UBI - magical thinking in the age of capitalism

 

As the New Zealand Labour Party ponders the 'Future of Work', the discussion focuses on the Universal Basic Income (UBI) to "guarantee income security and dignity". This is another attempt to rewrite Labour's historic mission to convince workers that it knows best what workers want under capitalism. This is another con. 

Not until bosses give back their profits to the generations of workers they stole them from will any redistribution of income be more than a subsidy to the bosses. Notice how all the discussion around the fashionable UBI is limited to what the bosses can afford to pay. This is magical thinking. No way will capitalist corporations and banks agree to pay for full employment and a living wage let alone a UBI. Both have to be sacrificed in the impending global crash to restore the rate of profit.

This magical thinking has always been the fatal flaw of social democracy – the illusion that there is a peaceful, gradual road to socialism by means of bosses agreeing to 'fair shares' in the distribution of income. To question this assumption is to risk exposing the real truth of capitalism; that all income originates from the labour power of productive workers. 

If that truth was our starting point the question would be: why does capital have the right to exist and define the terms of debate around how wages are determined when it lives off the expropriation of surplus-value?

In this light it’s easy to see that the UBI is another big con to divert the class struggle away from fighting for control of jobs and a living wage in the workplace and into the dead end of parliament. 

If unions are too weak to win a living wage now they won’t be able to force a living UBI out of the parliamentary talkshop. Parliamentary reforms that benefit workers are concessions won from the bosses only when they fear being over-run by militant labour.

The reason the UBI has been dragged off the top shelf as a ‘reasonable’ demand by academic liberals, social democrats and union bosses is because the bosses are scared a global economic crash will spark rising worker opposition to paying for the bosses crisis and threaten the fragile hold the ruling class has over the ‘dangerous’ class – the international proletariat.

The parties of the ‘center-left’ (Labour, Greens and Mana) are all run by a clique of pro-capitalist bureaucrats whose pay rests on the legal fiction that they represent the interests of the working class. This means that these parties are internally divided between a worker base and the bureaucratic leadership. The internal class divisions widen as such parties are torn between two class programs – to serve the top 10% and their lackeys, or the bottom 90% expected to pay for the crisis with their lives and livelihoods.

A new mass workers party is needed arising out of a split between the working class supporters of these parties and their union affiliates and the rotten labour bureaucracy that act to tie their worker organisations to the bosses state machine. 

Strong fighting, democratic unions that throw out their pro-capitalist leaders are the only way to begin the claw back of the surplus expropriated from workers and build a power base capable of taking on the ruling class and implementing a Transitional Program (TP) that takes workers all the way to socialism.

The TP puts up immediate economic demands that all workers need and are willing and able to fight for such as: Jobs for all! A living wage! Solve unemployment by sharing work hours without loss of pay! These are immediate demands but they are also ‘transitional’ because they cannot be won without workers control of work. 

So rather than waiting passively for a Government cargo cult that will drop a living UBI from the sky even while an economic crash looms and global warming escalates exponentially, fighting democratic unions will defend every job with strikes and occupations against their employers. Because such struggles threaten the bosses’ control of work they will be met with inevitable state repression which will in turn force workers to develop new organisations and tactics to advance the defence of our class.

Inevitably employers backed by the state will try to deny workers defence of economic rights to work and a living wage by using the state forces to close down on freedom of expression, assembly, strike etc. When bosses use the labor laws to call in the cops the workers response is to break the law with occupations defended by picket lines.

Furthermore, strike action to win in any worksite has to be generalised to involve all militant workers in struggle in every sector of the economy. In that way workplace committees, strike committees and workers defence guards, become coordinated locally, nationally and internationally.

Building unity around these demands and the organisations they throw up empowers workers to take another big step and organise a political general strike aimed at defeating the employers and their state machine and imposing workers ownership and control of the means of production. 

Thus the Transitional Program begins with immediate economic and political demands and leads necessarily to workers empowering themselves to the point where they can overthrow of the capitalist state and create a Workers’ Government able to implement a planned socialist economy - where the myth of the capitalist UBI is a dim memory for those whose social equity is based on the principle: 

"From each according to their ability, to each according to their need".

BART UPDATE: Labor needs a strategy of political independence in order to win strikes and smash austerity!

Many leftists and working class militants are confused about why labor ends up on the losing end of nearly every confrontation. Why the “good guys” lose is not merely a question of poor tactics by well-meaning labor leaders-even when they do rise directly out of the ranks. The long term political subservience of labor to the Democratic Party (one of the two major parties controlled by and representing the capitalist class) acts like a ball and chain on labor preventing strikes from accelerating to victory. Only by going beyond the parameters set for labor by the bosses’ parties in power can labor mobilize the power of the working class to win-what are indeed class battles! Those “legal” parameters, set in stone by anti-labor laws, supported and invoked by both Democrats and Republicans, with the acquiescence of labor’s misleaders, prevent strikers from asserting their power to initiate and win indefinite, general and political strikes.

On July 5th, after 4.5 days of strikers shutting down BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), under threat of a government mandated cooling off period, both sides agreed to extend contract expiration for 30 days. Some see this as a tactical retreat or tactical mistake, but in reality it is emblematic of a subservient labor leadership whose strategy is to grovel at the feet of the state.


HWRS & LBB lick the tail of the bureaucracy*

In Class War #5 we raised the rhetorical question: was the collapse of the strike a tactical retreat or a strategic collapse in the first place (pg10)? It seems the HWRS/LBB has answered that ending the strike after four and a half days was a “tactical mistake.”

