Class Struggle, No 131, Summer 2019-20

   CS 131 Summer by Dave Bedggood on Scribd

Where is Britain Going?

After 9 years of bitter austerity, how did the Tories turn an entitled, lying clownish toff like Johnson into such a winner, and an avowed parliamentary socialist like Corbyn into a weak chump? The answer lies in the failure of Labour to stand up to Johnson’s Trumpish rally to ‘make Britain great again’. Fatally, Lexiteers like Corbyn tried to meet Brexit halfway with a ‘Socialist’ Brexit, or Lexit.

The Tories were split over Brexit but the Brexiteers fought inside the party to defeat the Remainers, so the campaign was all about Brexit. Labour was also split, but refused to take a position and compromised on a second Referendum. So, Labour broke the stalemate by allowing Johnson to turn its Brexiteer working class voters into his pawns.

Never mind. Brexit is far from over, and Johnson’s hard Brexit will explode on the streets and workplaces rendering parliament impotent to stop the breakup of Britain. It will push Scotland towards independence, and give Northern Ireland every reason to join a united Ireland. This will pose for socialists the test of their ability to organise the working class against reactionary bourgeois chauvinism and for proletarian internationalism.

To understand why this election will launch an open class warfare that can only be resolved by fascism or socialism, we need to explain how Britain’s existential crisis, as part of a wider terminal crisis of global capitalism, has forced Brexit to the top of the bosses’ political agenda.

Brexit stalemate

The stalemate over Brexit is a symptom of the paralysis of the British ruling class facing the dilemma of its future as a declining imperialist power maneuvering between the US bloc and the Russia/China bloc. The rise of Russia and China threatens the waning US world hegemony. The EU is torn between the two but increasingly drawn towards Russia/China.

This poses a problem for the UK ruling class: to remain in the EU as it gets pulled away from the US towards Russia and China, or to leave the EU and stick with the US come what may. The British ruling class is split between the finance sector, the legacy of Britain’s rentier role in the world economy, and the national bourgeoisie who are now in partnership with US, EU and Asian transnationals.

Both fractions are globalist in outlook and make their profits in a multilateral world where capital and labour know no borders. Johnson in copying Trumps ‘exceptionalism’ is acting contrary to Britain’s globalist role. There is no case for abandoning the EU for the US – since Britain profits from both – unless Britain is so uncompetitive and sees no future in the EU allied to Russia/China and is desperate to gamble on the declining US. So, what part of the ruling class has an interest in writing off the 20th century and building a fantasy of reclaiming the glory days when “Britain ruled the world”?

None except a small section of British capitalists that wants to share in a US takeover and asset stripping of British assets including the remaining state assets such as the NHS. This is the Trumpist strategy to save the US that the reactionary Tories endorse.

The trade deal being negotiated with the US will reduce Britain from the status of declining imperialist power to a client lackey state. Those who stand to gain from a hard Brexit are those who blame Britain’s decline on EU membership and want to become the servile junior partner of the US. They are a tiny, backward chauvinist fraction that rejects globalism to make Britain great again. But this slogan actually means becoming mere neo-colonial compradors (agents) of US vulture capital. This is the reason that the Brexit comprador fraction needs to manufacture a populist movement of chauvinist workers and petty bourgeois social imperialists to give it parliamentary legitimacy.

Lexit succumbs to chauvinism

The left is mightily confused over Brexit when it puts itself into the camp of the comprador Brexit faction of the British ruling class. While the left propagandizes that Brexit creates a Left-exit (Lexit) for workers to take power, in practice they are acting as stooges to call on workers to side with British imperialism over German imperialism. What’s more they sign up to ‘their’ ruling class to defend Britain from all foreigners, migrants, militants, and revolutionaries to defend ‘glorious Britain’. The bankruptcy of this ‘social imperialism’ (socialism at home paid for by imperialism abroad) explains Labour’s defeat by the Brexit populists.

The problem with the Lexit position is that it takes a historical construction of the bourgeoisie, the nation state, and defends it as timeless. But since the arrival of the age of imperialism early in the 20th century, capital has known no borders. It has had to expand globally to boost profits at home. Giant monopolies backed by their nation states have gone to war to make their rivals and the world’s workers’ pay for their crises of overproduction.

Thus, excess capital is destroyed in depressions and wars, while workers’ wages have been driven down by depression and their resistance defeated by conscription to fight the bosses’ wars. The 20th century proves that workers used as cannon fodder must mutiny and unite with workers everywhere to overthrow crisis-ridden global capitalism. In the place of bourgeois nation states workers will create socialist republics that replace chauvinism with internationalism and a global federation of workers’ republics.

Fascism or Socialism

The extreme logic of bourgeois nationalism leads to the rise of fascism to smash workers refusal to pay for the bosses’ crises. This is where we are again today, in a full blown, terminal crisis of global capitalism, where new movements are beginning to rise up against global capital. And once more the bosses are encouraging fascism to raise its ugly head to smash workers struggles for basic democratic rights from Algeria to Hong Kong.

Within this framework, the situation in Britain is consistent with a declining imperialist power reverting to imperialist xenophobia, led by a reactionary comprador clique of the bourgeoisie that has been defeated by monopoly capital. In its desperation to protect its wealth it exploits the fears of workers against migrants to ape Trump in backing imperialist Britain against imperialist Germany and France. And in many European countries the same centripetal forces of national populist movements are creating the swamps in which fascism breeds.

There is nothing progressive in defending bourgeois nations in the name of the ‘left’. It leads to the enlisting of workers behind the national flag to fight workers in other countries in the interests of the ruling classes and against the interests of humanity and nature. Against the populist/fascist movements that are forming to divide and smash working peoples, the only left position that can lead to the end of capitalism, is that which unites workers across national borders into one international revolutionary force capable of ending capitalism and building socialism.

Pela Revolução Permanente no Irã, Oriente Médio e Norte da África!

Solidariedade com o levante iraniano!

(1) O novo levante no Irã é de importância histórico-mundial. Isso prova que as massas estão prontas e dispostas a lutar para derrubar o capitalismo em sua agonia. Os trabalhadores iranianos e os agricultores pobres se recusam a pagar pela crise terminal do capitalismo global com as suas vidas e os seus padrões de vida. Marxistas entendem que este levante está atrasado e só pode terminar em revolução socialista ou bárbara contra-revolução. Mas não estamos sozinhos nessa perspectiva histórica. Um homem iraniano, envelhecido 111 anos, fala de ter nascido no Irã (então Pérsia) na época nos primeiros passos para a revolução burguesa que ocorreu em 1906. Ele disse “Eu sabia que esse dia chegaria, eu fiquei vivo para ele”. Ele viveu toda a época do imperialismo no Irã durante a qual seu desenvolvimento nacional foi retido pela rivalidade das grandes potências, auxiliado por seus agentes burgueses nacionais, e a traiçoeira pequeno burguesia ‘democrática’ da esquerda, na disputa pelo controle da Eurásia como chave para dominar o mundo. 

