Brazil elections: Down with the Popular Front! For class independence in the struggle against imperialism and fascism!

Jair Bolsonaro candidate of the Social Labour Party (PSL) who has a current lead in the polls of approx. 10% over the Workers Party (PT) candidate Fernando Haddad

There are only a few days left before the elections and instability and unpredictability lie not only in the outcome but in the electoral process itself. Most likely the polarization between PSDB and PT of the last 24 years will break when PSDB supporters in the second round must choose between the PT (Workers' Party) candidate and the extreme right represented by Bolsonaro (Social Liberal Party).


The instability of political regimes is a constant in the semi-colonies, like Brazil, exploited and subordinated to the dictates of imperialism. The current economic and social crisis puts in check the bourgeois democratic regime established in the 1988 constitution. The greatest expression of this crisis is the emergence of Bonapartist figures such as Bolsonaro (standing above classes, parties and institutions, supported by middle class discontent and lumpenproletariat, with a racist, macho and homophobic narrative) and in the threat of a real military coup.


The more the crisis of the regime deepens, the more the reformist left proclaims the old formula, bourgeois democracy vs. fascism, defending the alliance with "progressive" sectors of the bourgeoisie, the Popular Front (FP), in defense of the dying bourgeois democratic regime. This formula leads us today to look at the "left", to fight Bolsonaro's Bonapartism, to deal with the Globo network and with the "democratic" sections of the bourgeoisie. The biggest example is the left going along with the PSDB, PDT, etc., in the feminist movement, "against fascism".


Despite the deepening political and social crisis and the unpredictability of the electoral process, the reformist left promising to end the crisis through bourgeois elections has proclaimed its entire "repudiation" of the attack on the far right presidential candidate in defense of the " democracy "and" dialogue ". This attack strengthens the reactionary sectors supported by the racist, sexist and xenophobic narrative, who are also unhappy with the crisis, and their "remedies" are to defend civil war methods against the working class. These sectors are not just present in the elections represented in the Bolsonaro candidacy, they are in the fascist police bands that control the militias in the favelas, they are in the paramilitary groups that defend landowners and kill indigenous leaders, quilombolas and rural workers every day! They are in the bourgeois state and in the torturers of the armed forces that until now are unpunished! They are in groups that have called for "military intervention" for years. The PT, with the narrative of "coup" and the struggle through parliament, disarms the workers for the struggle against fascism and the threat of a real coup.


These "revolutionary" leaderships, for whom the revolution "is not possible," are the opportunists who defend the moribund bourgeois democratic regime and demoralize, demobilize and divert the direct struggle of the single working class with its committees of the rank-and-file and self-defense, from a general strike and a revolutionary insurrection capable of defeating fascism and imperialism and giving the only remedy of interest to the oppressed workers and peoples in the face of the deep global crisis of capitalism. The PT deceived workers that the reactionary 1988 constitution and bourgeois democratic regime could provide a good living for the working class and spent 20 years creating the illusion that a "left" government could change their lives. After 13 years governing with the bourgeoisie, it is linked to the inherent corruption schemes of the capitalist state and is the main supporter of the Popular Front, which is the biggest obstacle to working class independence.


The current global crisis affirms the destructive character of the capitalist system. The rivalry of the decadent American imperialism with the ascendant imperialism of China / Russia is increasing, from commercial wars to the military. Brazil and Latin America are being hit hard by the global crisis of capitalism. They are also the target of the inter-imperialist dispute between the US and China. In Argentina, as in Brazil, workers have been suffering from unemployment, inflation, loss of rights and repression. In Venezuela, the masses endure the country's worst capitalist crisis and workers suffer from hunger, misery and xenophobia in neighboring countries where the search for a better life drives them to migrate. Class independence and unity of the continent's workers is necessary to defeat this destructive system! Latin American workers need to get rid of Castro-Chavism and its opportunist leaderships that advocate oppressive regimes like Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Syria, and an alliance with Russian and Chinese imperialism as "anti-imperialism" and an alternative to American imperialism. These populist leaderships divide the class and put the weight of the crisis on the workers' backs.


