be
leveraged to split up NATO. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; margin-left: 25.1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 25.1pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Trump and the isolationists fed the Putin dream of breaking up
the western bloc but the US ruling class put its foot down, displacing Trump
with Biden and the hawkish Democrats committed to containing Russia and
maintaining Germany in their sphere. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; margin-left: 25.1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 25.1pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Putin/Xi meeting on February 4th consolidated the
Russia/China imperialist bloc, something that has been obvious for a long time
since BRICS, SCO and CSTO built the alliance of the two emergent imperialists
power into a rising imperialist block facing off against the declining US/UK/EU
imperialist bloc in the ‘Great Game’ for Eurasia. Now they are contending for
Africa, Latin America and into Eastern Europe, first with the looking outward
strategy and the Win-Win tactics of competitive loans and development projects
which bring Chinese capital, corporations, managers and labor to the
semi-colonies. More recently China and Russia are further integrating with the
Belt and Road initiative.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; margin-left: 25.1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 25.1pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">7.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ukraine won its formal independence from Russia in 1994, but the
true independence has never existed and can only be won under the slogan and
implementation of an Independent Soviet Ukraine which recognises the national
rights of Donbass and Crimea. Ukraine is one of the poorest countries in
Europe, but it has an untapped wealth of fertile soils ripe for the picking by
the imperialist power that succeeds in drawing it into its sphere of influence.
This civil war in the East, which is in reality a proxy war between Russia and
the US to claim control of this prize, reflects the intensity of the
struggle. <em><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">See “</span></em></span><span style="color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><a href="https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-81-permanent-crisis-or"><em><span style="color: #dd3333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Chartbook #81 Permanent crisis or Black Earth
agro-giant? Alternative futures for Ukraine (Adam Tooze)</span></em></a></span><em><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">”</span></em><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; margin-left: 25.1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 25.1pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">8.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Both the Kiev and the Moscow governments have made use of
fascist reaction. Today the fascists are a minority in Ukraine and the
break-away People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk which raised a socialist
program in their struggle have bowed to Russian power at their back. Russia in
turn employs Russian fascists in a paramilitary role.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; margin-left: 25.1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 25.1pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">9.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Ukraine government, caught between the two imperialist
blocs, nevertheless is economically and militarily subordinated to the western
bloc and NATO. Russia correctly identifies the western bloc and NATO as an
economic and strategic threat. Thus, as a pawn in the great game the workers
and peasants of Ukraine have no way out from under the thumb of imperialism but
the path of permanent revolution.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; margin-left: 25.1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 25.1pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">10.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
means that the call ‘neither Washington nor Moscow’ of the Third Camp socialist
tendencies is in fact a social patriotic slogan in favor of US imperialism
since there can be no Ukrainian independence as a vassal of Western or Eastern
capital.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; margin-left: 25.1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 25.1pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">11.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To
secure Ukrainian independence socialist revolution is required. And this
requires open hostility. Class against class, with fraternization and mutinies
and a proletarian military policy turning the war drive of the imperialist
powers into class war. The ILTT takes the side of neither imperialist bloc and
rejects the theories of </span><span style="color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><a href="http://www.cwgusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2014-11-NOV-Class-Warrior-Vol-001-No-7.pdf"><span style="color: #dd3333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sub-imperialism</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="color: #dd3333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></span><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of the opportunists who seek to support Putin and Xi against the
socialist revolution.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; margin-left: 25.1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 25.1pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">12.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Stalinist parties take an unapologetic pro-Moscow ‘peace’ position reflective
of their origins of the Moscow parties in the USSR days and without reference
to which class holds power in Moscow today. According to the Stalinists,
capitalist Russia is a leading force in the anti-imperialist bloc of nations.
In reality, Russia as an imperialist power, like the United States and the EU,
is a leading counter revolutionary force against proletarian permanent
revolution internationally.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; margin-left: 25.1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 25.1pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">13.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We
call on workers in the US and Russia and all nations to turn inter-imperialist
war into a civil war at home to bring down the capitalist class, bring the
workers to power in Workers States, to expropriate the capitalists, bring the
troops home and build national and international centrally-planned economies,
world peace and rational socialist economic development.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 25.1pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 25.1pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><em><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">14.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span></em><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">As the martyred German socialist </span><span style="color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/liebknecht-k/works/1915/05/main-enemy-home.htm"><span style="color: #dd3333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Karl
Liebknecht</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="color: #dd3333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></span><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">said:
“<em><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">The main enemy of the German
people is in Germany: German imperialism, the German war party, German secret
diplomacy. This enemy at home must be fought by the German people in a political
struggle, cooperating with the proletariat of other countries whose struggle is
against their own imperialists.”</span></b></em><em><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><o:p></o:p></span></em></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #565656; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">February
14, 2022<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12873621971212067467noreply@blogger.com0