Argentina: legislative elections 2013

We repost the statement of the LOI-CI on the Argentinian elections. Notwithstanding our differences with this organisation, we are in solidarity with its stand to call for a vote for worker candidates on a class struggle platform. We also agree with the LOI-CI characterisation of the Left Front as standing on a reformist program. You can find an abbreviated Spanish version here.

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Statement of the Trotskyist of LOI-CI Democracia Obrera facing PASO (initials in Spanish for Open Compulsory and Simultaneous Primary Elections)
 
With the electoral circus, the boss parties of the bankers and the transnational companies count the votes so that they can see how to share the business.
The workers will expect more repression, inflation, sufferings and attacks against their conquests
Enough with maquilas (sweatshops) and jail factories!
Out from Argentina and the continent the Wall Street’s bankers and transnational companies!
Our call for a class Independence vote against the boss parties 

Argentina is a country where the government gets income tax from the workers. This tax is much higher than inflation. This is in order to maintain the capitalist parasites. This is not all; Argentina is a country of sweatshops and jail factories, more than 60% of the working class lives with the small amount of $3000. Argentina is Bangladesh. Thus, the factories’ walls fell down slaughtering textile workers who earn 2 dollars per day.
In Argentina, millions of workers work as slave in clandestine worships, paid under the table, also picking veggies and fruit. Here, in Pompeya (neighborhood of Buenos Aires Capital), as it happened some years ago in Tunisia, a worker was exposed so she was heard, so she could get her wages and not be dismissed as it happened in the textile factory ELEMENTOS. We die as dogs, and when we go to work, in the terrible trains under the control of the parasite bosses, who even contract mercenaries to kill fighters as it happened with Mariano Ferreira.
We even have to live with slaughtering-floods as happened in La Plata. They still hide dozens of dead to ease the political responsibility of the boss politicians. The migrant workers try to choose delegate and the murderer bosses with the the police kill them and make them disappear as in Choele Choel (Rio Negro) happened with Solano. His family still demands justice and demands his son appears alive camping in the area. When the workers rise up against precarious work and income tax the government militarize the town, torture the workers and put them imprisoned as the fighters, the oil workers of Las Heras.
When immigrant workers can no longer afford anything else because 50% of their wages is to pay a cardboard-roofed room in a shanty town then we occupy a piece of land and the government kill us as it happened in Indoamericano o Ledesma Park, or we are shoot on highways as Fuentealba in Neuquen.
Thousands of young people are doomed, no future nor education or a job, with an extermination policy with paco (drug) and the easy-trigger by the murderous police forces.
And on top of all this, the full time workers are charged the income tax. This is used to subsidize the capitalist companies. They get reduction of taxes in the industrial parks located in Mercosur. They are subsidized to steal money, to the transport companies. But the deduction of income is not the only tax to the worker wage. Most of us paid with our wages the VAT, which is 21% to what we consume. 350,000 million per year are collected with VAT to keep a handful of capitalist parasites and huge profit of bankers and transnational companies.
Kirchnerism and the right wing opposition are representatives and managers of Wall Street in Argentina, of that 1% of parasites, who from New York plunder and sink the world into misery, barbarism and wars. They decide the price of oil. With the land oligarchy, Monsanto, Cargill and huge cereal food companies defined prices. They need slave workers for the maquila Argentina.

With its transnational companies formed MERCOSUR to evade taxes, to exploit the comparative advantages of each country, to enslave workers, to steal the Bolivian oil and gas, minerals of the Andes. They agreed FTA and took all the minerals in Peru and Chile to its companies in China. They installed maquilas in Mexico to sink the wages of US workers, as in Africa and Asia; they filled Latin America, as in Colombia with military bases.
In Argentina, we see how the cereal companies like Cargill and Monsanto, banks and multinationals and the native oligarchy as a junior partner keep 80% of U$S 40,000 million from the land income.

Reserve Dollars go to Wall Street because with them is paid the Argentine bonuses of the foreign debt. The government keeps paying with fresh dollar the bonds which the banks got in the crisis of 2001 at the value of 1 peso 1 dollar, while the Wall Street parasites steal, with a devaluation of 40%, the savings of people. They stole the people more than 50 billion dollars, expropriating their savings.
16 billion dollars come out of the country on payment of bonds, and 6.000 million dollars in royalties, profits and patents to the transnational companies of Wall Street. The government wants to make happy the workers with a netbook which most of their children will never use it, and with alms as the universal child allowance, which does not even reach to cover 30% of children needs, while the worker women are denied to have free childcare and get paid a salary 30% lower than the workers.
THERE WON`T BE SOLUTION FOR ARGENTINA NEITHER FOR THE OPPRESED NATIONS OF LATIN AMERICA IF WE DON’T KICK OUT WALL STREET AND THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY.
THE WORKERS MUST BREAK WITH THE POLITICAL FRONT MAN OF THE IMPERIALIST BANKERS, AS WELL AS THE POLITICIANS OF KIRCHNER GOVERNMENT AND THE RIGHT WING OPPOSITION. In U.S.A these bands of Wall Street have taken to ruin the US working class making them pay for the crisis. Imperialist Europe bankers associated with Wall Street stealing, looting and in bankruptcy today they are destroying all the conquest of workers in the continent.

Yesterday Bush invaded and destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan to keep the oil and opium routes, which are the spurces of large medical laboratories. The Chevron in Argentina is another business of Wall Street and its oil companies to plunder the nation.

They plunder the tormented Africa and want to transform the world into a great Foxconn, a company that in China manufactures IPOD and Hewlett Packard, with 300 000 slave workers in a real factory which is a prison, with fences, railings and bedrooms on the ground. They want to impose that to the world.
When the workers upsurge against the mines of the Anglo-American in Africa, they shoot us. When we fight for bread, they cause genocide as in Syria and repressed us as in Tunisia. In Argentina when workers revolted, as happened in Kraft few years ago, Warren Buffet picked up the phone, 8 blocks away from Wall Street and sent the police forces and their lackeys of Kirchner’s government to beat up the workers. They and oil companies have decided to give a lesson to the oil workers of Las Heras for leading the fight against the earning tax and against outsourced work.
From Wall Street, a world financial oligarchy has spent, consumed and stolen what the world human labor has not even produced yet. And today, they put the burden of the crisis to the working class and the people they oppress.

