Aotearoa 2018 - year of the 'waking' left

Yellow Vest protestors facing police repression in France

Bomber on The Daily Blog is a bit premature calling victory for the cops and corporates excluded from next years Gay Pride Parade. https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/12/19/well-well-well-pure-temple-pride-parade-exclusionists-scrap-parade-wheres-action-station-now/

In fact all that will be missing from the Pride Parade will be those who choose to side with the police bosses’ decision to ban police from parading in mufti. That is, all those institutions on the side of the ruling class that put their class collaboration ahead of standing up for young gays still being targeted by the cops.

Who is this ‘woke’ left that Bomber is so keen to excoriate?  It is the ‘left’ that tries to exclude the alt-right from exercising their bourgeois right to free speech and association. It first cropped up when this ‘woke’ left tried to ban visiting Canadian alt right speakers for their ‘hate speech’. But as was pointed out at the time, the experience of the last 100 years since the cops and the fascist guards in Germany killed Luxemburg and Liebknecht,  is that free speech for fascists is equivalent to allowing them the freedom to recruit and build their armed gangs. The ‘hate speech’ of the alt right is designed to justify and rally support for alt right actions which directly attack the rights of workers and migrants.

Liberal Greenwald vs white-supremacist Spencer on de-platforming the alt right

Greenwald expresses the liberal view that the alt right must be heard or else the left will face a backlash. Arch alt rightist Spencer says that de-platforming has set back the growth of the white-supremacist movement in the US.

Why at this particular point in history do we find the alt right mobilising against the left?  Because the severity of the twin crises of economic crash and climate burn gives the ruling classes no choice but to abandon democracy and impose martial or emergency laws to allow the police and military to put down all popular uprisings. So at the very least those who understand this history, need to prepare for these crackdowns by building a working class independent resistance movement.

So to call those who backed the ban on alt right speaking rights, and the Pride ban on police uniforms, the ‘woke’ left is akin to the slurs attached to ‘cisgender’ (biological men and women) and ‘terfs’ (trans exclusionary radical feminists) to label and smear those who oppose the wider, ‘inclusive’ Pride movement from acting as a stool pigeon for the police and spy state, and to attempt to intimidate them from standing up to ruling class bullying.

The ‘woke’ slur has been weaponised as ‘trans exclusionary’, conveniently ignoring the longstanding acceptance and support for transwomen and transmen in the movement, in order to make the ultimatum that ‘cisgender’ people must recognise transgender people as equal to biological sexes, or be cast out of the movement. 

But natural born men and women have been around for millennia, and for at least three thousand years, men have dominated and controlled women in the first form of class society – the patriarchy. For just as long women have resisted gender oppression, but have never been able to remove its roots, which is why this resistance needs to continue until it defeats the patriarchy.

It is this development of class resistance to fascist ‘free speech’ and to corporates dominating Pride that shows us that 2018 is the year of the waking left, not the woke left. The bosses are still the same, spying on democracy to destroy resistance to their terrorist class rule. The alt-right crypto fascists are on the march, using the latest C21st tech to sell their message as ‘free speech’ when its agenda is still to push the nation (xenophobia) Church (moral vacuum) and State (body of armed men) as instruments of ruling class rule. Bolsonaro – ugh!

And the social democrats are now openly liberal capitalist parties when capitalism cannot afford to be liberal. The result is that by posing as the ‘lesser evil’ to fascism, social democracy continues to divide and confuse workers, disorganise their unity and potential power, and thus enable the rise of fascism.

That is why this amorphous ‘woke’ left is in the process of ‘waking’ – developing, excluding, and ‘splitting the left’ – by breaking from liberal capitalism and its crumbling ‘bourgeois democracy’, and radicalising itself as anti-capitalist, anarchist or socialist.

I would say that the woke left is waking – a work in progress in both senses. It has partially penetrated the veils of capitalism, survived the flame wars of social media, seen and felt the causes of inequality – the rich exploiting the poor, women, migrant workers, Maori youth in jail etc.; and cast their vote of no confidence in patriarchy-capitalism-imperialism.

The waking left may not agree on how best to be anti-patriarchy-capitalist-imperialist, and prefer Piketty, Fanon, or Guevara to Marx, but they know that capitalism, including its state forces, is the enemy and that social democracy embedded in the bosses state does not serve the interests of workers. Green capitalism is also part of the problem. So is Pride in capitalism and its agents the cops, banks and corporates, part of the problem.

The two most recent explosions of the waking left are the Yellow Jackets and Extinction Rebellion. These are mainly working class (because workers are 80% of those in the economy!) and representative of all kinds of workers, with a heavy presence of women and youth. What is significant is that this waking left has raised demands refusing to accept austerity, poverty and state repression to pay for capitalism’s crisis. Join that to Extinction Rebellion’s demands that government must take action to reverse climate change, or go and make way for those that will.

In raising these anti-capitalist demands The Yellow Jackets are building a new movement that is breaking from social democracy, and even ‘the system’ (Macron is the bastard neo-liberal child of bankrupt parliamentary ‘socialism’); from the alt right whose attempt to take over the Yellow Vests has been unsuccessful so far; from the union bureaucracy that is trying to appease Macron; and, is proving itself as a class-based uprising prepared to resist the state forces.

To be ‘progressive’ today means to fight the class war on the side of the huge working majority and to convince the waking left that the survival of humanity means ending capitalism and building a post-capitalist society where planning production flows from workers’ democracy. To do this working people all over the world need to unite in solidarity to form workers’ governments everywhere against the desperate attacks by patriarchy-capitalism-imperialism that threaten to starve, drown or burn us all.