The strength of the PT (Workers Party) and the FP (Popular Front), and the capitulation of the leftist currents

PSOL's candidacy with Guilherme Boulos is demoralized, with militants declaring a vote for the PT and for the bourgeois PDT party (Presidential candidate Ciro Gomes) "against fascism", and Boulos appealing to do so in the second round! Boulos and PSOL spent the year 2017 constructing the "Vamos" platform, along with PT and bourgeois parties like PDT and PSB, saying "unite" the left and the "progressive" sectors, "against fascism". Today, the PDT candidacy gains strength postulating the oligarch Ciro Gomes as the "left", and Boulos and the PSOL reap the bitter fruits of their opportunist politics, capitulation and the populist front. These bitter fruits will not disappear after the crisis of these elections and the PSOL runs the risk of not electing important parliamentarians.

The MRT (Revolutionary Movement of Workers) has launched candidates with the PSOL legend. Its main policy is to defend Lula's freedom for a "normal" electoral process, with the "democratic" right of the people to decide who to vote for. A shameful capitulation to the popular front and the rotten bourgeois democratic regime! The MRT policy, which is the brother party of the PTS in Argentina, shows the capitulation of the leftist currents in the FIT to the bourgeois democratic regime, reflected clearly in Brazil where these same currents have brother parties and are unable to unify the struggles, and often even fail to provide solidarity.


In these elections we call a critical vote for the PSTU for not being allied with the bourgeoisie. In a moment of so much pressure for the FP popular front, where bourgeois sectors such as PDT and PSB are placed in the left field, it is fundamental of class consciousness to NOT VOTE FOR THE BOURGEOISIE. But we show that the PSTU program is reformist. Unlike the PT and PSOL that replace the direct struggle of the class with the fight in the parliament, the PSTU substitutes for the union bureaucracy, making alliances with the bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy in the unions and workers' movement. What they call a "unity of action" is actually a bureaucratic popular front bloc.

There is no capitalism without machismo! Working women need their own organizations. They must be in the struggle with their organizations independently, at the forefront of working-class organizations, at the forefront of the revolutionary struggle, the only one capable of defeating fascism. The multi-class bourgeois feminist movement, this great popular front "against fascism", divides the working class, it drives women away from their allies to stand next to their class enemies! Workers need to organize independently and with their traditional methods of struggle, the only way to combat the bourgeoisie and fascism!


It is important that Brazilian workers have no illusions in the capitalist system and bourgeois elections. The Brazilian crisis is part of the global crisis of capitalism that is deepening. Whatever the outcome of the electoral process, the bourgeoisie, imperialism and its agents have nothing for the workers unless they pay for the crisis with unemployment, loss of rights, more taxes, pension reform, privatization, and with increasing repression and fascism. This left populist Front does not fight against imperialism and fascism, it opens the way for it! The deeper the crisis and the instability, the more the false left proclaims the Popular Front as the "struggle" against fascism, and multiplies pressure for alliances with the "progressive" bourgeoisie. The FP is the biggest barrier to the necessary class independence of the workers. Left-wing currents who say they are revolutionary must break with this reformist policy and capitulation to FP. Brazilian workers need class independence, which prioritises the traditional methods of working class struggle, organization of workers' committees and self-defense, pickets and general strike, to fight against the bourgeoisie and all imperialist powers, overthrowing the bourgeois state and building socialism. It is urgent to build a revolutionary leadership!