With a web of investments and control of stakes of 1300 transnational companies are the core of the world economy and form, from Wall Street, where the imperialist banks of European and Japanese link with a financial super-oligarchy. They control 150 companies, 50% of the wealth of the planet. International finance capital concentrated holds 80% of the wealth in the world and have left 1,200 million people living with less than U$S 2 a day. These parasites rule and got the core of the economy, industries and finances of Argentina and Latin America, among others on every continent.
The last decade of this democracy for the riches in Argentina was a Paradise for the car companies, the soy producers, Cargill, Monsanto, Chevron, IMF and the parasites of Wall Street and it was a hell for the workers and the poor people
The revolutionary socialists are going to tell the truth to the workers: we cannot confront and defeat the attack we suffer today in Argentina, stealing our wages, slave labor, and the theft of the nation from a parliamentary seat. We call not to believe this. We cannot be fooled anymore. We are facing an enemy that controls the world politics and economy and has recruited hundreds of paid agents, union bureaucrats and labor leaders to defend it from the mass revolutionary struggle.

Workers need in the enemy's ground, which is the parliament (a true notary's Wall Street), a brave anti imperialist parliamentary seat. We need workers and revolutionary member of parliament who can tell to the workers that such an economic, political and military power rules the world, oppresses us and exploits the working class (even same or worse than us in Europe and U.S.A) would be defeated fighting in the streets, organizing ourselves, getting rid of the union bureaucracy (paid with crumbs falling from the exploitation of the working class).

We confront Wall Street and their political bosses fighting with our class brothers in Brazil and as the Chilean youth, as the Lonmin workers did in Africa with pickets and strike committees. With insurrections and uprisings for bread and against starvation as in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and as the exploited masses of Syria are doing against the genocide carried on by Wall Street and as the Palestinian masses, today tormented and imprisoned by the fascist Zionist state of Israel ... which is the armed wing of Wall Street in Middle East.

We defeat Wall Street and their transnational companies as we always do it: fighting and defending our conquests in the streets. This was the way we ended with the Menem, with murderers of De la Rua and Duhalde and so we fought against this lackey government, disguised who never gets tired of repressing the people and sells out the nation to imperialism. Such is the case that they submit to the courts of New York.
It is necessary to tell the truth: that cave of bandits of Wall Street who are the real owners of Argentina will be defeated fighting with the international working class and with the socialist revolution. We have to kick them out as we did it in 2002… this time so they do not come back ever again!
The left currents in Argentina who are running in these elections want to hide this. They are telling us that voting and with a parliamentary seat we will resolve our problems, their members are tired of submitting laws for workers and only may present testimony of what this parliament, the house of the capitalists, has given to the exploited ones: nothing. We always get everything with the fight or as a consequence of this.

We must tell the truth: you cannot talk on May Day about the international unity of the workers and when you have access to television, hide the "international unity" under the carpet or to make silence about the genocide in Syria and make silence that the Palestinian masses are being slaughtered. They cannot talk about the class struggle of Brazil without calling the Argentinean workers that we must fight together and like them.
In Brazil the parliamentary left is confronted by hundreds of people in the country and now millions of exploited ones have taken into their hands their problems, because the reformist left of the Lula's PT and all those who supported him over the years from the unions, were all lackeys of Wall Street and capitalists. We must tell the workers the truth. There are millions in the streets for 20 days and they reduced the bus fare from 3.20 to 3 reales. This shows that only fighting for everything and in tough battles we can get the least. So how are you going to make the Argentine workers believe that with laws we can solve our problems, making illusions in this rotten democracy for the rich?

They talk about the class struggle in Brazil, but they do not tell the workers of auto-industry and auto-parts, and food chains, of cement, which are on both sides of the border, that we have to organize in common unions, in coordinating common struggle, as the capitalists do and organize for their business and centralize their attack against the workers in Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires, in Minas Gerais and in Cordoba, Rosario and Porto Allegre.

From FIT, from some of its semi-hidden advert, they said we have to fight like in Egypt. Some of the leaders of the left said that. But in Egypt the masses fight, as in Tunisia and Libya, this rotten democracy for the rich who expropriated the struggle for bread to the heroic revolutions of the oppressed peoples of North Africa and Middle East.
The Left Front cannot occasionally talk about the classism and '70 and name with those pompous names its union groups and not to tell the Argentinean working class in this election that to defeat the exploiters and end the income tax, not to mention the unemployment and contract conditions, it is necessary to fight like in Cordobazo, follow the path to the general strike as the Rodrigazo, occupy the factories and set up a Villazo and set up the workers coordinations as in the '70s, getting rid of the union bureaucracy and take the streets as in 2001, with the general strike, the pickets.

Only the workers carrying on this fight could get some conquests, albeit totally degraded. Thus we got, do not forget, the six hours for the subway workers, maintain factories under worker-control and even the miserable work allowance given by the state. They all were a consequence of heroic struggles that left in the streets the martyrs of Anibal Veron, Kostequi, Santillan, Teresa Rodriguez, etc.
Today workers are worse because in the revolution that we began in 2001 we did not take power and ... "became all of them came back": bloodsuckers of political bosses, their judges and murderous army men, and union bureaucrats. All of them, when we took the streets could not face the rebellious masses. That's what they – the ones that have been expropriating our revolution, getting rich and killing the poor people for 10 years - deserve the masses rise up again.
Boss Politicians cheat with the electoral trap to disorganize the workers so the workers do not believe in their own strength and struggle, to prepare future and better attacks against their conquests. While television is filled with the faces of the Argentinean left politicians, in none of their advertisements are the faces of the workers who are imprisoned in Corral de Bustos or Bariloche, or submitted to vengeance courts as the oil workers of Las Heras.

The left leads the workers on their lists, but they do not say that we have hostages in prisons and in courts of the capitalists, the left does not say that the bourgeoisie has decided to put in jail thousands of workers who have fought as in Las Heras, as in Tierra del Fuego, as in the Garrahan, Kraft, Bus Line 60 and in hundreds of battles across the country.
For socialists we use the elections as an electoral platform to tell the truth to the workers and people, not to create more illusions and deceptions than the illusions propel by the political bosses. As the revolutionary socialists say:
THE LIBERATION OF THE WORKERS WILL COME FROM THE WORKERS THEMSELVES!
FIT has abandoned this issue because it thinks everything will work without a struggle, without a brutal war between the capitalists and their states against the workers. But in Argentina, colony of Wall Street, without major class struggle there will be no place to start recovering the salary, or end the income tax, nor to get decent work and to prevent the imperialist pirates plunder our nation.
The revolutionary socialists do not believe the siren songs of the Bolivarian revolution - a genuine imposture of revolution. In 2003 Castro’s brothers, Chavez and Morales came to say that we should support Kirchner. Today they sell out the socialist Cuba to the imperialism with 500,000 laid-off workers, with luxury hotels for the world bourgeoisie, and giving to the children of bureaucrats the right of inheritance to have private property. Maduro and Morales repress the workers and attack with inflation and devaluation the workers. In Argentina, Kirchner’s government represses and kills workers with almighty judges, supported by bankers to imprison and suppress the workers.
We must say enough: Enough of Wall Street! Enough with the maquila Argentina! We must expropriate without compensation the transnational companies and expel imperialism in order to eat and live with dignity!
Against the ones that are for the nation, and are against to be a colony and support Kirchner government, lackey of imperialism, the revolutionary socialists say that:
ARGENTINA WILL BE SOCIALIST OR WILL BE A COLONY

