Can the Oaxaca Commune Survive?

The Oaxaca Commune is rapidly becoming the focal point of the world class struggle. It has pushed the Zapatistas 'other campaign' off the map, even though Chiapas is right next door to Oaxaca. The Zapatisas model of revolution from below in which indigneous peasants would lead the backward workers has backfired.

The Fox government repression of Atenco, just outside of Mexico City back in May showed that small traders, gutsy and determined as they were, cannot stop the state machine without the help of the organised working class. It was not the flower sellers of Atenco who lost this argument, but Delegate Zero (subcombatant Marcos) who came out Zero by refusing to unite the traders with striking steel and mine workers.

What the struggle in Oaxaca shows is that the trendy Western pacifism of power-shifting - without-taking-power is exploded by the Oaxaca Commune. This Commune did not arise from an indigenous or peasant rebellion (and Oaxaca has around half of the indigenous people in Mexico). It arose out of a long strike by the poor teachers of Oaxaca fighting for better pay and conditions. The Teachers Union is Mexico wide and cripplingly bureaucratic - like most unions in Mexico that have been part of the PRI state machine that lives off the prestige of the 'frozen' Mexican revolution and the 1917 Constitution.

But in Oaxaca a minority inside the Teachers' Union won support for their strike and this has built into a hugely popular insurrection involving mass marches of over 1,000,000 and the ongoing occcupation of the city of Oaxaca and several radio and TV stations.

This shows that in Mexico as in the rest of Latin America, it is the organised working class like the radical teachers union, that can and must form the leadership of the mass movement which can meet the demands of the peasantry, indigenous movements, and unemployed workers. It proves, against all those who say that that the working class is dead, and that social movements have taken over the anti-capitalist fight, that the working class lives!

It proves yet again, that it is the working class that will lead the fight for democracy and against imperialism, and carry through the national revolution to go all the way to defeat NAFTA and imperialism, and defeat the national bourgeois, completing the national revolution as a socialist revolution.

The original demand of the strike to get rid of the state governor, Ulises Ruiz, who is part of the PRI party machine and responsible for numerous killings of militants, has issued a direct challenge to Fox's successor Calderon, the 'winner' of the rigged Presidential election. That election of course has been challenged by the loser Obrador, or AMLO as he is called after all of his initials. Massive demonstrations and occupations of the center of Mexico City by AMLOs supporters led to the calling of a national 'democratic' congress of the parliamentary left in September, the CND, which declared AMLO as the 'alternative President'. But, apart from offering his body as a symbolic shield against the repression of the Commune, AMLO's CND does not propose to rally the Mexican masses in the real defence of the Commune. That would lift the lid of Pandora's Box and along with the rest of the capitalist system AMLO would be history.

Meanwhile, Fox has sworn to remove the Oaxaca Commune before he hands over to Calderon on December 1. Troops are massing in Oaxaca, thousands of PRI paramilitaries are preparing to smash the Commune, and what to do becomes the order of the day. Most of the 'left' is hoping that some deal can be made, so that the Governor goes, some extra spending on education gives the teachers something to go home with, and everything goes back to almost normal. They cannot envisage an all out struggle winning, and the price of more deaths at this stage cannot be justified.

For revolutionaries the answer is like ABC. Already the Commune has built Barricades, and formed rudimentary Armed self-defence committees. They are not going to go home with any compromise deal. But this is minimal stuff. A few small arms from police stations, clubs and molotov cocktails are no match for the might of the paramilitaries armed with AK 47s let alone the Mexican army.

The Commune needs to be armed inside to resist military assault, but more even more important, armed outside, to undermine the state's ability to deploy its armed forces. The masses who occupied the centre of Mexico city to protest AMLO's 'defeat' by electoral fraud, have to say that the PRD needs more than a symbolic few bodies on the barricades in Oaxaca.
These workers need to flood to Oaxaca to boost the barricades. They need to call on all workers in unions to strike, independently of the PRI and union bureaucracy, to generalise their strikes into a general strike, and to set up barricades and road blocks. The long history of militant struggle in the mines and heavy industry shows that the rank and file of Mexico's huge working class can respond in crises with great solidarity.

This strike action must be generalised so that the solidarity actions are not isolated and open to repression. Self-defence committees need to be coordinated nationally as the basis of a people's army. This would put pressure on the ranks of the armed forces to disobey orders and to support the strike rather than kill the insurgents. By means of a general strike that brings the country to a halt, uniting the organisations of the working class, forming armed 'communes everywhere', the workers will create an alternative, or 'dual power' structure. By winning over the ranks of the military and defeating the paramiltary thugs, the question of state power is posed and the possibility of a revolutionary seizure of power put at the top of the agenda.

The Oaxaca commune can become the first revolutionary commune to follow in the footsteps of the Russian soviets and prove that the working class can 'storm heaven' as did the workers of Paris in 1871, but more than that, take the power at the head of the oppressed and exploited masses to build a new society as the members of the soviets did in 1917. But for this to happen, the vital ingredient that Paris lacked but Petrograd had, is the revolutionary party of the workers.

As Trotsky explains in his analysis of the Paris commune, comparing it to the Russian revolution, the mass movement has strong points and weak points. Its strength is it militancy and heroism. But its weakness is its absence of revolutionary leadership. Leadership cannot be simply responding to events willy nilly, but must condense the lessons of the history of workers struggles to know in advance what to do and what not to do. Without this leadership the strengths of the workers movements are dissipated by their weaknesses and lost.

In Paris 1871, the lack of a revolutionary leadership with the knowledge and will to unite and organise the struggle led to petty bourgeois leaders vacillating and opting for compromises with the enemy. The Commune did not seize power when it could have, but rather let it slip away in defeat. In Russia, by contrast, the Bolsheviks had decades of experience to draw on, and could guide the masses through the months in preparation for insurrection, without making fatal mistakes, until they were ready to seize power.

In Oaxaca the militancy and heroism of the masses are evident, but insufficient for victory. The majority of teachers are not yet revolutionary and are exposed to various competing political currents vying for leadership. Those who think that Obrador and the PRD can form the leadership will find that they are wrong, but at what cost? It is necessary to break the masses who have illusions in Obrador from the PRD. The revolutionary left is small, but does have a critical role to play. Some like the Militant tendency which is inside the PRD, puts its hopes in creating a split in the party. Others like the FT tendency reject working inside the PRD when its politicians are openly siding with Fox to defeat the Oaxaca commune. The main demand of the FT is to call for a 'revolutionary Constituent Assembly' outside the existing political constitutional structure.

Yet, working inside the existing constitution, or calling for a new even 'revolutionary' constitution, are both confining workers to the existing bourgeois power structures where individual electors vote for political representatives in the bourgeois/capitalist state. That is, all individuals or all classes get the right to vote. But the Oaxaca Commune is already creating an alternative power based on mass solidarity in which political representation is of the working class and other oppressed classes. The bosses and their petty bourgeois lackeys and goons are not represented, nor will they ever be. The military defence of the commune is therefore the start of any revolutionary program.

The revolutionary party in Oaxaca and Mexico must start from the lessons of the past communes - their successes and failures. The alternative power of the working class is the only basis on which the interests of the workers and oppressed peoples can be resolved. The program must be for a general strike to defend the Oaxaca commune; to create 'communes everywhere', armed and coordinated across the whole country, with workers and peasants militias to smash the paramilitaries and defend themselves against the state forces; to break from the state apparatus and the statised bureaucracy and their political parties; appealing to the ranks of the armed forces to refuse orders to suppress the Commune; and ultimately for a government of the workers and peasants that can expropriate the imperialists and the national bourgeosie and implement a planned socialist economy, as part of a federation of workers republics of the Americas.

heaven-storming

Revolutionary internationalist workers stand together with the heroic Bolivian wage-earning miners of Huanuni!

STOP THE MASSACRE OF THE MOST COMBATIVE SECTOR OF THE BOLIVIAN WORKING CLASS!

Out with the counterrevolutionary shock troops of the cooperativistas bosses, sent by the government of Evo Morales, his Minister Villarroel and the transnational companies, to divide and to massacre the working class!
Out with the army and the police who are accomplices in the massacre of workers and peasants!

While the miners of Huanuni, fought heroically with their blockade, pickets and road blocks, for the nationalisation of all mining under workers control, for 1500 new jobs for the unemployed miners and landless peasants, Morales and his minister Villarroel organized the shock troops of the cooperativistas bosses to kill the militant workers, just as Goni did in 2003, and to strengthen the fascist bands of Santa Cruz against the landless peasants.

The counterrevolutionary thugs of the industralist Villarroel, throw dynamite sticks into the homes of miners and their families and have tried to retake the state mine at Huanuni. The miners have defended the mine that they now control with their lives figthting hand to hand. Already there are tens of dead and wounded on both sides. The Miners Radio has been blown up, as have the tin processing machines in the mine.
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While he negotiates pacts for the plunder of Bolivia with the transnational companies and the fascist bourgeoisie of Santa Cruz in the Constituent Assembly, Evo Morales class collaborationist regime now massacres the workers and peasants who fight for their program of October 2003 “ Gringos Get Out! Nationalization now! Dignified work and wages for all!”