(2) Quando Lenin escreveu “O imperialismo; A fase superior do capitalismo”em 1915, o lugar do Irã no capitalismo global já era de subordinação ao imperialismo. Lenin definiu imperialismo como um sistema em que os países imperialistas opressores dominam países coloniais oprimidos. No entanto, um punhado de países eram ‘transitórios’ os quais incluiu Pérsia, China e Turquia. Ele chamou esses países de semi-colônias :

” ..países que, formalmente, politicamente eram independentes, mas que são, na verdade, enredados na rede de dependência financeira e diplomática”.
Assim como a revolução russa provou a teoria / programa da Revolução Permanente ser correta, o fez o desenvolvimento futuro do Irã. A reforma constitucional de 1906 limitou os poderes do Shah mas não conseguiu escapar da “rede de dependência financeira e diplomática” sem se libertar da rivalidade imperialista britânica, alemã e russa para o controle do petróleo persa. A revolução nacional do Irã nunca foi concluída porque ela foi presa na garra do imperialismo na I Guerra mundial que tentava a redivisão do mundo em face do levante revolucionário internacional. O tratado russo-persa de 1921 protegia a revolução soviética de incursões do exército branco ao sul, enquanto garantia os direitos de transporte no Mar Cáspio para a Pérsia. Tal foi a re-divisão do mundo que eliminou o imperialismo russo da cena, substituindo-o pelo poder da União Soviética até o acordo de Stalin com o bloco anglo-americano durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial.

(3) o Irã aproveitou a redivisão pós Segunda Guerra Mundial e a onda de descolonização, mas como a maioria das colônias ficou aquém de completar a revolução nacional democrática (burguesa). Que sucedeu apenas na China, onde os capitalistas recusaram a oferta para compartilhar o poder com o maoísta PC chinês e fugiu para Taiwan, e tardiamente em Cuba onde os EUA se recusou a compartilhar o poder forçando os castristas ir para os braços da stalinista URSS. Em 1951 a Frente Nacional de Mossadegh, comprometida com a nacionalização do petróleo, ganhou uma maioria parlamentar e derrubou o poder absoluto da monarquia constitucional, mas não conseguiu percorrer todo o caminho para derrotar a burguesia nacional numa revolução socialista. O resultado foi um populista governo burguês anti-imperialista que nacionalizou a indústria do petróleo. Contudo, para o movimento popular dos trabalhadores e agricultores pobres faltava um revolucionário partido bolchevique-leninista capaz de romper a frente popular. Mossadegh tentou negociar com os imperialistas, enquanto eles impunham sanções na produção e comércio, bem como um bloqueio naval. Agentes americanos e britânicos criaram divisões entre os apoiadores de Mossadegh e em 1953 eles conspiraram para realizar um golpe para restaurar sua propriedade e controle de petróleo iraniano e para restaurar Reza Xá Pahlavi como monarca constitucional.

Inicialmente, a tentativa de golpe fracassou, com a Frente Nacional e o (Partido Comunista) Tudeh indo às ruas e o Xá fugindo para os EUA. Os EUA e a Grã-Bretanha planejou uma segunda tentativa. Desta vez o golpe sucedeu, principalmente porque Mossadegh desmobilizou seu apoio de massas e o partido stalinista Tudeh aquietou-se complacente pela frente popular aparentemente vitoriosa que incluiu seu movimento islâmico rival pressagiando o seu papel reacionário em 1979. Perdendo o apoio no parlamento, Mossadegh, em seguida, fizeram um referendo para dissolver o parlamento e tirar do Xá seus poderes remanescentes; um golpe constitucional da esquerda que o fez perder mais apoio. Prenunciando Allende no Chile em 1973, Mossadegh não mobilizou seus apoiadores nem os chamou recorrer às armas. Tudo o que era necessário então era neutralizar Tudeh, infiltrando provocadores no partido para provocar uma “insurreição comunista”, perdendo a Mossadegh mais apoio e, finalmente, instigando os oficiais pro-Xá sob o general Zahidi para prendê-lo e assumir o controle do governo.

(4) Resumimos nossa posição sobre a revolução anti-imperialista de 1979 e da contra-revolução pela burguesia islâmica do bazaar:
“A tragédia da revolução de 1979 mostrou que o Irã estava maduro para a revolução, mas não tinha uma direção revolucionária. Os operários e camponeses pobres foram a força por trás da revolução anti-Xá, mas foram conduzidos por liberais e stalinistas que aliados com a burguesia nacional islâmica que em 1981 tinha ligado os trabalhadores mais avançados e exterminados muitos milhares dos melhores militantes. O fracasso da revolução socialista pode ser claramente atribuído ao papel do partido stalinista Tudeh, que seguiu a fatalista linha stalinista de fazer uma revolução democrática em aliança com a burguesia ‘progressista’ para expulsar os imperialistas. Os stalinistas se recusam a aprender com a sua traição da revolução na China em 1927, quando seu ‘aliado” e membro honorário da Comintern, Chiang Kai Shek, cooptou o Partido Comunista e massacrou sua liderança.

Novamente, isto serve para demonstrar que a menos que os trabalhadores liderem os camponeses pobres à revolução, a burguesia nacional reacionária usará sua liderança na frente popular anti-imperialista para cooptar os trabalhadores e oprimidos e esmagar a revolução socialista. As lições de Outubro ainda não foram aprendidas. Os stalinistas, guevaristas, trotskistas renegados e Mudjadaheen (maoístas) depositam sua confiança na democracia burguesa, em vez dos revolucionários operários e camponeses pobres. Mais uma vez, os trabalhadores e os camponeses pobres se levantam, mas falta um partido marxista revolucionário e eles são derrotados pela burguesia reacionária, servindo direta ou indiretamente os interesses de uma ou outra potência imperialista.


(5) A República Islâmica e sua ditadura de quase 40 anos e a episódica resistência a ela, chega até sua situação atual como parte do bloco Rússia-China, indo para a guerra no Oriente Médio para repartição do Iraque ao Líbano. Ele está tentando resolver sua crise semi-colonial à custa das semi colônias menores e os povo trabalhador do Oriente Médio e do Irã. Pelo menos duas vezes até agora, após a negociação Astana e de Sochi, o mundo foi girado um conto de um acordo sírio. Tudo o que foi resolvido, a partir do ponto de vista dos governantes iranianos, é que a Síria vai ter que pagar pela intervenção em apoio à Assad! E enquanto isso, a política expansionista contínua introduzindo às massas iraquianas, sírias e iemenitas os “voluntários” da temida Guarda Revolucionária Iraniana. Estes não só reprimem e roubam tudo à vista em áreas “liberadas”, mas têm seus dedos em todo tipo de empreendimentos econômicos onde quer que estejam, tudo com a benção dos teocratas.
Como resultado (como um cartoon no Facebook coloca) o Irã está bombeando capital e  mercenários para o Iraque, Síria e Iêmen em um papel de subordinado à Rússia e a China, remendando suas pontes com a Turquia e Qatar, e matando de fome seus próprios trabalhadores e camponeses. Assim, os determinantes da revolta é uma história de desenvolvimento desigual e combinado semi-colonial em face a uma crise mundial que cria todas as condições objetivas para a revolução, mas que ainda não tem a condição subjetiva vital de um partido revolucionário bolchevique-leninista. Com apenas duas alternativas, em última análise, as massas iranianas devem encontrar o caminho para leninismo para ser capaz de realizar a sua revolução, porque a única outra alternativa é a pior reação que eles presenciaram até agora.