It seems incredible but the left of the system has given up to any anti imperialist struggle because it left aside the struggle for the socialist revolution as an immediate and urgent task of the exploited.
As revolutionary socialism posed in the electoral processes, the masses question, even in the enemy ground and in a distorted way, the problem of power. The left of the system has suggested that they are for a left alternative to workers and to fill many seats with left deputies to help workers' struggles. What about power? Do they call the working class to take power, to make a revolution to overthrow the bourgeois regime and this brutal dictatorship of capital under parliamentary forms? The left has banned the struggle for workers' socialist revolution in the elections of 2013.

We must fight like in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Brazil! Fight alongside Syrian workers and fight with workers picketing as Marikana mines in South Africa and with the method of the general strike yesterday in Greece!
We have to say enough is enough and fight with the occupy movement that surround Wall Street shouting "we must expropriate 1% of the parasites that plunder the world", we must fight with the Indignados of Madrid who shouted "Our dreams do not fit in your polls"!
We must stand up again war cry of our revolution, 2001:
EVERYONE OUT, NOBODY LEFT! To end the income tax, work in black and unemployment, for a minimum wage of $ 9,000 for all, with prices indexed to wages and not with the scoundrel Moreno. We must fight like in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Brazil! Resist as in Syria and fight with the worker pickets as in Marikana mines in South Africa and with the method of the general strike as it happened before in Greece!
Behind the smoke screen of the electoral campaign, the capitalist gangs dispute their business.

Enough with democracy for rich! Down with the arch-reactionary Constitution of 1853-1994!
The Argentinian left currents as FIT and MAS that match their program, have decided to follow the path of the Brazilian left, to assimilate to the oppressors’ regime and to make workers believe that their demands will be achieved with laws in the parliament of the executioners. In every fight they did not hesitate to take the fights to a dead end of the negotiations of the Ministries of Labour which is just a directory of human resources of the bosses against workers.

They have made the workers to believe that with left seats in parliament "we can eat, heal and have education" as Alfonsin said in the '80s, also they told the workers that there may be judges who make progressive, democratic and historical resolutions for the workers when they always defend the private property of capitalists and only make some concession when it is useful for the capitalists to defend themselves from an attack of the oppressed ones.

The trial and punishment to all the killers and military men is gone from FIT program, their only enemy and repressor seems to be the genocide Milani. Bergoglio, the Argentinean Pope seems to have blessed them all and the expropriation of the property of the Church, the separation of the church from the state and de exposure to Bergoglio as a collaborator of the military dictatorship is not seen in any of the main adverts of FIT.

CEPRODH (as posted in the brochure presenting its meeting in Cordoba) posed the brutality, defending the Supreme Court, that anti worker policy of Kirchner’s government that calls to vote for board members of the judiciary who chosen by the judges "is a Bonapartist attack". This is constitution madness when the Supreme Court is the Bonapartist institution of the bourgeois state which s above all institutions of the state and is the guarantee -together with the army- when the democracy for the rich falls. Another sector of the left looks with sympathy the Kirchner politicians who careful respect the caste of judges, and only discusses, as the right wing opposition does, how many judges each of the bourgeoisie fractions have in order to share the business of Argentina.

There are no institution of this democracy for rich and the arch-reactionary Constitution of '53 where the leaders of this left have not given up.

The Trotskyists of Workers Democracy affirm:

Enough of democracy for the rich! Down with the arch-reactionary Constitution of '53 - '94!

Dissolution of the caste of judges, the real leaders of the police forces and the intelligence services, which are only to give orders to repress and slaughter the workers and the poor people!

Dissolution of the genocide officer caste of the Army Forces!

Dissolution of the damned murderous police, gendarmerie and all the repressive forces of the state! For watching worker and popular committees: the ones who can guarantee our safety are the workers! Trial and punishment to all the genocide military men and all the killer bosses from before and today! Worker and popular trials!

Out with the Ministry of Labour and its compulsory conciliations! Out with the Professional Associations Law with which the state uses it to regulate the workers` lives and the unions!

Hundreds of thousands of fighters and militant youth of Argentina go with FIT at a time when this has moved a giant step to the right.

FIT decided to water down and dress up this rotten democracy for the rich. They say that the working class can succeed without a revolutionary struggle, without preparing and organizing a general strike defeating the traitors of the union bureaucracy, is to call the workers to surrender to the capitalists who use this democracy for the rich to wrap the fiercest dictatorship of capital, covering up the brutal plundering of Wall Street.

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Our call to make a class vote 

The Argentinian left has abandoned all anti-capitalist banners and more and more puts in the background the militant worker organizations that support it Let’s defend the policy of class independence against the electoral circus and the bosses’ parties
In 2011, when the collapse of Wall Street was still fresh and the world working class was moving forward against the exploiters in Middle East, Europe and USA, FIT disguised as anti-capitalist. It sent greetings to the anti-capitalist movements of the world.

Now, its anti-capitalism become a program of immediate demands to be voted as laws in a Congress dominated by the bankers of Wall Street. Both yesterday and today, everything is fake. This is a Left that only wants a Parliamentary Seat desperately. This is why it reduces its program, adapts to the “common sense” of the rich middle class and “left” kirchnerists who it tries to seduce with its sweetness, even publicly or slyly to cut ballot (voting some members of its list and some members of other lists), like Altamira and PO are doing now. We just need to see the cover of their last paper and we can realize that they call to vote for Pitrola (leader of PO) in BA and Altamira in Capital and they get rid of senators list head by the PTS members. They aren’t even a real left front and they play hide and seek between them.

Now that FIT is sure that will pass the proscriptive percent of this primary elections, shamefully didn’t propose to MAS an unified fight to defeat proscription of the bourgeois regime, which they denounced yesterday.