Down with the pact between Morales’ government and the fascist bourgeoisie of the Media Luna to calmly kill the most combative of the Bolivian working class! Down with the pact of the fraudulent Constituent Assembly to steal the revolution from the workers and poor peasants!

FOR THE IMMEDIATE NATIONALIZATION OF MUTÚN, OF ALL BOLIVIAN MINES AND HYDROCARBONS, WITHOUT COMPENSATION AND UNDER WORKERS CONTROL TO CREATE DECENT WORK AND LIVING WAGES FOR ALL THE UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE OF BOLIVIA!

The workers are employed by the cooperativistas bosses and exploited like slaves for 14 or 16 hour days. They must unite with their class brothers and sisters of Huanuni to recover their jobs, their lost labour rights and put the COMIBOL into the hands of the Bolivian workers.

Enough of union leaders of the COB, the COR and the peasant movement who collaborate with the regime to kill the workers!

Enough of the hollow phrases of solidarity that conceal the isolation that the treacherous union leaders have imposed on the heroic miners. The workers and peasant rank and file must join the fight alongside their comrades of Huanuni. But the leaders of the COB and the COD that support the class collaborationist bourgeois government of Morales hold back and weaken the organisation of the militant masses.

Empower once again the Headquarters of the Bolivian Revolution in Huanuni!

ELECT DELEGATES NOW OF ALL THE WORKERS AND PEASANTS ORGANIZATIONS IN STRUGGLE TO LEAD A NATIONAL FIGHT TO ENSURE THAT THE HEROIC DEFENCE OF THE MINERS IS VICTORIOUS

The demands of the heroic miners are those of all workers and poor peasants. Their victory will be a victory for all exploited people. The insurrection of El Alto rise up again and descend on La Paz to fight alongside its class brothers and sisters in the mines. With blockades, pickets and road blocks the miners can win in Huanuni.

LET US MAKE A NATIONAL GENERAL STRIKE NOW

Against the counter-revolutionary shock troops of Morales government and the employer's association, the junior partners of the transnational companies. Against the fascist bands armed by the Santa Cruzbourgeoisie that attack the poor peasants in broad daylight.

Get the army and police out of the workers’ fight!

They killed workers and farmers under the orders of Goni in the October days, and before that had entered the mines to kill under the orders of Banzer. The army and the police are prepared to enter once the the 1500 cooperativistas armed by Villarroel have defeated the miners and taken the mine.

Organize and to build self-defence organs like those of the miners of Huanuni in the whole labor movement and peasants movement.
Build workers and peasants militias to smash the counter-revolutionary gangs of Villarroel, the enslaving employer's association and the government of Morales, and the fascist bands of the Santa Cruz bourgeoisie in bed with Morales and the treacherous union leaders.

The international working class, and that of Latin America in particular, that fights back against the pro-imperialist bosses, the partners of the transnational companies in MERCOSUR; that in the Oaxaca commune heroically resists the election fraud and the Mexican FTA; that in Chile confronts the repression of the Bachelet government, the FTA and the pinochetista civic-military regime; the workers and the youth who fight against war in the United States; the oppressed in the Middle East who resist the forces of the Zionist-fascist state of Israel and fight in the trenches of Iraqian resistance; all internationalist workers must unite together to surround the heroic Bolivian workers and peasants so that their fight can win and become an enormous position of strength for the working class struggle at the world level.

Enough of the fraud and deceit of the Bolivariana Revolution! , of the pro-imperialist bourgeoisies, partners of the transnational companies in the sacking and the plundering of our countries, supported by the union bureaucracies and the treacherous leaders of the proletariat in the World Social Forum. In order to finish with the sacking, the plundering and the super-exploitastion the heroic Bolivian workers must win and make a revolution that can solve all the needs of the exploited masses.

FOR A WORKERS AND POOR PEASANTS’ REVOLUTION
THE LIBERATION OF WORKERS IS THE TASK OF WORKERS

Leninist Trotskyist Fraction (FLT)
Internationalist Red October (ORI) of Bolivia – Internationalist Workers’s Party (POI-CI) of Chile – Internationalist Workers League (LOI-CI) - Workers Democracy of Argentina – Communist Workers Group (CWG) of New Zealand – Trotskyist Fraction (FT) of Brazil – International Trotskyist League (LTI) of Peru

The Bolivarian Revolution of Chavez, Morales and Castro has stolen the Bolivian Revolution Pt 2

PART TWO

CHAPTER III

The Constituent Assembly where the transnational companies and the national bourgeoisie negotiate the rent of hydrocarbons is a transitional regime that usurps the revolution


The true democratic tasks of the Bolivian revolution: the liberation of the nation from imperialist dominion and the agrarian revolution


(11) The installation of the Constituent Assembly on the 6 of August marked a significant step in the theft of the Bolivian revolution in the name of ‘national unity’.

On 2 July the bourgeois election of deputies to the Constituent Assembly, and the referendum on autonomy was held. The fascist bourgeoisie of the Medialuna won a big “yes” majority for autonomy in the referendum in Beni, Pando, Tarija and Santa Cruz which was a huge political victory over the exploited people.

The MAS won 35.62% of the votes (137 deputies) in the CA, followed by PODEMOS of Tuto Quiroga – (party of the Santa Cruz bourgeoisie and the Rosca [mine-owning oligarchy]) with 11% (60 deputies), and a collection of small parties that got between 1% and 5% with a total of 42 deputies.

On 6th of August the Constituent Assembly met in Sucre. On the next day there was a huge rally of ‘national reconciliation’ where indigenous and peasant organisations march next to the Bolivian army and its West Point trained officers. This act of “unity” between the oppressed and oppressors would have been lacking without the true architects of this act, the treacherous leaders of the workers organisations of El Alto, including the FSTMB, the Huanuni mines, appearing next to the representatives of Kirchner, Chávez, Tabaré Vázquez, Bachelet, etc.

This act was part of plan of to relegitimate the Armed Forces and the officer caste so that the workers and peasants would not seek their own revenge or popular justice for the martyrs killed by the military. To restore confidence in the army, as soon as he assumed office, Morales dismissed some of the most hated officers before using the now “popular” army to suppress the striking LAB workers that demanded the re-nationalisation of the airline and gave support to the strikes of workers and peasants.

Then, on May 1 the army occupied the oil wells and gas fields when Evo announced his decree “nationalizing” the hydrocarbons, apprearing to be the “guardians of the hydrocarbons” when in fact, his purpose was to prevent any possibility that workers and peasants would re-occupy the facilties of the transnational companies as in October 2003 and May-June 2005.

Today, Evo Morales calls on the masses, especially the peasants, “to defend the Constituent Assembly”, saying that “only with the Armed Forces next to the social mobilizations will we recover all the natural resources - not only the hydrocarbons. The best guarantee is the people organized legitimately next to the Armed Forces” (Clarin, Argentina, 4/09/06).


(12) The Constituent Assembly completely is rigged and undemocratic.

In the first place, it is the brainchild of a back room deal between the national bourgeoisie, the Santa Cruz oligarchy and the transnational companies. Second, it has only 250 deputies divided unqually between 8 million workers and peasants by the MAS and the old bourgeois parties of the Rosca, grouped in PODEMOS. Third, they will be get big salaries and privileges and are not mandated by the electors.

After a year “to debate” a constitution, that is, diverting the worker and peasant masses to discussions of the languages of the indigenous peoples, or how to combine their codes of conduct with bourgeois justice, and a million secondary other questions about formalities, the results of that “debate” will be presented by the Executive which will then hold another referendum to vote “yes” or “no” on a new Constitution.

This CA will not give anything to the exploited masses. It cannot solve one of its basic demands: not a break with imperialism, not the nationalization of natural resources, or the land, or bread and decent work. Not even the punishment of the killers of October 2003, since the army officers still command an army with a monopoly of arms – thus protecting the continuity of the bourgeois state, and with it the growth of the fascist bands.

This CA farcically shows, in that was necessary, that the Morales bourgeois government is incapable if delivering the farmers a truely free and sovereign Constituent Assembly as the most radical form of bourgeois democracy. That is to say, they are incapable of forming a truely democratic CA, with deputies elected across the whole country for each district, each representing 10,000 people, with maximum powers to dissolve the existing constitution, the presidential office, parliament, and replacing these with a single unicameral house, with mandated and revocable representatives paid not more than a workers wage, that has the power to determine the destiny of the country. Why? Because though such as CA is still a bourgeois institution, its representatives would be bound to question and challenge the rights of private property and the interests of imperialism. The Armed Forces would be ordered immediately to dissolve it by force.