 Como a luta está se desenvolvendo e os dois blocos imperialistas 

(6) Lemos que noventa por cento dos iranianos estão se alimentando com o equivalente a cupões de alimentos, e que estes estão programados para serem cortados. Onde 27% do Produto Interno Bruto foi dedicado ao bem-estar social e um piso básico semelhante ao Bolsa  Família brasileiro,em 2008, um estudo do Banco Mundial agora mostra como isso foi “reformado” para baixo a 3% hoje. O desemprego dos jovens é enorme, a inflação de dois dígitos tornou-se um elemento permanente e o salário mínimo do governo é ⅓ da ‘renda mínima necessária’ oficial para uma família de três membros. Esta condição prevalece como resultado dos custos de guerras dos teocratas que ocorrem durante uma crise global do capitalismo e, especialmente, desde que o Irã tem apoiado a contra-revolução de Assad com tanto sangue e dinheiro. Um aumento no investimento internacional deveria resultar em melhores condições de vida, assim como a reeleição de Rouhani, que a imprensa ocidental chama de “moderado”. Mas, enquanto os ganhos nas ações foram vendidos, nada melhorou nas ruas. No mês passado, os preços da gasolina dobrou. Onde Alemanha e Espanha foram os grandes investidores após os protestos de 2009 (pela fraude nos resultados das eleições), hoje o dinheiro inunda a partir da China : 
“A China está financiando bilhões de dólares em projetos chineses no Irã, fazendo incursões profundas na economia, enquanto concorrentes europeus lutam para encontrar bancos dispostos a financiar as suas ambições, disseram autoridades do governo e indústria iranianas… o financiamento chinês, de longe o maior declarante de intenções de investimento do que qualquer outro país no Irã, está em contraste gritante com a seca dos investidores ocidentais desde que o presidente dos EUA, Donald Trump rejeitou o pacto de 2015 acordado pelas grandes potências, aumentando a ameaça de que as sanções poderiam ser re-impostas.”


Autoridades iranianas dizem que as ofertas são parte de US $ 124 bilhões da Nova Rota da Seda, iniciativa de Pequim que visa construir nova infra-estrutura – de rodovias e ferrovias a portos e usinas de energia -entre a China e Europa para pavimentar o caminho para uma expansão do comércio”

As revolta das massas é geral e não restrita às grandes cidades. A alegação do governo feita pelo britânico “Guardian” de que as manifestações tenham acabado é espúria. A revolta combina demandas econômicas e políticas e apela à expulsão dos teocratas e o grande aiatolá Khamenei são chamadas em todo o país. Zamaneh mídia relata que o segundo semestre de 2017 viu um aumento de greves trabalhistas sobre o não pagamento de salários e demissões em massa. Os protestos não se limitam aos trabalhadores industriais, que sofreram o pior de tudo, mas se espalharam para todos os setores de trabalho assalariado. Zamaneh relata as repressões do estado atingem as minorias nacionais mais duramente, assim como os muitos curdos que são mineiros.

Nossa “esquerda” oriental nos assegura quer(a) não há classe de trabalhadora lá, ou (b) que este é apenas o último de uma série de trabalhos da CIA nas massas do Oriente Médio e Norte da África. Estamos aqui para dizer-lhe que existe uma ‘situação pré-revolucionária’ na linguagem do bolchevismo. Condenamos com antecedência qualquer tentativa de impingir uma frente popular sobre as massas iranianas. Eles estão justamente cansados com os líderes que lhes trazem nada além de guerras, pobreza e repressão anti-sindical. Quando uma vez perceberem que essas condições são lançadas sobre eles por uma classe social inimiga, eles também reconhecerão e rejeitarão quaisquer esquemas “a meio caminho”, sejam as frentes populares ou as Assembléias Constituintes, e o estado desse apoio.


(7) As frações reformistas da esquerda e os falsos trotskistas, necessariamente estão expostos e derrotados pela dialética. Se os protestos se  sustentarem e crescerem em uma revolução permanente através da formação de conselhos de trabalhadores, ocupando fábricas etc., e ele realmente começar a lutar pelo poder, podemos esperar que os pró-Assad corram para a defesa do regime, como fizeram na Síria. Estes falsos esquerdistas são tão fixados em sua visão de um mundo unipolar e cegos pelo seu oriental-chauvinismo que todos eles podem ver, sempre que um levante popular nas semi-colônias contra regimes capitalistas despóticos, é ação nefasta da CIA. A falsa esquerda, (na verdade, muito parecido com a Voice of America, que sugere que clérigos linha-dura estão por trás dos protestos!), acredita que o regime pode ser reformado / melhorado. Ou para esta “esquerda”, as próprias pessoas não são capazes de revolução – então elas devem ser as ferramentas de Wall Street. Assim, quando Trump enaltece a revolta, sem nenhum custo político para si mesmo ou sua marca, a falsa esquerda  vê um exército de espiões e provocadores agindo.

O regime lançou uma ofensiva para conter os protestos. Isso pode levá-los à obscuridade, como na Síria, onde milícias armadas surgiram para defender o levante da violenta repressão. Vai ser difícil (não impossível) para a falsa esquerda apresentar os protestos no Irã como trabalho da CIA e / ou radicais islâmicos. É claro que eles vão tentar dizer que é uma “revolução colorida”, ou seja, anti-corrupção, pró-capitalista, mas muitos não vão comprar isso por muito tempo. Eles não podem defender o regime na sua forma mais usual, alegando que o regime é secular e democrático, sendo totalmente apoiados por Erdogan e Putin (embora com cautela, os planos de Putin seja em manter uma aliança com o Irã, independentemente da sua liderança)! Naturalmente as massas iranianas têm pouco tempo para estes ocidentais pequeno-burguês. Colorir esta revolução de VERMELHO!
Chamamos os trabalhadores de todo o mundo a se engajar e participar de ações de trabalhadores em solidariedade com o levante iraniano!


(8) Seguindo o vigoroso patrocinador do governo, canal de notícias RT, declarou as revoltas terem acabado e “como qualquer  violento protesto”, inaceitável. Sombra de Marikana! A falsa esquerda deu ao CNA (Congresso Nacional Africano) um passe livre e nos últimos 6 anos eles têm dado indireto, se não suporte direto, à Assad. Este é o nexo do bloco SCO / BRICS (Organização de Cooperação de Xangai e o bloco  Brasil Rússia, Índia, China, África do Sul), que reunem-se ao emergente bloco imperialista da Rússia / China, com várias semi-colônias capitalistas tentando libertar-se ou permanecerem viáveis, livres do imperialismo norte-americano /União Européia. Assim, junto com aplausos do Fórum Social Mundial / LINKS assemblage, de Chávez presenteando Assad com a espada Bolivariana ao Irã apoiando Assad contra a revolução síria, as classes capitalistas semi-coloniais (Bolivariana, sul africanos e iranianos … ) agem para parar a onda de aspiração revolucionária do proletariado procurando fazer a revolução nacional democrática permanente- isto é, socialista. A esquerda stalinista, com LINKS, os castristas e os falsos trotskistas  do PSL e WWP, optaram por apoiar um bloco imperialista sobre o outro. Cem anos depois de Outubro e eles repetem a traição social-imperialista de agosto de 1914.