In their August 1st Statement “Transport and Public Sector Unions: Strike in Support of the BART Workers and Their Unions!” they categorize the bureaucracies’ capitulations in the first round of negotiations, which sent the strikers back to work without any gains for a 30 day cooling off period, as a tactical mistake. Trying to make lemonade out of lemons the HWRS/LBB state:

“Even now, the ATU 192 workers at AC Transit, and the AFSCME 444 & 2019 workers at EBMUD, still have not settled their contracts. This gives the workers an opportunity to correct the tactical mistake (our emphasis) made by the BART unions in returning to work before they had achieved the goals of their strike.”

So it remains for us in our lonesome to say this was a strategic collapse in the first place. We would not only want to make the points that the ICL (Spartacist) makes that on both sides of the negotiating table you have champions of the Brown administration, but that this is a cynical class collaboration against the interest of the workers and takes place against the backdrop where labor leaders of this kind across California and the USA have acquiesced in the bosses austerity, as has their beloved president Obama who is yet to make one practical move against the ALEC-inspired sequester.

This trade union misleadership has “thrown the fight” and left the membership on the ropes and it will be all California workers who take the resultant beating. To win labor needs to repudiate the bureaucracy, the Democratic Party and all of the false consciousness of capitalist ideology. As we said in Class War #5, workers must reject the compounding of “reactionary backward consciousness perpetuated by the media, the culture and the state [which] limits labor’s power to mobilize the entire class to win strikes.” It will take a general strike to win this battle. And right now is not too soon to realize this.

HWRS/LBB not only says this was a tactical error but proceeds to reduce the workers real grievances to a secondary order of importance, changing the subject to the also objectively necessary labor self-defense of oppressed communities. This wouldn’t be bad if they had raised demands that made either winning the strike or defending the oppressed an immediate prospect.

Replace the misleaders via a class struggle program to defeat the bosses and their politicians

Today the labor leaders still tell the workers there is no alternative but to acquiesce to the state’s demands that labor work without a contract. Thirty days after the end of round one, on August 4th, on the eve of the strike’s resumption, Governor Brown put a seven day halt to the strike to “investigate why” the negotiations are stalled. In both cases the government stepped in, not on the side of labor but to prevent the workers’ momentum from accelerating.

Marty Morgenstern, State Labor Secretary, with S.F. Mayor Ed Lee (right) at a news conference: “I don’t think the Bay Area should be on pins and needles. It’s time for this to end.” Photo: Sarah Rice, Special To The Chronicle

The governor, the Democrats and all the politicians in the Bay Area were gesticulating madly in front of the TV cameras, doing everything they could to berate labor and stop the BART strike from reigniting and gaining support. They know that AC Transit workers (who at this writing 8/5 have announced a 72 hour strike notice) and other city, municipal, county and state workers unions are also working while out of contract. The possibility of united strike action by multiple unions at this time could “legally” grow over into a General Strike. The Taft-Hartley restrictions written into law precisely to prevent another Oakland general strike as happened in 1947 are cited by labor leaders whose link to the Democratic party prevents labor from challenging these laws with militant class struggle! These laws were written to prevent class solidarity strike action. It is only by general strike action that we will defeat these laws and regain labors’ strongest weapon–SOLIDARITY STRIKE ACTION!

If labor’s historic strategy was to obey the dictates of the state it would never have won the 8- hour day or organized the industrial unions, forced the government to concede a minimum wage, social security, or end child labor. Labor’s strength can emerge victorious only when our organizations mobilize the membership and the entire working class with the understanding that the capitalists run the government and that it is not neutral, that the state is the tool of the bosses and that labor needs its own political independence and an action strategy to win a fair shake.

Only with this understanding can labor unite with all the unorganized, the precariat, the immigrant communities, the international workers movement and those victimized by racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and anti-Semitic police and vigilante terror in order to initiate united general strike and political strike actions that can secure democratic and economic. The capitalists have their posse, the politicians, the corporate media, the cops, and even their agents in the labor movement who keep us tied to their politics. We need to have a strategy of political independence to win. This means organizing class struggle caucuses in our unions which develop class struggle strategy and tactics to turn our organizations into fighting tools for workers victory.

Labor must have a strategy of defeating Taft-Hartley in the street through united strike action defying government injunctions. This is a strategic, not a tactical decision, one which can only be made when the rank and file assert their dissatisfaction with the long-term losing strategy of class collaboration foisted upon the membership by the entrenched bureaucracies of the major labor federations. To get off this political treadmill workers need their own fighting workers labor party which adopts and carries out a transitional program bridging the immediate concerns of the class to the historical resolution of the major contradictions of class society and all oppression. A party which will stop at nothing to accomplish this and will secure all political power for the working class.

The bosses’ strategy has been sold to the rank and file by the labor aristocracy and the union’s bureaucracies because they, a small percentage of the laboring class, have had their bread buttered by their alliance with capitalism at the expense of the unorganized millions of workers here and the hundreds of millions of workers super-exploited by parasitic Wall Street imperialists “investing” abroad. This grand coalition of labor and capital is enforced through the Democratic Party of President Obama, Governor Brown, Mayors Ed Lee (SF) and Jean Quan (Oak) on the one side and the sellout labor leaders on the other. There was no tactical mistake when the BART workers went back to work without a contract! No, it is the long term strategic collapse of the labor leadership that ill-prepares the class for these battles and which must be removed and replaced for labor to assert its just claims of today and win its historical revolutionary class demands.