Our starting point has to be a mass workers’ socialist party independent of both the bosses and the bosses’ bureaucracy, where workers – employed, unemployed, of all genders, ethnicities, and nationalities – democratically debate a program on how to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a new sustainable society that produces for need and not profit and takes immediate action to reverse climate change.

Brazil: Election Balance Sheet, the Failure of the Left and the need for a Revolutionary Leadership

Mothers against fascist dictatorship

The rise of the extreme right and the election of a Bonapartist figure like Bolsonaro are the result of the aggravation of the crisis of capitalism in Brazil. This signifies the exhaustion of the Workers' Party (PT) and the Popular Front (PF) in their function of pacifying the workers who fight against the attacks of the bourgeoisie and imperialism. Global capitalism, faced with its terminal crisis, resorts to Bonapartism and fascism as a means of getting workers to pay the price of the crisis.

With a populist and conservative discourse, Bolsonaro exploited the discontent of the petty bourgeoisie and the unemployed with the current crisis situation. As a characteristic of Bonapartism, it has placed itself above the parties and institutions that are demoralized and worn out in the eyes of the population. Corruption, the privilege of politicians and bargaining in the spheres of power, as the population suffers from unemployment and falling living conditions, was the main reason for the votes for an "anti-system" candidate. The PT was the party most associated with this system. "Anti-petismo" (anti-PT) was the flag in the election campaign of Bolsonaro and several candidates to the parliament and to the state governments. However, all the major parties that have governed the country since the re-democratization, especially PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party) and PMDB (Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement), suffered with rejection in these elections.

Corruption, privileges of a political oligarchy and attacks on workers. This is the "system" established with the 1988 Constitution and the bourgeois democratic regime. This is what capitalism can give in its imperialist epoch. Obviously, the PT is not responsible for corruption and for this "system" as the bourgeoisie and Lava-Jato want to believe, but the PT entered this system when joining the bourgeoisie to govern the country for more than 13 years. Lula / PT and the so-called "progressive" governments of Latin America rose to power in a moment of world economic growth, boosted by the sale of commodities to China. Far from breaking with capitalism, these governments were able to give crumbs to the workers and poor people while applying neoliberal measures. Far from being "anti-imperialist," these governments lined up and increased their dependence on Chinese imperialism.

Bolsonaro was elected by a great feeling of change and promising to end the corruption, that the population sees as cause of the worsening of the conditions of life. We know that neither the inherent corruption of capitalist relations nor the economic crisis will resolve itself, and it will have to attack the working class hard. The instability generated by the capitalist crisis has already led to the impeachment of Dilma and the unpopular government of Temer who had moments on the tightrope. Bolsonaro is a veteran of the military regime and has announced several military personnel to compose his ministry. Ending the illusion of Bolsonaro's promises, a regime of exception may be the only "change" the bourgeoisie will have to offer.

The biggest challenge of the working class to fight Bolsonaro and fascism is to break with the Popular Front. For what divides the working class is the bourgeoisie. The working class will remain divided as long as the opportunist leadership directs large numbers of workers to join the bourgeoisie and abandon class independence, shifting the struggle to illusions in parliament. Workers need a united front, to organize the class in an independent and democratic way, to assume the traditional methods of direct struggle, the only way to combat fascism and imperialism.

THE PARTIES OF THE LEFT AND THE CAPITULATION TO THE PEOPLE'S FRONT

The PT and a large part of the left are today the greatest defenders of the demoralized bourgeois democratic regime to combat Bolsonaro and the threat of fascism. In the second round of elections, almost all leftist organizations supported the Popular Front (PF) by voting for the PT. Including organizations claiming to be revolutionary, such as PSTU (Unified Workers' Socialist Party), MES (Socialist Left Movement), CST (Socialist Workers' Current) and MRT (Revolutionary Movement of Workers). These false Trotskyists evoked the struggle of the Bolsheviks against Kornilov's fascist coup to justify their support for the Popular Front. Lenin and Trotsky were relentless combatants against the PF. While fighting Kornilov, they called for the One Front precisely to expose the betrayal of the Mensheviks who were part of the provisional government of the PF!

The left abandoned any prospect of struggle for the Brazilian revolution. The main policy of these organizations for the elections, and now after the elections, is the call for the "Broad Front" of the PT to defend (bourgeois) democracy! That is, the only way out for the working class against Bonapartism and fascism would be the alliance with so-called "democratic" or "progressive" sectors of the bourgeoisie.

Guilherme Boulos and the PSOL (Socialism and Liberty Party) leadership capitulate to the PT and have been the major mouthpieces of the populist front politics. With the electoral process polarized between Bolsonaro and the PT, Boulos's candidacy was the true auxiliary line of the PT. Boulos and PSOL spent the year 2017 constructing the "VAMOS" platform on a front with PDT (Democratic Labour Party), PSB (Brazilian Socialist Party) and other bourgeois sectors that they say are "progressive". In the second round he called a vote for the PF, consistent with his defense of bourgeois democracy vs. fascism. The PSOL is a split from the PT and was opposed to its government, but it is a reformist party and, in fact, never was against the policy of popular front. Socialism is a word that does not exist in the vocabulary of Boulos. The program advocated by him and the PSOL leadership on the VAMOS platform is openly reformist, posing as the greatest advocates of "better" capitalism and accusing as divisive and sectarian those defending class independence, the Frente Única and a revolutionary strategy.

