Brazil: the Crisis and the Fight Against Reformism

The instability of the bourgeois democratic regime in Brazil has deepened since the impeachment of Dilma in 2016. The Brazilian institutions have their structures eroded on display. Saving democracy, including bourgeois democratic rights, is only possible through the direct struggle of the working class with its traditional methods of struggle. Replacing the direct class struggle with parliament and bourgeois institutions as the PT and the reformist left does, or replacing it with union bureaucracy as do centrist parties like the PSTU, is the historical betrayal of reformism and the main cause of the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the working class.

The traditional right that led to Dilma's impeachment with maneuvers inside the bourgeois democratic regime, claiming that the cause of the crisis was the PT, which would be resolved with its departure, did not see the return to “normality” that was expected in the 2018 elections. The 2018 elections, with Bolsonaro's rise to power as a representative of the extreme right in the country, broke the 25-year polarization between PT and the traditional right represented by the PSDB.

After Dilma's fall, the government of her vice-president Temer was a government on a tightrope for 2.5 years. Its main moments of tension were the leaking of corruption cases carried out by the same Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash investigation) that had overthrown Dilma. Temer faced a truckers strike that paralyzed the country and a general strike called by the union bureaucracy but with workers' support.

Bolsonaro today fails to impose a Bonapartist government, that is, to put himself “above the classes” and “appease” the country. On the contrary, it advances through fascism, relying on the ruined petty bourgeoisie and the most backward elements of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, as shown by the video of the ministerial meeting published in the media. But the meeting also shows that Bolsonaro's radical line is not shared in the government. Most faithful to him are his ministers called by the press the “ideological wing”, the minister of the environment, education, human rights and the economy. Another wing is that of the military ministers and Vice President General Mourão. The “technical wing”, which after Mandetta and Moro left, practically no longer exists.

The Brazilian bourgeoisie is clearly divided and in dispute. The sector linked to the Lava Jato, Globo, the judiciary sector, the congress, Moro, etc., attack Bolsonaro hard. There are daily reports of corruption, actions by the Supreme Court (Federal Supreme Court), Lava Jato and PF (Federal Police) against the president and his children, and attacks on the government in the media. The dissemination of the video of the ministerial meeting is the result of one of these actions.

At the meeting, Bolsonaro, speaking of the economic crisis ahead of him, states it is a "disgrace", predicts a situation of "unemployment, chaos and social disorder" and warns the ministers of "(political) concerns that everyone must have". The minister of education spoke of arresting the ministers of the STF (Supreme Federal Court); the environment minister to take advantage of the media distraction with the pandemic to take steps to facilitate deforestation in the Amazon; Damares, minister of human rights, spoke of arresting governors and mayors; and Guedes, from the economy, of privatizing public banks.

The video was released in an investigation by the Supreme Court (STF) of allegations of Bolsonaro's interference with the Federal Police (PF) made by Moro when he left the government. Bolsonaro's response was to show once and for all that he is in charge of the PF, since days after the video was released, the PF carried out an operation against corruption investigating the governor of RJ (Rio de Janeiro), Witsel, who is part of the right-wing opposition to Bolsonaro. The governor, who was formerly a supporter of Bolsonaro and flew over the favelas by helicopter firing shots at the communities, now went on television to rage against the action of the PF and in defense of “democracy”.

Witsel cannot be our “spokesman” for democracy! Neither the Globo network, nor Moro, Morão, army generals, Maia or Lava-jato and other “democratic” and “progressive” bourgeois sectors! It is not only the Bolsonaro government that is in crisis, it is a crisis of the Brazilian bourgeois democratic regime, of the reactionary 1988 constitution and its institutions. 

We live in a moment of capitalism's terminal crisis, with the intensification of the inter-imperialist dispute between USA and China that leads us to war, and further accelerated by the pandemic. The crisis of the regime in Brazil only exposes the semi-colonial character of the country, which historically has been dependent and oppressed by American imperialism and today is squeezed between the inter-imperialist dispute between the USA and China. As we said in our ILTT (International Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency) statement:

“The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fragility of Bolsonaro’s ability to rule Brazil in the interests of the US fraction only. He does not have majority support and has backed off much of his radical slash and burn of the welfare system and privatisation of state-owned corporations. But his crazy “little flu” stand on the pandemic has put him offside not only with most people, but with most of the state governors who are imposing lockdowns, and many bourgeois and military figures. This compounded crisis has disqualified Bolsonaro ruling as a Bonaparte, strutting above the classes and claiming to represent the people. Now he is a buffoon whose power has been quietly transferred to the army command which will try to find a new candidate to fill the vacancy for a Bonapartist figurehead.

For the ILTT, the bankruptcy and instability of the Brazilian ruling class is evidence that semi-colonial capitalism cannot solve the terminal crisis of capitalism. Only the revolutionary working class can solve this crisis by overthrowing capitalism and building a socialist world.”

Revolutionaries do not fight for democratic rights by defending this rotten and reactionary regime. The war that we have witnessed between the sectors of the bourgeoisie, with both sides using the state institutions to attack each other, shows that with the current regime the bourgeoisie is unable to contain social and political instability in the face of the greatest economic crisis in history. This explains the growth of Bonapartism and fascism as a necessary method for the bourgeoisie to contain social upheavals and the workers' struggle.

It is already clear that the right-wing opposition headed by Lava Jato, Globo, Moro, STF and sectors of the FFAA (Brazilian Armed Forces) want “Fora Bolsonaro” (Out with Bosonaro). Bolsonaro's impeachment today is openly defended by various sectors of the right, with more than 30 requests filed in the Chamber of Deputies. At a time when the bourgeois democratic regime is barely standing, can the country endure yet another impeachment? Ultimately the issue will be resolved by the military, with whom this bourgeois sector has no problem joining in order to guarantee "stability" and "democracy".

Impeachment is also the defended by most the left, PT, PSOL and PSTU that seem at least to have reached an agreement on “Fora Bolsonaro”. The totality of the left today, from the right wing to the ultra left, debates and writes polemics about the way out of the crisis within the bourgeois democratic regime. What everyone agrees on is that “revolution is not possible”. The debate broadcast over the internet between PSTU, MES and MRT is an example of this.