Instead, the CA acts as a seductive institution to subordinate the organs of struggle of the masses to the rigged and undemocratic process of completing the task of destroying all vestige of workers and peasants’ power. Thus, before the installation of the CA, tens of organizations of the masses made congresses, meetings, etc., to discuss and to resolve what projects, proposals and demands would be presented to the CA.

We see that today in Bolivia, the treacherous policy applied by German social democracy in the first decades of the 20th century that was devised by Hilferding the leading theoretician of the bourgeoisie. This consisted of “combining” soviets with the Constituent Assembly. That is to say the organs of dual power of the proletariat were dissolved by means of subordinating them to a bourgeois institution such as the CA. Thus they strangled the glorious revolution of the working class of 1918-1919 in Germany, first with sweet phrases to deceive the revolutionary workers, and then with a ferocious repression and a massacre perpetrated by the Noske, the head of Social-Democratic police.


(13) The Constituent Assembly is the place where the workers revolution is being expropriated.

Not least by the debates between the different fractions of the national bourgeoisie and the transnational companies who publicly squabble over the shares of the profits that they want to plunder from the nation’s resources and the workers and peasants labor.
In the discussions over whether the Constituent Assembly will be “supreme” over the executive, legislature and judiciary or not; on the question of whether the vote must be approved by absolute majority (giving the MAS the majority) or by two thirds of the votes (so the MAS would have agree with PODEMOS) the delegates came to blows, and the representatives of PODEMOS left the Assembly. There have also been a number of scandals, resignations such as that of the gas minister for resisting the pressure of the transnationals, and changes in the Morales cabinet. These activities all reflect the disagreements between the monopolies of the different imperialistic powers and the national bourgeoisie over the division of the spoils from gas and minerals wealth. They can occur openly and blatantly reveal the true nature of the CA as a den of thieves only because the popular front has temporarily coopted the masses and subordinated them to the bourgeoisie.

That is what is behind the scandal of “re-nationalisation” of the YPFB. The head of YPFB Alvarado was accused of signing a contract for refining diesel oil that went outside the terms of the semi-bourgeois “nationalization” fantoche of Morales. Repsol and Petrobras are renegotiating contracts under the “nationalization” decree. To drive down the price they pay for Bolivian gas Petrobras (that controls the two refineries of Bolivia and 400 gas stations), stopped producing diesel oil, creating a shortage of supply. Not to be pressured by Petrobras, Alvarado negotiated a contract with a Brazilian refinery (US and Belgium owned) to provide diesel to Bolivia, in exchange for Bolilvian crude. Petrobras, the subsidiary of French imperialism, hit the roof.

The result was that Alvarado was sacked and the the task of negotiating gas contracts was put in the hands of the vice-president Garcia Linera – an agent of the imperialists, in particular the FrenchTotalfina . He immediately went to Brazil to embrace Lula and assure him that “the asscociation with Petrobras is strategic for Bolivia”. A few days later he returned to stop the gas minister Soliz from putting the three main gas fields controlled by Petrobras and Totalfina into the hands of YPFB! This led to the resignation of Soliz and the ‘freezing’ of the measure.
The disputes that paralyze the Constituent Assembly and sack ministers and administrators, are the expression of the interests of the national bourgeoisie in the West – that is the Altiplano.

This is the fraction that is using the popular front and the Morales government to control the negotiations with imperialism so it can increase its ‘share’ of the oil, gas rent and mineral wealth.That is why it needs a Constituent Assembly with a MAS majority, but also a CA that is ‘supreme’ in writing a new constitution that legitimates the supremacy of the West over the Eastern bourgeoisie of the Medialuna. So while Morales continues to appeal to the imperialist ‘partners’ and claims that he will not ‘expropriate’ them, he is doing this to the advantage of the West bourgeoisie at the expense of the interests of the Eastern bourgeoisie of the Medialuna, which is why PODEMOS walked out of the CA, and why it makes ‘strikes’ against the government and threatens secession.

(14) In Bolivia –as in all semi-colonial and colonial nations –the fundamental democratic tasks of national independence and the agrarian revolution, remain unresolved.

The Constituent Assembly is completely undemocratic because it is controlled by the national bourgeosie and is not going to resolve either of those two democratic tasks. On the contrary, all it can resolve the amount of gas rent allowed to the national bourgeoisie as the junior partner of imperialism, as the price it pays for the containment of the masses.

National independence and the agrarian revolution were tasks that historically had to be completed to destroy feudalism and allow the bourgeoisie to become the dominant class. The bourgeois revolutions - England in 1640, the United States in 1778 war of independence against England (followed by the civil war of 1865); France in 1789, etc. – all created a bourgeois nation-state by eliminating feudal property and distributing land to capitalist farmers.

However, the arrival of imperialism on the historical scene by 1914, blocked all independent development of the backward countries - like China, India, the nations of Latin America and Africa, etc. The rule of imperialist financial capital dominated those nations combining capitalist property and the most modern technique with the subordination of pre-capitalist production. This trapped the weak national bourgeoisies as the junior partners of the imperialistic monopolies, bound by thousands of economic threads of dependency to finance capital, and powerless to fight it to complete the national democratic tasks of the bourgeois revolution. At the same time, it gave forced birth to a strong proletariat concentrated in the cities of the colonial and semi colonial nations, alongside a sea of exploited peasants in the countryside.

As the national bourgeoisies of the backward countries were incapable of fulfilling its tasks historical, that is to say, national independence and the agrarian revolution, these tasks were handed on to the only class that does not have any interest that ties it to imperialism – the proletariat.

As the theory-program of the Permanent Revolution of the Fourth International says:
“With respect to the countries of delayed bourgeois development, and in particular the colonies and semi- colonies, the theory of permanent revolution means that the complete and effective resolution of its democratic aims and their national fufillment can only be achieved by means of the dictatorship of the proletariat, taking power as the leader of the oppressed nation, and first in line, its peasant masses (...) There are occasions when revolutionary episodes occur in various counttries, but the fulfillment of the revolutionary alliance of the proletariat and the peasant masses is only conceivable under the political leadership of the organized proletarian vanguard organised in a Communist Party. This means, as well, that the democratic revolution can only succeed by means of the dictatorship of proletariat, supported in an alliance with the farmers and committed to the immediate realisation of the tasks of the democratic revolution. (...) The dictatorship of the proletariat, which raises the proletariat to the head of the democratic revolution, is inevitably committed to the deep transformations of bourgeois property rights, so the democratic revolution is transformed immediately into the socialist revolutionm, thus becoming permanent”.

Life has passed judgement on the Permanent Revolution. Only in those nations where the working class, become the leader of the oppressed nation, expropriating the bourgeoisie – as in China, the ex-Yugoeslavia, as in Cuba –could the break with imperialism, national independence and the agrarian revolution be won. Similarly, with the treason of the Stalinist bureaucracy, capitalist restoration has seen these historic conquests lost, proving that only by defending the dictatorship of the proletariat can the expropriation of the bourgeoisie be guaranteed.

On the contrary, in those nations where the national bourgeoisie has expropriated the anti-imperialist struggle of the masses, the revolution has turned to counter-revolution, with the masses remaining under imperialist oppression, and in most cases, smashed by bloodthirsty military dictatorships, e.g. Chile 1973, Indonesia1965, and China 1925-27, etc.

Today in Bolivia we see once again proof of the correctness of the theory of Permanent Revolution. While the national bourgeoisie usurps the democratic revolution the only result is to divide the profits at the expense of the exploited classes. To increase its bargaining power it uses the “threat” of the anti-imperialist hatred of the masses, but at the same time it must control the masses to prevent that hatred spilling over into a revolution that can not only remove the bourgeoisie but expropriate the imperialists. For that reason, the national bourgeoisie has a greater fear of proletarian revolution and will ally with its imperialistic boss to smash it.

The double game of the Bolivian bourgeoisie that uses and at the same time represses the mass struggle to increase its bargaining power is the secret of the CS and determines its character. The CA is rigged because it allows the existing bourgeois parties to dominate it. It is totally undemocratic since it prevents the masses in struggle from carrying through their demands to break with imperialism and exproproate the transnational companies without compensation and under workers control. Nor does it nationalise a single hectare of fertile land of the great large estates and redistribute it to the poor peasantry; or nationalize the banks and the foreign trade to provide cheap credit and to prevent wealth being drained out of the country.

This farce of a CA, with its “fictitious nationalization” of hydrocarbons, its “agrarian reforms” that only distributes barren land, which continues to ‘bargain’ with imperialists and with the great landowners, at the expense of the continued hunger and misery of the poor workers and peasants, is the maximum expression of the “democratic revolution” – that is, “the Bolivian” version of the “Bolivarian Revolution” –of Evo Morales and his vice-president Garcia Linera!