O determinante comum da atual onda de protestos é a austeridade devido à crise econômica global que está sendo imposto para as semi-colônias pelas potências imperialistas. Como em toda revolta desde a erupção na Tunísia no início da “Primavera Árabe”, vemos revoltas espontâneas descoordenados  não organizados por qualquer fração burguesa ou influência externa. No Irã, a culpa é dirigida ao regime, não as sanções, etc., daí slogans contrários à intervenção na Síria e Gaza representam um internacionalismo proletário, não uma conspiração da CIA. Isto é evidente na demanda do dirgente do sindicato de professores  que pede o fim do regime (ele foi preso pelo regime durante 5 anos, então não pode ser um fantoche da CIA). Assim, o regime é improvável que seja capaz de enterrar esse levante, tomando a linha que EUA / Israel etc., são os culpados. Daí a defesa do regime pela esquerda imperialista já é exposta como falência! 


Não desprezamos a nossa visão do que precisa ser feito, a saber: 

Por solidariedade internacional dos trabalhadores com as massas iranianas!

Por ações  e greves políticas dos trabalhadores para defender os sindicatos e trabalhadores iranianos!

Abaixo a repressão à mídia social! Retirar todas as acusações e libertar todos os manifestantes presos!

Pela Revolução Permanente no Irã! Acabar com o regime! Esmagar o Estado burguês / clerical!

Formar conselhos operários e milícias, dividir o exército, sem retorno do Xá, unir a revolução com a resistência na Síria e na Palestina!

Abaixo o imperialismo incluindo tanto o bloco dos EUA /UE e do SCO da Rússia e a China! Abaixo os  lacaios burgueses / clericais!

Apoio  internacional dos trabalhadores para reabertura da revolução iraniana juntando-se com a Revolução Árabe! 

Pelo direito de autodeterminação do povo curdo! Por um Curdistão socialista!

Por um partido leninista bolchevique que não ceda a liderança para stalinistas, maoístas, bolivarianos e guevaristas! 
Para um estado dos trabalhadores e camponeses pobres! 

Para uma federação de repúblicas socialistas do Oriente Médio e Norte da África! 


Por uma  nova, revolucionária Internacional dos Trabalhadores, baseada no método e Programa de Transição de Trotsky de 1938 : “Morte agonizante do Capitalismo e as Tarefas da Quarta Internacional”! 



Comitê de Ligação dos Comunistas 8 de fevereiro de 2018 



documentos do Comitê de Ligação dos Comunistas sobre o Irã: 

http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=1800 

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2015/06/mena-yemen-and-arab -revolution.html 

http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=1049 

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2012/02/defend-iran-against-imperialism-and-its.html 

http: / /redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2011/11/defend-iran-against-us-eu-and-israel.html 

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2010/03/us-and-chinese- imperialismo-mãos-off.html

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2009/06/iran-for-revolutionary-party.html 

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2015/07/for-workers-socialist-federation-of .html


RCIT: 

https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/long-live-the-popular-uprising-in-iran/


Fontes: 

https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2018/ 01 / ministério de verdade-não-reporte-Irã-protestos / 

https://en.radiozamaneh.com/articles/spike-in-labor-protests-in-iran-is-changing-the-political-milieu/ 

http: //www.worldbank.org/en/country/iran/overview 

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/12/01/asia-pacific/chinas-investments-iran-surge-coming-western -nations-solha / 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/30/iran-protests-trump-tweets

https://twitter.com/SMohyeddin/status/948505462596603904 

https://financialtribune.com/articles/domestic-economy/65339/iran-2nd-biggest-fdi-destination-in-mena
Original em http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=1967
Traduzido por GTR

Worker or Capitalist control of borders? Reply to RCIT

Workers, not people, of all lands unite!

The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) is an international tendency which proclaims itself as “Bolshevik-Communist”. It published a critical reaction to our recent article on migration. Their response titled “The Slogan of "Workers" Immigration Control: A Concession to Social-Chauvinism” is available on their website here. The RCIT argue for the ‘open borders’ slogan claiming this is the Marxist slogan. As we will show below is was not a slogan supported by Marx, Lenin or Trotsky. The article the RCIT reacted to titled “For workers control of migration” was published by CWGANZ here, and in the paper Class Struggle. In our reply, we will show how our differences in method must give rise to differences in political program, including that on migration and borders.

Our Differences in Method

Our differences in Method (how to analyse and understand capitalism and the class struggle) explain why RCIT and CWG differ on the slogan ‘open the borders’ in relation to migration. The RCIT claims that workers must defend bourgeois (capitalist) democracy in general, while we say that workers only defend bourgeois democracy when its advances the workers’ struggle. This difference has a history.

In 1991, the RCIT (then part of the League for a Revolutionary Communist International - (LRCI)) defended bourgeois democracy in the Soviet Union and sided with the fast-track capitalist revivalist President Yeltsin, against the resistance of the Stalinist bureaucracy. While the LRCI viewed the Soviet Union as a ‘degenerate workers’ state’, they failed to unconditionally defend the main gain of the 1917 revolution, workers’ property, from the restoration of capitalism.

The LRCI rejected Trotsky’s demand for workers’ unconditional defence of the Soviet Union against capitalist restoration across the whole Soviet Union which meant reviving armed workers’ soviets against imperialism and its agent Yeltsin, siding with the bureaucracy if it defended workers’ property, yet overthrowing it as a reactionary caste that would inevitably side with imperialism against the workers’ political revolution. Instead the LRCI backed the Yeltsin faction’s bourgeois demands for breaking up the SU, against the armed resistance of a section of the bureaucracy, reintroducing capitalism, banning the Communist Party and restoring workers’ parties on a program of social democracy.

The comrades of the CWG(US), then the LTT, which was in a fraternal relationship with the LRCI, confronted the leadership with a Marxist critique of this betrayal. The leadership, just days before the next Congress, broke off relations and prevented any appeal to Congress to attend and debate this vital question. The CWG(ANZ) (then Workers Power A/NZ) split from the LRCI in 1995 in opposition to this betrayal. We explained the roots of the betrayal as ‘social imperialism’, the view that bourgeois democracy was the only road to defending workers’ property in a Degenerated Workers State. We considered that this was a deviation from Marxism and Trotskyism resulting from the pressure of public opinion in the imperialist countries (the LRCI centre was in Britain) similar to the WW2 capitulation of petty bourgeois opposition in the Fourth International to Stalinophobia (anti-Stalinism). We called this a failure of Marxist method symptomatic of groups that vacillate between Marxism and bourgeois ideology, i.e. centrism.

In other words, the LRCI rejected Trotsky's warning that that bourgeois democracy was a cover for the restoration of capitalism. Instead, they supported the restoration of capitalism through “democratic”, meaning ‘bourgeois democratic’, means. They failed to defend workers’ property! So, we have a principled difference going back to 1991 which results from the LRCI breaking with Trotsky's 'unconditional defence of the Soviet Union’. Trotsky said that if revolutionaries could not defend the Soviet Union unconditionally (meaning defend it despite the Stalinist regime) then they could not defend anything! How true this proved to be! 