Translated from the original Portuguese 

https://grupodetrabalhadoresrevolucionarios.wordpress.com/2018/09/26/abaixo-a-frente-popular-pela-independencia-de-classe-na-luta-contra-o-imperialismo-e-o-fascismo/

Capitalism lives by Dirty Politics

Dirty Politics: a must read for every man and woman

The publication of Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics a few weeks before the election was a big factor in the election outcome. While it accused the National Party of leaking secret information to right wing Bloggers to feed to the Corporate Media and discredit the opposition, the result was a backlash that lifted the National Party to an outright victory. After some weeks of being on the defensive  Prime Minister Key was able to turn the tables and use Dirty Politics to blame the left especially Kim Dotcom and the Internet/Mana Party of a ‘left wing conspiracy’ to defeat National in the polls.

What this reveals is a concentration of power in the state engaged in mass surveillance and covert propaganda which can be deployed to prevent any serious challenge to this power through the parliamentary system. Is this an anomaly of ‘abnormal’ power, a one party state, or rogue state that can be fought and corrected by a democratic opposition, or is it the ‘new normal’ form that the capitalist state takes when economic crisis begins to threaten its legitimacy? We argue that ‘Dirty Politics’ is normal in what we call the Bonapartist state.

The states subversion of parliament

The victory of National in the election was not due a democratic process that gave National a fair majority over the opposition parties, but the intervention of a Bonapartist state. We will demonstrate that ‘dirty politics’, mass surveillance, corruption, abuse of power etc are only symptoms of such a state. First we define Bonapartism then we look at the conditions that give rise to Bonapartism.

We go back to the Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky to define Bonapartism. He described this form of state supplanting parliamentary democracy during the crisis of capitalism in the 1930s as a concentration of state power in the hands of a "Bonaparte" figurehead projecting himself as standing above the class struggle, in order to hold back the rise of the revolutionary proletariat. If this failed to stem the revolution the ruling class was then forced to resort to fascism. Trotsky defined fascism as the last resort of the bourgeoisie to smash the revolution. The bourgeoisie provoked the angry petty bourgeoisie threatened with bankruptcy by the crisis to organise a fascist movement on the streets to fight and smash the working class.

So Bonapartism as the attempt to hold the fort and keep the people at bay requires a new state regime that subverts democracy and subordinates parliament, the bureaucracy, the judiciary and all the repressive and ideological apparatuses (such as the GCSB, police, media, schools etc) to the Chief Executive, (President, Military leader, or Prime Minister) concentrating power into the hands of figurehead that ‘stands above the classes’ and appears to personify the unitary state.

The pre-conditions for Bonapartism are then: first, the global economy facing a structural crisis of falling profits and a huge slump in which the main imperialist powers have to resort to war to survive. Today, we can see that the global capitalist crisis is a structural crisis that threatens its existence. The major imperialist powers are coming up against the limits of peak energy and climate change and facing rising mass resistance. The global economy faces stagnation and slump along with climate catastrophe.

Moreover, the competition over diminishing economic returns is taking the form of a dangerous rivalry between the declining US power bloc and that of the rising China Russia bloc expressed in proxy wars and US/NATO containment of Russia and China. The game is up when the IMF is calling on state aid for crippled capitalism and the OECD projections for capitalism over next 50 years is a long decline exacerbated by climate change.

Climate change and economic stagnation

This comes as no surprise to Marxists as capitalism has exhausted its potential to play any progressive role in developing humanity and must give way to either socialism or barbarism. All of this should be enough to prove that capitalism is doomed, posing the question whether we as a species are doomed with it. Is there hope? According to Paul Mason “The OECD has a clear message for the world: for the rich countries, the best of capitalism is over. For the poor ones – now experiencing the glitter and haze of industrialisation – it will be over by 2060...The OECD’s prescription – more globalisation, more privatisation, more austerity, more migration and a wealth tax if you can pull it off – will carry weight. But not with everybody. The ultimate lesson from the report is that, sooner or later, an alternative programme to “more of the same” will emerge. Because populations armed with smartphones, and an increased sense of their human rights, will not accept a future of high inequality and low growth.”