On the contrary, and it has already demonstrated with its heroic combat for the nationalization of hydrocarbons, for land, bread and jobs, only the Bolivian working class, independent of all the fractions of the bourgeoisie, commanding the poor peasants, and led by a revolutionary party, can take the power, make a dictatorship of the proletariat, expropriate the bourgeoisie, and realise the tasks of the democratic revolution, to break with imperialism and to nationalize the natural wealth, to expropiar to the large estate owners and give the land to the peasants, and to guarantee the bread, jobs and a living wage for workers.


The Constituent Assembly of Morales is a fraud against the Quechua and Aymará peoples

(15) Morales and the popular front have deceived millions of Aymara and Quechua poor peasants, making them think that his rigged and undemocratic CA will restore its rights and dignity stripped first by the Spanish colonizer, and then by imperialism and the bourgeoisie, turning back the wheel from history to return to the mythic “collectivism of the indigenous peoples”.

This is a swindle. Today the Aymara and Quechua are workers and poor peasants without land, and while the CA can proclaim the indigenous languages as national languages, make education in these languages obligatory, incorporate the uses and customs into the civil code and adopt hundreds of formal cultural practices, it will not give land, tractors, or cheap credit to the peasants, nor fully nationalize mines or hydrocarbons, or provide work and a living wage to the worker. This only can be guaranteed by workers expropriating the landowners, and nationalizing the banks, foreign trade, etc.

Many Bolivian bourgeois governments have partly collectivised the land. Yet all the land reforms and nationalizations that have been a byproduct of the masses struggles in the past have been reclaimed by privatisations. Today in Bolivia, 87% of the fertile land is in the hands of 7% of the landowners, while most of the mines have been privatised.

The salvation of the Quechua and Aymara, that is to say, the miniing and peasant families oppressed for over five centuries, will not come from the hands of the national bourgeoisie nor its farcical CA. It will only come from the victory of the proletarian revolution led by its revolutionary party, that expropriates the bourgeoisie and imposes a workers’ and farmers’ government –a Workers’ Republic – a million times more democratic that the most democratic bourgeois republic that serves to mask the rule of capital, and distributes land and natural resources to the vast majority of workers and peasants families of the indigenous peoples.

Only a Workers Republic, which is part of a Socialist United States of South and Central America, can provide the land, tractors, electricity, health, schooling, respect and democratic rights, guarantee traditional language and culture, and the right to the self-determination of the indigenous peoples oppressed for centuries.


Evo Morales’ swindle: no gas, no land, no bread, no work for the people, no justice for the dead of October

(16) So much is the greed of the imperialist monopolies and the Bolivian and Mercosur bourgeoisies, that they have robbed most of the hydrocarbons rent, minerals, etc. and left nothing for the workers and poor peasants who put their bodies on the streets, the pickets, road blocks, and sacrificed over 100 martyrs. They overthrew Goni and Mesa to expel the transnational companies, to nationalization the hydrocarbons 100%, for land, bread and the good jobs, but all of these demands were robbed when the revolution was stolen.

Thus, the supposed “nationalization of hydrocarbons” of Evo Morales is being stripped naked and exposed as a swindle: a policy of “mixed companies”, of “joint ventures” between imperialist big oil and the Bolivian state. The national bourgeoisie guarantees the transnational companies property and all its facilities as well as their large profits, and in return gets a small slice of the of the profits, while the workers and peasants must use guanaco as fuel for their fires, and now pay high prices for diesel on the black market.

The lauded “renationalisation of the YPFB” is a swindle against the workers and the exploited people. The YPFB is only a painted office front, a state oil company that has no wells, fields, pipelines, refineries, machinery, in fact, nothing.

The proclaimed “nationalisation of the natural resources” is also a swindle with the contract to mine the enormous mineral wealth of the Mutún hill –40,000 million tons of iron ore –being given to Jindal Steel and Power.

This gigantic mineral wealth is added to the traditional minerals such as tin, gold, silver, zinc, bismuth, wolfram and copper that today have a high price in the world-wide market, because of the enormous demand of the imperialist monopolies located in China. The high prices have mobilised an offensive by the cooperativista miners –petty capitalists exploiting their workers without rights, the allies of Evo Morales and his minister Villaroel –to ally with the petty bourgeois peasants, to seize the state mines of COMIBOL, like those at Huanuni, Colquiri, Caracoles, Bolivar and other centers, and expel the wage-earning miners from them.

Thus, recently the petty bourgeois peasants of the of the mining district of Caracoles used whips to attack the wage-earning miners, and threatened to take the Matilde mine for the cooperativistas.

The “legalization of the coca cultivation” promised by Evo Morales in his electoral campaign, ended up as a another swindle. The “legalization” of the coca cultivation is reserved for the rich peasants of Chapare, while the poor peasants like those of Las Yungas, who survive on small coca plotsl, face an intensified policy of compulsory eradication, with the Bolivian police and the Yankee DEA kidnapping and attacking the farmers, burning their crops, and condemning them to starvation.

The supposed “agrarian revolution” and “mechanization of the field” fiasco is another swindle of the poor peasantry. The barren land of the Altiplano will be distributed, but in the few cases where fertile but non-productive land is taken, the owners will be compensated. But the swindle does not stop there. Without expropriating the banks and creating a state bank under the control of the workers, there will be no cheap credit, tractors, machinery, fertilizers, etc. to allow the poor peasants to produce. The peasants will become indebted and one more each parcel of land will finish up again in the hands of the great landowners.

The supposed “reform of the education” was also a swindle that ended up with a pact between the government and the catholic Church to keep religious education in the state schools large subsidies going to the poorer catholic schools. There has been no increase in the education budget, and no increase in the miserable wages of the teachers, as is the case for all wage-earning workers.

So the popular front is no more than a fifth column, the “Trojan horse” of the bourgeoisie inside the ranks of the working class and the exploited people, to strangle the proletarian revolution from within. The popular front is the most treacherous enemy. As the great revolutionary Karl Liebcknecht said during the heroic German revolution of 1918-919, the workers can easily recognise the bourgeoisie, their state, their institutions, their police as the class enemy. But the treacherous leaders that betray the proletariat to the bourgeoisie, are camouflaged inside the ranks of the workers and for that reason are much more difficult to recognise as the enemy of the workers!


Chaper 4: The active betrayal of the reformist working class leadership was the decisive factor in the stolen revolution by acting as the left wing of the popular front and splitting the worker-peasant alliance

(17) The theft of the heroic revolution of the Bolivian workers and peasants could not have succeeded without the active betrayal of the reformist leaders of the working class and without the open collaboration of the fake Trotkyists. Because the leaders of the COB – then in the hands of the Castroite Solares, and now his successor, Pedro Montes – along with POR Lora, engineered the dissolution of the organs of struggle of the masses and the collapse of the semi-dual power regime which they had won in the two revolutionary offensives of October of 2003 and May-June 2005.

They promised the workers and poor peasants a thousand times they would summon an indigenous national Popular Assembly; and then delayed it as many times so that it never happened. That is why when Mesa fell in June 2005 at the hands of the masses, there was no centralised armed organisation of workers and peasants power that could carry out an insurrection and sieze state power. Against the centralisation of workers power, the leaders of the COB imposed a reformist policy of doing “what is possible”, that is to say, support of Morales in the elections “so that the right does not win”; then, as Morales himself argued, the election of a CA and the referendum on autonomy etc.

By that route, they guaranteed that the proletariat lost the leadership of the poor peasants which it had won again in the streets to the shout of “Neither 30 nor 50, (100%) nationalization”. The active betrayal of the workers leaders broke the worker-peasant alliance, and again threw the impoverished masses of the countryside into the arms of the bourgeoisie, allowing the regime of transition and the class collaborationist government of Morales to win a big social base in the urban and rural middle-class.


(18) In the middle of June 2006 the congress of the COB was held. Pedro Montes, leader of the miners of Huanuni and ex- Executive of the COD Oruro, was elected at the main leader of the COB. This leader, who boasted of his “Trotskyist” origins, gave critical support to the government of Morales as soon as he was elected.

This bureaucratic ‘fifth wheel’ of the leadership of the COB became essential for the government to enable the class collaborationist politics of the popular front to continue. Solares had been completely discredited, after leading the COB to support Mesa from October of 2003. That is why the COB was badly weakened and did not play a key role in the revolutionary events of May-June of 2005. On the contrary, it was the CORs and the CODs that, against the national leadership of the COB, played the revolutionary role in creating the organs of dual power in the second uprising of the third Bolivian revolution. After the workers had created these embryonic organs of dual power against the state in May-June of 2005, it became critical for the bourgeois regime to smash every last vestige of these organs. That is the role of the new leadership of the COB, Montes dressed in “Trotskyist” clothes had the task of nailing the last nail in the coffin of the Bolivian revolution.