The PSTU supported the bourgeoisie's maneuver to overthrow the PT as a "democratic right," and Lava-Jato as a "fight against corruption." For the PSTU, to stand against impeachment was to support the PT and the PF, as there was no threat from the extreme right and fascism in Brazil. In the second round they supported the popular front by calling for a PT vote against the far-right candidate who "defends a dictatorship project for our country", a threat that a few months ago they said did not exist! We warned that the PSTU was only masking its opportunism with sectarianism and its logic would lead to the defense of the PF against fascism. We said that the rise of the extreme right and fascism is fought with class independence and methods of direct struggle of the workers and not with the PF that serves to demobilize the workers and open the way to fascism. We did not support the PT and the PF and were against the impeachment and maneuvers of the bourgeoisie. We are against the narrative of the coup that disarms the working class in the struggle against a real coup and a fascist regime. The PSTU did this disarming denying a fascist threat and then supporting the PF in the elections.

BOLSONARO IN INTERNATIONAL POLICY

The new president defends a policy of alignment with American imperialism. Following the anti-China line of Trump, he says that the Asian country is not investing but rather "buying" Brazil. The editorial of the Chinese government aligned newspaper was considered a warning against some of the new government's plans to cancel deals with China. Bolsonaro's nationalist rhetoric contrasts with his economic team of notables led by economist "Chicago boy" Paulo Guedes who hastily said that business with China is important to the country and will not be affected. Bolsonaro's statements against China were also seen as a risk by businessmen and sectors who fear for their business. While Bolsonaro says he does not understand economics and Paulo Guedes is the one who decides in this area, the other ministries have been filled with conservative and military figures, closer to his far-right politics. Bolsonaro's nationalism cannot go beyond its subordination to imperialism.

The global crisis of capitalism shakes the hegemony of US imperialism established in World War II and stirs up the dispute with the ascendant imperialisms of China and Russia. The actual crisis, of commercial and military wars, affirms Lenin's Marxist theory of imperialism which explains the destructive character of capitalism in the imperialist era, when the world is already divided between the great powers that must go to war to survive. The dispute between the US/EU and China/Russia blocs is an inter-imperialist one in which workers must maintain their class independence and the unity of the workers of the world in the struggle for socialist revolution, the only revolution capable of defeating both imperialist blocs, avoiding their wars and the destruction of the environment.

Much of the left, especially the Stalinists, defend the China/Russia bloc claiming an "anti-imperialist" struggle for a "multipolar" world. We say that this is nothing more than revisionism of a traitorous left. We affirm Marxism and Trotskyism that there was no "progressive" bourgeoisie in the imperialist era and that the democratic demands and independence from imperialism can only be achieved by the workers with the permanent revolution. It is not possible for a semi-colony to become imperialist. China and Russia were able to develop their productive forces with the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, so they returned to the capitalist sphere as imperialist countries. The reactionary national bourgeoisie are unable to develop the productive forces and fear the working class and the revolution more than they fear imperialism.

For the reformist left, Bolsonaro and fascism were fought on the national level, by means of a PF with the "progressive" national bourgeoisie. On the international scene, they are part of a big PF with China and Russia to fight against American imperialism. Defending Chinese and Russian imperialism as an alternative to the US is to take sides in the imperialist dispute and abandon class independence and revolutionary strategy.

THE WORKERS STRUGGLE

Contrary to what the reformists say, the workers and poor people have staged various struggles and resistance. However, these struggles are becoming subordinate to the reformist strategy of struggle within parliament and the PF. Class independence and traditional methods of struggle are boycotted and impeded by the opportunist leaderships of the movement.

With the outbreak of the crisis in 2008 and the announcement of thousands of layoffs in the metallurgical sector, the CUT (Central Única dos Trabalhadores) rushed to defend the PT government and dismantle the resistance, while the main leader of the PSTU metallurgists in São José dos Campos, got on the sound truck with the well-known union bureaucrat Paulinho Da Força, beginning his policy of alliance with the trade union bureaucracy and their bourgeois parties that lasts until today. In the years that followed, teacher strikes spread throughout the country and the need to unify these struggles was diverted by CUT/CNTE into a 3-day general strike in defense of the National Education Plan (PNE) and this diversion was supported by the entire left. The PNE was precisely the neoliberal plan for privatization or outsourcing of education throughout the country! In 2012, the university strike and more than 400,000 federal workers were isolated and demobilized by the CUT/PT with the help of the left, which was said to be opposed to the PT government but was not politically independent of the PT and the union bureaucracy.

In 2013, during the rise of the youth against the increase of bus fares, which led to mass demonstrations and became known as the June Days, again the left that claimed to be the opposition to the government, such as PSTU and PSOL, did not have any independent policy from the PT and many ended up supporting the government and the media by calling the demonstrators "vandals".

The June Days followed with numerous strikes all over the country, some historic, including in Porto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro (RJ), such as Rio’s bus drivers and teachers, in the middle of the "Não Vai Ter Copa". All this movement of resistance of the workers was attacked and boycotted by the central trade unions, CUT and CTB. So did the left that claimed to be opposition to the government, keeping the strikes isolated by category, with economist guidelines and preventing any attempt to include "Não Vai Ter Cup" in the strike agenda, a slogan that was shouted at the assemblies and raised in posters by workers. On the eve of the opening of the World Cup in São Paulo, the leadership of the subway union, led by PSTU and PSOL, ended the strike, and the MTST (Homeless Workers' Movement) leadership ended the occupation of the "People's Cup", two movements that brought the city to a stop.