The PSTU is keen to emphasize that Fora Bolsonaro alone is not enough, Fora Mourão is also necessary, so the solution is “general elections now”. The MRT, which agrees that a revolutionary exit is not possible, says that new elections do not challenge the regime and that the exit should be the Constituent Assembly (AC). These controversies were no different during the crises in the Temer government, in which PSTU opposed the PT over “general elections” while the PT defended elections for president only. The MRT, on the other hand, once again represented the left flank of reformism trying to save the regime with a new AC.

Why should we defend a bourgeois democratic regime that collapses, at a time of greatest economic crisis in history, in the midst of a pandemic, in which imperialisms threaten war and the bourgeoisie has no other choice but to attack the working class harshly to pay the price of the crisis? The working class defends its rights, including bourgeois democratic rights, with its direct struggle, the general strike, occupation, pickets, self-defense and workplace committees.

There has never been a reason for the class to stop “going to the streets”, that is, fighting for their rights. Even more in the face of a huge crisis of capitalism, attacks and withdrawals of rights and the pandemic. A general strike is necessary for workers to take control of measures to fight the pandemic in their hands, deciding who will work, with what security, what will be produced. The bourgeoisie has always been clear that it did not intend to contain the pandemic, but only to delay it so that we die little by little, without promoting chaos in the health system.

The general strike is needed to defend jobs and wages and to preserve rights. It takes organization and class independence, with the formation of local and national workers' committees, occupation of factories and hospitals. Self-defense committees against rising fascism are urgently needed. The reformist left, which is at home and uses the pandemic as an excuse for its betrayal, will soon have to return with its fanfare of “demonstrations”, which in fact has the purpose of containing the struggles, especially at the moment when more demonstrations, protests and the spontaneous resistance of workers increase.

We defend lockdown as a necessary principle to contain the pandemic. But the bourgeoisie “lockdown” is on the one hand to save capitalism itself, and on the other hand to repress and contain the working class. Only workers can guarantee the necessary social isolation to contain the pandemic. That is why the “lockdown now”, without class character, called by the PSTU as a necessary stage, defends the lockdown of the hypocritical bourgeoisie. The world bourgeoisie has understood that repression and authoritarianism is the best way to “fight” the pandemic.

We are seeing the lockdown of the bourgeoisie in countries like India, Kenya and South Africa, in which dozens of workers were killed by the police for “breaking the quarantine” while having to be locked up at home starving! That is why hypocritical, bourgeois and petty bourgeois speeches that the left makes, such as "saving lives before the economy", lead to the support of people like Bolsonaro, who claims to be very concerned that the people have no work. That is why the social isolation necessary to contain the pandemic must be taken into the hands of workers.

The right-wing opposition to Bolsonaro, in the Lava Jato bloc, Globo, STF, etc., are not concerned with containing the pandemic, and the opening of the economy during the increase in cases affirms this. Their concern for the economy is to maintain the profits of the bourgeoisie. Despite the dispute with the government, they support measures to reduce wages, a rescue package for bankers and attack public servants. Much less are they concerned with "democracy".

The Broad Front that PT and organizations like Frente Povo sem Medo participate in alongside center-left bourgeois parties like PDT, PSB to “contain fascism”, is a betrayal. The Popular Front (FP) does not fight fascism, on the contrary, it opens the way for fascism. It serves to contain the direct action of the class and divert the struggle into parliament and the regime, allying itself with sectors of the “democratic” bourgeoisie in a FP, the reformist left divides the class and ends workers' independence, which is the only force capable of containing fascism.

Workers need to break with their opportunistic leaders and union bureaucracy. That is why we need the united front (FU), which brings together the grassroots workers as well as their leadership. The bloc of the union centrals, of which CSP Conlutas is the driving force, is not a FU, because it is based on agreements between unions and political currents, without the participation of the base, which is only called in the days of “demonstrations”. That is, it is a bureaucratic bloc, the result of the opportunistic policy of the PSTU, which replaces the class with union bureaucracy. CUT, Conlutas, Intersindical, must make the FU by mobilizing workers to build workplace and self-defence committees, and the political general strike to defend rights, wages, pandemic control, towards the seizure of power and workers' government.

The PSTU, as a centrist party, is slipping towards ultra leftism. We saw this in Dilma's impeachment process. The PSTU did not fight against the maneuver of the bourgeoisie, stating it would not defend the Popular Front (FP) government. Currents such as the MES (PSOL) openly supported the actions of the bourgeoisie of Lava Jato as a defense of “democracy” and “justice” (bourgeois, of course). Now it defends justice and the PF against "the 2 sides", strengthening security actions and institutions supported by laws such as the Anti-Terrorism Law, which ultimately is used against workers.

The PSTU and many ultra-left currents denied the rise of fascism and the ultra-right and supported impeachment as something "progressive", because the workers were "breaking" with the PT. To deny the rise of fascism to justify that it would not fight against the maneuvers of the right because that would be to support the FP, shows that the ultra-left face does not differ in any way from opportunism when it supports the FP against fascism.

Once again, the struggle against the rise of Bonapartism and Fascism should be carried out by the independent workers with their traditional methods of struggle. And without any support to the PT FP government. The PT administered the bourgeois state, unable to contain the extreme right and fascism itself. A government that made Belo Monte (Hydro Dam), sent troops to Haiti, established military police bases in the slums, allocated billions to banks and contractors and put the price of the crisis on the back of workers, could not be defended. It is true that the workers' discontent with the worsening of the crisis and their living conditions pitted them against the government, not with the methods of the bourgeoisie, but the direct struggle of the class.

The opportunistic aspect of the PSTU did not take long to appear, in the 2nd round of the 2018 elections, it called a vote in the FP against Bolsonaro. While making bureaucratic blocs with the union bureaucracy, substituting for the direct class struggle, the PSTU has a sectarian policy against PT and often PSOL, denying a true FU that gathers the base in front of its leadership. In fact, it becomes a counterrevolutionary element, supporting a bloc with the union bureaucracy as the United Front, and preventing the formation of true FU and direct class action, leaving the workers' movement in the hands of the union bureaucracy!