For that reason, the immediate aim Montes was to isolate the miners rank and file of Huanuni from the workers and peasants base of El Alto –that is, to break the unity that was at the heart of the revolutionary struggles of 2003 and 2005 –refusing to call to for delegates of the COR to the COB Executive. This allowed Patana to suspend to representatives of the revolutionary COR of El Alto in the COB.

From there on , the policy of the COB was limited to pressuring the government as a “friend” of Morales, demanded that he fulfil his election promises made to the workers. The policy of the leadership of the COB under the leadership of Montes, shows that he has been faithful in continuing the policy of Solares to giving ‘leftwing’ support to the Morales popular front and the Rosca regime, deceiving and lulling the masses to sleep.

This policy continues unchanged today. The day after the referendum on autonomy, the fascist bands linked to the COB bureaucracy, attacked the COD of Santa Cruz. They beat up the unionists and workers, and they occupied the union office to the shout or “Autonomy for Carajo” “Collas are shit”. Montes, instead of calling on the working class to create its own militias and march to Santa Cruz to smash the facists, called for a “unity congress” between the assaulted workers and the pro-fascist bureaucracy, to “maintain unity in the COD”.

The same position was raised by POR Lora, saying there was ‘racism on both sides’, trying the make it seem that a fascist attack against a workers organization was a racial confrontation!


While the fascist reaction prepares to smash the revolution, the leaders of the COB keeps the proletariat inside the “democratic front” with the bourgeoisie, the government of Morales and the killer Armed Forces of the martyrs of October

(19) Against these attacks, hard but as yet only partial, the Bolivian working class has begun to resist and recover its strength. But Montes, like Solares, has refused to mobilise the COB to coordinate and centralize these pockets of resistance.

When the bourgeoisie of the Media Luna announced their “strike” the local unions called for action. The leaders of the COB, and the POR Lora, quickly took control of the teachers, health workers, drivers etc and opened negotiations with the government. The COB then summoned a national congress for 6th of September to put pressure on Morales’ government.

The COB resolution says:

“1. The national congress of the COB emphatically rejects a political and civic strike summoned by the Civic Committees of the Media Luna, instructing its affiliates to oppose strike action to maintain the unity of the Bolivian people in dignity and sovereignty against all the actions of the right.

2. The national congress is unanimous in demanded that the government of Don Evo Morales Ayma the completion of the Agenda of October of 2003. (...)

8. Facing the failure of the Constituent Assembly, the national congress resolves to summon an indigious popular Constituent Assembly of the COB.

The leadership of the COB, headed by Montes, far from calling on the working class to break with the popular front government which ties the masses hands and opens the way to defeat hands of the fascist bands; far from calling for workers’ militias to smash the facists, “it instructs” the proletariado to maintain “the rock like unity of the people”. That is, to be subordinated to the government of Morales and the CA of the MAS and Rosca to “defend the dignity and the sovereignty of the nation against the right”. This is political treachery, tieing the working class to “the democratic” fraction of the bourgeoisie to fight fascism, when at the same time the popular front government, kept in power by “the left”, is preparing the ground for the fascist reaction.

The resolutions of the COB congress prove clearly that the policy of the COB under the Montes leadership, the “friend” of Evo, is part of the policy of the popular front to lull the masses to sleep. The “democratic front” against fascism is a policy to pressure Morales’ government that steals the revolution from the masses, to fulfil the demands of the masses, by threatening to call an indigenous popular Assembly, a threat the COB does not intend to keep.

Part 3 to come.

The 'Bolivarian Revolution' of Chavez, Morales and Castro has stolen the Bolivian Revolution

CHAPTER I

The political treachery of the popular front and the theft of the workers and peasants revolution


(I) Almost three years since the onset of the Bolivian workers’ and peasants’ revolution in October of 2003, we are today facing an unfinished revolution that has been de-railed by the treachery of the workers leaders who prove that they still have the ability to usurp the heroic revolutionary uprising of the masses that brought that country to a halt.

The heroic workers and poor peasants revolution that began in 2003 is unfinished, despite the fall of Sanchez de Lozada, and despite the enormous spontaneity and independent organisation of the masses, because the treacherous leaders have prevented the the workers and poor peasants from taking power.

In October of 2003 the sellout leaders of the COB and the peasants’ unions conspired against the revolutionary uprising of the masses that had begun in February that year and which was on the point of sacking parliament, handed power to Carlos Mesa, the representative of the Bolivian landowning and mineowning oligarchy, the Rosca.

They actively conspired to prevent the revolutionary masses from forming militias, splitting the army and destroying the officer caste that had ordered the killilngs of more than 100 workers and peasants, and the killing of rank and file soldiers who refused to fire on the masses. They prevented the masses from forming organs of dual power and militias in the way that the COB did during the first Bolivian revolution of 1952.

That was the first attempt to usurp and destroy the revolution. The power of Mesa did not come from any part of the bourgeois state which had been severly weakened by the revolutionary struggle of the masses. His power came that developed by the masses over weeks of revolutionary struggle, and usurped by the leaders of the COB and the peasants unions, and then handed back to Mesa so that he could form a government out of thin air, propped up only by the treacherous leaders.

The historic revolution that had begun could only come to victory as a socialist revolution. That is to say, with the masses developing and centralizing the organs of dual power, creating workers and peasants militias, splitting the army and destroying the officer caste trained in West Point, organizing an insurrection of the working class leading the poor peasants to victory, expropriating the expropriators, socialising the hydrocarbons, ending imperialist plunder, and distributing land to the peasants and bread and work to the working class and the exploited people.


(2) But this act of treachery against the independent organisation of masses could find no answer that allowed the bourgeoisie to reverse the attacks of the masses, restore the institutions of the bourgeois nation state and allow the return of the transnational companies that plunder the resources and exploit the terrible labour conditions of the masses.

Mesa’s government failed in its objectives. The militancy of the workers could not be contained by this pact between the treacherous leaders and the government. Mesa tried rally the urban middle class in a reactionary offensive to strangle the revolution. But this only provoked a new revolutionary upsurge of the masses, Once more they rose to the demands “Gringos Out”, “Nationalization of the hydrocarbons”, “Justice for the October martyrs”, and “bread for the slaves”, in a nation whose natural wealth could supply the needs of most of the countries of Latin America.

This second revolutionary uprising took place from May to June of 2005. The exploited masses blockaded the centers of state power with an indefinite general strike, pickets, mass street fighting and roadblocks. This uprising also broke the political pact between the military and the peasants organisations on which the regime of the Rosca was built, creating a vacuum of power in the base of the state. Mesa fell when the CORs and the CODs, [the regional and departmental cells of the COB] led by the miners, the militant workers of El Alto and the combative peasants won control of the streets with the demands: “Neither 30% nor 50%, [100%] nationalization” and “Out with the transnationals”.


(3) So, two revolutionary uprisings, despite the dirtiest tricks of the reformist leaders, saw the revolutionary masses raise their demands to break with imperialism, for land reform, and for bread for the workers –demands that could not be met by the bourgeois Rosca regime, thus opening up a crisis in the state that raised the question of power.

In the process, the revolutionary workers and peasants created their central command in El Alto [the working class city above La Paz]. They also created organs of semi-dual power. But the treacherous role of the workers and peasants leaders prevented that power from developing to the point where a revolutionary insurrrection was possible.

Once more, the traitors of the Latin American revolution rallied all their forces to rescue the servile national capitalists and were able to isolate and quarantine, economically and militarily, the Bolivian revolution. So the uprising of May-June 2005 was also stolen. The thieves were the masses' leaders. Evo Morales and Jaime Solares, of the COB, backed by the leaders of the WSF. They stole the power from the workers and handed it back to Rodriguez, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, announcing that he would head an interim government until new elections were held for a Constituent Assembly and a referendum on regional autonomy.

So the Rosca was rescued by the skin of its teeth [Morales and Solares!]. The president of the House of Representatives that had fled the masses blockade in La Paz to reopen in Sucre, admitted that giving power to Rodriguez put the “lid back on Pandora’s box”; that is, returned the demons released by the insurrection and calmed the panic of the ruling class and its imperialist masters!

The rescue of the Rosca also strengthend the MAS of Evo Morales who now formed alliances with the local bosses in different cities. It also allowed the leaders of the COB and the COR to neutralise the organs of semi-dual power by making them subordinate to local authorities, mayors etc. The newly formed alliance between the workers and the poor peasants was broken and their organisations were drafted into supporting Morales in the election.

When the workers are threatening to take state power, the first form of defence of the ruling class is the popular front, the government of class collaboration. On the one hand Morales and the MAS promised the poor peasants and workers he would ‘nationalise’ the hydrocarbons and spend more gas revenue on their needs. On the other hand, the MAS promised the Rosca a Constituent Assembly and a referendum on regional autonomy in which they could manoevre to advance their class interests.