On the opening day of the World Cup there were marked demonstrations throughout the country. In Porto Alegre, striking municipal workers who had concentrated in the center of the city a month before were diverted to a distant action, in a clear example of the union's leadership isolating the movements. In Sao Paulo, demonstrators were attacked by the police who prevented them from entering the subway and receiving shelter from the transit workers union. The workers' strikes were isolated and defeated, and the youth and some independent movements were left alone in the resistance against the World Cup and the government, resulting in 23 convictions under the Anti-terrorism law approved by Dilma. The true United Front formed in strikes, school occupations, Block of Fights in Porto Alegre or the Fight Forum in Rio were dismantled all over the left.

However, the struggles did not end and 2016 was marked by school occupations by high school students. After Temer's inauguration, the "Out With Temer" movement took to the streets of the cities, and in Porto Alegre there were 50 thousand demonstrators, as well as in São Paulo, Rio and several cities across the country. The demonstrations were all controlled by the PT and its allies and diverted by the strategy of pressuring the government and contesting the bourgeois elections. At that moment, the capitulations to the PT and the PF of the currents that claim to be to the left and in opposition to the PT government were already enormous and the total absence of an alternative policy by these organizations became clearer. The struggles against the Reformation of Secondary Education, the PEC of the Ceiling of the Expenses and Labor Reform of Temer were subordinated to the "unity of action" of the opportunist leaderships in a bureaucratic bloc among the union federations. CSP Conlutas, which emerged as an alternative to the CUT's governing bureaucracy, is today the largest advocate of this unity with the opportunist leadership of the movement. In the metalworkers' union led by CSP Conlutas, while keeping strikes isolated by factories and with an economist agenda, the CSP leaders leave the agenda of the General Strike and Against the Reforms and government attacks in the hands of the trade union bureaucracy and their Popular Front alliances.

The minority movement is another example of struggle and resistance that is also controlled by the opportunist leaderships that lead the working women's movement to subordination to bourgeois feminism. The #EleNao movement, which generated demonstrations throughout the country with thousands of women against Bolsonaro's candidacy and fascism, was channeled into the bourgeois elections and the defense of Haddad’s PT candidacy.

Faced with the deep crisis that the country is going through, it is not only the workers and the poor and oppressed people who show their revolt and indignation. Sectors of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie are also dissatisfied and outraged by the situation. This outrage was capitalized on by the right and extreme right in 2015 in the move that led to Dilma's impeachment. Reactionary sectors are also dissatisfied, leading to "police strikes" generating chaos in the states and getting support from several leftist currents! But the most emblematic movement was the truckers' strike in May, 2018. The indignation of the autonomous truck drivers who cannot keep their livelihood was led by transport entrepreneurs who are also not at all pleased with the high fuel prices. These reactionary sectors also wanted a "solution" to the crisis, but their solution had nothing to do with the interests of the workers, demonstrated by the number of factions in the truckers' strike that called for "Military Intervention Now".

The truck drivers' strike lasted 10 days, causing a supply crisis bringing the country to a stop with great popular support, threatening the already weakened Temer government. All the left came out in support of the "strike," consistent with its policy of unity with "progressive" bourgeois sectors. The CUT was paralyzed in the first week of the strike and after the movement rejected the unions' agreement with the government to end the strike, the CUT then began to mobilize the tankers, the sector it organizes, and to raise the slogan of "against Petrobras' price policy" and “Down With Parente" (the president of the oil company) and there followed 3 days of strike by the trade. The slogan of the CUT / PT became a force in the movement and were picked up by the truck drivers, including the fall of Parente. On the day marked for the strike of the oil tankers, the leadership of the truck drivers' movement ended the strike. The roads that had been taken by trucks on the first day of the oil tankers' strike were totally empty. The oil tankers' strike did not last the 3 days, and was totally demoralized.

Does the fact that the truckers' strike was a movement of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie mean that the workers should not mobilize and strike? No, on the contrary. Popular support for the truckers' strike showed the feeling of indignation of the population, especially the workers and the poorest people and showed the need for an independent movement of the working class. The phrase most heard on the days of the truckers' strike was "have it for everything," it was a great moment for an independent movement of the working class for a General Strike to call on the workers to break with the bourgeois sectors and unite the sectors of workers. The support of the CUT and the call to join in the strike was not a call for class unity, but to unity with bourgeois and petty bourgeois sectors, which left the movement in the hands of the bosses of transport and the bureaucracy of the truckers' unions, inevitably leading to the defeat of the movement.

CONCLUSION

The new government has not yet assumed office and already shows all its fragility. The formation of its team of ministers is surrounded in several controversies of dispute between its allies and Bolsonaro’s party, showing that the "give and take" that it said it would fight continues. Just as the allegations of corruption, which shakes his future minister of the civil house, and in recent days, the denunciations made by the media involving his son who is a deputy, and the undue receipt of money by his wife, while his deputy, General Mourão makes statements saying that Bolsonaro has to explain the origin of the money. Police in the state of Roraima are on strike, the government has announced federal intervention in the state and the truckers who threaten further paralysis.

There is no way out for the workers within capitalism. And to defeat capitalism, class independence and its traditional methods of struggle are required. Workers need to form committees for workplace, study and housing and organize self-defense committees. A true united front is needed that brings together workers and social movements for State and National Congresses, with delegates elected at the base, to discuss a program of struggle for the working class.