* Humanists Workers for Revolutionary Socialism and Labor Black and Brown

Class Struggle in Aotearoa/NZ

Auckland Portworkers (Wharfies) mass rally March 10, 2012

The capitalist system is not working: profits are falling for the capitalist class. Their solution is to make the working class pay for their crisis. They are on the attack, across the world, the working class is under attack. In NZ National-Act support the bosses who are attacking unions and forcing down wages and conditions. National-Act is a government of the bosses. De-unionisation deregulates the labour market and lowers labour costs. They leave NZ a cheap labour country. This is a direct result of competitive pressure on primary industries in the global downturn. We look at the emergence of open class struggle in two key export industries in Aotearoa – Port workers, and Meat workers. There is no parliamentary solution to this all out attack on workers. We need a mass revolutionary party to fight for a Workers Government and a socialist planned economy!

Port workers struggles

he fight between shipowners, port owners and wharfies (portworkers) in Aotearoa is about driving down shipping costs to restore profits to the monopoly shipping lines. It is little surprise then that Ports of Auckland backed by the new right NACT regime came out in 2011 hell-bent on smashing the Maritime Union of NZ (MUNZ) the union covering wharfies, to drive down wages by contracting out jobs.

The board members of the ports of Auckland were picked as part of the restructure of Auckland in the invention of a Supercity. Where the elected Auckland Regional Council had run the port and used profits to subsidise public transport developments, the new board was hand-picked by Rodney Hide on behalf of global finance capitalism. The port was set up as Ports of Auckland Ltd (POAL), prepared for privatisation. It is ready for the next right-wing dominated council to privatise.

Already the Ports of Auckland have contracted out work. They set up Conlinxx as a 70% POAL owned contractor that drives shuttles moves containers between ports and the “Wiri inland port”. The other (30%) player in this is NZL, a Tauranga based capitalist logistics contractor. This is a part privatisation at the port. Other private contractors getting in behind the gates are Spotless and Labour hire companies.

National-Act attacks on the working class continue to create unemployment and at the same time they harass the unemployed into accepting any job at low wages. Marx described the unemployed as a reserve-army of labour: A part of the working class that is ready for work. Unless the union movement starts to protect the unemployed – the capitalist class will continue to use the unemployed as scabs in fights with organised unions.

As a direct result of the POAL dispute the NACT regime is writing new labour laws which support the bosses walking away from negotiations and screwing the working class and dumping unions completely. The new legislation will allow bosses to lockout workers and replace them legally to smash the unions.

The Labour Party plays it “safe”: Neither for nor against the wharfies. Auckland Mayor Len Brown and Opposition leader David Shearer don’t want to takes sides in a class war. They play the roles the capitalist class allows them – and are proven to be ineffective for workers needs in this fight.

While the current situation has reached a stalemate and no further contracting out is happening, workers have lost wages during the recent strikes and lockouts, and are now subject to total video surveillance on the job. Unless the union learns the lessons of its failure to mobilise the wider working class support to shut down the port, it is only a matter of time before the next round of attacks under the new labour law ‘reforms’ take place.

Break the labour law!  

Those labour supporters and union leaders who continue to think these attacks are just “rogue’ employers and possible to control those “bad faith” employers with “good laws” are foolish. Capitalist crisis is the underlying cause of these attacks on the working class as the capitalist class tries to restore their profits at the expense of the working class. Parliament will not tame capitalism. Only the working class taking control of ALL the workplaces internationally can end this crisis ridden system and build an economy planned to meet the needs.

The existing union leadership continues to follow the legal road when the capitalist state has them legally cornered. To break the law would jeopardise their role as the agents of capital in the unions. Under capitalist law unions are tamed: Real pickets (that shutdown the workplace) or “illegal” strikes risk financial penalties on unions and their officials. That is the way the capitalist state has neutered the official unions. We have to look back to unions who refused to operate under the bosses laws, for an example of unions who refused to be tied down by the capitalist laws: the Red Feds. Workers need unions since they give us the opportunity to organise collectively, but we also need maximum independence from the capitalist class.

There are two areas of rank and file struggle when unions have been tamed. We fight within the unions, to raise demands for the needs of workers to be met – and run into the limits of unions working within the system. So that we can be as organised as possible, and so every worker learns that unions are limited by capitalism within capitalism. We fight outside the union –as a party we aim to organise the wider working class. For example the occupy movement in California demonstrated how it could unite with rank and file unionists to shut down West Coast ports even for a few hours.

Further, the dispute at Longview proved that non-unionised workers in Occupy could join forces with the ILWU rank and file shut down the port to force the employers to negotiate a truce (agreement) with the union. In the process the union officials are exposed as doing deals to keep the lid on a union revolt that also organises non-union workers. Thus we can build a new labour movement uniting organised and un-organised workers by fighting for democratic, fighting unions that break from the bureaucracy and the bourgeois labour laws.

Meat workers struggles

The fight between Meat company bosses and Meat workers is also about casualising labour to drive down wage costs and the price of meat shipped offshore during a global capitalist crisis. NZs competitive advantage in producing meat for export depends on driving down labour costs further than its competitors.

The recent round of attacks on meat workers was started by the CMP (Canterbury Meat Packers part of the ANZCO group) who used a 65 day lockout at its plant in Rangitikei to force a 20% pay cut. ANZCO Foods Ltd, is jointly owned by the directors and managers, Itoham Food Inc and Nippon Suisan Kaisha Ltd. “Sir” Graeme Harrison is the Chairman of the Board and was awarded Wellington businessman of the year.

On 17th November 2011 another 50 NZMWU members from branches across the country converged on the plant as well as members of many other unions, joining the locked out workers in a 200-strong mass picket. Rather than let the scabs confront the reinforced picket the bosses closed the plant down for the day. This was a real picket because it shut down the plant. However the working class needs to be ready to do this for more than one day i.e. indefinitely, until the bosses concede to the needs of the working class.