Thus, the revolutionary insurgents of October of 2003 and May-June of 2005 were made to submit to the Rosca, the national bourgeoisie of the landowing and mine owning oligarchy. The Constituent Assembly diverted the workers and poor peasants with sweet talk about new concessions and cheap demagoguery. Meanwhile the referendum on autonomy carries a threat of secession if the Rosca oligarchy does not win a large share of the hydrocarbon rents at the expense of the transnational companies and the Bolivian masses.

The first instalment of the deal between Morales/Solares and the Rosca, for a Constitutent Assembly and an autonomy referendum, was delivered in the form of the bourgeois semi-nationalization of the hydrocarbons of 1st May 2006. The Bolivian state ‘nationalised’ 50% of the ownership of the hydrocarbons on behalf of the national bourgeoisie and guaranteed the property of the monopolies, holding back the threat of revolution and the expropriation of both the Rosca and the imperialiists.

So the popular front, now expressed in the newly elected Constituent Assembly, contains the revolutionary leadership, divides and subordinates the workers and peasant masses and reconstitutes the army under the officer caste. It contains and diverts the exploited Bolivian people away from the only historic solution to their situation: the armed, revolutionary workers and peasants overthrow the bourgeois state, the formation of a workers’ and peasant’s government, and the expropriation of the transnationals and the national bourgeoisie.

In summary, the heroic workers and peasants revolution has been stolen by the pact between the treacherous leaders of the workers and peasants organisations, and the national bourgeoisie. The CA and the autonomy referendum has established a transitional popular front regime that contains the revolution and guarantees that the ownership and control of the wealth of Bolivia will be split beween the multnationals and the Bolivian bourgeosie which will haggle over the shares of the wealth plundered at the expense of the masses.


(4) Three landmarks mark the current stolen Bolivian revolution: first the conspiracy of the treacherous leaders of the workers and peasants in 2003 who handed over power to Mesa; second, the same treachery in 2005 when the power was handed over to Rodriguez; and third, today, the creation of the CA by the popular front government of Evo Morales to coopt the organs of struggle of the revolutionary working class and poor peasantry.

As yet the CA and the referendum are not seen by the masses as the enemy of the historic Bolivian revolution. This is because the popular front that came into existence to save the regime has suceeded in its purpose of deceiving the masses. But the popular front only can last a short period since imperialist finance capital cannot allow the power of the bourgeois state to hang in the balance for long.

For that reason, the imperialist corporations and the various fractions of the Bolivian national bourgeoisie are using the popular front to buy time to attempt to reach agreement and to form a more stable government of national unity. By keeping the masses submissive to the popular front, this allows the preparation of new authoritative institutions of class rule that will finish the task of definitively defeating the Bolivian revolution.

But if the bourgeois fractions cannot reach an agreement on sharing the profits with the imperialist corporations and the Morales' government, the Santa Cruz bourgeoisie will not hesitate to call out its fascist bands against the workers and peasants and begin to secede from the rest of the nation.

It would not be the first time that the oil monopolies cause secessions and national divisions to take control of the land and mineral wealth to plunder. These same monopolies today, along with their national bourgeois agents in the Mercosur - Brazil, Agentina etc - are pressuring the bourgeoisie of the Media Luna [the ‘crescent’ on the Amazonian side of Bolivia] centered on Santas Cruz, to secede from the Altiplano so as to gain complete control over the richest resources such as water, iron and hydrocarbons.

The pressure on Bolivia results from imperialism This is particularly serious in the case of Brazil which gets around half of its energy from Bolivia. Brazil is putting huge pressure on Morale’s government to maintain Petrobras’ ownership and control of a large share of Bolivian hydrocarbons. In the case of Chile, it is facing an energy crisis since its copper production must increase rapidly to meet contracts to supply the transnationals and China over the next decade. Bolivia refuses to sell to directly to Chile until it returns Bolivia’s access to the Pacific, so Chile must buy its energy from Argentina. However, Argentina cannot continue to supply Chile because it faces an energy shortage of its own.

In these fierce disputes, the Bolivian national bourgeoisie is split and aligned to different imperialistic powers and their monopolies. It is clear that the government of Evo Morales and Garcia Linera, allied to Chávez, Kirchner and Fidel Castro, are the agents of the Spanish Repsol – and that is why it is winning in the race for control of hydrocarbons in Latin America. On the other side, the bourgeoisie of the Media Luna, are allied to Lula and Petrobras, the French Totalfina, the Chilean bourgeoisie who are agents of British Petroleum, and Yankee big oil who want to pipe Bolivian hydrocarbons via the Pacific coast.

So in Bolivia there are two factions of the bourgeoisie each aligned to different factions of the Latin American national bourgeosies who are in turn the junior partners of Spanish or Anglo-French-US imperialism and their monopoly corporations. Each faction has the support of the union bureaucracies, the Stalinists and other treacherous leaders combined in the World Social Forum, the one side supporting Morales and Garcia Linera’s ‘Andean capitalism’, while the other side is supporting Lula, Santa Cruz fascism and the breakup of Bolivia!


CHAPTER 2:

In Bolivia and Latin America the “Bolivarian Revolution” of Chávez, Morales and Castro, is a popular front in the interests of the national bourgeoisies and imperialism


(5) To usurp the Bolivian revolution and to prepare for its historic defeat, Spanish and Anglo-US finance capital have joined forces to create a continental ‘counter-revolutionary alliance’ with the national bourgeoisies, the Castroite restorationist bureaucracy and the fake Trotskyists, all aligned to the World Social Forum.

That is why the imperialist client states of the Southern Cone - the regimes of Lula, Kirchner, Chávez, Lagos and Bachelet – have imposed a quarantine on the Bolivian revolution. With the signing of the “Commercial Treaty of the Peoples” between Fidel Castro, Evo and Chávez, the entry of Venezuela into the free trade agreement of the imperialist monopolies called the MERCOSUR, and the commercial agreement of MERCOSUR with Cuba, an economic, political and military barrier against the Bolivian revolution and the masses of Latin America has been put in place.

By this means, the reintegration of Bolivia into the world division of labour, interrupted by the masses insurrection in 2003, has been completed. Bolivia is once more a major supplier of hydrocarbons for the MERCOSUR and minerals for the world economy (more so after the discovery of the biggest iron deposits in the world at Mutún) to meet the huge demand of the transnationals and the restored capitalist economy of China.

In this way, imperialism and the client bourgeoisies of the continent have succeeded in rewelding the three weakest links of the imperialist chain broken after 1997 by the revolutionary mass insurrections in Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia.


The treacherous leaders of the WSF and the union bureaucracies collaborate with the restorationist Castroite bureaucracy and fake Trotskyists as the left wing of the popular front


(6) The Bolivian workers’ and peasants’ revolution has for the moment been hijacked by the “Bolivarian revolution” of Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, Fidel Castro, the treacherous labor bureaucracy and the fake Trotskyists. This continental popular front of class collaboration suobordinates the revolution to the national bourgeosie who haggle with the imperialists over the division of the spoils from the plunder of the resources and the super-exploited labour power of the workers and poor peasants.

The class collaboration of the “Bolivarian revolution” in Bolivia is evident in the bourgeois semi-nationalization of the hydrocarbons. The Bolivian bourgeoisie haggles with the oil multinationals of Repsol, British Petroleum, and Petrobras (dominated by the French Totalfina) for a share of the huge superprofits exproporiated from plundering the gas, petroleum, and the enormous mineral wealth of the Mutún, and the exploitation of the Bolivian workers and poor peasants.

Two fundamental pillars support this continental politics of class collaboration. First, the Brazilian labor aristocracy, the labor bureaucracy of the CUT, and the pro-imperialistic government of Lula. These play a key role in containing the Bolivian revolution because they all share in the benefits of the cheap gas supplied by Bolilvia, the huge profits of Petrobras in Bolivia, and from the consumption of this gas in the major industrial manufacturing sectors in Brazil dominated by imperialist monopolies.

Today, the government of Lula, pro-imperialistic and anti-worker to the core, is facing a crisis. Layers of workers have broken with the PT [Workers Party] and the bureaucracy of the CUT [central union federation], but have been contained by the ‘left’ bureaucracy of the P-SOL [Party of Socialism and Freedom] , the PSTU [fake ‘Trotskyist’ Unified Socialist Workers Party] and the PCB [Communist Party] with a bourgeois program of “redistribution of wealth” and politics of class collaboration. While the PT and the bureaucracy of the CUT are today in the government, openly administering the economy for the bourgeoisie, this “left front” of Trotskyists liquidators has the role of stopping the layers of left-moving workers from turning to revolution and thus guaranteeing the stability of the Lula-Alencar regime. The P-SOL and the “left front” are today acting as the left cover for the continental popular front under the ideological leadership of the Castroite Celia Hart. They are busy organising ‘united’ parties with the Stalinists for the “Bolivarian revolution”, e.g. PODEMOS in Chile, “Plenary of Auto-convenors” in Argentina, PRS in Venezuela, etc.