In 2011 FIT said that they raise the banners, despite some of the candidates like Altamira called openly to vote for Kirchner for president and FIT candidates for the Parliament, that workers vote for workers and they said they fought for the class independence. Today, this practically disappeared as the axis of the electoral campaign and all the workers forces are to help the left politicians achieve a seat in the Parliament. An example of this is that they have liquidated the slogan of Left…. And workers Front. “Workers” have become a smaller word and is almost gone. FIT is almost breaking, not only breaking with a program but also with a policy of class Independence.
Not only this, they have refused to do a united meeting to unify a big number of fighters and workers shop stewards that FIT has among its ranks. Because this would prove the importance and the conditions that FIT has to set a Workers Front to fight. The workers of FIT have disappeared, they only fill their acts and complete their lists. They leave in the background worker fighters and it is one left the left politicians… fighting for a seat in the Parliament… deplorable.
An example of this issue is the meeting that gathered a hundred worker shop stewards in Northern Zone organized by PTS, while PO organized another meeting of worker organizations with SUTNA and CTA.
When we proposed the demand of the workers of Las Heras be part of a fight of the workers, PO not only divided the big forces of worker and militant organizations of Northern Zone, but also said that the fight for the freedom of the imprisoned workers of Las Heras divided the fight against the tax on wages, and stated this openly on its paper. How can divide the fight against the tax on wages with the demand for the freedom for those who started this heroic fight? We must unify more this fight, not only in Argentina but at international level with all the leaders and fighters of the working class prosecuted. Tge fight for the prisoners of Argentina is the fight to end the prosecution with Savas Masas (leader of Greek EEK), for the freedom of the anti-imperialist prisoners of Guantanamo and the 4,500 Palestine prisoners who are in the jails of Zionism.
PO convinced FIT of this policy. In the last demonstration to the House of Santa Cruz demanding the freedom of the comrades of Las Heras, except for a couple of left lawyers and small delegation of PTS, FIT missed the appointment.
Yesterday FIT said that any factory that closes or dismisses workers must be expropriated and nationalized, like Zanon. And now… there must be a law in the Parliament against dismissals and lay-offs. Pathetic. When the economic crisis reaches the semi-colonial world, we more than ever must fight as in Brukman and Zanon: occupy the bosses’ factories, without compensation and make them work under workers’ control.
After the elections, when FIT conquer many seats, the workers who took them to the elections will be fighting face to face with the bosses and union bureaucrats.
The Left Front, in the program concentrated of slogans that distribute massively call to vote for them, propose the nationalization and re-statization of privatized companies “under worker control”… and TNCs! They let aside the main question of a revolutionary socialist program that IT MUST BE DONE WITHOUT COMPENSATION.
Letting this question aside in the slogans that are seen by millions of workers means, by omission, calling to pay compensation in fact the capitalist companies in crisis; this is the program of Kirchner for Argentinean Airlines and for Repsol, and the program of Chavez for Techint. This is the program of Kichnertist left, to which Altamira dreams to receiving votes from. “They haven’t stopped to think” that this is Obama’s program of nationalizing some bankrupted banks of Wall Street. This is the program of nationalizing losses of capital while they always privatize profits.
It is crystal clear. The politicians of the left have decided, in order to get a seat in Parliament, not to scare Wall Street. Because let’s be clear, 90% of the lands, companies and banks of Argentina are under the guardianship and directs of Wall Street, London and Bundesbank. FIT forgot that in order to defend wages we must disregard the fake collective bargains of the traitors of the union bureaucracy, which is where they sell workers’ wages. IT IS WHERE UNION BUREAUCRACY SIGNS EVERY YEAR THE AGREEMENT OF THE TAX ON WAGES. FIT covers up that treacherous union bureaucracies like Moyano, both CGTs and CTA agree every year collective bargains, always lower than the inflation rate, which they sign a minimum wage of $3,000, which they accept dismissals and lay-offs and they sign the tax on wages.

This can be easily explained: if a union doesn’t sign a collective bargain that doesn’t includes the elimination of the tax on wages, then the working class would be in the best conditions to start an offensive to end with it.

Left places itself behind the bureaucracy, while the bureaucracy discusses which is the limit to start charging the tax on wages.

Only with annulling the fake collective bargains, disregard all the wage agreements and call the workers to prevent than any collective bargain be signed that includes the tax on wages and call to organize a big fight to open the road to achieve this demand.

FIT says that deputies must earn the same wage than a worker. But in order to do what FIT says, first all workers must have a job and earn at least $9.000. This means calling the working class to disregard the fake collective bargains of union bureaucracy.

Partido Obrero disciplined all the FIT’s members. Whoever think of calling to fight for the destruction of the Zionist fascist State of Israel and supports the Palestine Cause, is accused of provoker by its leadership, like happened with Convergencia Socialista, which was refuted for this reason from FIT’s lists and its candidate took a place in the list for a place given by PTS.

Izquierda Socialista, claimed defending the cause of the Syrian masses against killer Assad, has tens of tens of minutes on TV and radio to fight to defeat the fence to the Syrian masses killed and today remains in absolute silence on it. It is a front of the opportunist where whoever has more votes rules, the rest obey if they can get a seat. PTS has several spots where they express the militancy of their worker leaders. Unfortunately they can only be seeing in YouTube by the left layers of the voters who look around in the Internet. In the mean time, it shares the electoral drunkenness with their FIT partners.

In this elections, workers don’t have the best conditions to face the electoral trap of the establishment and Wall Street parties. This situation is not because of the working vanguard that put all its forces conquered in the combat against the bosses and the government to set up the “Left and Workers Front”, so this ends being a “Left Front”… where its leaders only fight for a seat and not to organize a unify those who fight, claiming, as a Marxist must do that “workers liberation is a job for the workers itself”.

More and more the day of the elections comes and more and more workers are moved to the background by FIT. Most of the prosecuted workers and their workmates will vote for FIT, some of them are in the scaffold of the videlist judges like in Santa Cruz. This is unacceptable. This situation can be reverted until October. FIT and MAS must call a militant workers’ public meeting headed by the prosecuted comrades so never again a worker be placed in the scaffold of TNC’s judges and them and the bosses politicians be the ones punished.