• NO TO THE PENSION REFORM AND PRIVATIZATION!
• IN DEFENSE OF PUBLIC SERVANTGS AND THE PUBLIC SERVICE
• NO TO FISCAL ADJUSTMENT!
• FOR THE NATIONALIZATION OF LARGE COMPANIES AND BANKS, WITHOUT INDEMNIFICATION AND UNDER WORKERS CONTROL!
• FOR A REVOLUTIONARY WORKERS PARTY!
• FOR A UNITED FRONT! FOR STATE AND NATIONAL CONGRESSES OF WORKERS, WITH DELEGATES ELECTED FROM THE RANK-AND-FILE AND WITH WORKERS DEMOCRACY!
• FOR THE REVOLUTIONARY GENERAL STRIKE, THAT DEFEATS THE BOURGEOISIE AND INSTALLS A WORKERS GOVERNMENT!
• FOR THE BRAZILIAN REVOLUTION AND A SOCIALIST LATIN AMERICA!

Reblogged from https://grupodetrabalhadoresrevolucionarios.wordpress.com/2018/12/10/balanco-das-eleicoes-a-falencia-da-esquerda-e-a-necessidade-de-uma-direcao-revolucionaria/

Brazil elections: Down with the Popular Front! For class independence in the struggle against imperialism and fascism!

Jair Bolsonaro candidate of the Social Labour Party (PSL) who has a current lead in the polls of approx. 10% over the Workers Party (PT) candidate Fernando Haddad

There are only a few days left before the elections and instability and unpredictability lie not only in the outcome but in the electoral process itself. Most likely the polarization between PSDB and PT of the last 24 years will break when PSDB supporters in the second round must choose between the PT (Workers' Party) candidate and the extreme right represented by Bolsonaro (Social Liberal Party).


The instability of political regimes is a constant in the semi-colonies, like Brazil, exploited and subordinated to the dictates of imperialism. The current economic and social crisis puts in check the bourgeois democratic regime established in the 1988 constitution. The greatest expression of this crisis is the emergence of Bonapartist figures such as Bolsonaro (standing above classes, parties and institutions, supported by middle class discontent and lumpenproletariat, with a racist, macho and homophobic narrative) and in the threat of a real military coup.


The more the crisis of the regime deepens, the more the reformist left proclaims the old formula, bourgeois democracy vs. fascism, defending the alliance with "progressive" sectors of the bourgeoisie, the Popular Front (FP), in defense of the dying bourgeois democratic regime. This formula leads us today to look at the "left", to fight Bolsonaro's Bonapartism, to deal with the Globo network and with the "democratic" sections of the bourgeoisie. The biggest example is the left going along with the PSDB, PDT, etc., in the feminist movement, "against fascism".


Despite the deepening political and social crisis and the unpredictability of the electoral process, the reformist left promising to end the crisis through bourgeois elections has proclaimed its entire "repudiation" of the attack on the far right presidential candidate in defense of the " democracy "and" dialogue ". This attack strengthens the reactionary sectors supported by the racist, sexist and xenophobic narrative, who are also unhappy with the crisis, and their "remedies" are to defend civil war methods against the working class. These sectors are not just present in the elections represented in the Bolsonaro candidacy, they are in the fascist police bands that control the militias in the favelas, they are in the paramilitary groups that defend landowners and kill indigenous leaders, quilombolas and rural workers every day! They are in the bourgeois state and in the torturers of the armed forces that until now are unpunished! They are in groups that have called for "military intervention" for years. The PT, with the narrative of "coup" and the struggle through parliament, disarms the workers for the struggle against fascism and the threat of a real coup.


These "revolutionary" leaderships, for whom the revolution "is not possible," are the opportunists who defend the moribund bourgeois democratic regime and demoralize, demobilize and divert the direct struggle of the single working class with its committees of the rank-and-file and self-defense, from a general strike and a revolutionary insurrection capable of defeating fascism and imperialism and giving the only remedy of interest to the oppressed workers and peoples in the face of the deep global crisis of capitalism. The PT deceived workers that the reactionary 1988 constitution and bourgeois democratic regime could provide a good living for the working class and spent 20 years creating the illusion that a "left" government could change their lives. After 13 years governing with the bourgeoisie, it is linked to the inherent corruption schemes of the capitalist state and is the main supporter of the Popular Front, which is the biggest obstacle to working class independence.


The current global crisis affirms the destructive character of the capitalist system. The rivalry of the decadent American imperialism with the ascendant imperialism of China / Russia is increasing, from commercial wars to the military. Brazil and Latin America are being hit hard by the global crisis of capitalism. They are also the target of the inter-imperialist dispute between the US and China. In Argentina, as in Brazil, workers have been suffering from unemployment, inflation, loss of rights and repression. In Venezuela, the masses endure the country's worst capitalist crisis and workers suffer from hunger, misery and xenophobia in neighboring countries where the search for a better life drives them to migrate. Class independence and unity of the continent's workers is necessary to defeat this destructive system! Latin American workers need to get rid of Castro-Chavism and its opportunist leaderships that advocate oppressive regimes like Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Syria, and an alliance with Russian and Chinese imperialism as "anti-imperialism" and an alternative to American imperialism. These populist leaderships divide the class and put the weight of the crisis on the workers' backs.


The strength of the PT (Workers Party) and the FP (Popular Front), and the capitulation of the leftist currents

PSOL's candidacy with Guilherme Boulos is demoralized, with militants declaring a vote for the PT and for the bourgeois PDT party (Presidential candidate Ciro Gomes) "against fascism", and Boulos appealing to do so in the second round! Boulos and PSOL spent the year 2017 constructing the "Vamos" platform, along with PT and bourgeois parties like PDT and PSB, saying "unite" the left and the "progressive" sectors, "against fascism". Today, the PDT candidacy gains strength postulating the oligarch Ciro Gomes as the "left", and Boulos and the PSOL reap the bitter fruits of their opportunist politics, capitulation and the populist front. These bitter fruits will not disappear after the crisis of these elections and the PSOL runs the risk of not electing important parliamentarians.