The second pillar is the Cuban Castroite bureaucracy, which has an interest in strangling the life out of the the Latin American revolution, expecially the heroic Bolivian revolution, to remove any obstacle to the completion of the restoration of capitalism in Cuba. Its key role is that of using the prestige of the Cuban revolution to make the working class and the exploited peoples kneel at the feet of their bourgeoisies. It was Castro who visited Argentina in 2003 to call on workers to support Kirchner. It was Castro who in 1973 went to Chile calling on the working class making the great revolution in the industrial sectors to support the bourgeois nationalist government of Allende and to follow the Communist Party’s “peaceful road to socialism”. This advice betrayed the workers to the bloody military coup of Pinochet and the US transnational ITT. A victorious workers' and peasants’ revolution in Bolivia would explode the reactionary utopia of “socialism in one country” - worse, “in one island” - of the restorationist Castro bureaucracy, and would greatly advance the victory of the Latin American revolution. For that reason, the life of the Castro bureaucracy means the death of the heroic revolution of the Bolivian workers and peasants.

The restorationist Castroite bureaucracy and the Brazilian labor aristocracy and bureaucracy are the main forces that support the counter-revolutionary continental alliance to defeat the revolutionary struggles of the workers and peasants of Latin America in Ecuador, Argentina, in Bolivia and before long, Venezuela.


The “Bolivarian revolution” is based on negotiation between the national bourgeoisies and imperialism over the division of the national wealth extracted from the oppressed and exploited people

(7) What we are seeing in Bolivia is the most recent example of the victory of the “Bolivarian Revolution” in containing and preparing the defeat of the Latin America revolution. Before this we have seen examples of the “Bolivariana revolution” intervening in 1997 in Ecuador, in Argentina in 2001, in the masses defeat of the pro-imperialistic coup in Venezuela in 2002 when Chávez surrendered, and the 2003 insurrection of the Bolivian masses. In every case the masses rose up not only against imperialism and its rapacious plundering of their nations but also against the client regimes of imperialism that grind down the workers and poor peasants into poverty, unemployement and misery.

In Venezuela, home of the celebrated “Bolivarian Revolution”, out of 10 million workers who comprise the workforce of that country, 5 million are casualised, without social or trade union rights, super-exploited and oppressed. Yet the national bourgeoisie makes fortunes from the high price of oil in the international market, and continues to sell oil to the US imperialists to fuel their killer army in Iraq and the Middle East. Despite five million enslaved workers, many others on starvation wages, and more than 60% of the population barely surviving below the poverty line, the fraudulent external debt is paid promptly by Chávez and he has not yet touched any imperialist property nor any property of the 31 big bourgeois families that control much of the Venenzuelan economy. So much for the “Bolivarian Revolution”!

Victory for the “Bolivarian Revolution” means that Cuba is able to introduce more “joint ventures” with the Canadian, Spanish and French monopolies. The deal wtih MERCOSUR is designed to further the restoration of capitalism in Cuba so that the bureaucracy can turn itself into a national bourgeoisie. It consolidates the system of dual currencies that guarantees the imperialist companies get their “chavitos” converted into US dollars, and condemns the great majority of the working masses and farmers to live on poverty wages paid in the devalued Cuban Pesos.

Uruguay, under the government of the Frente Amplio - with Tabaré Vázquez in the presidency and CP and Tupamaros as ministers and state functionaries, is being quickly transformed into a Yankee colony. The “popular government” is prepared to sign the FTA and to authorize the installation of a Yankee military base on Uruguayan territory. The monthly cost of living is US$ 1,500, but the average wage is no more than US$ 250. Yet the union bureaucracy of the PIT-CNT and Stalinism promises only to “pressure” the “popular government” for a minimum wage of US$ 500! This is the victory of the “Bolivarian Revolution” in Uruguay –the workers get to eat for ten days of the month!

In Argentina under the government of Kirchner, the victory of the “Bolivarian Revolution” means the abortion and strangling of the revolution that began in 2001; that all the enemies of the workers and people have retained power; that all the monopolies and the national bourgeoisie have redoubled their plundering of the national wealth, and their super-exploitation and enslaving of the working class, imposing historic low wages while the fighters of the Heras are prisoners of Kirchner and Repsol.

In Brazil, what have the proletariat and the poor peasants got from this “Bolivarian Revolution”? Sixty million workers and exploited enslaved in the factories and on the land do not even appear in the statistics. They are abandoned by the labor aristocracy, by their unions and their political parties –by the PT in government, but also by the P-SOL, PSTU and other fake Trotskyists who have gone over to open reformism. The landless peasants are killed by the armed thugs of the landowners and by the police without the intervention of the “Trotskyist” minister of Agrarian Reform, the Pabloite Rosetto etc. They are attacked by the employers such as Volkswagen, where they have lost 1,800 jobs with the threat of losing 6,000 more.

In Chile, as was signalled by the magnificent student rebellion in mid-2006, the working class threatens to break with the Pinochetista-Concertacionista government of Bachelet – the same regime congratulated and supported by Chávez, Castro, Morales and the World Social Forum. But the union bureaucracy of the CUT and the Communist Party with the complicity of all the left currents that support the regime, has prevented this so far, subordinating the poor workers, peasants and militant students to the government of Bachelet and the FTA by means of endless discussions, negotiations and talk of a “social parliament”.

These regimes of the “Bolivarian Revolution” which have contained and usurped the revolutionary anti-imperialist struggle of the masses, have as their objective the stabilising of bourgeois class rule. This was done in Central America when the Stalinist bureaucracy, led by Castro, strangled the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran revolutions in the' 80s and the' 90s, by agreeing to the counter-revolutionary pacts of Contadora and Esquipulas. For that reason, the objective today can be seen as being fulfilled in Nicaragua, where the “former guerrilla commanders” of the Sandinistas have beome new yuppies, with Daniel Ortega at the head, forming an electoral alliance with the party of the ex-dictator Somoza in order to become the government that administers the businesses that profit from CAFTA by turning the Nicaraguan proletariat into wage-slaves in their assembly plants.


The resistance of the Latin American masses against the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ in Chile and Mexico opens the road to the proletarian revolution

(8) All the Latin American counter-revolutionary leaders, members of the World Social Forum, are playing their role in strengthening these bourgeois governments. They play the same role in the United States where they make the workers kneel before their imperialist Democratic Party so that they do not develop their opposition to the war in Iraq, or their blaming of the government for the deaths during the Hurricane Katrina, or their defense of the undocumented Latin immigrants, and make an historic break with the Democratic Party.

But while in the Southern Cone they have for the moment contained the resistance and while they have also kept the lid on the newly awakened US working class, they have not been able to prevent a great explosion of workers and peasants in Mexico. There, on the very doorstep of US imperialism, facing a major split in the ranks of the ruling class, and after twelve years of resistance to NAFTA, the Mexican proletariat is rising up in mass struggle, engaging in militant strikes such as the mines and steel works of Michoacán, and heroic three-month long teachers strike in Oaxaca.

The ghost of a revolutionary uprising of the poor Mexican masses terrifies the imperialist bourgeoisie because it knows that the Mexican revolution is overdue for completion and will inevitably strike a dagger blow into the bowels of US imperialism itself. This is why the US conspired with the PAN to steal the presidential election from Manuel Lopez Obrador and the PRD and try to suppress the masses fight “against fraud” and “for democracy” to contain them within the regime. The lessons of Bolivia are vital for the Mexican working class, because the “democratic revolution” of the PRD will be no more in the interests of Mexican workers than that of Evo Morales and Garcia Linera.

In Chile a pre-revolutionary situation has begun. The struggles of the students is escalating the as yet uncoordinated mobilisations of the workers such as the miners of La Escondida, the professors and the health workers, the dockers and workers in the fish industry. These directly confront the government “of the left” of Bachelet which is based on a ‘pact’ with the labor bureaucracy. But in only a few months this ‘pact’ it has been exposed before the masses as pro-imperialist, pro-FTA, anti-worker and repressive, in fact a continuation of the Pinochetista ‘civic-military regime’.

While the bourgeois and reformist leaders of the student movement have led the middle class students into fruitless negotiations with Bachelet in the “Presidential Advisory Council for Education”, young workers and exploited people in the communes of Greater Santiago have mobilised and begun taking action like those of their French brothers and sisters of the ‘Cites’. Against them, the treacherous Communist Party has proclaimed that it will organise its own militia to smash the protests of the young oppressed workers. For that reason, the youth call the Stalinists thugs “red pacos” (red gendarmes). Chile therefore shows the way of future combats of the masses in Latin America against the “Bolivarian Revolution” which will have to defeat not only the client regimes of imperialism, but the treacherous Stalinist leaders of the labor movement, and the other counter-revolutionary forces of the World Social Forum.