Call of the Trostkyists of Democracia Obrera to vote in the elections
Neither FPV, nor PJ, nor UCR, nor FAP, nor any other bosses politician…

Workers must not vote for Wall Street and slavering bosses candidates
From our program and anti-imperialist fight, taking the banners of revolutionary socialism that left abandoned long time ago, we call to vote critically to the organizations that represent the name of the working class in the elections. We call to vote, with this program and under these banners, critically the lists of FIT and MAS headed by worker shop stewards and fighters.
We call to vote for the left’s lists headed by worker fighters, because against them is concentrated the entire attack of the class enemy, after the votes and the electoral charade be over. Worker fighters will be with their rank and file and comrades fighting against capitalists and treacherous bureaucrats. Perhaps some left politician achieve a seat, but they wouldn’t have prepared the workers for the hard current and future combats. They have only said sweet statements to the ears of the working vanguard, when what is coming are new blows against workers by the government and oppressive forces.
Even though left politicians have place it in the background, their front was also “of workers”, in order to win some voters of the rich middle classes of kirchnerism: We, workers, vote for workers, not bosses.
This is why in CABA we call to vote for the shop steward Dellecarbonara (Subway worker) who belongs to the FIT’s lists as candidate to senator. We call to vote for comrade Muzlaz in Cordoba, who was dismissed in the fight of the workers of Somisa and FIAT in Cordoba, to comrade Alcides Christiansen in Neuquen, among others.
We feel that we must oppose to the policy of the left of the system called FIT, which tries to ingratiate itself with this regime of the democracy for the rich, a policy of fight for the political class independence, which are the minimum conditions that the working class needs to intervene in this electoral charade of deception and lie of the bosses politicians, front men of Wall Street bankers.
In those provinces where FIT lists aren’t head by working fighters, we call to vote or cut ballots for MAS, as vote to fight against proscriptions which mean PASO for the small currents of the working class who claim being socialistas and want to be known and win sectors of the masses with their programs.
It is urgent to set again on its feet the Internationalist Trotskyist Workers Party of Mateo Fossa and the Fourth international in Argentina
From Worker Democracy we will continue to fight for our revolutionary program because it is ever more clear to the vanguard of the Argentinean working class that it is necessary to set up a true revolutionary party in Argentina, beating the present “lefts” who have already and long ago adapted openly to this regime of democracy for the rich and the arch-reactionary 1853 / 1994 Constitution which regulates it.

Hundreds of thousands of workers and young people are looking for an alternative to overcome the oppression, exploitation and to take in their hands the solution of their problems. Hundreds of thousands of them will vote FIT; we do trust these rank and file workers. We know that from the entrails of the labor movement the vanguard will emerge of the next battles that should go the way of El Cordobazo, the Argentinean 2001 revolution and the massive struggles of the world working class as today in Egypt and Tunisia, as yesterday in Greece or Madrid, today in Bangladesh, in Chile and again in Bolivia, and of those fencing Wall Street.

The Argentine working class need to have again among its ranks a Trotskyist party as that which Mateo Fossa founded in the 1930s that never bowed to Stalinism or to the bourgeois regime lackey of imperialism, and this could be so because it was a truly militant party for the Fourth International. That's the fight that we are today continuing, the Trotskyists of Workers Democracy that we strive to rebuild our party: the Fourth International.

In that struggle we have put all our effort and energy. The new labor movement that this decade of delivery of the Kirchner of the oppressed nation to Wall Street bankers is giving birth to is looking at the struggles advanced by their class brothers and sisters all over the world against capitalist bankruptcy in huge revolutionary struggles. The reformist left adapted to the system throws sand over the eyes of the working class so that the workers don't see themselves as part of a single and unique world working class which is today taking decisive battles in Syria, China, Greece or as in Chile and Brazil, or as the indignant young do by fencing Wall Street.

A new labor movement is emerging in Argentina and should return to the path of El Cordobazo and Classism, learning from the revolutions that were expropriated from them in Argentina and Latin America; they must learn also how to fight, how to advance and retreat studying in the life book of the struggles of the masses in Africa and Europe. The generation of the ' 70s Cordobazo was a byproduct of huge struggles of the Argentine proletariat that had forged a huge experience of struggle in the Peronist resistance, which was shaped thousand and one times by the whip of capital, but also by the fire of the revolution burning from Mexico and the Southern Cone to the French May to the Prague Spring, to the uprising against the war in Viet Nam in United States, a revolutionary upsurge that shook the entire planet at a time.

In the current conditions this working class is maturing, under the influence of large international events, the imperialist crack, wars and revolutions and the whip of the capital that makes its existence unsustainable. The Trotskyist internationalists will not change our course. Not only we confronted counter-revolution at an international level in decisive battlefields on the planet, as in Maghreb and Middle East, in the Pacific, accompanying the workers’ combat from China to Japan to the martyred Africa in the very heart of the pickets of Marikana. We did not surrender in Latin America, fighting in Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, etc. We have confronted and denounced the covenants of the Castro brothers delivering Cuba to imperialism and the Colombian resistance to the fascists paramilitaries of Santos Government and the US bases; we did not fall in the traps of the siren chants of the scam of "Bolivarian revolution" Governments, lackeys of imperialism as Chávez, Morales and Kirchner, not least oppressors of the workers than those imperialist agents, the FTA Governments.

A historical period of counter-reformism has opened. As revolutionary Marxists we remain steadfast in our fight because we know that in these and the next waves of the struggle of the proletariat, there will be a merger between us internationalists and the best elements of the vanguard of the world working class. Argentina will not be an exception.

Down with France’s colonial war in Mali! Solidarity with the Resistance!

 

 

The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) invited us and other Marxist tendencies to discuss, endorse and modify a joint statement against the French Imperialist assault on Mali. While we had already initiated an internal discussion to draft a statement, we found the RCIT statement essentially correct and modified it to more closely reflect our understanding of the events in Mali. The draft which follows, was finished too late for a deadline the RCIT had proposed, but our statement is timely as the imperialist assault is on going.
 

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Let’s transform Mail into another defeat for imperialism!

Fight for a workers government based on the peasants and poor! For socialist revolution in North Africa and the Middle East!

  

1.   French imperialism has started a new war in Mali – one of its former colonies in Western Africa. Since 10.1.2013 the “socialist” government of François Hollande has ordered its army to bombard the North of Mali and deployed 750 soldiers. The French intervention force should increase soon to 2.500 soldiers. British imperialism has already announced its readiness to support the French troops with its air force and the US will assist them too with its murderous drones. The Merkel government has committed special forces and tanks to the effort. Spain has committed troops we would say the EU has jumped in with both feet without polling the masses who they hope to distract from privations of record unemployment and austerity with “humanitarian” war hoopla! In addition, the bloc of Western African states, ECOWAS, plans to send 3.300 soldiers. Together with the Mali government’s army they want to crush the Tuareg and Islamist rebels and re-conquer the North of the country.   

