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.

Class Struggle, 122, Spring (September-November) 2017

   Class Struggle 122 Spring 2017 by davebrownz on Scribd

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

After the Woolwich attack in Britain: Stop imperialist war-drive and racism!

One of the accused explains his actions

Re-blogged from RCIT website

Socialists must not solidarize with Britain’s professional army but with the anti-imperialist resistance!

Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 24.5.2013, www.thecommunists.net

 

1.            In protest against the imperialist notorious “war on terror”, a serving British soldier was attacked and killed by two Islamist black men near an army barrack in Woolwich (South London) on 22.5.2013. The professional soldier served between 2009 and 2011 as part of the British occupation forces in Afghanistan which leaves thousands and thousands of people dead. Since 2011 he was stationed in Britain. After the attack the two men spoke with passerby, and when the police came they were shot. Britain's ITV news channel broadcasted a video footage filmed by an onlooker, in which one of the two assailants, Michael Adebolajo, explained – with local accent – the political motive of this attack against the British soldier: “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. Your people will never be safe. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying by British soldiers every day. We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I apologise that women had to witness this today but in our lands our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don’t care about you. Do you think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we start busting our guns? Do you think your politicians are going to die? No, it’s going to be the average guy like you, and your children. So get rid of them. Tell them to bring our troops back so we, so you can all live in peace.”

 

2.            Unsurprisingly the right wing government, the Labour Party and the bourgeois media are weeping some crocodile tears about the “tragedy” which poses such a danger for “soldiers risking their lives in the name of freedom” (London Mayor Boris Johnson). The fascist English Defence League mobilizes for racist rally against Muslims and two mosques were already attacked.

 

3.            Most of the reformist and centrist left – i.e. those who claim to be Marxist but adapt to the corrupt and privileged bureaucracy in the labor movement – fails to take an internationalist and anti-imperialist stand in this important situation. While criticizing the government policy of waging wars abroad, they cowardly adapt to the bourgeois media chorus and deeply regret the killing of a British soldier. To give a few examples: The pacifist Kate Hudson – a leading figure of the newly founded “Left Unity” project – writes: “We deplore the brutal murder of an unarmed British soldier in Woolwich yesterday. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family. Acts of violent retribution against individuals can never be justified as a response to the crimes of states and governments.” (1) Similarly the right-wing centrist Socialist Party (CWI): “The unprovoked, barbaric and vicious murder of an unarmed soldier in Woolwich yesterday is a horrific event which must have been profoundly traumatic for the people who witnessed it, and, of course, an appalling tragedy for the victim, and the victim's family and friends. (…) The Socialist Party completely condemns this attack just as we condemned 7/7, 9/11, and all similar attacks aimed at indiscriminate slaughter.” (2) The ex-revolutionary Workers Power leadership expresses too its sympathy for the British soldier’s family: “This is undoubtedly a horrific act, committed in front of ordinary civilians, women and children. We sympathise with the family of the victim and those traumatised by witnessing such appalling scenes.” (3) And Counterfire leader Lindsey German states: “There can be no justification for a murderous attack on an individual soldier in the streets of London.” (4)

 

4.            The first task of Marxist, of revolutionaries, is to speak out the truth. The truth is that the Woolwich attack is the inevitable result of a barbarous imperialist war-drive led by the United States in which Britain’s ruling class is the most important ally. As a result the US, British and other imperialists have occupied Afghanistan, Iraq and wage countless terror acts with their drones in other countries in the Middle East and Africa. Just recently the British government sent hundreds of soldiers to help French imperialism occupying Mali and killing those they consider an obstacle to control the vast resources in Western Africa. As a result hundreds of thousands have been slaughtered by the hands of British soldiers and their US and other European allies on the behest of the imperialist ruling class. This imperialist war-drive is the result of the monopolies and Great Power’s drive to rule and exploit the semi-colonial countries – i.e. the vast majority of the world’s population. Another aspect of this imperialist domination is the national oppression and economic super-exploitation of a growing number of migrants and black minorities in the imperialist metropolises.

 

5.            In response to this, the oppressed people in these countries are waging an anti-colonial, national liberation war against the imperialist occupiers since years. In addition there have been many anti-war mass mobilizations by sectors of the working class, migrants and youth in the imperialist metropolises themselves.