The MRT (Revolutionary Movement of Workers) has launched candidates with the PSOL legend. Its main policy is to defend Lula's freedom for a "normal" electoral process, with the "democratic" right of the people to decide who to vote for. A shameful capitulation to the popular front and the rotten bourgeois democratic regime! The MRT policy, which is the brother party of the PTS in Argentina, shows the capitulation of the leftist currents in the FIT to the bourgeois democratic regime, reflected clearly in Brazil where these same currents have brother parties and are unable to unify the struggles, and often even fail to provide solidarity.


In these elections we call a critical vote for the PSTU for not being allied with the bourgeoisie. In a moment of so much pressure for the FP popular front, where bourgeois sectors such as PDT and PSB are placed in the left field, it is fundamental of class consciousness to NOT VOTE FOR THE BOURGEOISIE. But we show that the PSTU program is reformist. Unlike the PT and PSOL that replace the direct struggle of the class with the fight in the parliament, the PSTU substitutes for the union bureaucracy, making alliances with the bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy in the unions and workers' movement. What they call a "unity of action" is actually a bureaucratic popular front bloc.

There is no capitalism without machismo! Working women need their own organizations. They must be in the struggle with their organizations independently, at the forefront of working-class organizations, at the forefront of the revolutionary struggle, the only one capable of defeating fascism. The multi-class bourgeois feminist movement, this great popular front "against fascism", divides the working class, it drives women away from their allies to stand next to their class enemies! Workers need to organize independently and with their traditional methods of struggle, the only way to combat the bourgeoisie and fascism!


It is important that Brazilian workers have no illusions in the capitalist system and bourgeois elections. The Brazilian crisis is part of the global crisis of capitalism that is deepening. Whatever the outcome of the electoral process, the bourgeoisie, imperialism and its agents have nothing for the workers unless they pay for the crisis with unemployment, loss of rights, more taxes, pension reform, privatization, and with increasing repression and fascism. This left populist Front does not fight against imperialism and fascism, it opens the way for it! The deeper the crisis and the instability, the more the false left proclaims the Popular Front as the "struggle" against fascism, and multiplies pressure for alliances with the "progressive" bourgeoisie. The FP is the biggest barrier to the necessary class independence of the workers. Left-wing currents who say they are revolutionary must break with this reformist policy and capitulation to FP. Brazilian workers need class independence, which prioritises the traditional methods of working class struggle, organization of workers' committees and self-defense, pickets and general strike, to fight against the bourgeoisie and all imperialist powers, overthrowing the bourgeois state and building socialism. It is urgent to build a revolutionary leadership!

Translated from the original Portuguese 

https://grupodetrabalhadoresrevolucionarios.wordpress.com/2018/09/26/abaixo-a-frente-popular-pela-independencia-de-classe-na-luta-contra-o-imperialismo-e-o-fascismo/

Zimbabwe: Revolutionary Workers Group statement on Dismissal of Nurses

GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF NURSES! REINSTATE ALL FIRED NURSES NOW! ALL GOVERNMENT WORKERS STRIKE! FORWARD TO A GENERAL STRIKE!

Yesterday, the eve of the independence celebrations, the government through the Vice President and former army general announced the dismissal of all striking nurses. In an opaque statement the government tried to shift the blame to the workers who are justly and legally fighting for their rights. The main reason for the dismissal was that the government view the action as political hence the measures.

The nurses have been on strike for about a week now demanding better working conditions, payment of overdue allowances and a review of their salaries and all legal procedures relating to the strike were followed. The real reason for the dismissal is to instill fear in other civil servants especially teachers who are set to strike when schools open on May. In essence this is the logic of class warfare which must be met with equal force.

The post Mugabe military based coup government is intent on attacking workers to lay the basis for renewed investor confidence and protection of the interests of capitalists. They want to send a clear message that indeed Zimbabwe is open for business and they can guarantee massive profits for their masters. In contrast to the workers and poor masses living from hand to mouth, the bosses and their surrogates are living large and can afford to charter planes for routine medical checkups whilst the masses die due to lack of medicine, proper facilities and money.

The Revolutionary Workers Group of Zimbabwe (RWG-Z) salutes the gallant nurses who are fighting a class war on behalf of other workers in government and generally against austerity and slave conditions. We salute the nurses union for remaining resolute in the face of such attacks and also support the call by the main trade union federation for a general strike. The nurses must be defended. We call on all nurses not to bow down to this intimidation and instead intensify the strike. Workers should support the picket lines to stop scab labour. All government workers must down tools in support of the nurses and send a clear message to the government. A general strike is now a must if the working class is to survive.