Talleys – Affco tried the same as ANZCO, locking out the members of the Meat Workers Union at its plants while continuing to run on a scab workforce. Some families were split between those still working and those on picket lines! As we wrote in an earlier issue a picket that cannot stop family members from crossing it is not a picket! The only way for workers to shut down the meat works is for real pickets that stop the scabs.

Because of the weakness of the token pickets it was the Iwi leaders who came to the rescue. Iwi politics became the negotiators after Tainui workers put pressure on iwi leaders to help with negotiations. Contrary to the official union line, it was not working class solidarity but tribal ties to Iwi capitalism that threatened the Talley family to resolve the dispute.
 

Class not ‘family’ solidarity

The two meat workers disputes highlight what is progressive and reactionary in the NZ working class. At Fielding working class solidarity shut down the plant for a day showing that the way forward is the mass picket that defies the labour law. At the Talley plants families were split and the appeal to the Tainui leaders to pressure the Talley family was the result of working class weakness. Pressure by Iwi capitalists on Meat bosses has more to do with the backroom deals between bosses than trade union struggle. It poses the question put to Class Struggle by one Tainui worker after the settlement; why do we need unions?

Under the impact of the global crisis, NZ is reverting back to the extractive colony of the late 19th century when its role in the world economy was to provide raw materials for the mother countries. This trend will be reinforced by the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement that will re-colonise NZ. The only resistance that will succeed against global capitalism will be a mass movement of workers and poor farmers united across the whole Pacific to prevent the exploitation of raw materials and land in what is a rip, shit, bust process of recolonisation. Today this struggle cannot be won by indigenous struggles such as that of Maori nationalism. Maori are now divided along class lines with Iwi bosses voting for privatisation of assets, while the vast majority of Maori are at the bottom of the working class. We need to unite along class lines nationally and internationally across the whole Pacific to take back and take control of the resources we need to survive.

· We need to prepare for Strikes, Occupations and Workers Control!

· Mass pickets to defend the jobs, and protect union workers! Mass pickets to shut down workplaces!

· Occupy against the 1%, workers control!

· For Occupations and Nationalisations without compensation under workers control!

· For a General Strike to defeat the NACTs and for a mass Workers Party based on the rank and file of the unions!

· For a Workers’ Government and planned socialist economy!

· For a Socialist Aotearoa in a Socialist Asia/Pacific!

From Class Struggle No 100 May-June 2012

FOR AN ALL-OUT STRIKE TO FIGHT UNION-BUSTING!

The Oakland Board of Education is determined to bust the OEA, no matter what it takes, and no matter how much it hurts our children’s education. Through its unprecedented move of abruptly shutting down negotiations and imposing its chosen terms on the teachers, the Board has not only declared war on the union, but also has shown that it is committed to destroying the quality of education for the children of Oakland. The Board is supposed to put our children first. Instead, it has revealed its true role, which is to help carry out the overall effort to cut public education and other social services to the bone.

If the Board succeeds in imposing forced concessions in Oakland , this trend will set the standard across the nation. Once the employer has imposes conditions without a signed contract the union is for all practical purposes busted, and can no longer function as a fighting union! Unless the members stand firm and fight for their contract, the OEA will become a mere shell. Like too many other unions, it will be reduced to the role of a messenger to bring the bad news to its members, with a sad face and the old sorry excuse: “Aw, shucks, that’s the best we could do; we all know times are hard.”

ACROSS THE NATION IT’S THE SAME STORY

The ruling class keeps working class parents and teachers isolated district from district, and many teachers’ union leaders have fallen into the trap, keeping their district in isolation and fighting their battles purely on the local level. We have fallen into the habit of negotiating separately, with all the districts treating education like a local issue. So when each district claims it’s broke, it appears as a local issue and the punditry and media hacks point to declining enrollment, changing demographics, bloated benefit packages, or expensive consultants to reinforce the lie that Oakland’s problems are different from Richmond’s, San Francisco’s, Detroit’s, Washington D.C.’s or Newark’s.

We know better! Our district is not the only place where public education is under attack. Budget cuts, union-busting, and privatization are widespread across the nation, fueled by the aftermath of the worldwide economic crisis. From Oakland and Richmond to New Orleans , Detroit , Chicago , and Rhode Island , public education is under attack, and the unions are being challenged for their very survival.

Local responses to this nationwide situation are popping up across the country; for example, students in New Jersey plan a statewide strike next week. But the crisis of education is not local. The root of the problem goes way deeper than that. From the puppets in the White House all the way down to the local school boards, all the legislators and other government officials are doing the bidding of those who hired them, and they know damn well it’s not the working folk. We are told to seek solutions only from district school boards, local governments, and states. But to be effective and save public education from privatization, each community’s response must be part of a national movement! This strike is not only for our own survival and to save education in Oakland , but is part of the defense of unions and the fight to stop the Democratic Party drive to privatize education across the nation.

We know damn well that if the ruling class wanted our youth educated, working class schools would be flourishing, because they would be getting the quality and quantity of support the military-industrial complex counts on every year. If Obama had any faith in the public school system, his daughters would be attending D.C.’s finest.

But Obama cannot and does not intend to salvage the education system that working class youth depend on. Just like Bush before him, he is acting as the good CEO for imperialism, and putting the needs of US corporations far ahead of the education of working class youth. Posing as a great reformer, he has offered us a new program – RACE FOR THE SLOP – under which chronically underfunded districts in economically destroyed communities try to prove their worthiness to stay alive in a “fair competition” to meet standards set without regard to the special educational needs of young people inner city, poor, and multicultural school districts. Meanwhile, class size rules are being ignored, and the quality of education diminishes, and teachers’ wages are being driven so low that talented, experienced educators are being forced out of their chosen profession.