2.   Let us spell out the truth: This is no “humanitarian” war – this is a reactionary colonial war! The real goal of French imperialism and its allies is to strengthen its control over Mali and the Western African region and to suppress the revolution which is sweeping through North Africa.

3.   Mali and most of its 14.5 million people are living in extreme poverty which is mainly the result of imperialism’s control over the world economy and the super-exploitation by the multinational corporations. However, monopoly capital and imperialist power are greedy for the rich raw materials of Mali. The country is Africa’s third largest gold producer. It is also believed to be filled with oil and gas as well as uranium and phosphate. French imperialism already depends on Uranium from Tuareg populated areas in Niger, to sustain its “clean energy” solution while the local people must scrounge for cooking fuel/fire wood.

4.   The Uprising of the Tuareg people in the North of Mali who are fighting for their own state Azawad has added another rebellion to the wave of revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East. Socialists support the struggle of the Tuareg people for national self-determination. We combine the support for the Tuareg’s national liberation struggle with the perspective of a “Socialist Azawad”.

5.   Both in Mali as well as in the Tuareg areas, the way forward for the workers and peasants is to take power and to expropriate the multinational corporations (like AngloGold) and local capitalists without compensation. For the control of all natural resources by the workers, expel the multinationals and their greedy managers! For massive wage rise for the miners!

6.   We oppose bourgeois and petty-bourgeois forces like the Islamist Ansar al Din, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and MUJAO (Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa) as well as the bourgeois nationalist MNLA (National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad) and the FLNA (National Front for the Liberation of Azawad). We call on the exploited of Mali and West Africa to militarily defend ALL factions in the Tuareg nationalist struggle against imperialism, the dictatorship and their African including Arab proxies. We also defend Asawad and the main Tuareg organisation MNLA from attack by the Islamist/Jihadist factions that seek to impose Sharia law in Asawad and the whole of North Africa.

The workers, peasants and poor in Mali need to organize independently in action councils (like the Soviets in Russia in 1917) and armed militias to fight for their own interests. The recent heroic workers struggle in Marikana in South Africa as well as the bold struggle of the armed workers and peasants in Syria fighting against the jackal Assad are inspiring examples of how we need to fight.

7.   The French colonial war has again exposed the true reactionary character of the main forces of the French left. Holland’s Social Democratic government wasted no time showing its classical social imperialist colors complete with its “humanitarian” subterfuge, an old racist story the SP has been peddling since the 1890’s. The Communist Party (PCF) – a constituent party of the reformist European Left Party as well as of the Front de Gauche in France – expressed in their public statements to date that they “share the goals of the Mali government to defeat the Jihadist terrorists in the North”. These social-democratised Stalinists are cynically worried that the French intervention “might risk a war”, so they “request that the French authorities respond to questions posed by heavy military intervention” (Statement from 12.1.). In other words, they are true social-imperialists who implicitly support the war goals of its ruling class. The New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) adopts the classic centrist line of social-pacifism. They verbally “denounce this imperialist military intervention decided by Hollande”. (Statement from 11.1.) However, they fail to support the rebels, i.e. those who are actually fighting against this imperialist intervention, nor do they call for the defeat of the French army.

8.   We call upon the international workers movement to mobilize against the imperialist intervention in Mali! We call for the defeat of the imperialist troops and the allied Mali government army! In the tradition of the Communist International in Lenin’s time and Trotsky’s Fourth International we support the military struggle of the colonial people against the imperialist forces and their allies without supporting in any way the politics of the Islamists and bourgeois nationalists. Let’s transform Mail into another defeat for imperialism!

9.   We call the international workers movement – especially in France – to mobilize for protest actions against the colonial war in order to undermine the government’s war efforts. For demonstrations and strikes against the imperialist war! Transport workers: refuse to do any work which supports the French military efforts!

10.   The activists of the Revolution in North Africa and the Middle East must see the struggle against the imperialist intervention in Mali as part of their struggle. The workers and popular struggles in Tunisia against the Ennahda government and in Egypt against president Mursi, the heroic Palestinian resistance against the colonial settler state Israel, the heroic Revolution of the Syrian workers and peasants against the murderous Assad regime – they must be combined with the anti-imperialist resistance in Mali into a single wave of permanent revolution leading to working class power and the establishment of a Socialist Federation of Workers and Peasant Republics in North Africa and the Middle East. To succeed in this task we need to build new revolutionary workers parties and a new World Party of Socialist Revolution.

• Down with France’s colonial war in Mali! The wealth of the Sahara must be made to serve the people not imperialism its corporations or the IMF.

• For the defeat of the imperialist troops and the allied Mali government army!

• For the military victory of the rebels against the French/government and-coalition troops!

• For the right of national self-determination of the Tuareg people in the North of Mali including the right to form their own state! Tuareg people live and migrate across modern borders. We defend Tuareg national rights over those of the nation states carved out by imperialism and the Tuareg’s right to migrate freely.

• No political support for Islamism and bourgeois nationalism!

• Break with imperialism – for the expropriation of AngloGold without compensation! For nationalization of the mines and all natural resources under control of the working class! For massive wage rise of the miners! For a joint fight with the miners of Lonmin against the imperialists and for workers control!

• For international solidarity against the imperialist intervention! For anti-war actions by the French, European and US workers movement! Defend class war prisoners and those who take direct action against of imperialism’s war machine.

• For a workers and peasant government in Mali! For expropriation of the multinational corporations and the local capitalists without any compensation! For socialist revolution in Mali and the whole of North Africa and the Middle East!

Liaison Committee of Communists, 
January 25
CWG(USA), CWG(ANZ), RWG (Zimbabwe)

NOTE: The RCIT statement of 19 January is here.

The modifications to the RCIT text add more information in most cases. However, in two cases they reflect probably minor disagreements. First we omit the reference to "Let's transform Mali in to another Afghanistan for imperialism", and replace it with "Let's transform Mali into another defeat for Imperialism". While clearly intended to mean 'defeat', we don't think that the long-term occupation of Afghanistan with puppet regimes installed is a defeat for imperialism. Second, while some of us are for a 'Fifth International' we have agreed that to unite our forces what is essential is the rebuilding of a new communist international based on the 1938 Trotskyist program. We encapsulate that position by adopting Trotsky's formulation of "for a New World Party of Socialist Revolution".  