The global crisis of capitalism is deepening, as is the intensification of the inter-imperialist dispute. The forecast is for a drop of 5.99% of GDP in Brazil this year! The prospect for workers worldwide is one of misery and repression. In Brazil, there were already millions of unemployed, and in the pandemic over 1 million jobs were lost. Our job market is more than 50% informal. They are public health workers scrapped and attacked for decades, no longer guaranteed rights or decent wages, attending to the pandemic without the basics of protective equipment.

From this crisis, the Brazilian semi-colonial bourgeoisie cannot escape except with dictatorship and fascism. Any policy that leads workers to the illusion of the bourgeois democratic regime, that it is possible to “improve” capitalism or reach socialism through parliamentary means, is betrayal.

Workers must unite not only in Brazil, but in the world. The reformist leaderships also promote the division of the world's workers, as shown by their support for “left” governments like Argentina. Hearing the reformist left talk about Argentina and its government, it gives the impression to Brazilian workers that the pandemic in Argentina is paradise! While in the real Argentina, the government puts the people on lockdown, workers suffer from hunger and repression in quarantine, go on strike and are harshly repressed by the police. The reformist left, as well as dividing the class to ally with bourgeois sectors at national level, internationally promote FP with bourgeois governments, dividing the class. Especially in its support for the China / Russia imperialist bloc, supporting it as an alternative to American imperialism.

The left is beating its head to find a way out of the crisis within the democratic regime, saying that "revolution is not possible". We say, there is no possible way out of the bourgeois democratic regime and capitalism. Fascism and military coup threatens us, and the only way out for the working class is the socialist revolution, possible and necessary!

May Day! Workers of the World Unite to Smash Fascism and Imperialism! End Capitalism and Build Socialism to Stop Climate Catastrophe!

 
Comrades, International Workers Day, or Mayday, has been celebrated since 1886, three years after the death of Marx. But what are we celebrating? This year is 200 years since Marx’s birth, 180 years since the Communist Manifesto, 100 years since the Russian Revolution and 80 years since the foundation of the Fourth International. There is plenty to celebrate. But where is the ‘spectre of communism’ haunting the bourgeoisie today? True, the bourgeoisie fear communism. They fear the revolutionary proletariat as their ‘grave diggers’. But we, the international workers, have yet to turn that fear into the reality. Mayday has become less than a celebration of victorious revolutionary advances and more of a ritual occasion for the bureaucratic leaderships of the labour movement to hold ‘Sunday speeches’. Meanwhile the masses resistance to the rise of counter-revolution and fascism all over the world is isolated, and defeated.
 
We should remember that ‘Mayday’ is also an international emergency call sign. This is how we should ‘celebrate’ Mayday, by disrupting the ritual and calling for international workers to unite in action to overcome a global emergency of climate collapse and human existence. Everywhere capitalism is in crisis. It can no longer rule in the same old way. In fact every day capitalism survives only by destroying humanity and nature. And workers will no longer submit to extreme exploitation without fighting back. There is no way out for the bourgeoisie other than destruction and barbarism. To survive as a dying mode of production, capitalism is thrashing about destroying everything that has been won over centuries. It threatens to destroy humanity and nature unless stopped by the global socialist revolution. It is clear that for workers to live and humanity to survive, capitalism must die. But where is the international proletariat rising up to smash capitalist imperialism, and to build world socialism?

Syria: Revolution or fascist genocide

This is no more obvious than in Syria, the Paris Commune of the 21st Century, where the promise of the Arab Spring has been driven back to near defeat by the combined forces of counter-revolution. The bosses fear more than anything the spread of a victorious Arab Revolution setting an example to the rest of the worlds workers – the imperialist powers and their murderous client regimes have resorted to fascist genocide. Whole cities and regions have been turned into bloody rubble because the Syrian Revolution has been ignored and isolated from any campaign by the international working class to join the revolution arms in hand. Most of those who claim to be international socialists have turned out to be social chauvinists and social imperialists. They condemn the popular Arab Revolution as a counter-revolution against Western democracy. The two imperialist blocs led by the US and by Russia have combined forces to smash the leading armed edge of the Arab and international revolution, by propping up a fascist dictator, and the servile Western ‘left’ has provided a ‘left’ cover for genocide.

This Mayday we are into the 8th year of the Syrian civil war and the approaching defeat of the revolution which will be a defeat also for both the Arab revolution and the world revolution. So we must ask what are the prospects for the international revolution right now. Let’s reject Mayday as a ritual ‘celebration’ and make it a call to a global emergency. Then we can act to overcome that emergency by organising international workers as a revolutionary force able to defend every basic democratic right being destroyed by imperialism in its death throes and rebuild the ‘world party of socialism’ called for by Trotsky in 1938 based on the Transitional Program.

This means fighting for a Marxist program that can guide workers in every fight for their most basic rights and needs, across the bridge to the formation of soviets and militias, all the way to socialist insurrection and a world federation of workers states. For example, in Syria we need an international party strong enough to mobilise military support for the revolution for basic freedom and link it to all other Arab resistance. It means uniting the Palestinian revolution to defeat the Zionist settler state with the workers movements in every other country. We need international brigades in Syria, and militant uprisings against the imperialist ruling classes threatening world war.

In other ‘hot points’ where the crisis is bringing workers to their feet to fight, that new international party has to have the forces to intervene with a program that works to advance the revolution against the counter-revolution and make it ‘permanent’. The forces of counter-revolution are the imperialist ruling classes, their client states ruled by national bourgeoise factions and their political parties, and the treacherous fake ‘left’ of all shades that always sides with the bourgeoisie against socialist revolution.

Under today’s crisis conditions, the imperialists and their client lackeys are exposed as naked class enemies. The fake ‘left’ however provides a left cover to fool the workers. They are the most dangerous enemies. We must expose and defeat these bosses’ agents in our ranks. In every revolutionary situation where workers are mobilising they are on the side of the class enemy, demobilising the masses. Let’s illustrate this by using examples that demonstrate the way forward in both semi-colonies and imperialist nations.