The recent firing of an entire school staff in Rhode Island was the opening salvo in an attack on public workers the likes of which has not been seen since Obama’s mentor Ronald Reagan destroyed PATCO.

Be clear, brothers and sisters: this president is leading a war against the unions and the working class. As part of this effort, Obama and his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, are leading the drive to destroy public education through privatization of public universities and promotion of charter schools.

The effect of this effort is already starting to show. The UC system is no longer accessible to the average working class student. The chronically starved schools have such high dropout rates that many of our young workers will never be ready for higher education and will remain functionally illiterate. And to put the final nail in their coffin, adult education is being slashed in district after district, giving the most oppressed no way to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”

HOW TO WIN BACK OUR EDUCATION

But we CAN fight back! Teachers, workers, parents, and students are not powerless! Last week, in Orange County , the Capistrano Unified School District had a one-day strike over a 10% pay cut that was respected by two-thirds of the parents and students. In order to call an effective halt to the cuts in public education, however, we will need to do more than hold educational pickets prior to school, visit Sacramento to lobby the paid stooges of the ruling class, and organize day of action protests like those on March 4, Even one-day strikes will not be enough. Unless the ruling class feels the real power of labor through full-on, determined, indefinite strike actions that cut across district and state lines and unite educators, workers, students, and parents, public education will be starved into submission to the privatizing drive.

Even slowing the attacks on working people or winning a decent contract in Oakland will not be possible until workers achieve a much higher level of self-organization and political independence. The Democrats count on the Union leaders to deliver our membership into the often tried and failed political task of supporting another millionaire for the next open office; in our case our unions will push for Jerry Brown and the Democrats as the executioner of choice. To maintain their political control, the Democrats will try to put our movement back to sleep and keep union members from generalizing the fight-back across localities, and from acting politically by running working class candidates under labor’s banner. To fight back effectively, rank-and-file union members must take control back from the current leadership and forge a new, politically independent militant workers’ movement.

To win a fair contract, the OEA will have to take a number of steps: 1) escalate the strike action from one day to an extended strike until demands are met and a contract is signed; 2) break out of localism and link our struggle with that of others across the state and nation who are fighting privatization; 3) work to spark a Bay Area wide, statewide and ultimately nationwide strike for education; and 4) defeat Taft-Hartley and other reactionary anti-labor laws through action, not legislation. As long as our labor leaders accept anti-labor legislation that tells us when we can and cannot strike, labor cannot win Only when the ruling class has its back to the wall because we as workers exert our power on the picket line and in the streets as we unite and smash the anti-labor laws. This is how we will get decent wages, benefits and provide quality education for the youth.  This will also be a big step in breaking with the Democrats and building a fighting labor party.

FIRST STEP: ALL OUT ON APRIL 29!

THEN: TURN THE ONE DAY STRIKE INTO AN ONGOING STRIKE TILL WE WIN!

SMASH TAFT-HARTLEY! STRIKE ACROSS DISTRICT, COUNTY & STATE LINES!

BUILD FOR A GENERAL STRIKE BY ALL TEACHERS AND STUDENTS IN SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES THROUGHOUT THE BAY AREA AND CALIFORNIA !

Humanist Workers for Revolutionary Socialism

www.HumanistsForRevolutionarySocialism.org hw4rs@yahoo.com

April 27, 2010       

No New Viet Nam War in Afghanistan and Pakistan!

Oil Industry Tool Obama Fosters Mass Murder of Pashtuns
and Creates Nearly Two Million Refugees in Swat Valley!
Workers can stop him – and we must!

US imperialism is demanding that the Pakistani government take control of the Swat Valley using whatever military means are necessary, even if that means slaughtering the civilian population in the area. Bringing a halt to the progress of the anti-intervention front, which has advanced to some 60 miles from the capital of Pakistan, is critical to the interests of the US and its allies. They must maintain control over Pakistan in order to permit construction of a planned oil pipeline that will cross Pakistani territory on its way to a new port being built on the Indian Ocean. The crumbling governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan are in desparate need of support from Washington, so they are complying with US demands. The resulting intensification of imperialist intervention in Pakistan also brings to the front long-unresolved issues of agrarian reform, national liberation for the Pashtun, and basic democratic demands of the masses. The resulting conflict has exploded over the Swat Valley.


The arbitrary border between Afghanistan and Pakistan means nothing to the Pashtun, whose tribal lands were long ago bisected by British mandate. In recent days, that border has collapsed, as the former Taliban has morphed from an exclusively Afghani reactionary movement, based on archaic theological concepts, into an anti-interventionist front. The emergent neo-Taliban is the only source the Pashtun people can look to to provide armed resistance to the American-backed governments that have long since abandoned their needs, concerns, and safety. The neo-Taliban has not shed its reactionary character, but in a land without justice or protection, it provides a pole of attraction for the oppressed Pashtun in their efforts to resist the seemingly unending deluge of military intervention from the West. The recent murderous bombardment by the Americans, via their proxy Pakistani army, has only resulted in strengthening the neo-Taliban’s influence among the civilian population.


Only the most cynical and reactionary western observers still believe NATO intervention in this area is truly a battle against “terrorism,” or a fight to bring democracy to those who have been living under the rule of the Taliban. Deeper geopolitical interests are in play. One driving force behind this conflict is the intention of Western oil interests – Unocal, Chevron, and Halliburton – to build a north-to-south Trans-Afghanistan oil pipeline across eastern Afghanistan and through Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. Another is Washington’s need to encircle the emerging capitalist giant China, which if left unchecked will challenge Washington’s dominance as the predominant world imperialist power over the next two decades.