We further call for:

• The immediate and unconditional reinstatement of all dismissed nurses!
• An all-out strike and solidarity action to defeat the government!
• Payment of all outstanding allowances and timely payment of allowances!
• The opening of all books of the medical services for public view!
• A living Wage! Workers fight for a living wage and better working conditions through mass action controlled by ordinary workers!
• Against the ever rising prices and inflation we demand a sliding scale of wages!
• Against unemployment and destitution we demand a sliding scale of working hours to provide decent jobs for all through massive public works programs to provide housing, education and medical care for all!
• Organise the unorganised! Form unions of the unemployed as fully affiliated unions!
• Workers take back your unions!
• Militant workers to form class struggle caucuses in the unions to fight for this program!
• The government must stop the attack on the vendors!
• Workers to form strike committees to lead the resistance to the growing attacks on the wages and working conditions of the poor and the livelihood of the majority poor!
• Workers to form workers defence guards for defence against state violence!
• A national strike committee to organise and plan for a general strike!
• For a workers government on the basis of the armed people to implement decisions that benefit the workers and the poor!
• Nationalisation of all companies without indemnification to the big shareholders under workers control!
• Land to be distributed to all poor peasants together with a state bank to provide inputs to all small farmers!
• A workers state that defends workers, peasants and the poor masses against the local and foreign capitalists!
• An African socialist revolution as part of the international revolution that alone can guarantee a better life for all!
• A new WORLD PARTY of socialist revolution based on the TRANSITIONAL PROGRAM of 1938 to lead the revolution to end capitalism and open the road to socialism!

Revolutionary Workers Group of Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe section of the Liaison Committee of Communists)
18 April 2018
Harare

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".

Smash the TPP! For a Workers’ Government!

Aotearoa/NZ is a semi-colony that has been undergoing re-colonisation for years . This is how imperialists behave. Semi-colonies are ostensibly ‘independent’ but remain economically dependent. NZ has a long history of dependence which it moderated in the 1930s by a policy of economic nationalism. Deregulation by the Fourth Labour Government removed some of the barriers to free trade and NZ dropped most of its subsidies and tariffs. NZ became the US Deputy Dog in the South Pacific.

But that is not enough for US imperialism facing an historic decline rooted in a stagnating economy. It needs open access to trade and to investment to boost profits and increase market share to compete with its No 1 rival China. When Obama says the US not China must write the new trade laws, he really means that US monopoly capital wants to extend private property rights globally over all new ideas and technologies to exclude its big rival. This will subordinate all the partners of the TPP to the rule of US monopolies. This means reducing the NZ state to a neo-colonial puppet of the US. At stake is not only who governs NZ in whose interests but the fate of humanity.

Against US imperialist rule in the Pacific we are for the Socialist United States of the Pacific!
 
What’s wrong with the TPP?

Why does it need to be smashed? US imperialism is setting the rules to stop China setting them and at the expense of workers in the Pacific Rim countries. New Zealand is a semi-colony. Its economy is dominated by a few big imperialist powers – US, China, Britain and Japan. But in the last 30 years it is being recolonised as these big powers have exerted direct control of the NZ state.

The 4th Labour Government began the process. NZ dropped its economic nationalism and opened itself to the global monopolies. Removing import protection allowed the big powers to muscle into the economy. But their drive to own and control the NZ economy was still impeded so long as a sovereign state could impose any barriers to the monopolies freedom to invest in and take super profits out of NZ. These barriers to naked neo-liberalism became critical when China’s rise began to undercut US dominance of the Asia Pacific region. To survive the US has to impose its complete economic and political dominance of the Pacific.

The TPP posing as a free trade pact actually trades off NZs remaining national sovereignty for tiny gains in market access for exports. The TPP reduces national sovereignty to a total fiction and will convert NZ into an outright neo-colony. Just like Warner Bros imposed its own labour conditions on NZ film workers in the Hobbit movies, US monopolies will be free to buy up NZ assets and dictate labour conditions to pump out super-profits at the expense of the working people of NZ.

To guarantee this freedom to super-exploit us, the US will tighten its military and surveillance control of politics and culture to extend its war on ‘terror’ to all of us who resist its hegemonic rule. Serco is blatant example of the global world order that enables US corporates to take over state functions from jails to social welfare to divide and rule the regions workers. 

Social Democracy

Will any future capitalist government oppose the TPP or have the guts to repudiate it? No. They will say they cannot because of the terms of the TPP which legally binds the signatories! Little has ducked and dived over what to support and what not to support when Labour should have committed itself to condemning it. Why not?

The NZ Labour Party was founded as an anti-strike party in 1916. It promoted a hysterical hatred of the SU and painted all ideas of communism as evil. It was created to divert workers from class struggle like the general strike of 1913, and to go to war on behalf of the Empire to save capitalism from the threat of communism. The Labour Party was born out of the labour bureaucracy, the petty bourgeois layer of privileged workers who were paid by the bosses to con workers into believing that capitalism could be reformed. But reforms always put profits before workers. Labour’s WW2 anti-strike legislation and the 1984 neo-liberal Labour Government was proof it that.

The problem is that there is no parliamentary "winning strategy" in a tiny semi-colonial country where foreign capital dictates state policy. A Labour-Green-Mana-NZF etc. government would not 'flout' the TPP because they are capitalist parties that observe the rule of law, the rights of private property (even when concentrated in a few monopolies worldwide), and would not dare to advocate repudiating the debt and re/nationalising the key sectors of the economy.

Labour fakers like Chris Trotter blinded like possums in the twin headlights of US and Chinese imperialism try to rescue defunct Social Democracy as our saviour from the neo-liberal ‘deep state’. This argument is a variation on the right wing conspiracy theory that provides an alibi for the failure of bourgeois democracy. We have news for Trotter; bourgeois democracy is part of that ‘deep state’. It is the democratic face of the dictatorship of capital.

That is why it is useless to continue to sow illusions in parliamentary democracy to reform and regulate trade and investment. Gordon Campbell, Jane Kelsey etc., all focus on defending legal mechanisms and state regulation to challenge US global hegemony such as in the Investor State Disputes. Campbell points to the invasion of US corporates such as Serco in privatising provision of state services. Any further erosion of state regulation under the TPPA will make worse the already dismal regulatory regime, as in the lax border biosecurity. The question then is: how can resistance to the TPPA break out of the trap of bourgeois democracy and take to the streets as a mass movement?

