Egypt: Egyptian masses throw out Mubarak

As part of the world capitalist crisis is the revolutionary wave of democracy in Arab countries, whose turning point was the revolution in Tunisia in January this year. Nearly a month later, in Egypt the masses have just thrown down the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. This is a triumph of the masses, a partial victory, but a win nonetheless. It is clear that the protests will continue and increase in many other countries whose dictators have less political margins to suppress.

In Egypt, after 18 days of resistance, and more than 300 deaths by state repression, Mubarak had to resign handing the Army the task of carrying out the "democratic transition." But it is the same army that sustained Mubarak for 30 years and and other dictators such as Sadat and Nasser for 50 years in total. The army supported and ensured the implementation of all business plans that led to extreme poverty for the vast majority of the population, concentrating wealth in a tiny bourgeois minority. In short, this is a bourgeois army whose officer corps is more than just a military bureaucracy, it is socially bourgeois-imperialist. Yet it has a base of soldiers and noncommissioned officers with close ties to the poor people, which ultimately prevented the generals and imperialism from using it to repress the people because they knew they risked a mutiny of the base, and with the destruction of the army, a revolution.

Bourgeois analysts insist that open democratic processes in the Maghreb and Egypt are as important as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. That is totally wrong in principle because bourgeois imperialism wanted democracy in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to bring about a faster restoration of capitailsm to capture their markets. In the Arab countries imperialism already controls them and their markets, factories and service companies. If today the U.S. and European governments are forced to reposition themselves, and so blatantly stop supporting dictatorships, is it entirely due to the class struggle, the struggle of the workers and oppressed in the Arab countries. And therein lies the contradiction about the situation because the class struggle forced the Egyptian bourgeoisie to give more freedom when it is forced to make fewer concessions. Neither the bourgeoisie or imperialism care about democracy in Arab countries.

So the Egyptian army cannot secure any democratic transition, because the bourgeoisie and officers are acutely aware that the underlying problem is not the regime, but the social conditions of the masses, and that the democratic revolution opens doors even wider to the struggles of workers, peasants and popular social achievements, as part of a global capitalist crisis. Certainly Egypt is in a revolutionary situation objectively as Lenin pointed out when he said that the ruling class cannot go on ruling in the same way and the masses will no longer suffer more of the same situation. Moreover, such a democratic transition is more complex because European and American imperialism will seek by all means that future Egyptian governments guarantee the existence of genocidal state of Israel, and repression and confinement of Palestinians in Gaza.

In this political and social framework that explains the democratic revolution or rebellion in Egypt, hence a faction of the bourgeoisie or imperialism now raises the need for a Constituent Assembly, limited to constitutional reforms, they say, for holding "free and fair" elections. They are more Catholic than the Pope, and even some 'Marxists' are raising the slogan of a Constituent Assembly to Egypt. The problem with raising this slogan is that the demand does not spell out which class is going to take state power. But the reality makes it clear that it is the pro-imperialist military who are driving the process so that a Constituent Assembly will be neither free nor sovereign. And on the other hand the working class has no strong political parties that can mobilise participation in a Constituent Assembly.

But Mubarak's resignation was due to a rising mobilization that was reinforced when the working class began increasingly to participate from the unions and autonomously, with strikes and demonstrations, taking up the great days of strikes 2009. Not only was the determining fact the mobilisation of the working class but this is the only guarantee of continuing the positive and open democratic process.

In the new stage opened in this revolutionary process with Mubarak's resignation, the central policy of revolutionary socialists should be to explain patiently that is the working class that must rule, that only the working class in alliance with the rural poor, can ensure a free and sovereign Constituent Assembly to give a new constitution for Egypt, favorable to the interests of the exploited. The struggle to ensure the freedoms and democratic guarantees should not go against the struggle for workers government and socialism, or vice versa. Both issues are intimately linked.

On the basis of these unions and farmer organizations, ane the militant labor and farmer leaders who have emerged from the revolutionary process, any principled Marxist group or party in Egypt should raise the slogans:

For a Government of Workers, Farmers and Oppressed People!
No trust in the military, political, religious or secular, bourgeois!
Free all political prisoners!
Immediate wage increases! Work for All!
Committees of Struggle, self-organization and self defence!
No recognition of the State of Israel! Zionists out of Palestine!
Break all political and military pacts with imperialism! 


In the process of this social and open democratic struggle Marxists must build the Revolutionary Workers Party, taking advantage of all loopholes that the new balance of power provides. Without the building of a revolutionary leadership the working class cannot rule or defeat the counter-revolution to destroy the bourgeois state, expropriate the bourgeoisie and expand the revolution to all the Arab countries. In other words, without socialism there is no solution to the suffering of the Arab proleteriat that now leads the world proletariat. And for that, there is no shortcut: we must build a revolutionary workers party and the International.