 

6.            The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) states that it is the primary duty of every anti-imperialist and internationalist to support the resistance – including in its armed forms – in order to drive the occupiers out. We welcome the heroic struggle of the resistance forces in Afghanistan, Palestine, Mali and other countries against the imperialist occupiers and their local allies. We look forward that they will succeed to drive them out as they did already successfully defeat the US and British troops in Iraq. At the same time we oppose the bourgeois ideologies and leaderships which pre-dominate in the resistance movement. The RCIT calls the working class to organize independently, to strive for leadership in the anti-imperialist movement and to connect the struggle against the imperialist monopolies and Great Powers with the international struggle to overthrow capitalism world-wide.

 

7.            It is of course a blatant lie if arch-reactionary whips like Johnson claim that “"is wrong to draw a link between this (the Woolwich attack) and British foreign policy and soldiers risking their lives in the name of freedom.” It is exactly the British foreign policy that kills so many people, which makes British professional soldiers abhorrent in most parts of the world.

 

8.            Authentic British socialists must condemn all the hypercritical outrage of the ruling class’s politicians, media and the agents in the workers movement about the “barbarian act” against the British profession soldier in Woolwich. True, the British and US soldiers usually don’t use knives and machetes when they slaughter hundreds of thousands of people but rather modern machine guns, bombs and drones. But since “terrorists” from oppressed people are usually poor, they are forced to use rather primitive, “barbaric” methods for their attacks. Surely, they would prefer to use the modern British means of killing. While cowardly Western leftists like the Socialist Party title “No to terrorism!”, even a left-liberal American columnist like Glenn Greenwald can recognize a simple truth in the British paper “Guardian”: “The US, the UK and its allies have repeatedly killed Muslim civilians over the past decade (and before that), but defenders of those governments insist that this cannot be "terrorism" because it is combatants, not civilians, who are the targets. Can it really be the case that when western nations continuously kill Muslim civilians, that's not "terrorism", but when Muslims kill western soldiers, that is terrorism?” (5)

 

9.            Shamefully most of the British left fail to resist the pressure of the imperialist public opinion. They condemn the “horrific event” and promise to “pray” and to “sympathise with the family of the victim”. They – consciously or subconsciously – consider professional British soldiers who kill thousands of people in Afghanistan as “our boys”, with whom (respectively their families in case they are killed) they fully sympathize. In opposite to this reformist and centrist left, authentic British socialists do not consider Britain’s professional soldiers as “our boys” but as part of the imperialist killing machine. They would call British soldiers to refuse carrying out their duty as part of this oppression apparatus. They would call British soldiers to fraternize with the Afghan resistance and to aid brining down the British military machine. For authentic British internationalists, it is not the professional British army who are “our boys”, but rather those men and women who resist the imperialist occupation and fight to defeat the forces of the modern British Empire. However, the majority of the British left is not capable of such an internationalist, anti-imperialist stand. They adapt to the imperialist camp and act as social-imperialists or social-pacifists.

 

10.          The RCIT stands in the tradition of authentic communism associated with classic Marxist leaders like Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky. We condemn the capitulationist “left” which fail to support the resistance struggle when a member of “their” professional army is killed. The following statement of the Communist International’s Manifesto – written by Trotsky in 1920 – has not lost its relevance: “The Socialist who aids directly or indirectly in perpetuating the privileged position of one nation at the expense of another, who accommodates himself to colonial slavery, who draws a line of distinction between races and colors in the matter of human rights, who helps the bourgeoisie of the metropolis to maintain its rule over the colonies instead of aiding the armed uprising of the colonies; the British Socialist who fails to support by all possible means the uprisings in Ireland, Egypt and India against the London plutocracy – such a Socialist deserves to be branded with infamy, if not with a bullet, but in no case merits either a mandate or the confidence of the proletariat.” (6) If we replace the words “Ireland, Egypt and India” with let us say “Afghanistan and Mali” this is a pretty contemporary statement to denounce most of the British left-reformist and centrist groups. Based on such an anti-imperialist program, British revolutionaries in the 1970s and 1980s defended military actions of the IRA on British soil as a legitimate part of the Irish national liberation struggle. (7)