Second, Aotearoa/NZ cannot escape this fate. Capitalism faces the twin crises of a declining economy and climate collapse. To survive, it must exploit nature to death and bring about human extinction. For humans to survive we must destroy capitalism and save nature. Capital in NZ is also battering down the hatches for a showdown. As a declining semi-colony (some would say de facto state) of the US, with its economy dependent on China, there is a rat-race to grab NZ's resources before they are destroyed by profiteers or expropriated by the impoverished worker/peasants. NZ's semi-raw commodity exports are subject to collapsing prices, while capital exports to the Aussie banks and US and China corporate soar. This leads inexorably to a mounting national debt that must be paid for by the working class. As living standards plummet expect rising social protests challenging the legitimacy of the NACT Bonapartist regime.

Fighting Bonapartism

As we saw demonstrated in the recent election in New Zealand, the trampling of democracy, corruption, ‘dirty politics’, media capture and so on, are all symptoms of this Bonapartism of the state. So in the light of this, it is defence of democratic freedoms that are the key political question right now. Bonapartism leading to fascism can have only one response from any party that claims to represent the poor and oppressed and that is active defence of these freedoms as a precondition for any social justice.

None of the Left except Internet/Mana picked up on this and brought the fight for democracy (internet freedom) together with  social justice (feed the children). Only Internet/Mana kept the pressure on Key by staging 'The Moment of Truth' event where Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange appeared by live link alongside the crusading journalist Glenn Greenwald live on stage to claim that the NZ spy agency GCSB was engaged in mass spying on NZ via its partnership with the NSA. While this forced Key to admit that this was "possible" neither Hager’s book nor Dotcom’s evidence was the ‘smoking gun’ that the Right and Corporate Media demanded as proof that Key was spying and lying.

Key could protest his innocence only by virtue of state secrecy as the chief executive of a Bonapartist state where Cabinet dominates all branches of government and the so-called Fourth Estate, the Corporate Media. What we have here then are revelations about how the NZ state operates today to spy and lie to the people in order to maintain social order and control over the economy, yet that state has the power to prevent these revelations from destabilising its regime.

Instead of taking Key head-on over his subversion of parliamentary democracy, the rest of the Left including Labour fell for the narrative of the Bonapartist state of sacrificing democracy (denial of Dirty Politics and whitewash inquiries after the election) for the sake of business as usual (stagnation and trickledown) and joined in demonising Internet/Mana on the basis of the Right whipping up public envy, racism and chauvinism. Labour and the Greens instead of fighting the election on Dirty Politics blamed it for their failure to get their policies heard.

As the global crisis deepens and as the class gap widens Labour will split and out of its ashes will come the working class party or parties that are needed to defend workers and oppressed people from the destruction of economic and climate collapse caused by the historic decline of capitalism. Revolutionaries fight to further this process by raising a Transitional Program in the parties of the working class to defend democracy and raise immediate demands for decent jobs, pay, health, education, housing and a healthy environment. As a result of coming up against a Bonapartist state, and being faced with the prospect of a fascist movement, it becomes clear they must build workers councils and self-defence against the regime's thugs, and fight for a Workers' Government that is capable of expropriating the capitalists and creating a planned economy.

Hugo Chavez’s Death and the Way Forward for the Venezuelan Revolution

While Chavez hand-in-hand with Hu JinTao in April 2009 cut oil deals while trumpeting the “New 5^th International” and the building of “21^st Century Socialism” the Chinese Development Bank (CDB) had something else altogether  in mind.

 With the following observation from the thespec.com we hope we can dispense with the illusions of what  ‘Bolivarianism’ and ‘21^st Century Socialism’ are presented as and  identify the actual class character of the state that the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) administers,  what road-blocks still exist for workers on the path to socialism, and what defending and advancing the social gains already made in the anti-imperialist struggle means and how it can be done.

Read On: 

Aotearoa/NZ - End of Parliamentary Democracy?