Long live the struggle of Egyptian and Arab masses against the "democratic" military!
For a Workers and Farmers Government!
Long live the revolution of the Arab workers and peasants and the creation of a Socialist Federation of Arab Republic

Communist Workers League
Argentina
12-02-2011

http://lct-revolucionproletaria.blogspot.com/

Republished with permission. Translation by CWG.



Egipto:

Las masas egipcias tiraron abajo a Mubarak




Como parte de la crisis capitalista mundial se está dando una oleada revolucionaria democrática en los países árabes, cuyo punto de inflexión fue la revolución en Túnez en enero de este año. Casi un mes después, en Egipto las masas acaban de tiran abajo la dictadura de Hosni Mubarak. Se trata de un triunfo de las masas, de un triunfo parcial, pero de un triunfo al fin. Es indudable que las movilizaciones continuarán y aumentarán en muchos otros países cuyos dictadores tendrán menos margenes políticos para reprimir.

En Egipto, después de 18 días de resistencia, y más de 300 muertos por la represión estatal, Mubarak tuvo que renunciar cediéndole al Ejército la tarea de llevar adelante la "transición democrática". Pero se trata del mismo Ejército que sostuvo a Mubarak durante 30 años, y anteriormente a otros dictadores como Sadat y Nasser por más de 50 años en total. Y fueron los que apoyaron y garantizaron la aplicación de todos los planes económicos que llevaron a la pobreza extrema a la inmensa mayoría de la población, concentrando la riqueza en una ínfima minoría burguesa. En definitiva, se trata de un ejército burgués cuyo cuerpo de oficiales es más que una mera burocracia militar, es socialmente burgués-imperialista, pero con una base de soldados y suboficiales ligados estrechamente al pueblo pobre, lo que en definitiva impidió la represión pues la plana mayor, y el imperialismo, sabía que se corría el riesgo de una ruptura de sus estamentos bajos, y una verdadera revolución junto a la propia destrucción del ejército.

Los analistas burgueses insisten que estos procesos democráticos abiertos en el Magreb y en Egipto son tan importantes como la caída del Muro de Berlín de 1989. Lo que es totalmente falso, en principio porque el imperialismo quería la democracia burguesa en el Este Europeo y en la ex-URSS para lograr restaurar el capitalismo más rápido y capturar sus mercados, pero en los países árabes el imperialismo ya tiene el control de ellos; ya tienen sus mercados, sus fábricas y empresas de servicios. Si hoy los gobiernos norteamericanos y europeos se ven obligados a reposicionarse, y dejar de apoyar tan descaradamente a las dictaduras, se debe a la lucha de clases, a la lucha de los obreros y trabajadores de los países árabes. Y allí está el punto contradictorio de la situación porque la lucha de clases obligó a la burguesía egipcia a dar mayores libertades cuando menos concesiones puede dar. Ni a la burguesía ni al imperialismo les interesa la democracia en los países árabes.

Por eso el Ejército egipcio no puede ser garante de ninguna transición democrática, porque la burguesía y los oficiales son extremadamente conscientes de que el problema de fondo no es de régimen sino de condiciones sociales de vida de las masas, y que ésta revolución democrática abre las puertas aún más a las luchas obreras, campesinas y populares por conquistas sociales, en el marco de una crisis capitalista mundial. Ciertamente que Egipto está en una situación revolucionaria objetiva como señalaba Lenin cuando decía que ella se daba cuando los de arriba no pueden seguir viviendo como hasta entonces y los de abajo no quieren seguir padeciendo más de la misma situación. Por otra parte, tal transición democrática se complejiza porque el imperialismo norteamericano y europeo buscará por todos los medios que los futuros gobiernos egipcios garanticen la existencia del Estado genocida de Israel, y la represión y el confinamiento de los palestinos en Gaza.

En ese marco político y social es que se da esta revolución o rebelión democrática en Egipto, de allí que ninguna fracción burguesa ni el imperialismo plantea la necesidad de una Asamblea Constituyente, todos se limitan a las reformas constitucionales, dicen, para realizar elecciones libres y justas. Aunque no faltan algunos más papistas que el Papa, incluso algunos diciéndose marxistas, que plantean la consigna de Asamblea Constituyente para Egipto. El problema que tiene el levantar esta consigna es que los que la plantean no dicen quién es el que la va a llevar adelante desde el Estado, porque la realidad, no los esquemas sino la realidad, indica que son los militares -pro-imperialistas- los que conducen el proceso, entonces, de realizarse dicha Asamblea Constituyente no será ni libre ni soberana. Y, por otra parte la clase obrera no tiene fuertes partidos ya no para gobernar, sino hasta para participar con alguna trascendencia en una Asamblea Constituyente.