Consequences of Betrayal of Workers' Property 

When the RCIT comrades who were expelled from the LRCI (by then the League for a Fifth International (L5I)) around 2011, they approached us for discussions. We entered into an exchange of documents but failed to find agreement because the RCIT leadership refused to recognise the LRCI’s historic betrayal of workers’ property.

We could never fuse which a tendency that could not defend the historic gains of workers’ property and which actively participated in a popular front with Yeltsin (bourgeois democratic restorationists) that destroyed those gains.

In our discussions, we found that this non-Trotskyist adaptation to social imperialism continued to blight the RCIT method wherever conditions brought about a revolutionary crisis. The RCIT always put up the defence of bourgeois democracy against Stalinists or military juntas as a necessary means of advancing the working-class struggle for socialism.

In Yugoslavia in 1995, in the imperialist military intervention against Stalinist Serbia the LRCI did not defend Serbia against NATO but instead called for the defeat of both! Why? - the pressure of bourgeois public opinion. British public opinion was hostile toward Serbia and sympathetic to the bourgeois democratic right of Bosnia to independence. The LRCI in effect opted for the defeat of Serbia at the hands of imperialism. This was a replay of the Yeltsin betrayal. The breakup of Bosnia-Herzegovina, supported by US and NATO powers was lauded as a victory for ‘bourgeois democracy’ against the reactionary Titoist/Stalinist leadership of Milosevic in Serbia, and any prospect for political revolution to form a united socialist Yugoslavia was aborted. In 1999, the second NATO war against Serbia was to defend the bourgeois national right of Kosovo to secede from Serbia to create a US protectorate. As a result, Serbian, Bosnian, Kosovan (and Croatian) workers and peasants went to war against one another in the name of rival national chauvinisms that led to vicious ethnic cleansing to create new borders/frontiers.

Again, the LRCI (and RCIT) failed to defend workers’ property in the former Yugoslavia and in the process contributed to the formation of a reactionary breakup of a workers’ state and the creation of a number of new national borders/frontiers! But even if Serbia was no longer a Degenerate Workers’ State of any kind, the war between Serbia and Bosnia had been created by imperialist intervention to break-up Yugoslavia to smash the remains of workers’ property. NATO bombs on Serbia could not advance the self-determination of Bosnia. The result was the restoration of capitalism throughout the former Yugoslavia: a defeat for all workers. The breakup of Yugoslavia followed the same pattern as the breakup of the Soviet Union. For the LRCI the defeat of ‘workers’ property’ was not an historic defeat for workers but a mere reactionary phase in an otherwise revolutionary period in the march of bourgeois democracy.

In Egypt and Thailand in 2011/12, the right-wing bourgeois regimes were defended by the RCIT against military coups. Why? Because the RCIT thought it was necessary for workers to defend bourgeois democracy against military coups to create the preconditions for socialism. In both cases, we argued for an independent workers’ fight based on workers' councils and militias on the grounds that bourgeois ‘democratic’ governments were popular fronts tying the hands of workers and so making coups possible.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood regime was elected on a reactionary constitution written by the army to halt the revolution. In Thailand, the government thrown out of power by the military was a patronising, corrupt regime duping the masses. In neither case could workers advance their struggle by defending 'bourgeois democracy' when in practice such governments were suppressing the class independence of workers.

In Brazil in 2015, the RCIT stretched the concepts of 'coup', and 'fascism', to describe the right-wing use of a reactionary constitution to impeach Dilma and sideline Lula in the 2018 elections. Although the RCIT recognised that the Workers Party-led government was a popular front (and that its bourgeois partners including Temer were complicit in the ‘coup’) it called for defence of the popular front Government against the ‘coup’.

As stated already, our position was, and is, that we do not defend bourgeois democracy unless workers can advance this as workers’ democracy. The RCIT position is to make bourgeois democracy a fetish, or a necessary step towards, if not substitute for, workers’ democracy. In every revolutionary crisis where bourgeois governments are deposed by a military coup, or threat of a coup, the RCIT resorts to defence of bourgeois democracy. Yet the whole epoch of imperialism from Berlin 1919 to Brazil 2015 proves that bourgeois democracy is bankrupt and counter-revolutionary and that any advance on the road to revolution requires the proletariat to be organised independently of bourgeois democracy to fight for workers’ democracy, workers’ power, and workers’ governments.

How is this related to Open Borders?

The slogan ‘open the borders’ is a bourgeois democratic demand. ‘Open borders’ needs a specific historical concretisation as an international working class united front, to open borders to worker migrants and shut them to the bosses. Opening borders to workers and oppressed, stopping deportations, and at the same time preventing bourgeois and counter-revolutionaries immigrating, that is what we mean by worker control of borders.

The ‘Open the borders’ slogan by itself is an appeal to bourgeois ‘human rights’ and does not challenge the popular front of chauvinist workers with bourgeois liberals and pacifists to regulate the borders - that is, bourgeois democracy. The bosses already have ‘open borders’ for capital, but regulate borders for the movement of variable capital (workers), and have special channels (lanes) through the borders for capitalists (e.g. ‘business migrants’ in Aotearoa/NZ; APEC business lane etc.). The existing capitalist 'democratic' control of the borders is the policy of the ruling class. It is ‘democratic’ because capitalist parties and bourgeois workers’ parties pass legislation to regulate the borders. Liberals and pacifists are concerned about the plight of refugees. They want to rescue refugees and 'open the borders' to invite refugees into join them in (the mythologically) 'safe' democratic capitalist countries. Bourgeois pacifists freely give an invitation to cross the capitalists’ borders and to be wage slaves with citizenship - democratic capitalist rights. They also give refuge to the class enemy, petty bourgeois or bourgeois who want to establish businesses to exploit the working class.

Aotearoa/NZ has long had a racist “white NZ” policy which gives preference to migrants from the old British Empire, in particular Britain, while keeping out “brown” workers from the semi-colonial world. In A/NZ the most blatant example is the influx of white South African “kith and kin” after 1994. They number in the thousands and congregate in the more affluent suburbs of cities, compared with the relatively few black or brown faces from Africa. Only recently has the back-door been opened to Asian, Philippino, South Asian and Middle Eastern migrants, most of whom end up as low-paid wage workers or ‘self-employed’.

Revolutionaries want a class based immigration policy that opens the borders to the oppressed but keeps the oppressors out. We are not social chauvinists. Our policy does not start at home. Workers’ control of borders is a consequence of the degeneration of the Fourth International and the failure of revolutions to remove the causes that force workers to flee from oppression at home to live and find work. As internationalists, we act to protect the lives of workers and oppressed in whatever country they are living in from imperialist and national oppression (i.e. the national liberation wars in MENA), those who flee imperialist invasions in semi-colonies and counter-revolutions everywhere, and from wars to restore capitalism in degenerated workers’ states including the DPRK today.