Labour leader Phil Goff (left) and National leader and former Goldman Sachs banker John Key

In Aotearoa/NZ the National and Labour parties are both capitalist parties but they are not quite the same. Labour historically claims to represent working people, while National has always stood for international finance capital. Under the current crisis of global capital the NZ Labour Party like Social Democratic parties everywhere has almost exhausted its claim to represent the working class. In the face of this historic bankruptcy, support for Social Democracy has been falling as the largest sector of workers no longer vote. Capitalism in crisis is everywhere openly abandoning the figleaf of parliamentary democracy and installing Bonapartist regimes to impose mounting austerity attacks on workers. The results of the 2011 election in Aotearoa/NZ has confirmed the bankruptcy of Social Democracy with the number or voters falling to an historic low at 73% of eligible voters and Labour's share of the vote falling to an historic low in the traditional working class constituencies. 

Labour Party exhausted historic role?

Labour is being pulled left and right in the face of the global capitalist crisis. It’s torn between two masters. On the one hand it has to serve capitalism and manage capitalism by increasing the productivity of labour the creator of value. On the other it has to respond to its working class supporters and try to claim it serves their interests or it loses its reason for existence. This reveals that Labour like all Social Democratic parties is founded on a class contradiction between its bourgeois program and its labour movement base. Its function is to attempt to suppress that contradiction. In a crisis when that contradiction comes exploding to the surface, Labour has no option but to move right to attempt to solve the crisis at the expense of the working class. But in the process the contraction threatens to destroy Social Democracy.

This explains labour’s lurch to the right. Its new policy on pensions steals the extreme neo-liberal ACT party's policy of making workers work harder, longer, and die sooner. Pushing out the age of retirement from 65 to 67 is an open attack on the working class. To get elected Labour has again abandoned its working class roots and openly appeals to international finance capital to allow it to manage its affairs in NZ. It's another lurch to the right in response to a deep crisis echoing the 1980s crisis management at the expense of workers. Labour has gone so far to the right it even makes multi-millionaire Gareth Morgan’s Big Kahuna look positively leftwing.[see note]

Labour wants to make workers' pay for NZ's economic crisis in the same way as so-called 'socialist' parties in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland are making workers pay for the crisis of international finance capital. And like those parties which have been voted out or replaced by unelected politicians, Social Democracy is exposed as political bankrupt. What this proves that when it comes to deciding which master it serves Labour always sides with the capitalists and their profits rather with workers and their needs. Let’s prove that this is historically true.

Labour was never a socialist party. It was formed in 1916 after the historic defeat of militant labour in 1913 to co-opt the labour movement into parliament. But under pressure from unemployed workers and destitute working farmers during the Great Depression of the 30's the First Labour Government came to power on a radical populist policy of economic protectionism and income redistribution. This policy prevailed under both Labour and National until the late 1960’s when falling export earnings and internal costs created a big balance of payments deficit. The National Government Prime Minister Muldoon's response to the deepening international crisis in the 1970s was to reinforce protectionism. He refused to concede control over NZs economy even in the face of the threat of massive capital flight. Not because he was pro-worker but because he was for the protection of farmers and manufacturers from rising world prices for energy etc. Hence the 'think big' economic nationalist policy of self-reliance which ironically echoed that of the First Labour Government of the '30s. NZ became a pariah for international finance capital. When Labour was elected in 1984 it found itself facing a double global structural crisis and a crisis of capital flight from a collapsing NZ economy.

Labour became the Government without declaring to its working class supporters that it would shortly adopt the shock therapy of monetarist deregulation. It claimed it had no option because of a crisis of confidence in the NZ economy on the part of international capital. 'Rogernomics', as it came to be called after Finance Minister, Roger Douglas, was the policy of international finance capital (neo-liberalism) designed to destroy protectionism and privatise public assets. It was driven by the crisis facing global capital of falling profits. Douglas prepared his plans as early as 1980 as anyone who read ‘There Must be a Better Way’ knows. Labour had the unions in its pocket so by the time its so-called ‘red’ [pro-Moscow 'socialist'] leaders woke up under their beds it was too late. They were rewarded by Labour stripping the unions of basic rights just before the 1990 election. The left split to form the New Labour Party while many workers refused to vote Labour. Labour was defeated and the 1990s became a decade of National-led governments that furthered the neo-liberal plan of deregulation.