The Arab Revolution meets NATO-Zionism

Syrian militia with outdated anti-aircraft gun Aleppo August 4th (AFP via Getty)

The current situation in the Middle East is one of a growing confrontation between the resurgent Arab democratic revolution – popularly called the ‘Arab Spring’ now two years old – and US imperialism represented by its military ‘gendarme’, Zionist Israel. The US and EU imperialist powers are attempting to impose a ‘democratic’ counter-revolution, to prevent the working masses from overthrowing their national bourgeoisies and breaking with imperialism. The global crisis means that revolution and counter-revolution are on collision course. Gaza is the first point of impact of the collision. The recent Israeli attack on Gaza was the imperialist gendarme testing the reliability of the Arab bourgeois factions to impose the imperialist ‘democratic’ counter-revolution. The outcome proves that the Zionist and Arab ruling classes are united against the mass base of the Arab Revolution. 


Driving this confrontation is the worsening global crisis of capitalism. The imperialist powers are undergoing a severe recession brought about by falling profits and overproduction of capital. This is not a ‘financial’ crisis but a deep structural crisis of capitalism. To restore profits the imperialist economies have to destroy $trillions of capital value which is why the world economy is still in a long depression. Made to pay for the crisis are the weaker capitalist powers and the world’s workers and peasants and that means further austerity. Between 2008 and 2010 massive attacks on workers and peasants living standards were launched. By 2010 resistance to these attacks were reaching explosive potential. When Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight in Tunisia the masses of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) were ready to rise up. The Arab Revolution that had been frozen and driven back by dictatorships since the 1950s rose up and brought down one regime after another in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, while in Syria the regime is approaching its downfall.

The awakening Arab Revolution destabilised the rule of terror of the Zionist regime. Israel had reached a stalemate with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Then came the wave of uprisings from Tunisia to Syria which strengthened the mass support for the isolated Palestinian Revolution. The Egyptian Revolution put the freedom of Palestine at the top of its program, thereby declaring its anti-imperialism and internationalism. The army deposed Mubarak and conceded the election victory of his successor Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) to put the lid on the revolution calling for an end to Mubarak’s treaty with Israel. The Libyan armed revolt exploded and threatened to spread across the whole Arab Revolution. It was contained by NATO intervention and bourgeois parliamentary elections.

The Syrian people began to resist al Assad’s dictatorship and without imperialist support are today pushing to overthrow the regime. Under pressure from the Palestinian masses, Hamas broke with Iran to back the Syrian revolution against al Assad. This leaves Hezbollah as a proxy for Iran on the side of al Assad, weakened and isolated from the rest of the ‘Arab Spring’. The weakening of Iran’s influence in MENA reduces the pressure for direct US intervention beyond a CIA watching brief on 'Jihadists' in the Syrian opposition. The US is confident that it can find a pro-imperialist coalition government to impose a ‘democratic counter-revolution’. Israel is not so confident. A revolution without imperialist strings attached could develop into a mortal threat to the Zionist state and to the Arab bourgeois factions who rule over the Arab masses. Israel has lost the support of al Assad as a counterweight to the Palestinian revolution. The Palestinian Diaspora in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan became embroiled in the Syrian war as under pressure from the masses in the camps the PLO and Hamas came out in support of the revolution against the Stalinist PFLF-GC who supported al Assad. Thus it is no surprise that the Arab Revolution threatened to break out of the ‘democratic’ counter-revolution at the major fault line, Gaza, where the Israeli and the Palestinian bourgeois factions staged another missile war to test the new balance of forces in MENA.

The Gaza attack has allowed the Arab and Israeli ruling classes to test their relative power and re-affirm their class alliance against the Arab masses. The result is that Israel re-affirms its military gendarme role against the armed Arab revolution, by doing a deal with the Palestine bourgeois factions, Fatah and Hamas, taking the pressure off al Assad, and reinforcing the MB rule in Egypt. The ceasefire signals that Israel has tested its defences and reached agreements with the ‘moderate’ Islamic regional powers Turkey and Egypt. Israel has fine-tuned its gendarme role to play tough cop to the soft cop of US/NATO ‘democratic’ counter revolution. Imperialism has incorporated Israel into its ‘solution’ to the Arab Spring, the flowering of moderate Islamic regimes in a bloc with Israel against radical Islamic nationalism and against popular mass revolutions that are capable of breaking with imperialism.

Obama’s foreign policy setting is to stabilise MENA as a secure base to pursue its vital hegemonic interests in the ‘pivot’ towards the Asia-Pacific. This requires a firm alliance between the Zionist and moderate Islamic nationalist regimes against the masses. The US will enlist the ‘global community’ to pressure Israel to re-open negotiations with Palestine for a ‘two state’ solution. Recognising Palestine as an UN ‘observer’ state is a move in that direction despite US official opposition. To the extent that Iran’s allies on its borders weaken, Israel has less reason to threaten war with Iran. Thus Iran’s significance will be less as a destabilising factor in MENA and more a focal point in the inter-imperialist rivalry between the US and China for control over the Asia-Pacific.

Permanent Revolution

This imperialist policy setting for MENA - that of ‘democratic counter-revolution’ - is inherently unstable not only because behind the fig leaf of parliamentary elections there are the naked austerity attacks on the working masses. Fundamentally ‘democracy’ in MENA is incompatible with the existence of Zionist Israel. The borders imposed by imperialism after WW1 created artificial states, dividing and trapping nations such as the Kurds and other minorities. In the case of Israel however, imperialism allowed a new settler colony to drive the Palestinians off their land creating the Zionist ‘nation’ at the expense of the Palestine nation. Any claims by the Zionist state to ‘democracy’ are a lie since its very existence is at the expense of Palestinian national rights. Therefore, imperialism cannot impose stability on MENA by pretending to resolve the Palestine question, i.e. recognising Palestine and imposing a ‘two state solution’, as long as Israel continues to exist. Just as Palestine can only be freed by the destruction of the colonial settler state of Israel, the Arab masses cannot be freed without overthrowing the rule of imperialism and the national bourgeoisies that serve imperialism in the MENA. This means the Arab revolution must fight to complete the national bourgeois revolution by means of socialist revolution in the whole MENA region.

We can see what progress is being made in transforming the national into the socialist revolution. The most advanced front is in Syria where a popular ‘peaceful’ resistance movement was transformed by defections from the military into an armed insurrection. Here imperialism has not intervened directly to subordinate the popular rebellion to a ‘government in waiting’. The militias are not controlled by the SNC or by any attempt by the US to set up a ‘reliable’ alternative to al Assad. Despite the imperialist legacy of splitting up nationalities and the deliberate sectarian incitement by the regime to weaken the opposition, the militias are broadly committed to an inclusive, tolerant bourgeois democracy. Any attempt by imperialism to prevent or hijack the victory will turn the insurrection against imperialism. The Syrian revolution has already reactivated the Palestinian revolution so the two cannot be isolated. The question of whether a victorious Syrian revolution and the Palestinian revolution can be contained by a ‘democratic’ counter-revolution will depend on wider developments in the Arab Revolution.