Zimbabwe, South Africa and Africa

The African continent alongside other semi-colonial continents like Latin America and Asia (a from Japan and China) have been hard hit by the double burden of capitalism and imperialism. The over reliance on the export of raw materials and trapped as cheap labour havens causes acute suffering for the workers and the common poor. The dictatorial and openly ruthless regimes in most African states make it difficult for the common masses to fight for their interests and against dictatorship, poverty, capitalism and imperialism. So, as we celebrate International Workers day or May Day it is important to appreciate that workers, poor peasants and the poor oppressed and exploited masses can conquer a good life only through socialism which must inevitably come through the strategy of permanent revolution.

Two countries can help illustrate the condition of the working class and poor masses in Africa. In Zimbabwe the workers are under intense attacks by the post-Mugabe pro-austerity bourgeois regime that is delicately balancing between western and eastern imperialism. A 2016 Supreme Court judgement, despite nominal ‘reversals’, has made it easier for employers including the government to fire workers without compensation or real chances of redress. Over 30,000 workers have lost their jobs as a result of this ruling championed by the current President of the main opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC Alliance). As a result of the judgement and the intransigence of the bosses, workers have been forced to resort to militant actions such as those at the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) and Grain Marketing Board (GMB) where workers staged prolonged protests at the companies headquarters. Workers at the Hwange Colliery and ZESA (a public utility power company) are currently engaged in a vicious struggle to get their overdue wages and allowances. But most importantly, the strikes by doctors and nurses has brought to the fore the true colours of the regime, despite claims that this is a “new era”. Nurses were summarily dismissed before being reinstated. In a clear show of what workers have to expect from this government it displays for imperialism its willingness to continue Mugabe’s alliance with imperialism and to crush workers struggles.

In South Africa the situation is even more delicate. The formal political independence of 1994 has failed to change the lives of the poor masses that are still faced with exploitation and poverty. The reformist African Nationalist Congress (ANC) party and its partners have failed to resolve the key aspects of apartheid which include subordination of the masses to the interests of imperialist investment enforced by the state, racism and exploitation of local and migrant labour as well as the continued plunder of natural resources. Despite a constitution that was hailed by imperialism and their middle class and petit bourgeois surrogates, the material conditions of workers and the poor masses has remained dire forcing workers, communities, students and poor peasants to rise in revolt. The most notable and watershed revolt of the suffering masses was the Marikana strike which resulted in the murder of workers by the state in collaboration with capitalist mine owners. The fight for a living wage, better working conditions and the unfettered right to strike has taken centre stage in the class dynamics of the state. The strike by bus drivers has dragged into the third week as workers reject slave wages and attempts at dividing the working class.

Zimbabwe and South Africa to a large extent reflect the current situation in most African states in relation to the conditions of the workers, poor peasants and poor masses. Slave wages, land privatisation, commodification of education and services, plunder of local resources, rampant corruption and dictatorial regimes are the hallmarks of African societies. May Day gives us the opportunity to take stock of our position as workers and the common poor and be able to chart a way forward that ensures a better life for the masses. Only independent mass action of the working class and oppressed can win a better life. For this to happen workers have to be militantly organised and armed with a revolutionary strategy and program.

Brazil and Latin America

In Brazil and Latin America, considered a “backyard” by US imperialism, the workers and oppressed people resisted neoliberal policies with militant class struggle in the streets. The reformist Left channeled this fight into parliamentary socialism or “socialism of the XXI century”, placing in power several populist Popular Front governments which continued to apply neoliberal policies and the dictates of imperialism.

The global crisis of capitalism has hit Latin America, and Brazil in particular, shaking governments that attack the working class as a way to resolve the crisis. The economic instability, political and social, is growing. Far from meaning “stability”, the return of the traditional rightist governments in Argentina and Brazil is met with the growing discontent of the working class, with their living conditions deteriorating, being hit by unemployment, “reforms” that remove their rights, and repression.

Unable to mitigate the economic crisis in Brazil, the ruling capitalists could no longer afford the luxury of the popular front.Thus Lula and the Workers Party (PT) suffered a “coup” by their bourgeois allies. Vice President Temer, in power today now has low approval ratings, faces protests, strikes and occupations of workers and social movements in the struggle for better conditions of life and work and against the “reforms” that remove rights such as the pension reform. The PT, even suffering the maneuver that led to the impeachment of Rousseff and Lula in prison, continues to defend the popular front and acts in the labor movement through the Unified Workers Central (CUT) and trade unions, demobilizes workers (as in the dismantling of the general strike against the welfare reform) and channels the struggle into bourgeois democracy and the elections in October. The Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), in alliance with the reformist leader of the MTST (Homeless Movement) entered into the Popular Front, along with PT and the “democratic” bourgeoisie in the struggle for “democracy” and “sovereignty” during the government attacks and the growth of the extreme right and fascism.

The solution for the workers and oppressed peoples of Brazil and Latin America is the independent political struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie and imperialism. We must build the revolutionary party that fights for the organization of rank and file committees of all kinds: grassroots, factory, tenants’ and price committees, neighborhood committees, and workers self-defense guards that prepare the General Strikes to win in the struggle for the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and a true socialism. The Popular Front does not fight fascism, it paves the way for fascism. The so called left-wing governments in Latin America apply the imperialist policy and harshly attack the working class. Conflicts with the US government like Venezuela’s do nothing to break with imperialism, and the linkage with the increasing imperialist bloc of China/Russian no way means “sovereignty” or “anti-imperialism.”

Latin American workers need to break with the reformist leaderships, which divide workers, prevents class solidarity, as is shown by the isolation of the Syrian masses’ revolution against Al Assad’s regime and how the restoring of capitalism in Cuba supports the repressive government of Venezuela. The Popular Frontists all together denounce as “C.I.A. agents” the workers in Nicaragua fighting against the government’s pension reform, just like Assad labels his revolutionary opponents agents of the west. This same “left” defends the Popular Front in Brazil against the right and the threat of dictatorship.

USA

Every “disaster capitalism” calamity visited upon the world by the federal government is an index of the decline of U.S. imperialism. The seldom seen side of ‘populist nationalism’ is its inherent autarchy. The retreat from such minimal world consensus as is represented by the Paris Accords is a pennant on the Titanic smokestack! The missile attack by the U.S., Britain and France on Assad’s empty facilities only highlights the growing ineffectuality of the U.S.-led bloc while Trump on more typical occasions calls for U.S. withdrawal, leaving Syria to Russia. Crooks of the new “swamp” have more personal interests to satisfy and are getting theirs while those “qualified” to look out for U.S. imperial interests are fired by Trump. Ideologues replace professionals and the U.S. loses market share. This results in trade war, the prelude to world war. And Trump floats the idea of becoming a Bonaparte for life after hearing of Xi’s lifetime appointment. Nothing Trump says or tweets is a joke, but signals that he knows the various reactionary options. The Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall has U.S. imperialism by the short hairs.