 

11.          As working class anti-imperialists, we differentiate between various tactics in the struggle against imperialist occupation. While the RCIT opposes terrorist actions which cause the death of ordinary working class people (like 9/11 in New York in 2001 or the 7/7 attacks in London in 2005), we consider armed actions directed against military targets of the imperialist occupation forces as legitimate. This does not mean that we promote actions like the Woolwich attack since they are used by the ruling class as a pretext to whip up racism and militarism. As Marxists we oppose petty-bourgeois strategies which don’t orientate on mass mobilizations but rather individual armed attacks. In countries like Britain where the level of anti-imperialist struggle is so low, it is tactically absolutely wrong to undertake armed actions against the imperialist state apparatus. Needless to say that socialists have nothing in common with jihadist ideologies. But we recognize that the imperialists have waged a global war “against terror”. In such a war, the oppressed have the legitimate right to attack the repression machine which is killing them. This is even recognized by a left liberal like the US filmmaker Michael Moore who commented the Woolwich attack sarcastically on Tweeter: “I am outraged that we can't kill people in other countries without them trying to kill us!” (8)

 

12.          The task of authentic British internationalists is to call now for a broad united front in defense of the migrant and black community against the racist backlash. Defend the Mosques against the EDL thugs! Renew the anti-war movement in order to help driving out the British and other occupation forces from Afghanistan, Mali and other places and to stop the barbarous drone attacks! Such united front actions must be combined with an internationalist, anti-imperialist stand which supports the resistance struggle against the British occupation forces and calls for the military defeat of Britain. Such a perspective has to be combined with the program for socialist revolution in Britain. However, only a program which includes such a consistent anti-imperialist position, only an organization which succeeds in maintaining anti-imperialism against the massive pressure of the imperialist public opinion and their allies in the labor movement, only such an organization can be considered as truly internationalist and socialist.

 

13.          Revolutionaries in Britain should break with the reformist and centrist swamp which capitulates to the imperialist public opinion. They should join forces to build an organization based on an authentic revolutionary program. Let us move forward to build a multi-national revolutionary party o white, black and Asian workers and youth as part of a new World Party of Socialist Revolution – the Fifth Workers International! The RCIT looks forward to work together with all those who are striving for such a goal.

 

Footnotes

(1) Kate Hudson: The Woolwich Attack, May 23, 2013, http://leftunity.org/the-woolwich-attack

(2) Statement from Greenwich Socialist Party on the Woolwich killing: No to terrorism! No to racism! No to war! http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/16739/23-05-2013/no-to-terrorism-no-to-racism-no-to-war

(3) Workers Power: Statement on the killing of a British soldier in Woolwich, 23.5.2013, http://www.workerspower.co.uk/2013/05/british-soldier-killed-woolwich-london. Today the centrist leadership of Workers Power regrets the killing of an imperialist killer. When Workers Power was still a revolutionary organization, it took a very different and anti-imperialist position. When the IRA killed British paratroopers, it called this action “double defensible”. When it killed retired Commander Lord Mountbatten in 1979, it titled simply “Don’t mourn Mountbatten”. (see Workers Power No. 8, September 1979)

(4) Lindsey German: The lessons to learn from the Woolwich killing are obvious: but not to David Cameron, 23 May 2013, http://www.counterfire.org/index.php/articles/analysis/16473--the-lessons-to-learn-from-the-woolwich-killing-are-obvious-but-not-to-david-cameron

(5) Glenn Greenwald: Was the London killing of a British soldier 'terrorism'? The Guardian, 23 May 2013, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/23/woolwich-attack-terrorism-blowback

(6) Communist International: Manifesto of the Second World Congress (1920); in: Leon Trotsky: The First Five Years of the Communist International, Volume 1, New Park Publication 1973, p. 153, http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/ffyci-1/ch12.htm

(7) See Workers Power: The British Left and the Irish War (1983)

(8) https://twitter.com/MMFlint/status/337451498369851393

Antrim/Armagh: Unconditional but Critical Support

Socialist Fight unconditionally defends those Irish Republican militarists that carried out the executions of British Army soldiers at a barracks in Antrim earlier this year, and killed the officer of the PSNI colonial police force in Craigavon. The British Army are in Ireland as imperialist occupiers, denying self-determination to Ireland and maintaining the last major colony of the British Empire (the occupied 6 Counties of Ulster that comprise "Northern Ireland"). The soldiers were going from the occupation of one country to occupy another. For this reason, British Army soldiers are certainly 'legitimate targets' of those fighting for a united Ireland, free of imperialist forces and free of the Border that divides not only the Province of Ulster and the Irish nation, but also divides the working class. That is where we are in agreement with the "republican militarists".