Sin embargo la renuncia de Mubarak se debió a que las movilizaciones no se desactivaban, y más aún, se debió a que la clase obrera comenzaba cada vez más a participar desde los sindicatos y autónomamente, con huelgas y movilizaciones, retomando las grandes jornadas de huelgas del 2009. No sólo fue determinante la clase obrera sino que sigue siendo la única alternativa positiva y democrática al proceso abierto.

En la nueva etapa que se abrió, en este proceso revolucionario con la renuncia de Mubarak, el eje central de la política de los socialistas revolucionarios debe estar en explicar pacientemente que es la clase obrera la que debe gobernar, que sólo la clase obrera en alianza con los campesinos pobres, puede garantizar una Asamblea Constituyente libre y soberana que dé una nueva constitución a Egipto, favorable a los intereses de los explotados. La lucha por garantizar las libertades y las garantías democráticas no debe ir en contra de la lucha por el gobierno obrero y el socialismo, ni al revés. Ambas cuestiones están íntimamente ligadas.

Sobre la base de estos sindicatos y organizaciones campesinas, y de los líderes obreros y campesinos combativos surgidos del proceso revolucionario, es que todo grupo o partido marxista principista en Egipto debe levantar las consignas: "Por un Gobierno Obrero, Campesino y Popular"; "Ninguna confianza en los militares, los políticos burgueses laicos o religiosos"; "Libertad a los presos políticos"; "Por aumentos de salarios"; "Trabajo para todos"; "Comités de Lucha, auto-organización y piquetes de autodefensa"; "Por el desconocimiento del Estado de Israel"; "Fuera sionistas de Palestina"; "Ruptura de todos los pactos políticos y militares con el imperialismo".

En el proceso de esta lucha social y democrática abierta es que los marxistas deben construir el Partido Obrero Revolucionario, aprovechando todos los resquicios legales que la nueva relación de fuerzas brinda; pues sin construir una dirección revolucionaria la clase obrera no podrá gobernar -o enfrentar con éxito la represión que se prepara-, destruir al Estado burgués, expropiar a la burguesía y expandir la revolución a los países árabes que están en la misma o peor situación. En otras palabras, sin Socialismo no hay solución a los padecimientos y los problemas más importantes que tiene el proletariado árabe y mundial. Y para eso, no hay atajos: hay que construir el partido obrero revolucionario y la Internacional.




Viva la lucha de las masas egipcias y árabes– Abajo los "demócratas" militares

Por un Gobierno Obrero y Campesino

Viva la revolución de las masas obreras y campesinas árabes y la conformación de una Federación Socialista de Repúblicas Árabes


Liga Comunista de los Trabajadores

12-02-2011

http://lct-revolucionproletaria.blogspot.com/

Mohamed Bouazizi: Political Suicide as a Revolutionary Act

The self-immolation of Mahomed Bouazizi in Tunisia that sparked off the uprising in that country last week ousting the dictator, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, has been followed by others in North Africa, such as Algeria and Egypt, posing the question of the significance of political suicide as a revolutionary act in opening up revolutionary uprisings.

While these acts of self-immolation are ones in which individuals act in relative isolation it should not be overlooked that political suicide can mean any revolutionary act that is met with state violence. The Jihardist suicide bombers against US invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan, or those in Pakistan and India, are no different from the many acts of heroism of militants confronting state forces in revolutionary uprisings. These were not new as all revolutions are heralded by the actions of martyrs who are killed by counter-revolutionary forces.

We can also see the suicides of those in the imperialist occupying armies as politically motivated.The US military has lost more soldiers to suicide in its invasions of Iraq and Afganistan  in 2009 and 2010 than it lost in combat. These suicides are just as much the result of political oppression and repression as those of the freedom fighters of the resistance movements they are sent to fight.

The question we need to ask is: if revolution is about the struggle for freedom, is it necessary that the revolution has its martyrs? Is death the price of freedom?
 
Yes, it is a necessary price in such a struggle because revolutions begin with the acts of heroism of its most committed militants before the mass support sufficient to overthrow the reactionary regimes has developed.  This means that such militants are isolated and face death since the ruling classes see political assassination of militant leaders as necessary to stop revolutions from gaining momentum. But their martyrdom often becomes a catalyst in mobilising that mass revolutionary support.This is also true of suicides in invading armies since the demoralisation and rejection of war, suffering fatique, PTSD and other health problems that motivates such acts, are also the inevitable product of weakness of individual soldiers trapped in an imperialist army, yet can serve as a spur to more widespread resistance.