Bourgeois talking heads won’t tell you the real effects of a 10% drop of stock market prices in the U.S. These losses have taken place post tax cut, i.e. THIS YEAR. They take place while investment lags and almost all economists say corporations are hoarding cash. Trump threatens protectionism while flip flopping on TPPA and NAFTA. None of his moves hide the fact that the recovery is an empty shell that keeps tens of millions of working poor people and their families in an endless cycle of poverty while wages have stagnated for decades. Workers often need to take two or three jobs just to pay the rent, while the ruling class continues it assault on meager and humiliating public assistance programs. The institutional hatred and state repression of the working poor and people of color is magnified by environmental racism and housing costs which trap people in zones of danger to their health. The lead poisoning of the water in Flint Michigan is just the tip of the iceberg of industrial pollutants toxifying life sustaining elements of the environment. Meanwhile, it is only a harbinger of the environmental threat the survival of capitalism inescapably poses to human and other species’ survival in the near future. The capitalists prepare for World War III, yet insanely retail the ICBMs of North Korea and reactors in Iran as the gravest dangers facing humanity to those who follow their kept media. They incite the MAWAs (Make America White Again mob) against immigrants and jail refugees while putting the recovery of Puerto Rico from a century event hurricane on rations, and all the “friends of labor” have to say is vote for us in November. Workers need our own party now, not some day!

Some recognition that piles of money sit idle has resulted in revolts of the base in some organized sectors, revolts the bureaucrat/Democrats have so far been able to run around in front of. Thus the United States has seen outbreaks of social and class struggles. The 2011 Wisconsin struggle, followed by Occupy and the Longshore ILWU EGT struggles, the Ferguson stand off, the self-defense actions of the Black and Brown communities nationwide that launched #BlackLivesMatter, the fight of the First People’s Water Protectors against the Dakota Access Pipeline, pre and post Charlottesville mobilizations against alt-right fascists, the women’s marches and #MeToo movement, the broad defense of immigrants with social-media-organized spontaneous direct actions at the airports against the Muslim Ban and against torture committed at San Francisco Airport by Homeland Security, and the spread from state to state of teachers strikes and a growing resurgence in class struggle organizing and strike action by nurses and airline workers as we march on May Day.

While Zionism doubles down in its daily war against Palestinian lives, Israel can no longer count on the unconditional support from Americans of Jewish heritage who seek out and march in solidarity with their Palestinian comrades. Yet a blood oath is still required of the labor bureaucracy which is tied to the imperialist Democratic Party’s projects including unwavering support for Israel, Saudi Arabia and the ruling class’s never-ending wars against workers abroad and at home, both overt and covert. Likewise the labor bureaucracy is do-or-die committed to the idea that police are workers and not the slave patrols who daily terrorize Black and Brown communities. Today’s struggles provide a glimpse of what could be, except at every turn they are limited or derailed due to lack of revolutionary leadership. The pro-capitalist trade union bureaucracy behaves as if the power of the workers and the oppressed is small and has negligible possibilities beyond legalistic self-defense. And everywhere the bureaucrats are willing to sacrifice your right to healthcare, even in otherwise victorious strikes!

They permit no self-consciousness about how successful their strategy has been. It is a free fall cataclysm. The rights of the midwest labor movement which used class struggle methods to build the Teamsters and the CIO are mostly history now, ignored by labor officialdom and contained among arcane academics and nostalgic Reds. This is exactly because class struggle methods of combating the exploiters are treated as impossible to carry out today.

Not only the strategy but the psychology the bureaucracy projects is a supine weakness! The Trump administration teeters legally even as it carries out the real bourgeois program of “disaster capitalism,” slashing every protection the masses have won since the 1870s and now even threatening the existence of public education. Trump’s presidency really is only sustained at this point by public relations. Both parties are guilty of defending it with faint damnation: it becomes clearer all the time that Democrats are not interested in impeaching Trump this year, talking increasingly that they will not seek to impeach him next year, while many echo the former FBI chief and now celebrity Comey who wants the voters to sort Trump out in 2020. This talk is fine with leaderships of central labor councils who never have struggled for impeachment, despite Nixon lawyer John Dean calling the present crisis “Watergate on steroids.” They organize labor walks for Democrat candidates. And the Democrats’ entire project is now transparently the co-optation of the masses’ self-defense movements!

The masses are hungry for direct action, but this is constantly used for politically limited pressure street protests and election campaigning. The “socialist” left is not able to contest for leadership. They refuse to fight for a workers party, as they tail after, or like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), outright support Democratic Party liberal politics and the labor bureaucracy. The worst of them, the Assad/Putin socialists, also abandon the Marxist program for world socialist revolution as they gush over the brutal Syrian dictator Assad and promote Syrian conspiracy theories that would make Alex Jones blush. The fake left therefore loses whatever credibility it ever had with American workers and oppressed people and could not mobilize any real numbers of them in the April “anti-imperialist” actions following Trump’s missile attack stunt.

The revolutionary fight to defeat U.S. imperialism at home and abroad, the main enemy of the international international working class, also means linking up to the workers struggles in the Middle East and everywhere in the fight for world socialist revolution, not abandoning them to their own brutal comprador bourgeoisie. As for the anarchists, they are largely mute on smashing the state as they engage in “propaganda of the deed” militant but non-violent street actions, thinking they will eventually replace the capitalist state by building democratic assemblies and a utopian alternate society within the current capitalist system.

The leadership of the class is up for contest as demonstrated in the rank-and-file-led actions of the teachers in right to be enslaved states. To defeat the ruling class and fight for socialism, we have to defeat the fake leaders of the working class who keep driving us back into the Democratic Party in our unions and in our mass movements.The fight for working class political independence leads through the formation of rank and file class struggle committees in the unions challenging to bring class struggle methods back.