Last week, the respective “Presidents” of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Zardari and Karzai, took orders from Obama to suppress and/or eliminate opponents of the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline. To suit Obama’s view of the “National Security Interests of the US,” those Afghanis and Pakistanis who do not want a Western-controlled pipeline running through their homelands must be pacified, removed, or offered a deal by imperialism. Construction of this pipeline is contractually stipulated to begin next year. Hence the sudden step-up of the slaughter.


Tens of thousands of new Pashtun homeless have been forced onto the roads of Waziristan this week. They are heading for bulging refugee camps that already “house” as many as a million and a half refugees. Meanwhile, police troops roam the roads and camps shooting suspected Islamists, because Zardari is anxious to please the imperialists so as to consolidate their tentative support for his regime.


The “spin” would have us believe that the slaughter is limited to the Swat Valley. Not so. While the Pakistani army wreaks havoc in the Swat Valley, the American army continues to slaughter the peasants of Afghanistan. The number of civilians killed by American airstrikes in Farah Province last week comes to 149, according to the peasants’ own handwritten list of relatives killed in the bombardments. All this shows without a doubt that the Obama regime’s intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan is escalating, accompanied by massive brutality. US imperialism can only maintain its domination through military force. Obama is thus exposed for what he is: just another imperialist politician, who is just as willing as Bush was to escalate the carnage inflicted upon the masses in Afghanistan and Pakistan, if that is what it takes for US imperialism to hold onto its power in the region.


Meanwhile all of Waziristan is subject to air attack by the Pakistani Air Force, which claims to have killed 800 militants as of May 13th. We don’t really know whom they’ve killed, but we do know these bombings are indiscriminate, are killing civilians, and are driving angered residents into the ranks of the neo-Taliban. The overall killing is the combined work of the Pakistani Army and the imperialist army. Here’s why: Predator drones, those robot airplanes with small video-guided missiles, have killed over 700 people this year in the course of eliminating a mere 14 (fourteen!) “Al Qaeda leaders” in Pakistan. The pundits and liberal supporters of the “good war” are stumped to explain the numbers. The casualties are already stressing the Pakistani medical system to the breaking point.


Socialists have no desire to see the reactionary Taliban take power and submit the population to a repressive theocracy. But the defeat of the imperialist forces and their Pakistani proxies will aid the struggles of the workers and the oppressed all over the world. It is our first duty to call for the defeat of our own mighty imperialist forces. We call for a revolutionary struggle to drive imperialism and its local capitalist allies out of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and pave the road to self-determination, peace, and dignity for the Pashtun people. Ultimately, only the socialist revolution, and a socialist federation among Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and the other countries and peoples in this region of the world who are fighting for self-determination, can really resolve the democratic aspirations of the people in the area. For this to happen, the Pakistani working class, in alliance with the peasantry in Pakistan and Afghanistan, must lead the struggle to oust imperialism from the area.


Meanwhile, within the imperialist countries and especially the US, labor must take the lead in the antiwar struggle. Defeat of imperialist warfare is too important to the working class to be entrusted to the traditional liberal/pacifist “peace” movement, which fell silent as soon as the prospect of a Democratic Party presidential victory appeared likely, and has not been heard from to any meaningful degree since Obama took office. Protests led by students and pacifists were not enough to stop the Viet Nam war. To stop this slaughter before many more lives are lost, we need LABOR ACTION NOW, in the streets, on the docks, and at the front lines! Those with the real power to end it through militant direct action include workers in transportation, and the rank and file in uniform.


• Transportation and logistics workers: Organize in your union to “hot cargo” (refuse to handle) munitions and other supplies destined for use in the slaughter of the Pashtun peoples of Afghanistan and Pakistan!


• Soldiers in the U.S. and on overseas bases: Refuse deployment to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan – and all other areas that US imperialism seeks to control!


• Soldiers already deployed: Hold mass meetings to discuss how to refuse criminal orders! Build a “let’s go home” movement that can lead strikes against a criminal war that is killing people who are fighting to defend their countries against imperialist intervention, as well as innocent civilians!


• Workers everywhere: Support these efforts by organizing and leading mass protests demanding immediate, unconditional and total military withdrawal from Afghanistan and Pakistan! Demand the withdrawal of mercenary trainers and covert special operations forces from both Afghanistan and Pakistan! Expose Obama’s “Big Green Lie” and demand abandonment of Big Oil’s pipeline project across Afghanistan and Pakistan! Demand massive aid for the refugees.

Reprinted from Humanists for Socialist Revolution

Call for workers to break the Cosatu alliance with the ANC and SACP

Update 15 April

The brutal attack by the police on the Satawu strikers means that the strike has now become a political strike as the forces of the state have directly intervened to attempt to smash the strike, on behalf of the bosses.

Several of the ANC leaders have, through so called black economic empowerment, become owners of transport companies. They have a direct interest in smashing the strike.

The SACP is playing the leading role in smashing the strike as they run the police ministry on behalf of the capitalists.

We call on all strikers to demand an immediate calling of an extended shopsteward council in all regions, where all unions, social movements and workers organizations are invited. There are many struggles of the social movements and the rest of the working class as well.

We call on all workers who are about to be retrenched to form a committee and to join with the satawu strikers in struggle, also demanding the calling of an extended council of the working class.

The agenda is one point- how to unite the struggles for decent housing for all, the immediate stopping of retrenchments, the strengthening of the strike and defeat of the agenda of the capitalists and their state. Only the working class united in struggle can defeat the attempts of the bosses to make us pay for their crisis.