Currently Bradley Manning, accused by the US military of being a whistle blower who released US secrets to wikileaks, is on suicide watch in solidary confinement in the Marine jail of Quantico. The authorities are using solitary confinement to torture Manning into confessing and implicating Julian Assange of wikileaks as a war criminal. If Manning is driven to suicide in jail this would be a clear case of political assassination and again prove the point that suicide for political reasons is a revolutionary act.

Suicides are therefore political acts used in situations where resistance is weak and there is no organisation to turn individual self-destruction into a collective armed struggle to defeat and destroying the oppressor.

This is especially true when we are talking about states in which the mass movement has been repressed for a long period and when the revolutionary forces are weak or where their leaderships betrayed them. In the colonial revolutions that won independence after WW2 each revolution had its martyrs. Gandhi, Lumumba, Fanon, Biko to name a few. But these revolutions only began the process of decolonisation as national bourgeosies came to power in the service of imperialism. The national revolutions remain trapped, or frozen by neo-colonialism.

When popular movements rose up against neo-colonialism, as in Latin America, Asia and Africa, imperialism adapted to maintain control. They resorted to popular fronts or patriotic fronts of all classes (Peron, Allende, Chavez) and when these fail to contain the masses, dictatorships follow. Where national leaders went against imperialism, coups or invasions were imposed to restore compliant national leaders (e.g. Vietnam 1955, Iran 1956, Indonesia 1965, Nicaragua 1979 etc). Sometimes these coups and invasions failed or were reversed (China, Cuba, Iran, Iraq). At every revolutionary or reactionary turn, thousands of militants are martyred.

Today, facing the global crisis of capitalism, the masses are once again moving against imperialism and its national neo-colonial lackeys, and again a wave of uprisings sparked by martyrdom is evident. At the same time the suicide rate in the imperialist armed forces is on the rise. What we see here is the initial imbalance of forces where the oppressed do not yet have organised mass support to express their opposition to oppression as mass action. Such individual acts, even when copycatted, will continue until such time as collectively the international proletariat takes on its shoulders the task of socialist revolution.

The task today then is to recognise the heroism of martyrs but at the same time to use their heroism as inspiration to build a mass revolutionary movement and revolutionary program that is able to complete the socialist revolution and make it no longer necessary for the best fighters to die for freedom, but rather to create the conditions that will allow death to take its natural course within the realm of freedom.

US: Balance sheet on March 4th Student Protests and What Next

 
The protests of March 4^th were bigger than the September protests last year. The militancy of the mass occupations last November was a step forward from the September protests. It was a step in a direction of seriously shutting down the universities. Yet the biggest achievement so far was what the students did in Santa Cruz, where with great militancy and determination they completely shut down the university. They were, it appears the only campus where a determined strike committee was formed in a conscious effort to shut the university down.

The Highway occupation in Oakland involved more people as direct actions than the occupation of Wheeler Hall at University of California Berkeley. The level of militancy was high but the situation was not right to draw the thousands who supported the Wheeler occupiers into action. Those who supported the Wheeler occupation would have done the same but were corralled by the rallies to off campus sites.

In general things turned out to be roughly as we expected them to be. A lot of anger, a lot of frustration: and what is more important a lot of militancy and willingness to go beyond the limited goals of the organizers.

The good thing about March 4^th is that the protests went beyond California and extended to other areas of the US. The best known university beyond California is Hunter in New York City where protesting students were confronting nasty cops, and the students claim that they also confronted the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) that was working with the police to stop the militancy of the students (http://takethecity.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/a-response-to-the-lies-of-march-4th/ ). 

The student protests are catching fire around the world with many statements of solidarity coming from students and workers' organizations around the world. Despite the participation of many individual teachers and other workers this was a youth and student action, the unions were not as involved as they were last year; none had organized actual strikes. The union leaderships kept the workers to a large degree participating in pickets before and after working hours.

East Bay and Oakland

In the immediate Bay Area it was mainly marches and rallies. Real effective strike actions were prevented from happening by the reformist organizers and the Left. From UC Berkeley (UCB) busses took about 800 students to a futile rally with Democratic Party speakers and day of lobbying in Sacramento to convince the class enemy to give more money for education. The main left organization that divert strikers to Sacramento and into the hands of the Democratic Party was Revolutionary Workers Group/Speak Out Now) whose politics are not that different the ISO's politics. Our group concentrated its efforts in Richmond and the East Bay. 
In Richmond we organized before March 4^th a March on Chevron, the oil company with a refinery that ruins the health of thousands of workers and youth mostly black and Latino in Richmond. In the successful march in which young students from the middle school spoke, the united front raised the demand to expropriate Chevron under the democratic control of the workers and the working class community. The East Bay Outreach committee rejected this slogan as too radical. That was not the opinion of the police. The Richmond cops took no chance and they sent a strong contingent of cops to stop the multi-racial youth and the geriatric marchers from entering "private" property, i.e. Chevron!