The present moment is a rare historical opportunity for workers to organize their own party, to see colossal corruption and perfidy for what it is and to see that what is required is uncompromising class struggle and the fight for a revolutionary socialist political program, the understanding of the class-for-itself political tasks of fighting for humanity’s future.

Socialism is the last, best and only hope against the drive for imperialist war and climate destruction!

For a New Revolutionary Workers International Based on Trotsky’s 1938 Transitional Program : the World Party of Socialist Revolution!

LCC May 1 2018

How (not) to smash fascism

 


There is a lot of crying out now about ‘fascism’ with the ascension of Trump. Trump may be a crypto-, neo-, semi-, proto-fascist leader, but as yet he is not the head of a fascist movement nor in charge of a fascist regime. In order to fight and defeat fascism it is necessary to know what it is.

Let’s be clear, fascism is the last resort of finance capital fearing its overthrow by a revolutionary working class. It is the last resort because everything else has failed. It is not an option taken lightly because it risks a civil war by unleashing the angry middle class and misguided workers into a paramilitary movement that become shock troops to smash the revolutionary proletariat. And all wars the capitalists unleash risk the working class winning.

So it is only justified when angry workers are rising up against the state that protects capitalist property and power and no longer accept the bullshit that the ruling class are their class mates. At that point the workers become class conscious and a force capable of overthrowing the whole system. Moreover they can rally the angry petty bourgeois to the revolution by proving that they are powerful enough to overthrow capitalism.

The lesson of the successful Soviet revolution proved that the unity of workers and petty bourgeois against the bourgeoisie was necessary and possible. Against that real threat, fascism is all that is left to defeat the revolution. So the ruling class anticipates the danger, and rallies the discontented petty bourgeoisie and unemployed workers to defend the nation from communism by appealing to a rabid racist nationalism to wipe out the communist party.

That is why fascism first arose in 1920 in Germany and Italy, long before the Nazi rise to power. It was the last resort to smash revolutionary uprisings coming out of WW1. In 1919 an armed workers and soldiers revolution was underway in Germany. The ruling class tried to pacify it by deposing the Kaiser and creating the Wiemar Republic in which the Socialist Party was a leading party. But this failed to head off armed uprisings all over Germany. The counter-revolution succeeded only when the Socialists handed over Luxemburg and Liebknecht the leaders of the Communist Party to the fascist gangs who murdered them and dumped them into a canal.

In Italy in 1919/20 workers rose up in the North and the threat of revolution sparked the formation of a fascist movement. That movement then systematically destroyed the communist organisations and saw Mussolini take power. Those who know Bertolucci’s 1900 saw these events graphically recounted.

While these revolutions were smashed by fascism at its birth the proletariat remained a threat to the ruling class, especially with the failure of the imperialist powers to defeat the Russian revolution in the brutal civil war. Fascism was then the necessary resort of finance capital in Europe to remove this threat. That is why the Nazis came for the communists first.

In the US and in Britain there was a fascist fraction of the ruling class ready to step forward if the proletariat was not pacified by emergency economic measures to deal with unemployment such as the New Deal. Had workers refused to submit to appeals to racism and national chauvinism and overcome the divisions in the labor movement, thrown out their rotten labour ‘lieutenants’ in the unions, and united to pose a threat to state power, the bosses would have quickly resorted to mobilising their fascist shock troops.

As it happened, in both Britain and the US, the working class was incapable of rising to the occasion for several reasons. Most important, the Soviet state, now isolated and under siege, was taken over by the Stalinist bureaucracy that neutered the Communist Parties around the world into agents of Stalin’s foreign policy of appeasement. Without a revolutionary party, US and British workers lacked the leadership and program to unite and fight for socialism. So the threat of revolution never arose to justify a a resort to fascism. Such was the power of the appeal to national chauvinism against any ‘communist’ threat that the surviving revolutionaries succumbed to national chauvinism and actively encouraged workers to fight ‘fascism’ as the worst enemy, and let their imperialist ruling classes off the hook.

In the US today, the conditions necessary for the resort to fascism are yet to materialise. The working class is divided, and misled by politicians, media and union bosses into backing rival boss parties. There is no independent Labor party let alone a revolutionary communist party. It is finance capital behind both boss parties, Republicans and Democrats, that is setting the agenda not a militant workers party. That is why Trump’s regime is as yet no more fascist than the Bush or Clinton regimes.

Trump inherits a failing imperialist state that can only survive by making the working class pay for the crisis of falling profits by further job losses and falling living standards. His promises to deliver jobs and restore America to ‘greatness’ are futile as he faces an inevitable world-wide slump and a drive to inter-imperialist war with China and Russia for control of the remaining global resources.

The working class is currently divided by ethnicity, nationality and gender, and Trump is feeding these antagonisms to prevent the class uniting as one multi-ethnic and multi-gender force for change. Only if he fails to impose the program of finance capital driving workers into more wars, so that workers overcome their divisions, and form a mass workers party with a program for socialist revolution, will Trump find it necessary to resort to fascism. Only then will he be forced to rally his shock troops to destroy the leadership of the workers’ movement.

That is why it is necessary now to build workers’ unity and reject pacifist appeals to non-violent resistance. History proves it is necessary to organise an armed defence against the rise of fascist gangs. Because if fascism is allowed to grow it is a mortal threat to the existence of a revolutionary class, and hence to the existence to the human race facing climate catastrophe, all attempts to mollify or placate fascism, to pass laws against it, or to rely on the state forces including the police to stop it, are futile.

For workers as a class, democratic rights are subordinated to advancing the struggle for revolution. These and are not abstract ‘rights’ that must be accorded to all and sundry willy nilly. Revolutionaries advocate ‘no platform’ for fascists because they use their ‘right’ to demand the death of militant workers, especially the revolutionary leaders who are always the first to be assassinated. Revolutionaries confront fascism with overwhelming force whenever it raises is filthy head.

Not to do this, to attempt to ‘reason’ with fascism for fear that arming workers would confirm the ruling class bogey of violent revolution, only feeds fascism. The ruling class is armed to the teeth and will use these arms ruthlessly whether workers are armed or not. In every situation where workers were not armed or were not organised into defence militias, fascism has destroyed them.