While the revolution has been driven back by force in Kuwait, and so far contained by an Islamic regime in Tunisia, the resistance in Jordan where the majority are Palestinians has taken to the streets protesting against fuel price rises and calling for the downfall of the regime. This shows that while the revolution may be stalled or pushed back in some countries, in others is it moving ahead. Those who are being driven back or are just beginning their struggle need to look to the most advanced struggles to learn the lessons of how to fight for permanent revolution. If we look at Syria, Libya and Egypt we can see that some of the conditions for permanent revolution exist, while others have yet to be created.

Libya is the only other front of the Arab Revolution where the armed struggle succeeded in overthrowing a national dictatorship. It must be remembered that strength of the rebel army resulted from defections from Gaddafi’s armed forces. This is a key development that allowed the rebel army to win without becoming subordinated to NATO. NATO intervened to prevent the war of liberation from dragging on like in Syria and sparking a wider Arab war. It succeeded in installing a parliamentary regime but has not been able to disarm the militias or form a stable government. The recent attack on the Benghazi US Consulate shows that the US has some way to go to create a ‘reliable’ client state in Libya. While the elections have been widely supported the masses have yet to see any relief from the austerity of the Gaddafi dictatorship. The militias remain armed and the potential to overturn any austerity regime exists. This fact shows that it is vital for the Syrian revolution to build and maintain a popular militia independent of imperialism and of any pro-imperialist national regime.

In Egypt the popular revolution did not arm itself or take power. The military regime replaced Mubarak with Morsi of the MB as a ‘democratic’ facade, but this has already proven unstable. Morsi has assumed total power to rush a new constitution through that will guarantee a MB majority in a new parliament. The MB knows that its middle class support base will not survive mass resistance to the austerity measures that the IMF demands. It wants to create a constitutional front that allows an Islamic bloc backed by the military to restore a dictatorship. This has revived the revolution on the streets but the masses do not have the power to bring down the Government. Demands that Morsi retracts his assumption of total power or resign cannot be enforced as it could be in Libya by the armed militias. What is lacking in Egypt is any popular power based on industrial action or more importantly winning over the base of the army. Both of these essential conditions were never seriously fought for by the revolution of the streets. To realise them now requires a fight for a revolutionary constituent assembly to unite the masses and the base of the army to bring down Morsi and his middle class MB dictatorship.

Permanent revolution means that to win the most basic democratic rights, such as Palestine liberation, such as a constitution that reflects the popular working masses and not just the middle class in Egypt, such as a popular victory over the al Assad regime in Syria, it is necessary to arm the popular struggle. In Palestine the resistance to Israeli occupation has always come from the masses not the Fatah or Hamas bourgeois leaderships. In Libya and Syria, the masses were armed when militants and defectors from the army joined forces. In Egypt, the fight to bring down Morsi will mean winning over the base of the military and uniting it with armed militias based on the organised workers. This will open the road to popular democracy and to bourgeois democratic republics. Yet, in semi-colonies dominated and super-exploited by imperialism, the national bourgeoisies serve as agents of imperialism to rule over the super-exploited masses. The bourgeois democratic republic must always revert to an open bourgeois dictatorship unless it is overthrown and turned into a proletarian dictatorship. For the working masses to survive they must insist on retaining their armed independence from the bourgeois regimes and take the fight to imperialism. We can see that this is necessary in the whole of MENA just as the liberation of Palestine necessitates the destruction of the Zionist imperialist enclave.

A new revolutionary international

The Arab masses are fighting to complete their national revolution against imperialism in crisis and the national bourgeoisies that act as its agents. Their spontaneous demands are to reform the state so that they are not victims of exploitation and oppression. The default ideology of capitalism is that individual citizens are equal and that once a majority mobilise for equal rights this can be won. In Libya, Gaddafi was seen as the problem. In Egypt, Mubarak was seen as the problem. In Syria al Assad was seen as the problem. The revolutions against these dictatorships aim to create egalitarian bourgeois democracies. The problem is that in the epoch of imperialism bourgeois democracy is incompatible with the survival of global capitalism. Once dictatorships are overthrown, new dictatorships must arise in their place. This is particularly true of semi-colonies where imperialism must use the national regimes to repress mass resistance to super-exploitation.

This means that to win the most fundamental bourgeois democratic rights the bourgeois ruling class must be overthrown and replaced with a socialist republic – the dictatorship of the working majority over the exploiting minority. But for this to happen, the most advanced workers must have a program to lead all working and oppressed people to socialist revolution. But in the Arab states socialism has been repeatedly betrayed. First, by the Western social imperialists of the rotten Second International who turned their backs on national struggles; second by the Stalinists of the rotten Third International who aligned themselves with the national bourgeoisies during the national struggles; and third the fake ‘Trotskyists’ who made friends with Gaddafi and al Assad and co, and today give critical support to the national bourgeoisies. Those who pass themselves off as revolutionaries like the Revolutionary Socialists of Egypt vote for bourgeois governments. There is no revolutionary party embedded in the working class in any of these countries that fights for a clear transitional program that lays out the road forward from the struggle for immediate and democratic demands and shows how these can only be won by an armed insurrection – the Permanent Revolution. Building such a party as part of a new socialist international party is the most important and urgent task facing revolutionaries.

SMASH THE ZIONIST STATE OF ISRAEL! FOR A SECULAR, SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF PALESTINE!

DOWN WITH BOURGEOIS REGIMES—THEY SERVE THE IMPERIALIST MASTER!

US/NATO/CHINA HANDS OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA!

DOWN WITH THE REACTIONARY BOURGEOIS CONSTITUTIONS OF TUNISIA, LIBYA AND EGYPT!

FOR REVOLUTIONARY CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLIES FOR ALL FROM 16YRS OF AGE!

FOR WORKERS COUNCILS, WORKERS MILITIAS, POOR FARMERS COUNCILS, COUNCILS OF THE MILITARY RANKS! FOR GOVERNMENTS OF WORKERS COUNCILS!

FOR A FEDERATION OF SOCIALIST REPUBLICS OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA!

Statement of Liaison Committee of Communists 

Communist Workers' Group (USA) 

Revolutionary Workers' Group (Zimbabwe)

Communist Workers' Group (Aotearoa/NZ)

 Co-signed by Workers Socialist Party (India)

30 November 2012