We call for the Satawu strike committee to take the lead in calling such an extended council of action. If the union and cosatu leadership refuse, we call on the strikers to take control of their unions and federations, through occupation of the union offices, if necessary. Prepare workers self-defence committees against police brutality.

We call on the Satawu strikers and the broader working class to also join the vigil on the 21st April in River Park, Alexandra- your fight is the same as the millions demanding decent houses for all.

Forward to the Satawu strike!

Forward to decent houses for all! Stop the retrenchments!

Expropriate the bosses! They are the crisis- the working class is the solution!

Down with the alliance with the capitalist ANC and SACP!

Workers International Vanguard League condemns the police attacks on striking Satawu workers on Tuesday 14 April 2009. The strikers have legitimate demands especially in the light of high food and transport prices. Their demand is in fact far too low for what the working class needs. The imperialist banks are making the working class pay for their 'crisis' of lower profits by cutting the wages of the working class. Why have the union leaders put such a low demand of 13% and why is there no solidarity being organised by the Cosatu federation? The union leaders are going all out for an election campaign victory of the capitalist ANC while the workers are being smashed. It is high time the workers threw out their leaders, broke the alliance with the capitalist ANC and SACP, and launch a real fight against the capitalists and their lackeys in government. An ANC victory means more shootings on strikers and communities in struggle.

We salute the strikers and the community of Alexandra for their resistance against the capitalist class and their state. It is the same fight. We call for the broader working class to give solidarity to the strikers in every way possible. We call on the broader working class to give solidarity to the community of Alexandra, by also supporting the night vigil at River park on the 21st April and continuing on the day of the elections 22nd April- the demand remains decent housing for all- a vote for any of the parties on the day of the elections is a vote for continued slavery of the working class, is a vote for permanent homelessness and permanent low wages and unemployment.

Shaheed Mahomed, Secretary, Workers International Vanguard League
1st Floor, Community House, 41 Salt River rd., Salt River. South Africa 7925
ph 0822020617 fax 0880214476777
workersinternational@gmail.com web www.workersinternational.org.za

Socialist Fight: No support for these chauvinist, xenophobic strikes

We reprint the leaflet of the British Trotskyist group Socialist Fight opposing the recent strike wave in defence of "British Jobs for British Workers". We publish it in the interests of furthering discussion and debate between our tendencies, though we differ on some aspects of Socialist Fight analysis (see comment below leaflet).

“A trade union led by reactionary fakers organizes a strike against the admission of Negro workers into a certain branch of industry. Shall we support such a shameful strike? Of course not. But let us imagine that the bosses, utilizing the given strike, make an attempt to crush the trade union and to make impossible in general the organized self-defence of the workers. In this case we will defend the trade union as a matter of course in spite of its reactionary leadership.” Trotsky 1939

Socialist Fight (SF) unequivocally opposes the current ‘wildcat’ strikes because they were called on the reactionary basis of ‘British jobs for British workers’ (BJ4BW), it was on this xenophobic basis they were spread, with the assistance of the right wing media and on this basis they were tacitly endorsed by the entire Unite and GMB leaderships. We place the blame for this situation squarely on the backs of the reactionary Labour movement leaders; Gordon Brown and the Labour party leaders for endorsing the reactionary slogan, borrowed from the BNP, the Unite, GMB and other TU leaderships for tacitly endorsing and pursuing negotiations on that basis. A major weight of responsibility also rests on the shoulders of those left groups and organisations, the Communists Party of Britain (CPB), the Socialist Party of England and Wales and others who have acted as left apologists for these bureaucratic misleaders of the working class. When similar demands were made on the French TU leadership they immediately rejected them as reactionary chauvinism and insisted on the demands like ‘we will not pay for the bankers/capitalism’s crisis’.

We reject the compromise of Keith Gibson of the Lindsey strike committee and the SPEW. This does not repudiate the original BJ4BWs demands, which were displayed so openly on the pickets. It is rather a cover for it, hoping we will forget, or close our eyes, to what it is really about. Gibson says that “Stewards and Union Officials asked to meet with IREM a.s.a.p. after Christmas to clarify the proposal i.e. would IREM employ British labour?” Then it explains that the walkout took place when “Shaws’ workforce were told by the Stewards that IREM had stated they would not be employing British labour.” (rb on SU Blog 3 Feb) He admits here that the initial walkout was about the nationality of the workforce, not about wages, conditions or any of the other red herrings he and his apologists have been trying to drag across the trail ever since.

The SP motion, now the property of the strike committee and the mass meeting, but not the property of the Unite leadership – Simpson, Woodley or Jerry Hicks – says “Union controlled registering of unemployed and locally skilled union members, with nominating rights as work becomes available”. That is simply BJ4BWs in another form. We reject the notion that “Union control of hiring is always preferable to the bosses controlling hiring. Enforcing an illegal closed shop would be a massive advance for the working class movement in this country”. On what basis would the union nominate people for jobs? The only issue that may be in question is equal access to jobs, but that is down to the subcontracting system itself, not nationality. When socialist in British trade unions fought discrimination against nationalists in the north of Ireland they were always referred back to the Irish Region (Region 11, Northern Ireland in the case of the TGWU). Here, in the best workers’ traditions, Loyalist craft engineering unions (like we have here), with all the history of privilege and empire loyalty had contempt for other workers and ensured they (nationalists) did not get to join the craft unions and did not get jobs.

Discrimination proceeded swimmingly, all in the name of the best trade union practices, the power of the unions was consolidated and the NI 'troubles' ensued. This ‘union control’ is only a demand for 'local' communalist discrimination; the predecessor of the SPEW in Ireland was quite comfortable with that. And British and Irish based union leaders turned their heads away and pretended they just did not see. In a certain sense this demand is more reactionary than national chauvinism; presumable workers from the south of England, Wales and Scotland, let alone Ireland, would quickly be sent packing by our ‘local’ TU registrar of jobs.