While it is true that fascism is the last resort to smash proletarian revolution, submitting to pacifism is to die on our knees. Armed resistance is necessary to defeat fascism and to make that revolution possible, freeing humanity from the scourge not only of fascism but of the capitalist sewer that gives it life.

Leon Trotsky summary of key writing s on fascism: What is Fascism and How to Fight It. https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm

reblogged from  https://situationsvacant.wordpress.com/2017/01/27/how-not-to-smash-fascism/

U.S.A. became Imperialist, what about NZ, South Africa and Australia?

Australia: a semi-colony torn between US and Chinese imperialism

Arising out of our analysis of the reasons for the emergence of China and Russia as new imperialist powers, a few other questions have arisen. If China and Russia can, why not Brazil, India, even South Africa? The answer is that semi-colonies cannot accumulate enough surplus value to become economically independent of existing imperialist powers. However, there may be one category of semi-colonies that could break out of this trap, or so some of the ‘left’ thinks. These are the European settler colonies. We think we can prove them wrong.

The epoch of imperialism arose in the late 19th century as the main European powers expanded beyond their borders to embark on colonial exploitation to escape the limits to capital accumulation. Marx in Vol 3 of Capital explained the need to find cheaper land, raw materials, and labour power to escape the limits of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall (TRPF).

At the time Lenin wrote his pamphlet, Imperialism –The Highest Stage of Capitalism, in 1915 he envisaged a world economy in the process of being divided among all the imperialist powers into rival “spheres of interest”. Competition to expand further would mean more wars unless the workers of the world rose up and overthrow their imperialist ruling classes.

Given this battle to re-divide the world by the imperialist powers, none of the colonies would be able to break free of dependency upon imperialism short of socialist revolutions. Failing that, they would remain colonies, semi-colonies or ‘neo-colonies’. Their political independence was rendered inoperative because of their economic dependency.

European Settler Colonies

One category of colonies, European Settler colonies, may be the exception to this rule. They seem to have more real political sovereignty and control over the economy than other semi-colonies. Thus the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Brazil and Israel are often held up as countries that were able to make the transition from settler colony to imperialist powers (if relatively small), while the vast majority of colonies that were not settled by Europeans, remained trapped in neo-colonial dependency.

Yet if we look at these countries, only the US was able to become a major imperialist power. The fate of the others is less clear cut. The reason for this is that the US had a complete national revolution where it broke its ties of political and economic dependence on its former colonial master, Britain. It could impose tariffs on British goods and protect local manufacturers until they were big enough to compete. It also had a Civil War that eliminated the barriers of backward pre-capitalist modes of production.

All the other countries settled by Europeans, however, did not have wars of independence against their colonial masters (except in Latin America where the wars of independence fell short of economic independence from European capitalist powers). While they had a limited self-government that enabled them to protect their domestic economies, this was insufficient to prevent imperialism from retaining a large share of national surplus-value and limiting national capital accumulation. Nevertheless, some argue that they were sufficiently ‘decolonised’ in the 20th Century to achieve economic independence and become minor imperialist powers.

We can test the proposition that political ‘decolonisation’ in the 30 years between the Great Depression and end of the post war boom enabled the former settler colonies to resist economic ‘recolonisation’ during the neo-liberal years from the 1970s to the present. That is, to what extent did national economic development enable these countries to become sufficiently ‘independent’ so as to resist neo-liberal ‘recolonisation’?

We can test this fairly easily in the case of the weakest states, New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. These settler colonies very early became part of an imperial division-of-labour where they produced raw materials for export and imported finished goods from the imperialist motherland. Tariff protection enabled a degree of domestic manufacturing but this always remained relatively limited mainly based on ‘branch plants’ owned by imperialist capital and financed by imperialist banks. In other words, the ‘decolonisation’ process was largely illusory as surplus value was siphoned off by imperialism leaving these countries relatively underdeveloped and economically dependent.

NZ, South Africa and Australia

There is no question that NZ was very quickly ‘recolonised’ from the early 1970s as domestic capital sought to modernise and compete internationally. The ‘neo-liberal’ counter-revolution during the Fourth Labour Government 1984-89, virtually destroyed the basis of economic protectionism built up over 40 years within 5 years.  

NZ's Global Links gives a good picture of the surplus-value siphoned out of NZ by international finance capital. Ignoring this overwhelming evidence most of the left in NZ says that NZ is a small imperialist power on the basis of its predatory role in the South Pacific and historic high living standards.

In the case of South Africa, we have written about its dependence on imperialism, Anglo-American historically, but now increasingly that of China. We reject any notion that South Africa is imperialist by any conception. 

Nor is it ‘sub-imperialist’ in the terms of the BRIC intelligentsia which adds to South Africa’s semi-colonial dependence, measure of ‘independence’ earned by a share of the surplus for performing a ‘subcontracted’ role as manager of imperialist affairs in the whole of Africa.

Australia, however, is viewed by many on the left as a minor imperialism. This includes ourselves (CWG NZ) since the 1990s. Australia’s protected manufacturing allowed a weak national bourgeois fraction to emerge, alongside the traditional pastoral and mining bourgeoisie. Australia was more resilient than NZ to neo-liberal deregulation as it was not dependent on protected manufacturing alone and could sustain growth in the late 80s and 90s due to its booming mining industry.

However, the neo-liberalisation of Australia under Hawke and Howard saw this national bourgeoisie largely swallowed up by international finance capital. And while NZ banks were all Australian owned, the big four Australian banks became controlled by HSBC, JPMorgan, Citigroup and BNP Paridas as the shareholders. 

As one commentator puts it: 

“Both commercial and mining companies’ ownership are dominated by HSBC Nominees, JP Morgan Nominees, and Citibank Nominees as the top three shareholders of most companies. If one examines company directorships there is a tight cross-linking across commerce, banking and mining in Australia today. Commerce, banking and mining are now part of an oligopoly.”

We conclude that Australia developed behind protectionist barriers for the period from the 1930s to 1980s yet failed to achieve economic independence. Its national bourgeoisie remained weak and dependent on international finance capital. The hallmark of imperialism is the TRPF and the over-accumulation of capital that must be exported to gain access to cheap land, raw materials and labour power. 