However, we need to ask what do the republican militarists think can be gained from a resumption of the guerillaist strategy, "armed struggle", by a dedicated, secretive minority that failed so decisively when carried out by the P-IRA on the basis of much more support than is enjoyed by its splinter groups? We need to propose alternatives.

British troops were re-introduced in 1969 to ensure the maintenance of the border dividing Ireland since 1921 and to defend British interests in a much broader context than 'just' in Ireland. The Provisional IRA emerged as the defenders of the beleaguered Irish nationalist minority. Their goal was to "get the British soldiers out" of Ireland. Their campaign enjoyed mass support among those Irish nationalists under occupation, as well as among Irish immigrants worldwide.

Bobby Sands

This support peaked in 1980 and 1981, when Republican prisoners went on hunger strike to win their rights as Prisoners of War against Margaret Thatcher. Hunger Strike Committees sprung up all over the world, mostly in former British colonies. The working class of much of the world was mobilising in defence of "the men behind the wire" against world imperialism as represented by the British Government.

Thatcher's intransigence, with the total support of Labour’s shadow Home Secretary, former Northern Ireland Minister Don Concannon, an NUM sponsored former union official, and the cowardly inaction of much of the far left, caused the deaths of ten hunger strikers between 5th May and 20 August 1981. A brief look at the worldwide reaction to the death of Bobby Sands on 5th May shows its powerful anti-imperialist effect. This is from the Wikipedia account:

In Milan, 5,000 students burned the Union Flag and shouted "Freedom for Ulster" during a march. In Paris, thousands marched behind huge portraits of Sands, to chants of 'The IRA will conquer'. In France, many towns and cities have streets named after Sands. Examples include Nantes, St Etienne, Le Mans Vierzon and St Denis. In the Republic of Ireland, his death led to riots and bus burning. In Dublin, the famous Moore Street market closed for the day of Sands funeral. In Liverpool a march in support of Sands took place from Upper Parliament Street to the Pier Head, chanting "Bobby Sands MP".

It was besieged by enraged Liverpool Orange Lodge members along the whole route. The International Longshoremen's Association in New York announced a twenty-four-hour boycott of British ships. Irish bars in the city were closed for two hours in mourning. In Hartford, Connecticut a memorial was dedicated to Bobby Sands and the other hunger strikers in 1997. The lower house of the New Jersey Legislature, voted 34-29 for a resolution honouring his "courage and commitment."

In 2001, a memorial to Sands and the other hunger strikers was unveiled in Havana, Cuba. After the 1979 Iranian revolution the government renamed Winston Churchill Boulevard to Bobby Sands Street. In the Indian Parliament, opposition members in the upper house Rajya Sabha stood for a minute's silence in tribute. A large monument dedicated to Irish protagonists for independence from Britain, including Bobby Sands, stands in the Waverley Cemetery in Sydney, Australia.

The all-Ireland Hunger Strike Committees and the mobilisations, were dominated by Sinn Fein who used them to build popular front alliances with Fianna Fáil and Labour local councillors in the south. Their policy was no confrontation with the southern state forces and this was rigorously enforced in this second revolutionary situation in May 1981 following the death of Bobby Sands; the other was in August 1969, both, of course, were all-Ireland upsurges.

In the late 1970s early 80s the radicalisation in Ireland was always to pressure the British state to negotiate a way out, so the roots of 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA) were firmly planted then. SF used the hunger strikers as voting fodder. But the only force that could have got the Brits out was a united front with the British working class. However, except for currents like Irish Freedom (RCP) and some others, the ‘Brit left’ refused to give unconditional support and fight the Prevention of Terrorisms Act in the unions etc. It was this early British version of a War on Terror that exposed the chauvinism of the British left on Ireland.