Revolutionaries would empower workers and other oppressed people to defend themselves from imperialism and its client states, by providing material aid and heavy weapons (e.g. surface to air missiles-(SAMs). They would form international brigades to fight alongside oppressed workers in military fronts, maintaining their political independence and not making concessions to any national, cultural and religious beliefs. Revolutionaries would smash the bourgeois aid agencies that pen working class refugees, into "camps" and throw them into the arms of criminal gangs who prey on them. Provide worker's aid, including the means of self-defence from fascist attacks! Smash the refugee camps and provide liveable accommodation! Down with bourgeois democracy and Up with workers’ democracy! Down with imperialism that creates the crisis most refugees are trying to escape! Revolutionaries don't just call for Imperialism out of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, (MENA): but also arm the revolutionaries! 

Marx, Lenin and Trotsky

Marxist analysis of the international class war that creates refugees recognise imperialist wars, imperialist exploitation of crops, and raw materials as the motor causes of famine and hardship that drive migration. As Marx argued over Ireland (see below), imperialism creates the influx of migration from less-developed semi-colonies to imperialist centres. Refugees are not the problem. Imperialism is the problem that needs a revolutionary working class ready to overthrow it.

The “open the borders” demand in the abstract is a reactionary utopia because it fails to provide transitional demands that are capable of mobilising workers to fight for a Workers’ Government. It cannot meet the needs of workers under capitalism, and in a workers’ state it will not be possible under the dictatorship of the proletariat. There is no way that “open borders” would survive in a Workers’ State because bosses, fascists, mercenaries, all enemies of the socialist revolution, would not be free to cross borders. Borders exist as a mechanism of control - the only question is which class benefits from that control; today it’s capitalist control, for capitalist benefit.

Marx’s answer to Irish workers driving down the wages of English workers was not to appeal to the bourgeois state to open or close the borders, but to confront English chauvinism directly by campaigning for English workers to fight to improve the conditions for Irish migrant workers and to unite with them in the fight for Irish Independence from English (British) imperialism:

“But the English bourgeoisie has also much more important interests in the present economy of Ireland. Owing to the constantly increasing concentration of leaseholds, Ireland constantly sends her own surplus to the English labour market, and thus forces down wages and lowers the material and moral position of the English working class.

And most important of all! Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the “poor whites” to the Negroes in the former slave states of the U.S.A. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland.

This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And the latter is quite aware of this.

But the evil does not stop here. It continues across the ocean. The antagonism between Englishmen and Irishmen is the hidden basis of the conflict between the United States and England. It makes any honest and serious co-operation between the working classes of the two countries impossible. It enables the governments of both countries, whenever they think fit, to break the edge off the social conflict by their mutual bullying, and, in case of need, by war between the two countries.

England, the metropolis of capital, the power which has up to now ruled the world market, is at present the most important country for the workers’ revolution, and moreover the only country in which the material conditions for this revolution have reached a certain degree of maturity. It is consequently the most important object of the International Working Men’s Association to hasten the social revolution in England. The sole means of hastening it is to make Ireland independent. Hence it is the task of the International everywhere to put the conflict between England and Ireland in the foreground, and everywhere to side openly with Ireland. It is the special task of the Central Council in London to make the English workers realise that for them the national emancipation of Ireland is not a question of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment but the first condition of their own social emancipation.”
Letter of Karl Marx to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt, 9 April 1870
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_04_09.htm

For Marx, then, the unity of workers across national borders had nothing to do with ‘opening the borders’ but the unity of the oppressed against the oppressor in destroying the oppressor state. The demand of ‘worker control’ of borders could not be implemented until after the socialist revolution. This position was also adopted by Lenin and Trotsky.

Lenin opposed the slogan “open frontiers” which is the same thing as “open borders” until it was possible under world socialism. He claimed that the “open the frontier” demand was an adaptation to “imperialist economism” the cult of bourgeois reforms in the imperialist heartlands paid for by colonial super-profits – akin to its twin, ‘social imperialism’, meaning ‘democratic’ imperialism abroad, socialism at home.

“The method of socialist revolution under the slogan “Down with frontiers” is all muddled up. We have not succeeded in publishing the article in which I called this view “Imperialist Economism”.[3] What does the “method” of socialist revolution under the slogan “Down with frontiers” mean? We maintain that the state is necessary, and a state presupposes frontiers. The state, of course, may hold a bourgeois government, but we need the Soviets. But even Soviets are confronted with the question of frontiers. What does “Down with frontiers” mean? It is the beginning of anarchy…The “method” of socialist revolution under the slogan “Down with frontiers” is simply a mess. When the time is ripe for socialist revolution, when it finally occurs, it will spread to other countries. We shall help it along, but in what manner, we do not know… Only when the socialist revolution has become a reality, and not a method, will the slogan “Down with frontiers” be a correct slogan. Then we shall say: Comrades, come to us...” https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/7thconf/29d.htm

Trotsky was opposed to the free movement of migrants into the Soviet Union while it was still a healthy Workers State. Of course, he led the Red Army against imperialism and their proxies invading the workers’ state. But he also supported the regulated, planned settlement of Japanese and Korean peasants in Siberia as part of the overall development of the Soviet Union.

“When resolving the question of Japanese immigration to the Soviet Far East we must take into account the intense interest the Japanese public is showing in this matter. However, in view of the danger of Japanese colonization in the Far East, every step we take will have to be cautious and gradual. It is premature at this time to fix the number of Japanese immigrants who are to be allowed into the USSR, but, in any case, Japanese immigration should not be large. It should be strictly regulated and should result in the breaking up of Japanese-controlled resources by means of a special agency set up for that purpose. The Japanese colonists should be settled in a checkerboard fashion, being alternated with a reinforcement of colonization from central Russia. The land that is parceled out should be acceptable to the Japanese peasants and should be suited to the peculiarities of Japanese agriculture. There are areas of land suitable for the Japanese colonists in the vicinity of Khabarovsk and further south, but not in the Siberian interior. We must not allow Korean immigration into these regions under the pretense that it is Japanese. The question of Korean immigration must be examined separately. The Koreans can be granted land that is considerably farther into the depths of Siberia.” http://www.geocities.ws/CapitolHill/Congress/1602/textosmarxistas/trottext/china/ch02.html

The Soviet Union as a Workers’ State facing imperialist encirclement had to defend its borders from hostile imperialist invasion, their mercenary armies and agent provocateurs. This was the Bolshevik application of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the Workers’ State to control the frontiers to admit pro-soviet workers and peasants and deny entry to, or expel, bourgeois counter-revolutionaries. Of course, this policy has nothing in common with Stalin’s Menshevik/bureaucratic policy of deportations of revolutionaries and forced population transfers, which could only be stopped by the overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracy by means of political revolution.

We are back to the basic disagreement between Trotsky's transitional method that empowers workers to develop as a class conscious revolutionary force, and the RCIT’s Menshevik method that blocks the self-development of workers by imposing the defence of reactionary bourgeois slogans and popular fronts as a necessary step to ‘prepare’ workers for socialism.