As one comrade said, “But the SPEW states that it is the bosses who are setting one nationality against another. Yes but why play the same game? It is the BNP, say the SPEW, who are attempting to sever fraternal relations between workers from different nations, but the SPEW want union control of a register of locally skilled workers presumably to facilitate local jobs for local people. Some are trying to find socialist gold under this militant dross of nationalism. But that seems like an attempt at alchemy’ (BB). You cannot endorse the strikes and repudiate the aims, they are the same. If you endorse and seek to spread these strikes you are dealing a crippling blow to the British Labour movement.

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Workers Power (WP) and SF are not siding with the Gov/bosses. The line-up is clear. The strikes have the enthusiastic support of the BNP, they have the support of the capitalist media, more enthusiastic the more you move to the right. The TU bureaucracy as a whole who would scarcely lift a finger to fight job losses or pay constraints while countless billions are handed over to bankers almost without conditions are enthusiastic supporters of these illegal but highly reactionary strikes.

The CPB, the SPEW and the TU bureaucracy are supporting it for entirely reactionary reasons. The bosses are 'opposed' because that is in their immediate short tern financial interests, but they are not anything like as opposed as they would be if the plant was occupied, and the right of private property was thereby challenged, as in Waterford Glass. The government are 'opposed' but really not like they would oppose a real workers action, in the long term interests of the class as an international whole, like Gate Gourmet. They are for ‘law and order’ and against ‘trouble’ in general but if they have to have ‘trouble’ they could not get better than this from their point of view. Where are the threats to sequestrate the union funds, where are the high court judges injunctions, where are the brutal police attacks? Where is the class consciousness of those who cannot see the difference? And we reject with contempt those backward workerists who say we are siding with the Tories because Kenneth Clarke made an anti-racist statement criticism of the strikers. Tory anti-racism bad, workers racism good, declare these political idiots.

It was entirely correct of the Campaign against Immigration Controls (CAIC) to picket the Unite HQ and SF endorses the action. The prejudices of localist craft trade unionists would have been easily overcome and the strike orientated in a healthy direction if it had got a lead from the top. But Unite gave them their head. Principled socialists would seek to argue and struggle politically with these workers to explain that workers cannot win in national, let alone local isolation. No, we need a rank-and-file movement in the unions to combat this. It is entirely nonsensical to talk of the form being reactionary and the content being revolutionary as if this was some kind of Marxist dialectic.

These are reactionary strikes for reactionary ends which can only win by driving foreign workers out of the country and setting in train the destruction of the entire working class and its organisations and all their historical gains. Fight them now, fight the reactionary leadership of the class who are responsible for this appalling situation or it will get worse. Do not try to find the silver lining; it is not there. They do mean what they say. If they occupied the plant and forged international solidarity that would be an entirely different strike, with entirely different leaders. To pretend otherwise is to defend the existing leaders and to prepare more defeats. This is differentiating the left in Britain; it goes to the core of class politics. Fight the reaction without reservations and you will find new revolutionists who will come forward to champion the interests of the class as an international whole.

In conclusion we quote from an Italian socialist group, the Communist Workers Party, “Our hope is that the SWP may be physically present in the struggle to denounce what is becoming a falsified reality i.e. that by which Great Britain is being occupied by foreigners, and British workers are being forced out of jobs because of them”.
Yours Ottaviano Scipione, PCL-Partito Comunista dei Lavoratori - Italy (Abruzzi Region)

• Occupy to prevent plant closures and job losses!
• For a comprehensive programme of public works, council house and infrastructure building to overcome unemployment!
• The trade unions must take responsibility for organising the unemployed now, before they fall prey to fascism!
• For a militant ‘no platforming’ of fascists combined with United Front demands on workers leaders to fight capitalism AND fascism!
• No to Popular Fronts compromises with capitalism like the Peoples Charter!
• Make the bosses and the bankers pay for the crisis – not the workers!
• For a rigorous progressive taxation system, comprehensive prevention of tax avoidance scams by transnational companies and the rich and a wealth tax to make the capitalists pay for the crisis!
• For a genuine rank-and-file movement in the trade unions to fight the bureaucratic labour lieutenants of capital who lead today’s trade unions!
• For direct employment by all firms of all labour, end the pernicious system of sub-contracting and agency working!
• For an open conference of all those political groups and individuals who oppose these reactionary strikes!
• Build a revolutionary socialist leadership to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism internationally!

Contact: Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ. Email: Socialist_Fight@yahoo.co.uk

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Socialist Fight sees the workers involved in these strikes as "craft workers" while we would see them as part of the "labour aristocracy" that benefits from the privileges of skilled workers who share in some of the super-profits of British imperialism. Labour aristocrats have history of social imperialism supporting their imperialist ruling class in return for the defence of their privileged jobs. It is the breakdown of this historic partnership as British bosses are looking for cheaper EU and other contractors employing non-British workers that explains why these workers took 'wildcat' action. The role of the 'left' bureaucracy of the Communist Party and Socialist Party is to cover the naked chauvinism of British Jobs for British Workers is part of the international left aligned to the World Social Forum and the Bolivarian revolution that brings together Stalinist, Castroists, Maoists and fake Trotskyists. The role of the 'left' bureaucracy is to use the unions to pressure the bourgeois state to the left rather than call for independent unions, occupations, and the general strike. It is the left leg of the Menshevik International aligned to "socialism in the 21st century" that has abandoned Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism and the "dictatorship of the proletariat".