Australia has failed to do this on its own account. Its national finance capital is dominated by EU, US and now also increasingly by Chinese finance capital. In the key growth sector of mining, the three largest “Australian” corporations, BHP Billiton is 75%, Rio Tinto 80%, and Xtrata 100% foreign owned. The monopoly rent from mining has therefore been largely siphoned off by international finance capital.

So the excess flow of FDI into Australia over OFDI flowing out of Australia reflects the dominant share of super-profits accruing to the international finance capital of the major banks and corporations. This dominance was demonstrated by the defeat of the Rudd Resource Super Profits tax that gifted $billions to the foreign owners of the mining industry.

The OECD says that Australian federal revenue from mining profits is the lowest in the world. The foreign shareholders get about half of the “value added”: “For every $100 in value added by the mining industry, state governments get $6 and employees get $20. This leaves a profit of $74. Of that amount, the federal government gets $14, foreign shareholders get $48, and Australian resident shareholders get $12.” It seems then that far from breaking out of semi-colonial dependency into mini-imperialism, Australia has been increasingly ‘taken over’ by international finance capital and Chinese monopolies.

Australia as “sub-imperialist”?

Various left groups call Australia small, minor, mini, regional, or junior imperialism. Their method is empirical in toting up the foreign investment figures and pointing to Australia’s ‘policing’ role in partnership with Britain or the US.

Ashley Lavelle, in “Who Owns Australia”, 2001, argues against the radical nationalist line that Australia is being taken over by foreign investors. Australia is an “advanced capitalist economy” as only 25% of Australian firms are owned and controlled by foreign capital. This means that the main enemy is not foreign capital, but the Australian ruling class. In the two main sectors of the economy we find 9% penetration in mining and 30% penetration in finance. Even in 2000 this is enough concentration of finance capital to dominate the Australian economy.

The Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) joins the pack yapping at the economic nationalists heels. It claims that Australia is a “small, regional imperialist power”, a “junior partner of Washington” with its own “sphere of influence” such as Melanesia and East Timor. 

Sandra Bloodworth of the International Socialist Organisation, writing in 2004, says Australia is a minor but “regional imperialist power”. Australia joined the war on terror in support of the USA and acted to fulfil its ‘regional’ policing role in the South Pacific, for example in the Solomon Islands. Australia profits from investments in this region, e.g. in Papua New Guinea mining and owns 50% of Fijian business. Another left group accuses Australia of mini-imperialism in exploiting and oppressing East Timor and seizing its oil resources in the Timor Sea.

Tom Bramble of Socialist Alternative writing in the Marxist Left Review, 2012, “Australian Imperialism and the rise of China” aligns himself with other left academics who speak of Australia and Canada as ‘secondary’ imperialisms. Bramble recognises the rise of imperialist China has major consequences for Australian trade and its relationship with the US. But China has been imperialist for some time according to the state capitalists like Bramble.

Yet Australia’s dependence on the US and increasingly China, does not cause him to challenge the prevailing Australian Cliffite (state capitalist) and DSP view on Australian junior imperialism. He does not question Australia’s obvious subordinate role to UK and US finance capital and as an exporter of minerals to China. He fails to register the significance that the Australian mining industry is largely foreign owned, increasingly favouring China. Or that Australia’s regional policing role has been overtaken by its integration under Gillard and Abbott as a forward base for the US military.

The Northite ICFI (WSWS) writing in 2014 sees Australia as imperialist despite its political subservience to US imperialism. WSWS argues that after the Global Financial Crisis and the 2010 ‘coup’ to remove Labour Prime Minister Rudd (because he was in favour of US and China friendship and the resource tax), Australia has been drawn completely into the US “pivot to Asia”.

The Abbott Gov't is even closer to the US. The result is Australia coming under direct domination by the US dictating a militarist foreign policy and an austerity domestic policy which it calls a ‘counter-revolution’. The Shorten Labor Party is also committed to war and austerity. But for the WSWS Russia and China are not imperialist, and Australia despite its dependence on the US remains a minor imperialist power.

It’s clear that while the case made for Australia’s economic independence is very weak, most of the left regard Australia as a junior partner of US capital on the strength of its imperialist policing role. Therefore, we can file the various labels for Australian minor imperialism under ‘sub-imperialist’ which is the vogue term on the BRIC left to mean a minor power that serves imperialism and is paid in a share of the subcontracted colonial tribute.

We have argued that the label “sub-imperialist” is meaningless since it represents a distributional definition of oppression which looks at shareholdings on stock markets and living standards but ignores the fundamental reality that the bulk of surplus-value produced is expropriated by international finance capital at its source, even if some of it flows back as kickbacks to the Australian capitalist class. A good example of a kickback for Australia’s military bloc with the US is Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton licence to mine public land in the US.

Reviewing the evidence of ‘takeover’ we think that we were wrong to get taken in by the flash statistics of economic independence when foreign ownership of the key economic sectors has always been British and increasingly US. With China being welcomed to buy up more mining interests and privatised state assets by the Rudd Government it seems that Australia’s economic dependence must increase. While some of the ‘left’ have noted the growing influence of China and US, this influence is not taken to its logical conclusion.

Australia’s political sovereignty is up for sale with the US FTA and the impending TPPA. China now has a FTA with Australia and is moving to invest heavily. Australia’s independent ‘policing’ role has been overtaken by US bases in Darwin and subordinated to RIMPAC in the military containment of China. It is the sausage in the sandwich as the hegemonic US and the rapidly rising China flex their muscles to contest control of the Asia Pacific region. 

Conclusion
 
Our conclusion is that for all Australia’s so-called “sub-imperialist” role as South Pacific "police" of Britain and US has always been a form of dependency and is now clearly exposed by the growing rivalry between China and US imperialism. Even hard bitten liberal journos can see that this rips the Australian political elite apart as its ruling class tries to serve two imperialist masters at the same time.

The political consequences of this reality are that Australian workers have the task of kicking out their own ruling class that acts as a client of the US and China, to take the leadership of the struggle to win national independence from both US and Chinese imperialism, and create a Socialist Republic of Australia within a Socialist United States of Asia Pacific! 

To be Continued: The USA and Canada

Class Struggle 111, Summer 2014|2015

https://www.scribd.com/doc/251151223/Class-Struggle-111-Summer