The East Bay Committee played a critical role in the Bay Area. It is controlled by reformists and organizations with reformist orientation such as the Socialist Party, Solidarity (Usec) and Advance the Struggle who were against real strikes and occupations. Our constant struggle in this committee was against their reformist demands such as "tax the rich" which they modified (under our pressure) to "make the rich pay" after months of debates with our organization. But the main different was our insistence that we need to organize real strikes and occupations in UCB and Laney versus the reformists insistence on a day of marches and rallies. We know for sure that the East Bay Outreach Committee discouraged the students from UCB and Laney from doing occupations of buildings so that such occupations would not interfere with their planned rally in downtown Oakland. So while many students in UCB and Laney were in militant morning picket lines, everybody knew that 2-3 hours morning strike is not a serious strike and obviously the universities in the East Bay were not shut down. 

Yet despite the acrimony between HWRS and the majority in the Oakland Outreach Committee, we think that they did an excellent job for what they planned to do: to have a strong working class rally in Oakland that combined strong contingents of working class people and youth from the high schools mixed with the marchers from UCB. It was indeed a good rally well organized and very democratic in which the principle of no platform for bourgeois politicians from the Democratic party s was upheld.

For good reasons some of the youth were frustrated because they wanted more than a rally. They wanted to disrupt the system and try to shut it down. So a number of them went to the freeway 880 and they shut it down for an hour or so before they were chased out by the cops with a number of arrests and one serious injury (from falling off an elevated road). We, of course, salute the youth and defend them unconditionally against any attempt by the state to prosecute them. The subsequent discussions revealed that many onlookers stuck in traffic cheered the activists who included university students, high school students and union teachers. But we clearly understand that spontaneous actions at the last minute cannot be as effective as statewide planned disruption of the capitalist system, even though they were done in frustration over the lack of effective actions by the East Bay Outreach Committee. To shut down the system effectively we need seriously planned massive picket lines which means scabs are not allowed to cross them, massive buildings occupations and actions by students and workers which includes actions such as on 880.

San Francisco

In San Francisco the situation was somewhat similar to the East Bay. In this area the dominant left organizations are the ISO and Socialist Organizer (Lambertists). Both organizations oppose militant actions to shut down the universities. San Francisco State University (SFSU) is the most radical university in the immediate Bay Area. While the Left stopped the students from organizing an effective strike and occupations, the students tried to stop scabs and were very militant on the picket lines as they attempted to really shut down the university. We need to bear in mind that in both UCB and SFSU have many entrances and that only well organized mass picketing or occupations can shut down these universities. 

The frustration about the lack of a well organized strike, and the emphasis on marches and rallies was expressed by the student leader Anastasia Gomes who told the SF Chronicle that the students should have stayed and defended the strike instead of marching to San Francisco civic center. But the union bureaucrats with Alan Benjamin from Socialist Organizer made sure that the strike turned into a long march from the SFSU and other SF colleges to the rally orchestrated by the labor bureaucracy. While there were more than 5000 people at the rally the speakers mostly offered the usual standard reformist solutions by the Labor Council in San Francisco with the views of the union bureaucracy as advocated by Benjamin and company. 
Indeed Socialist Organizer and other reformist organizations wanted to turn the March 4^th protests into a campaign for the Democrats. They tell the masses that what we need is to get a proposition to overturn the 2/3 majority in the legislature to adopt a budget, so that the budget can pass by the simple majority of the Democrats. Sure, we support democratic reforms. But the massive attacks on workers and students have nothing to do with the problem of 2/3 majority. In fact the Democrats, including the liberal Democrats voted for the current budget that unleashed these massive attacks through budget cuts.

Santa Cruz

Without a doubt the most successful actions took place in UC Santa Cruz. This was the only place where the students shut down the university completely. Santa Cruz is known historically to host the most radical students and the students showed again that this reputation is not for nothing. They organized and came prepared to shut down the university. They were equipped properly to stop scabs and any traffic of students or cars into the university. The cops and the school administration could not stop the students. The administration had to concede defeat and closed the campus down for the day. We can all admire and learn from the determination and the collective action of the students. A strike is the basic tool of the students and the workers. It only works if it is organized well. It is the basic organ of class war, and to win we need to understand the power we are fighting against and tactically organize the strike accordingly. The Santa Cruz students have, however, an important advantage over many universities. There are only two roads by which students, workers and traffic can get into the university. The students shut them down tight and that was enough. Despite the logistical advantage, the students showed us that a determined strike committee enforcing its own discipline and centralization could mobilize a solid strike!