Labour was in Government from 1999 until 2008 but did damn all to reverse its sell-out to monetarism of the '80s. It reformed the Employment Contracts Act to restore the 'balance of power' between employers and unions but the unions remained hollow shells and never recovered their mass membership. Labour had to live within the neo-liberal parameters it had imposed in the 1980s. Its ‘rescued’ some privatised state assets like AirNZ and NZRail but for the sake of business not workers. State provision of basic infrastructure has always been the role of the state in NZ as a subsidy to a weak national capital. So basically Labour accepted the neo-liberal ‘settlement’ of finance capital of the 1980s and imposed further limits on the sovereignty of parliament through fiscal and monetary policy constraints.

This is why it no longer has the tools (or the will) to tackle neo-liberalism and opts for fake ‘tough’ options like making workers work harder and longer. Labour’s tax adjustments are fiscal fiddling which do little to reverse steeply regressive taxation and the widening income gap. Labour introduced the Goods and Service Tax [GST] in the '80s as part of the neo-liberal shift of taxation from capital to labour. Taking GST off fresh fruit and vegetables will be eaten up by inflation in no time. The Capital Gains Tax [CGT] is another grim joke. It won’t do anything to stop speculation or boost productive investment in jobs. That’s why Labour’s excellently produced election advertisements try to cover up its historic sell-out to finance capital with clips from the Joe Savage and Walter Nash eras from 1935-1949 falsely claiming to be going back to Labour’s social justice historic roots.

It is the failure of Labour to reconcile the class contradiction that runs through it that has created the vacuum for the NACT regime to take power and dominate the political domain. Having co-opted the ‘middle class’ and labour aristocracy the NACTs are now resolving the class contradiction by dividing and splitting the working class between aspiring middle class and the ‘underclass’ in the name of national unity. The NACT regime now takes the form of an increasingly authoritarian Bonapartist regime.

Down with NACTs Bonapartism!

NACT PM John Key is a leader who appears to be able to stand above ‘partisan’ politics and represent the nation. He can change the law almost at will. He passes some urgent retrospective empowering legislation and sends a minister to ride shotgun. Some say it’s a feature of ‘presidential’ rule that spawns mini Tsars. His 'presidential' appeal however is that of finance capital and his reputation as a successful 'banker'. John Key the rich banker can pass himself off as above the nation because he represents the financial salvation of the nation. Of course this explains why Key is so popular and can get away with doing what he likes, laugh it off, smile and wave, and move on.

This is a well known phenomenon to Marxists who refer to it as ‘Bonapartism’ after the French Bonapartes who ruled as ‘strong men’ in the 1800s seemingly above classes, and therefore identifying with the nation as a whole. It is a feature of a period of social crisis when the open Tory parties are too much identified with the greedy, arrogant ruling class, so a populist figure, apparently straddling the classes, can for a relatively short period maintain a class balance and semblance of order and stability. Bonapartism provides a cover for creeping autocracy as the regime has to implement rapid reforms to make the working masses pay for its crises and restore its profits. In the current crisis, as the success of John Key shows, Bonapartism is taking the form of unelected Bankers assuming executive power by default allowing Social Democracy and Rightwing regimes to hide behind the figleaf of the authority of finance capital that is 'too big to allow nation states to fail'.