Radical Activism

Trades Unions and Social Movements that are designed to pressure parliament are inherently conservative. Strikes and protests are co-opted into the parliamentary talkshop. This conservatism results from the ideology of bourgeois democracy and the official leadership of the labour movement that can only lead workers to defeat. 30 years after the neo-liberal counterrevolution began parliament has been bypassed by the Bonapartist Prime Minister who as the ‘money man’ personifies financed capital. For radical activism to advance it has to get out of the parliamentary dead end and organised the power of labour –to strike, occupy, and build a genuine working class party that mobilises outside parliament to build mass working class support for a Workers’ Government.

There is potential in the unions and the anti-TPP resistance to take on the state by organising the working class majority in NZ. For example, “Doctors for Healthy Trade” have broken with their conservative profession to speak up about the impact of the TPP on the cost of drugs. The PSA in the health sector in Auckland are fighting cuts in their penal rates from double time to time-and-a-half. Right across the social spectrum the cuts in social spending and attacks on labour relations of the NACTs will become much worse under the TPP. The job of the unions is to step up their opposition to political strike action that breaks the ERA legal limits to strikes and exposes the political leaders who stand in the way of strike action. The advocacy for jobs, wages, health, education, housing, social welfare etc., needs to build towards ‘one big union’ and a national strike coordinated with national strikes in other countries as an international strike to defeat the TPP.

Marxists argue that the limit to the radical activism of trade unions and protest movements is the ideology of bourgeois democracy. They are trapped in the fetishized forms of capitalism that blames crises on the ‘abuse’ of power by the 1%. Reforming this ‘abuse’ is the objective of whistleblowers and hacktivists like Assange and Snowden. But this ‘abuse’ is not an aberration. It is endemic in capitalism struggling to survive. All the evidence is piling up that capitalism is driven by the worsening global crisis to attack and destroy all the historic gains won by workers over centuries and to the point of also destroying the ecosphere. Radicals must be convinced that capitalism can no longer be reformed but must be overthrown to save humanity and nature!

This means proving to radicals that the only way to fight the TPP is social revolution. The TPP is designed to abolish all national barriers to US monopoly capital. Logically, capital without borders must be fought by workers without borders. We won’t stop the TPP in our parliament because the NACTs have already signed away parliament’s sovereignty and the Labour Party is too gutless to stand up to US and Chinese imperialism to defend the interests of NZ workers. Opposition to the TPP demands the building of international social movements capable of mobilising mass working class power against US and Chinese imperialism. We have to fight all imperialist domination of NZ and refuse to become missile fodder for the US in a war against China. It’s not enough to ‘Keep NZ Nuclear Free’ we have to be ‘For a Nuclear Free Pacific’! But to achieve all this we will need a Workers’ Government that can socialise all the strategic sectors of the economy expropriating both big national as well as foreign capital! 

Marxist Revolution 

To recap, liberals are opposed to the working class joining forces with workers in other countries. They belong to a middle class that benefits from defending the nation state on behalf of capitalism. Radicals have to break out of this liberal trap and return to their historic militancy in staunchly resisting the bosses’ attacks. In fact the workers’ biggest fights in NZ history were international fights. In the period between the 1880s and the 1920s the struggle to unionise and to strike for basic gains were led by internationalists. The 1891 Maritime Strike was in solidarity with Australian workers. The Red Fed was led by recent migrants and many workers who shifted between jobs in NZ, Australia and the US, and were inspired by the IWW (Wobblies) militant struggles. Opposition to the war was led by those who united NZ workers with foreign workers to oppose an imperialist war that divided workers along national lines to kill one another for the profits of the bosses.

But working class opposition to world war was drowned in blood. The radicals and ‘socialists’ did not rise up en masse and mutiny against their imperialist bosses who drove them to the slaughter of the trenches to defend their profits. The Russian Bolsheviks overthrew the ruling class but elsewhere there were no mass Marxist parties capable of giving revolutionary leadership to the armed masses. Without a Marxist international to organise and guide their militancy, the radical masses remained trapped by reactionary bourgeois governments led by treacherous social democrats. Today, to avoid being dragged into World War 3 the spontaneous mass resistance that is breaking out around the world desperately needs a Marxist internationalist party and program that is capable of leading the masses to take power, to put Workers’ Governments in place, and build a world socialist society.

Like Greece today, there is no electoral way to stop NZ’s neo-colonial fate. We can no more legislate to stop the dominance of US and Chinese capital in NZ than we can stop the war in Syria. That rests in the hands of its working people backed by internationalist workers. The global recession we are in will soon become a depression and the trade wars between the US and Russia/China block of imperialist powers are becoming hot wars. Workers of Aotearoa must unite their tiny forces with the massive forces of China, the US and the rest of the world.

The only answer to the TPP as with all imperialist policy that reduces its "partners" to no more than flunkeys (Japan and Australia included) is the rebellion of the workers in these countries, united with the workers in the US and Japan, to throw out all capitalist governments and replace them with governments that represent the interests of the working masses to prevent the destruction of civilisation and nature.

Against monopoly capital’s TPPA we need a Pan Pacific labour United Front!
Build an international strike against the TPPA! 
For a World Party of Socialist Revolution!
For a Workers Government that implements a socialist program!
For a Socialist United States of the Pacific!


A Class Struggle Leaflet published by the Communist Workers Group (Aotearoa/NZ), member of the Liaison Committee of Communists. Mobile 064 0252800080 http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/