What is next

The movement is clearly at a cross road. It cannot continue as a protest movement for ever. The main argument of the majority of reformists and centrists is that the state has the money and the problem is that the capitalist state is greedy and the politicians want to give the money to Wall Street. From this logic it follows that protest movements like in the 1960's are sufficient, since all we need is to put pressure on the capitalist politicians to give the money to human needs instead of giving trillions of dollars to the bankers and their wars. This is a incorrect and a misleading understanding of American capitalism today.

American capitalism is in a steep decline as expressed by a world crisis that will not be replaced any time soon by an extended or robust period of boom. It is true that the capitalist system always has its priorities and it always favors the bankers and their wars. But the money that goes to the bankers and war is not American money, since the US has the biggest debts in its history as the US is losing its competiveness to countries like China. Chinese imperialism is on a rise. It (and other powers like Japan) finance Wall Street debts to reign in the recession in hope of preventing it from turning into a full blown depression. Because of the rising relentless competition between the imperialist powers American imperialism must inflict an historical defeat on the American working class to gain back its superiority and to maintain profitability. The US has lost its manufacturing base without which it cannot remain the top dog, particularly since its main rival (China) has the advantage from the super-exploitation of its own labor that the US national production does not have.

To compete in this race to stay the top imperialist dog the ruling class must enforce brutal attacks on the students and workers. This is why HWRS keeps on telling the activists that to defeat the attacks we must have an indefinite general strike by students, teachers and state workers who absorbed the worst attacks (15% cut in salary and benefits and it is going to get worse). This is the objective reality and it requires a massive response against the attacks by the bosses and their state. Yet we must recognize a major factor. To organize such a strike the union bureaucracy must be ousted and replaced by democratic rank-and-file bodies and delegates of state workers, teachers, the oppressed and students' bodies. Only such coordinated bodies can organize a sustained general strike. Without this a sustained or even one day general strike is not possible.

But the great response of anger and determination shows that we can shut down the universities if the reformists and the Left are removed from standing in the students' way. To shut down the universities we need, of course, the workers' and faculties' support. If there is no official union approval the rank-and-file must organize their own strike committees with the students. We know that the workers will not cross a firm picket lines even if their union does not call a strike.

We have the forces to shut down the universities and keep them shut indefinitely until the basic demands are met. But first we need to agree that this is what we want. Our forces must be united. That means no busses to Sacramento that will weaken the strike and divert it into a rally to pressure the Democrats -- a totally defeatist strategy. It also means A STRIKE IS A STRIKE IN WHICH THE UNIVERSITIES ARE SHUT DOWN. We cannot shut them down if we divert thousands of students to marches and rallies outside the universities. Doing it means that we will not have the forces to shut them down: eventually most students will realize that the movement is only channeling their anger into protests; they will become demoralized and the movement will decline. High school students should be mobilized to either strike and occupy their own schools or join the strikes at the local colleges which they hope some day to attend. In the event that solid strikes can not be mobilized at all the schools contingents should converge on the campuses that the state wide strike committee designates as priorities. 

SO UNITY WITH THE DETERMINATION TO SHUT THEM DOWN IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INGREDIENT FOR A FUTURE SUCCESS. It will have to be centralized and de-centralized. What do we mean? We need elected bodies of delegates from each university, union, and high school to coordinate the state-wide strike and ensure that it is done right. By de-centralized we mean that we need local creativity. In a real militant and powerful strike each university needs to take the local conditions into consideration. For example, we saw that in Santa Cruz there are only two entrances. So blocking them with massive pickets may be enough. But in places like UCB and SFSU there are many entrances and areas through which scabs can walk in. So shutting the universities down depends on how much mass picketing the students will have. It may be necessary to use a creative combination of picketing and occupations of key buildings that guarantee that classes are not functioning. 

We must bear in mind that many students and workers went to work and to classes because they did not see that March 4^th was about a serious strike to shut down the universities until the demands are met. When it becomes clear that this is what we are seriously doing, many of the hesitators and the cynics will join us. And finally, HWRS insist that only an indefinite strike could force concessions from the ruling class. Those who say that we cannot pull together are giving up in advance. If we remain a small minority on this, we tell the students and workers: Don't believe the reformists and the Left. One day of action at a time will lead eventually to a defeat. The ruling class uses it as safety valve to release anger. But if we remain a minority we are willing to go through a "test". If the majority wants to build for just another day of actions, lets make this day a test of our strength by shutting them down for real.