Yet Bonapartist figures cannot put the lid on class struggle in a serious prolonged crisis and the working class begins to resist the attacks on it. A very clever Bonapartist like Key can delay the shift to the right by simply smothering working class resistance. He won the ‘08 election as ‘Labour Lite’ keeping his Tory agenda under wraps. He has removed the wraps as his popularity and ability to maintain the class balance holds. He is well managed. The RWC and his photo op with the Mad Butcher continues to promote his stand for the national above classes. He drinks in the corporate boxes with the rugby bosses and sits in the stands with the heartland of working class NZ, the league fans, fraternising with another self made working class multi-millionaire. To make it easier the Labour Party under Goff is incapable of standing up for the most oppressed workers. And Mana has not yet been able to appeal to the disaffected hordes of Labour voters attracting only 1% of the vote in the 2011 election.

However, in one or two or three year’s time depending how rapidly the global crisis develops, the NACT regime will no longer be able to keep workers down. The Bonapartist regime will then move right to redefine the nation as excluding the ‘outsiders’- the 100s of thousands of workers who have been disenfranchised by Labour’s open pro-capitalist trajectory in the last 30 years and who in 2008 and 2011 stayed at home. Labour faces the ignominy of most of its traditional working class base alienated from 'their' historic Party.

The ‘outsiders’ are those sections of the working class mainly Maori, Pacifica, youth and women who are over-represented as unemployed, lowpaid, unpaid, precarious, casualised workers and labelled as the 'underclass'. The Bonapartist regime attacks these groups to victimise and demonise them in order to divide and smash their unity as workers. The NACTs have used Brash and will now use Banks to drive racist, sexist, anti-youth and homophobic wedges in this direction hoping to incite the formation of fascist currents. This opens the way for a fascist movement to demonise and physically attack the most militant sections of the working class and destroy its challenge to capitalist rule.

A serious working class opposition to capitalist class rule has therefore to unite all of these class elements as one single fighting force. This is what is under way with the wave of occupations that is spreading across the world. These occupations are all pointing towards growing support for general strikes from Egypt to Bolivia, Greece to the US etc, which if they become based on workers councils, militias and support from the ranks of the military, open the road to the smashing of the class power of the bourgeoisie and the rise to power of the working class globally. 

Global Revolution is the solution!
Just as we see growing layers of the masses around the world turning their backs on parliaments and the bankruptcy of social democracy, mobilising on the streets and Liberation squares to take their futures into their own hands, young people and workers are doing the same in Aotearoa. When it is clear that parliament is talk shop for the bosses and the state the committee to manage the affairs of the ruling class, the people are waking up to the reality that they have the power to make change by uniting, organising and campaigning for what they need.

The Arab Revolution that stood against political dictatorships sparked off the ‘indignados’ in Spain and Greece to stand up against the dictatorship of finance capital. The first tentative demand to emerge from the #OWS is the Robin Hood Tax but already it's clear that even to make this demand the movement needs to unite with workers everywhere and build for a general strike to bring down the capitalist regimes and open the road for real democracy. The general strike #OccupyOakland led on November 2 followed closely on the 48 hour general strike in Greece. There will be many more. Based on a revolutionary consciousness, program and action and lead by a global democratic mass workers' revolutionary party,  this can be the beginning of the revolution.

After the Robin Hood Tax comes the jailing of the Sheriff and his army of cops and then the deposing of King John and the ruling class.

[note] 

The Big Kahuna

Gareth Morgan and his collaborators have put out proposals for an Unconditional Basic Income to all (paid work or not) and a flat tax to pay for it which would incorporate a Capital Gains Tax. These proposals are an advance on modern social democracy that has conceded a tax regime that is highly regressive (poor pay a bigger % of income than rich). While the UBI challenges the fundamental presumption of capitalism that we must work or starve, and takes away the stigma attached to social welfare, in the end this is still a distributional solution to inequality that fails to get to the roots of capitalisms class structure. It is a proposal for re-allocating a social wage in a way that is more efficient for capital to make profits and to buy social peace. Nevertheless these proposals are ones that should be taken up by the left and debated as they can become the launching pad for mobilising working people to challenge the rule of capital, the ownership of private property, and the exploitation of labour-power as the source of profits.