The leader of the Hunger Strikers in the Maze Prison, Bobby Sands, was elected with 30,492 votes from his death-bed as an MP to Westminster for Fermanagh and South Tyrone as an Anti H-Block/Armagh Political Prisoner. Sinn Fein won the by-election caused by his death from starvation. With Thatcher trashing the industrial base of the British economy at this time - taking on the most well-organised sections of the British working class "salami-style" (first the dockers, then the steel-workers leading to the great Miners' Strike of 1984-5), the mass influx of workers into the branches of Sinn Fein in the 26 County Republic and... the possibilities for a mass campaign to rid Ireland of imperialist domination, led by the organised workers were certainly there.

Good Friday Agreement

However, this seems to have been the beginning of the end for the Provo campaign against the British occupation of Ireland which finished with the signing of the GFA in 1998 and the subsequent decommissioning of Provo weapons. The central occurrence in the intervening years , 1981 to the mid-1990s' striking of a deal between the petit-bourgeois nationalists of the P-IRA and the imperialists of the British Government (the GFA), was the world-historic defeat for the proletariat of the collapse of the deformed and degenerated workers' states of Eastern Europe, the USSR, China etc in 1998-91.

This victory for imperialism dramatically shifted the whole balance of world forces away from progressives and toward neo-liberal capitalism: its effects being seen everywhere with a huge ideological offensive by imperialism, spreading neo-liberal economics everywhere in the world. Politically we saw the collapse of former opponents of imperialism in the form of political formations 'making deals', or supporting nasty, thoroughly anti-working class Governments.

This was collectively known as "the Peace Process", most famously involving the PLO in Palestine, the ANC in South Africa and Sinn Fein in Ireland. In April 2009 Gerry Adams and his team visited Israel and Gaza to extol the benefits of the GFA. Nowadays, Sinn Fein as junior partners at Stormont, sit almost at the top of the new structure of Government for the occupied 6 Counties - overseeing the running of the hated Northern statelet that their predecessors fought and died to destroy, actively assisting the British imperialists in their continued occupation by attempting to legitimise the occupation and its political structures!

It would seem that the aims of those that carried out the attacks on the British Military and the PSNI colonial police force were to de-stabilise Sinn Fein's involvement in the Stormont regime to collapse the structures. From reading the various websites of these republican militarists, including their statements of Easter 2009, it is clear to see that they offer no way forward for the workers and poor of Ireland or anywhere else in the world but by their actions they damage the opportunities for the workers - the only truly and consistently progressive force in modern society, to impose their own solution to the various crises facing them and the planet.

The militarists have a warped idea that the increase in repression that is an inevitable side-product of their 'terroristic' forms of action is in some way progressive (sounds a bit like recommending a vote for the Tories in a British election - 'because the working class need to be whipped like a dog before they shall get off their knees and fight' or something!). Of course the closing down of civil liberties can in no way be to the advantage of the working class, which needs the utmost liberty in order to arrive at a programme for the conquest of political power.

Hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle

Do we share the aims of the republican militarists? Well, they rarely criticise the partitionist Government of the 26 Counties Republic of Ireland and think that 'justice' shall be done if the 6 Counties currently under occupation were to comprise part of a capitalist 32 county united Ireland. We as revolutionary socialists have to ask what the class nature of such a future united Ireland might be, and we stand with James Connolly who wrote in the Shan Van Vocht in January 1897:

If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.

That is the story of the 26 counties. We are in favour of a 32 county Workers' Republic in Ireland which would be part of a socialist federation of the islands of Britain and of Europe, and of the whole world. We recognise that the only genuine solution to the present finance and economic crises—as well as for problems such as the "national question" in Ireland—is the ending of the nightmare of capitalism worldwide which is based on the private ownership of everything in the world - a tiny number of capitalists own and control the whole of the Earth's resources.

We fight for a world revolution, the vision of October 1917 in Russia. Easter 1916, August 1969, May 1981, were part of that objectively; the Irish working class needs a leadership that consciously fights for it.

Socialist Fight is published by the International Trotskyist Current.
Contact: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, Socialist_Fight@yahoo.co.uk