The RCIT's democratic capitalist demand to “open borders” without specific class actions does not develop the consciousness of the working class or help build a new revolutionary communist international. While the response of most workers in Europe to the influx of Syria refugees was welcoming and inclusive, to throw up the “muddled” slogan “open the borders” as an abstract demand would indeed lead to “anarchy”. It would substitute bourgeois “human rights” for proletarian democracy and fail to advance the consciousness of workers in action. We need to consider how workers would control the borders, not as an abstract bourgeois right which suppresses the class line, but to advance the international proletarian revolution.

Menshevik and Bolshevik Method

The RCIT criticism of the slogan ‘worker control’ is a vote of “no confidence” in the working class – they believe workers’ in the “oppressor countries” would be unable to control the borders for the benefit of the international working class. RCIT assumed social chauvinist workers would close the borders to migrant workers because they are ‘not ready’ to fight for worker control. When it comes to the crunch they have no confidence in Marxism, Communism and International revolutionary politics. This is typical of centrists who opportunistically adapt to social imperialism.

This is the historic methodology of Menshevism which substitutes petty bourgeois intellectuals for the proletarian party and defaults from Bolshevism to the defence of bourgeois democracy in the imperialist countries and the semi-colonies. That is why the RCIT calls for “open the borders” in the imperialist countries but in the semi-colonies the oppressed masses can take control of the borders as part of their independence struggle. In its Theses on… Black Africa it raises the ‘revolutionary’ demand that “white and Chinese settlers” who do not “support African liberation struggle” be deported, and the borders closed to "influx of such settlers”.

"16. Revolutionaries in Africa strongly oppose the rising chauvinism fostered by reactionary forces among the ruling class and the middle layers against migrants. Such counter-revolutionary hatred has even led, for example, to pogroms against Nigerian and Zimbabwe migrants in South Africa. Revolutionaries call for international unity among the workers and oppressed irrespective of their national and ethnic origin. However, a different issue is the problem of the white and Chinese settlers who have come as local representatives of imperialist powers. In such cases, revolutionaries call these settlers either to break with "their" colonial power and to support the African liberation struggle, or to leave the country. Likewise they defend the right of African states to block the influx of such settlers." (Our emphasis)

'Theses on Capitalism and Class Struggle in Black Africa' (Part 4) https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/africa-theses/part-4/

So, for the RCIT the ‘open borders’ slogan really amounts to opening imperialist borders to semi-colonial workers and closing the semi-colonial borders to imperialist ‘settlers’ both as reforms within the existing global capitalist economy facing a terminal crisis! This is an opportunist adaptation to petty bourgeois humanism in the imperialist countries, and to petty bourgeois popular fronts in the semi-colonies. And a 21st century expression of 20th century ‘imperialist economism’, bourgeois democracy in the oppressor countries paid for by the workers and poor farmers in the oppressed countries. As if proving our point, the Brazilian section of the RCIT forwarded to us an article on the new immigration law in Brazil which accords equal citizenship status to migrants as to Brazilian nationals. Does this prove that ‘open borders’ is not a utopian demand but rather evidence that bourgeois democracy is capable of allowing the free movement of workers to match the free movement of capital across borders? And this in a semi-colonial country that the RCIT claims has been subjected to a ruling class ‘coup’!

Of course, we defend bourgeois rights where they advance the interests of workers internationally, but we don’t pretend that such rights can be won or defended by any means other than independent working class struggle. By making a fetish of bourgeois democracy, the RCIT has betrayed its claim to its very name. The task of Bolsheviks is to develop workers’ consciousness – not trap it in the non-historical abstraction of “open borders” that is premised on the ideology of the bourgeois citizen. When workers have broken from bourgeois ideology and formed a consciousness of a “class for itself”, they will be capable of taking power and taking control of borders. We must say now, and openly, that this is part of the dictatorship of the proletariat: that is, after the revolution we will exercise the class power of the workers’ states for the maximum benefit of the international proletariat.

That is why our article included the demand: “Open the borders to political refugees”.

We should have been more specific and said “refugees from imperialist and national oppression” to exclude the right of bosses and ‘settler colonists’ like racist British fleeing Asian and African migration; white settler ‘kith and kin’ fleeing Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe or the end of Apartheid in South Africa; Chinese petty bourgeois fleeing CCP rule; US corporate bosses fleeing Trump; etc. That is, to make the ‘open borders’ a concrete demand specifying the necessity for workers to organise independently of the bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy to fight for asylum for all oppressed workers and farmers who reach our shores.

But it should be obvious to ‘Bolshevik-Communists’ that such concrete demands are transitional demands to advance workers’ struggle for ‘worker control’ under capitalism but which cannot be realised short of socialist revolution.

So, the article concluded:

“In a socialist world planned migration would send skilled migrants to develop the poor nations, to educate and to build health services and infrastructure to improve living standards. For this to happen we need a new communist international and a Transitional Program for socialism to unite the worlds’ workers into one revolutionary force”.

It is clear that the workers’ control we advocate is one based on working class independence and not that of the labour bureaucracy’s subservience to national chauvinism. It means workers’ power and international socialism, and the smashing of chauvinist currents in the working class. Not as in the current situation whereby capitalists control migration to extract and exploit skilled labour from poorer countries within the rich countries and incite the unemployed to blame ‘foreign’ migrant workers for their wage-slavery. It is a clear choice between workers’ or capitalists’ control of migration and borders: we urge all revolutionaries to stand in solidarity with workers: advance to worker control’!

The RCIT places democratic demands on capitalism, and calls conferences centred in the midst of imperialist privilege paid for by centuries of super-exploitation and super-profits. And as the global crisis intensifies the flow of political refugees and economic migrants into the EU, it should be obvious that the ‘borders can only be opened’ in the interest of workers and oppressed by means of ‘worker control’. As the far right and openly fascist parties grow to mobilise workers to oppose migration, we have to draw a strong class line for “workers control of the borders and against capitalist control of borders.”

For revolutionary communist internationalists building sections in the semi-colonies to counter the tendency towards social imperialism in the imperialist countries. It was social imperialism that led to the fatal degeneration of the Fourth International after 1940! Build a new World Party of Socialism that empowers cadre from the semi-colonies to overcome the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the world proletariat! Provide workers’ aid and practical support to the most advanced (class conscious) workers in independent workers’ organisations from the least economically developed states! Meet and hold congresses in the semi-colonies! Exchange cadres so that leaders in the imperialist countries have direct experience of the semi-colonies!

Down with Mensheviks who substitute the petty bourgeois intelligentsia for the proletariat!

For an independent workers’ movement based on workers’ councils and workers’ militias to overthrow the capitalist state and create a revolutionary Workers’ Government!

For Worker Control of the Borders to open them to the oppressed and close them to the oppressors!

For a New World Party of Socialism that represents the most oppressed workers to solve the Crisis of Revolutionary Leadership!

For the Working Class to live, capitalism and imperialism must die!