HWRS think that we need few powerful demands for a broad united front that will draw hundreds of thousands students and workers who will be willing to participate in a general strike until the demands are met. We need demands that can unite the many students and workers who are determined to shut the schools down until the demands are met. We all agree on basic powerful demands. They can be adopted as we suggest or iin the way the delegates of students and workers resolve to make them.
 
Down the regents the watchdogs of the capitalist state! 
Open the universities to the working class! 
For open admission and free tuition! 
Student, faculty, staff, parent, and working class community control over the entire public education system, from preK-12 through graduate school and adult education! 
No layoffs and furloughs in the universities and the state! 
Rehire all laid off staff and faculty! 
Restore the budget cuts in the state! 
Stop all layoffs of state workers and all the attacks on the unions and the oppressed! 
Down with Race to the Top and privatization schemes! 
Make Education, Full Employment and Health Care basic rights!

HWRS believes that demands like these can unite and energize the movement. It should always be made clear, however, that even these basic demands cannot be won by electoral or legislative means. In fact, even an indefinite strike in the universities can only fully win its demands when it becomes the launching pad for a general strike by all workers in the state. What we need is to mobilize a massive general strike in which faculty, staff and students unite to occupy the schools, and then create democratic general assemblies under whose authority the institutions are reopened and administered. Such a demonstration of the power of direct action would serve as a catalyst for government workers in the strangled social service programs, and private sector workers in failing industries, to do the same. When workers and students come together to forge organs of direct democracy and to challenge the bosses' control of our institutions and economy, the government of the bankers and speculators is exposed as both vulnerable and unnecessary. Only a revitalized and democratic workers movement linked to the students, the oppressed, and the unemployed can build the democratic rank and file organizations necessary to oust the capitalist system and form a workers' government.


Dave Dov Winter HWRS


http://www.humanistsforrevolutionarysocialism.org/

USA: For a Fighting Action Program

We reprint a proposal submitted by the Humanists for Socialist Revolution to be considered and voted on by the Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign WERC at their teach-in held in San Francisco on Saturday May 9. The main organizer behind WERC is Socialist Organizer the US branch of the Lambertists.

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The formation of WERC could become a step in the right direction in the massive fight against the biggest attacks on the working class since the Great Depression. Unfortunately, however, WERC’s platform, as currently formulated, has some serious shortcomings. It is a list of generally supportable demands, but along with the demands there are built-in limitations seemingly designed to keep this campaign palatable to capitalist “friends of labor,” such as the Greens and the Progressive Democrats, who have signed on as endorsers of WERC.

The current gaggle of “liberal/progressive” Democratic politicians, as well as the bloated and entrenched labor bureaucracy, have come together to negotiate away our jobs, our social programs, and our benefit packages. In the coming weeks and months, we can expect a further watering down of the Employee Free Choice Act; a total inability to provide a plan for affordable, quality universal health care; layoffs and/or furloughs of thousands of public workers and teachers; school closures; tuition rises and restrictions on student registration at public colleges; and the commensurate ever-increasing expansion of prisons and the military-industrial complex.

To counter the current attacks against the unions and all working people, we need massive united labor actions from coast to coast. Factory occupations, such as the one at Republic Windows and Doors, are necessary to stop massive layoffs and closures of factories and workplaces. Unified strikes of public workers, teachers, and students are the only tactic that can save social programs, education, and the social safety net. But the current labor leadership, entrenched in its love affair with the Democratic Party, is incapable of launching the type of struggle that can win against the current attacks.

WERC’s current platform and program are not adequate as a fight-back strategy. For example, WERC calls for nationalizing the banks and the automobile industry. But reformist social democratic governments have nationalized banks during this crisis and before. They keep the banks and the financial institutions going for the benefit of the bankers and the capitalists, and then they de-nationalize them when it is safe to do so, returning the bank’s assets and operating capital to private hands once the risk of failure has been averted with the aid of public resources. Therefore, in contrast to pro-capitalist nationalization schemes, we must call for the nationalization of banks, financial institutions, and basic industries under workers’ control and without compensation.

Similarly, WERC’s action plan is limited to measures such as writing letters to President Obama begging him to turn against his benefactors. WERC’s program suggests that labor activists conduct a cross-class campaign of educational forums, devoid of any concrete preparation for the type of militant struggles labor must engage in if we are to turn the current class war around. Of course educational forums are needed to supplement the education we get from the bosses’ frontal attacks every day. But what we really need from labor activists are strategies and tactics for turning our unions back into truly democratic fighting organizations that act in the interest of the entire working class, rather than in their own narrow interests or that of the labor aristocracy.

We propose that WERC commit to organizing and publicizing regional, inter-union general meetings to organize and coordinate preparatory committees in every local.

The preparatory committees, in turn, can take the lead in preparing, mobilizing, and motivating workers in their own locals to help lay the necessary groundwork for massive actions. WERC’s role should be to serve as a framework around which workers can construct sustained, ongoing, democratically run coalitions of unions, working class communities, and the unemployed, with the goal of building for broad-based, militant direct actions such as massive strikes and occupations of workplaces, schools and universities. Our brothers and sisters in France have shown that such actions are the natural response of the working class. We should start organizing and follow their example.

We propose that the WERC adopt the following program and method of transitional demands, to be implemented by mobilizing the working class for a massive fightback:

1. Full Employment at prevailing union rates for all who are willing and able to work. To assure full employment, thirty hours of work for forty hours’ pay must be implemented to spread the available work to all and to compensate for the increased rate of production over the last 50 years that has been exploited by capital to sustain high unemployment rates and lower real wages. Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) will assist workers in forging fighting unions capable of winning full employment. To that end we must mobilize demonstrations demanding the right to organize not be impeded and for passage of the EFCA.

2. Failing industries (both financial and industrial) must be taken over (nationalized) under workers’ control without compensation to provide adequate access to credit and to get the wheels of industry rolling again. For example, the Big Three automakers, as well as the domestic plants of foreign auto manufacturers, should be taken over under workers’ control. Only then can the industry be rationally planned to assure that production is retooled to provide, first and foremost, a public transportation and energy infrastructure that obviates the need for excessive auto production and the commensurate waste of petroleum. The production of non-polluting electric cars, for example, must be planned and coordinated under workers’ control as a step toward staving off the environmental disasters threatened by climate change.

3. Stop Layoffs! When the bosses declare layoffs or attempt to close down a workplace, workers should occupy the factories and the workplaces and establish workers’ control. Follow the example of our Argentinean brothers and sisters, and go even further by establishing a massive network of occupied workplaces as democratically run organs of an incipient planned rational economy.

4. Housing is a right! Stop all foreclosures and evictions. Move the homeless and those in overcrowded housing into housing already vacated due to foreclosures and the falling real estate market. Massive public works projects to build adequate housing for all, and put people to work doing socially necessary construction, must be financed by a banking industry nationalized and coordinated under workers’ control.

5. Quality universal public education at no charge from daycare and pre-school through the graduate level. Working people know that without a good education, our children have no future. To confront the current economic and environmental crisis, everyone’s intellectual potential must be cultivated. Through education we can build a rational economy and divest the world of poverty and drudgery. Education should be under the control of teachers, parents, and students old enough to participate. In that way, we will assure quality education and not the miseducation, overtesting, and ruling class propaganda that currently plague our public schools.

6. Quality free universal health care at no charge from prenatal to the grave is long overdue. Each person must be given access to the benefit of medical science and current treatment options. Insurance companies must have no “place at the table”; the only way to provide health care for all is to divest it of the profit motive. To accomplish democratic health care, all medical institutions must be placed under worker (Doctor, Nurses, Staff) control with community/patient participation.

7. End attacks on undocumented workers! End the ICE raids! Full employment rights for all workers! To end capital flight through working class solidarity across borders, we demand: Same work, same contract, same wages and working conditions! Down with the maquiladoras! Open all the borders. For the right of all workers to cross the borders and seek work and establish their homes without restrictions and arrests. Free all detained undocumented workers!

8. US troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the rest of the world. Down with imperialist oppression. The defeat of imperialism is a victory for workers and the oppressed in the world.

9. We cannot count on Obama and the capitalists to clean up the environment and prevent catastrophic climate change. For them, profit always comes before the environment and the need of the workers. But the time to stop climate change is running out. The working class must combine its struggle against capitalist exploitation, and against the current economic crisis, with environmental consciousness. We must fight for workers’ control of industry in order to transform the current, outmoded technology of industrial production to totally green and sustainable technology.

10. Break with Democrats. No cross-class coalitions with Democrats and pro-capitalist Green Party politicians. For a struggle to replace the union bureaucracies that give our dues to the capitalist Democratic Party. Fight for the independence of the working class! We need to build a workers’ or labor party based on democratically run unions and organizations of the oppressed and the unemployed.

11. For a workers’ government that can and will implement and defend all the above transitional demands. To accomplish these goals, working people need their own government. If we allow the capitalists to control the state via their government, they will continue to attack and ultimately destroy our social gains. To defend our gains, we need workers’ power.

Humanists for Revolutionary Socialism are based in the US and are a Fraternal Group in discussion with the FLT.

You can find information about them on their website here.