References

Historical Differences with the RCIT http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=1815

Egypt http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=804

Thailand http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=1006

Brazil http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/search?q=RCIT https://livingmarxism.blog/2015/04/04/russia-china-and-the-unfinished-permanent-revolution/

RCIT critique of Worker Control of migration http://thecommunists.us10.listmanage.com/track/click?u=5eae708609f498218096cf23b&id=d9c00ae6e7&e=403879ee53

CWG article on Worker Control of Migration http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2017/03/aotearoanz-for-workers-control-of.html

Marx on Irish workers in England https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_04_09.htm

Lenin on ‘Down with Frontiers’ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/7thconf/29d.htm

Trotsky on Japanese and Korean Migrants http://www.geocities.ws/CapitolHill/Congress/1602/textosmarxistas/trottext/china/ch02.html

Brazil’s new immigration law https://translate.google.com.br/translate?hl=pt-BR&sl=pt&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.diariodocentrodomundo.com.br%2Fo-que-muda-com-nova-lei-de-migracao-e-por-que-extrema-direita-esta-histerica%2F

CWG(ANZ) 30 April, 2017

Brexit and the Breakup of the EU

 
The current global crisis of stagnating production is bringing a new period of inter-imperialist rivalry as each power seeks to pass on the cost of its crisis to weaker powers and ultimately to the working class. This is passed off as the end of ‘globalisation’ and/or ‘neo-liberalism’ by the fake left. But in reality it is the terminal crisis of capitalism which is incapable of surviving without more wars and revolutions. When the imperialist countries close their factories, unless they get super profits from investments abroad, they go into decline i.e. de-industrialisation and debt. Debt is passed onto the workers via the state bailing out banks, corporates etc, in the name of austerity! That is why we are facing a terminal crisis, because for capitalism to survive it has to kill more and more workers. For workers to live, capitalism must die! 

Brexit: a symptom of EU breaking up

The decision by Cameron to hold the EU membership referendum was no more than an attempt to appease the ‘Little England’ faction of the British bourgeoisie. It backfired when Brexit won by a small margin. Tales of woe and impending doom swamped the media. In reality Brexit was part of a process of the breakup of the EU as its imperialist countries fall out over who will pay for the global crisis. There was almost no mention of the fate of the PIIGS and East European members of the EU which are either semi-colonies oppressed by the EU imperialist powers, or weak imperialisms in danger of joining the semi-colonies.

As we point out below, countries that are already semi-colonies like Greece and Ireland or about to become semi-colonies like Italy, Spain and Portugal, are the only ones where it is necessary for revolutionaries to support the national struggles to break from the EU imperialist powers. That is, where the rate of exploitation, level of debt repayment, mounting political attacks on workers’ rights including the right to political or economic migration, puts the question of secession from the EU on the agenda of the day, it is the duty of revolutionaries to participate in that fight.

However, in the case of the declining imperialist countries whose profits are drawn heavily from their share in the exploitation of other EU members, revolutionaries do not join their ruling classes in seeking to exit or stay in the EU but instead fight directly to overthrow their own ruling class. This distinction was made clear through the weeks of French strike action that coincided with the Brexit vote. The Lexit left diverted British workers from taking industrial action in solidarity with the French workers strike wave.

Break from the Bourgeoisie

As we argued in the last Issue (CS 117) the role of British workers in this process was to abstain in a dispute between their bosses over how to make workers pay for the capitalist crisis. Neither the Lexiteers nor the Remainders on the left advanced the internationalism of the British working class by renouncing class independence as they tailed either their own ruling class or the German ruling class which dominates the EU. To do that was to take sides with British imperialism or German imperialism and to suck workers into defending their own ruling class in any trade or military war between them, or other imperialist powers. Ultimately, as the RCIT has pointed out in their polemic against the LFI, this tailing the bosses rejects Lenin’s position on imperialism, and the program of workers fighting for the defeat of their own imperialist ruling class.

Both British and German bosses know that their crisis requires the smashing of working class resistance. British bosses cannot be better for workers than any other bosses. There is nothing in their genes or the culture of German or British imperialism that makes them less oppressive than the other. There is no way that workers can vote to 'take back their country'. It never was their country and never will be. What is “theirs” is nothing more than the fiction that because workers share in the super-exploitation of semi-colonial nations they should also share in defending the British Empire. Nationalism is the last refuge of the capitalist scoundrel as it is the death warrant for the last worker.

Both the Remainders and the Lexiteers betrayed the working class by painting one or other British bourgeois faction as ‘progressive’. And since the shock outcome both continue to promote their illusions in British capitalism in or out of the EU by agreeing that the rebirth of Labour under the Corbyinite left offers the working class the option of reviving the Labour Party as the instrument of parliamentary reform.

Corbynite Labour entry

We can see that the crisis is generating increasing resistance, if not uniformly, across the EU. In the main imperialist countries the left is still trapped in the bureaucratic institutions of right wing Social Democracy as even the strike wave in France proved when it came to a halt. But Social Democracy is under attack from both the left and the right because it is clear that it cannot solve the crisis for capital. Behind the labor bureaucracy are the fascist gangs marching to attack any concessions to ‘foreign’ workers. The new ‘non-political’ parties such as Syriza in Greece, Podamos in Spain etc., are really ‘populist’ (i.e. non-class) parties acting as a barrier to workers independent political mobilisation.

In the absence of a real revolutionary communist party, worker militancy is still being steered back into left Social Democracy in the hope that this will resolve the crisis in favour of workers and avoid the rise of the fascist right. That means that the class contradiction that is being activated by the terminal crisis of capitalism is still suppressed by the labor bureaucracy. The rise of the Corbyn left is a classic example.

The British Labour Party is a classic “bourgeois workers” party, defined by its working class membership based on organised labour and its bourgeois program. The left labour bureaucracy has the task of attempting to suppress this class contradiction behind promises of reform. It offers new hope that a working class majority in parliament can revive the old dream of a Labour Party nationalising the commanding heights by passing legislation. While such illusions are promoted by this revival it is necessary for revolutionaries to enter the Labour Party to raise their Transitional Program to prove that even a left wing social democracy cannot serve the class interests of workers any more than the right social democratic French Socialists or Spanish Socialists can.

Labour has to split its worker members from the bureaucratic petty bourgeois leadership and their bourgeois program to resolve this class contradiction. This frees workers from the labour bureaucracy to organise in militant unions led by a revolutionary party capable of smashing the rise of the fascist right before it becomes a powerful movement. This can only be done by raising inside Labour the demands that workers need now to deal with the global terminal crisis. That is, a Transitional Program that begins with the urgent immediate demands to end austerity by taxing and expropriating the ruling class.

· No to the bourgeois plans for implementing Brexit as an austerity attack on workers.

· No to British imperialism and all the EU imperialist powers.

· Defend the rights of worker migrants.

· Break from NATO.

· Solidarity with the semi-colonial periphery of the EU and support for their break from the EU.

· For rank and file democracy in the unions.

· For a revolutionary communist party intervening in all the working class struggles.

· For workers councils and self defence militias.

· For the political general strike to pose the question of which class rules.

· For a Workers and Farmers Government and a socialist plan.

· For a United Socialist States of Europe! 

The only way workers interests can be served in the process of the breakup of the EU is to form mass workers revolutionary parties united internationally to strike and occupy workplaces, and build workers militias and communes, so that a the foundation of a ‘New Party of Socialist Revolution’ based on the 1938 Transitional Program can lead the socialist insurrection to put an end to dying capitalism and give birth to a world socialist society.