Alongside the heroic resistance of the Palestinian and Iraqian masses, the combat of the Mexican and Chilean masses confirms that, in spite of the victories won by imperialism in its counter-revolutionary offensives, it has not managed to decisively defeat the masses nor win a clear superiority in the balance of class forces in the world wide class struggle.

This is also expressed clearly in Bolivia, where the workers, the poor peasants and the students, have begun a difficult process of winning back their stolen revolution. The resistance of the Iraqi masses, of the masses in the south of Lebanon and in Palestine, inspires the workers and peasants uprising in Mexico and Chile, proving that the Latin American revolution still lives, and is driving the Bolivian proletariat to struggle to regain the revolution usurped by the class collaborationist popular front of the Bolivarian Revolution.

The vital condition for the victory of the revolution is the ongoing untiring struggle of the healthy forces of Trotskyism to create in Latin American a revolutionary internationalist party that can guide the heroic workers and poor peasants of Bolivia back onto the revolutionary road of October 2003 and May-June 2005, and on to the victory of the socialist revolution.


The historical alternative “Communism or fascism” becomes immediate in the stolen Bolivian revolution

(9) Because of the crisis of revolutionary leadership - that is, because the treacherous leaders are at the head of the masses and there is no revolutionary party ready to take the leadership, the working class and the poor farmers were robbed of their revolutionary anti-imperialist victory. The Bolivian revolution has been stolen and today it is on the edge of the abyss of fascism.

Resisting that theft Bolivian workers are fighting back. The teachers' 48 hour strike was met by Morales callng on the parents of students who ended up attacking the headquarters of the Federation of Teachers. The truck drivers' strike raised militant pickets in El Alto physically resisting the Morales’ police. The public health workers condeming the near total collapse of the health system, also took to the streets with strikes and demonstrations. Poor farmers threatened with the coca eradication program have formed civic strike committees and mobilised the masses in San Jose de Pocitos and Yacuiba, on the border with Argentina.

In this resistance of the workers, the stolen revolution lives on and is within the grasp of the workers. But imperialism and the client bourgeoisie knows this, and for that reason they are prepared to stop at nothing to destroy all resistance by means of violent counterrevolution.
The popular front, putting the masses to sleep while its revolution is stolen, gives a free hand to fascism to mobilise the reaction. Thus, while the poor peasantry are sold the illusion that the MAS majority in the Constituent Assembly willl be able to solve their problems and while the working class has been diverted from the class strugglle into the popular front, the bourgeoisie of the Media Luna – agents of the transnational companies – went on strike on Friday 8 September, with the fascist bands imposing terror in the streets of Santa Cruz and the cities of Beni, Pando and Tarija, using clubs to beat any workers, peasants, union members etc., that opposed the bosses’ strike.

In Tarija, the fascists of the “Youth Committee” distributed leaflets that said: “Tarijeños, stop the indians from taking power and finishing our society. Kick the Andean pirates out of Tarija. Kill the indians to stop them taking our gas. The gas belongs to pure Tarijenos only and not the Aymaran indian Evo Morales”. In the evening, armed with clubs, bottles and fireworks and led by the Constituent Assembly deputy of the MNR (Revolutionary National Militia –a right-wing party that smashed the 1952 Revolution) Ricardo Cuevas, they attacked a camp of homeless workers and peasants throwing kerosene on the body of a leader and setting fire to him, and beating and kicking the men, women and children. They set alight one of the tents in which 8 year old Alex Guevara was sleeping, and who later died with 90% of his body burned, and wounded two others, one with fractured bones and one shot.

The two main fractions of the national bourgeoisie haggle with imperialism and their monopolies over the price of the hydrocarbons and the share of the profits from mining. The MAS and the Rosca can do this openly in the Constituent Assembly because the popular front has for the moment lulled most of the workers into submission. But behind the scenes the imperialists and their local agents are organising the the fascist bands which have now begun to use their weapons openly against the workers and the poor peasants.

Leon Trotsky and the Fourth International in the 1930’s said that in the semi-colonial countries like Bolivia, “fascism is the expression of the most servile dependency on foreign imperialism. (...) In conclusion, it is impossible to fight fascism without fighting imperialism. The colonial and semi-colonial countries must fight first against the imperialistic country that directly oppresses them, whether it wears the mask of the fascism or the mask of democracy” (Leon Trotsky, To fight Imperialism, fight Fascism, 21 September 1938).

This means that today in Bolivia, to fight fascism it is necessary to expropriate the imperialist transnational companies that plunder the nation’s wealth, plan the breakup of Bolivia, and which organize the fascist bands and prepare a blood bath for the workers' and peasants' revolution. Fascism must be opposed by building armed organisations of the workers and poor peasants, especially workers' militias, led by a revolutionary party able to prepare and organise a victorious insurrection.

The popular front organised by the bourgeoisie to contain the workers and poor peasants, far from expropriating the imperialistic monopolies, calls on them to renegotiate the rent of hydrocarbons in the Constituent Assembly. Instead of calling on the masses to create workers' and peasants' militias to smash the fascist bands, it calls for “national unity” with the killer Armed Forces, leaving the exploited masses unarmed before the terror of the fascists.
Thus, the popular front - that induces sleep in the masses to strangle the revolution, and that saves the officer caste of the army that killed the people in October 2003 – now unveils the whip of the fascism to complete the task of destroying the revolution. In this way, as we will show below, the proletariat has been disarmed by the “democratic front” of Morales and Garcia Linera – true representatives of Repsol, Totalfina, BP etc, that is to say, of the same imperialist transnationals that are similtaneously arming the fascist bands that have already taken lives of the children of the people.


The present crossroads of the Bolivian revolution in the light of the lessons of the heroic Spanish revolution of the 1930s

(10) Against all the liquidators of the Fourth International and renegades of Trotskyism –today openly going over to Stalinism in calling on the masses to support Evo Morales –that is to say, the popular front; who welcomed the swindle of the “nationalization” of hydrocarbons; who since 2003 raised as their main demand the Constituent Assembly as the panacea for all evils that afflict the Bolivian nation; we oppose the program of the Trotskyism, of the Fourth International, that once more proves to be the program necessary for today.

To prove this we show how the lessons of the tragedy of Spain in the 1930s are invaluable as a compass to guide the revolutionary struggle in Bolivia today.

“The bourgeoisie is looking for revenge. A new social conflict which is being deliberately prepared in the general staffs of big capital will undoubtedly assume from the very first the character of a large-scale provocation or series of provocation directed at the workers.
(….) The more the leaders of the Popular Front ‘reconcile’ the class antagonisms and dampen the revolutionary struggle, the more explosive and convulsive character will it assume in the immediate future, the more sacrifices it will cause, the more defenseless the proletariat will find itself against fascism.
(...)For the second time in five years, the coalition of the labor parties with the radical bourgeoisie has brought the revolution to the edge of the abyss. Incapable of solving a single one of the tasks posed by the revolution, since all these tasks boil down to one, namely, the crushing of the bourgeoisie, the People’s Front renders the existence of the bourgeois regime inmpossible and thereby provokes the fascist coup d'etat. By lulling the workers and peasants with parliamentary illusions, by paralysing their will to struggle, the People’s Front creates the favorable conditions for the victory of fascism. The policy of coalition with the bourgeoisie must be paid for by the proletariat with years of new torments and sacrifices, if not by decades of fascist terror. The People’s Front government reveals its total inadequacy precisely at the most critical moment; one ministerial crisis follows the other because the bourgeois Radicals fear the armed workers more than they do the fascists.
(...)The administrative dissolution of the fascist leagues while the bourgeois state apparatus is maintained, is, as the Spanish example shows, a lie and a deception. Only the armed workers can resist fascism.
The conquest of the power by the proletariat is only possible only on the road of armed insurrection against the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie. The smashing of this apparatus and its replacement by worker, soldier and peasant councils is the necessary condition for the fulfillment of the socialist program. Without the carrying out of these tasks, the proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie have no way out of misery…” (Leon Trotsky, The New Revolutionary Upsurge and the Tasks of the Fourth International, 23 July 1936).

These lessons have immediate relevance to the stolen Bolivian revolution. Once again during the last three years, the coalition between the leaders of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie has taken the Bolivian revolution to the edge of the abyss. The class collaborationist government of Evo Morales supported by the leaders of the working class, proved that they were incapable of solving any of the tasks raised by the revolution - nationalization without compensation and under workers control of hydrocarbons, of land and the mines, nor the demands of the peasants, nor bread and decent work. These problems can only be resolved by overthrowing and expropriating the bourgeoisie.

But at the same time large sectors of the masses still have illusions in the government, the CA, etc., and they try to ‘pressure’ what they consider to be “their” government to meet their demands which are resisted and obstructed at each step by the bourgeois regime. Meanwhile, the other agent of the bourgeois General Staff, the fascist bands enter on the scene. But, enchanted by the siren sounds of the class collaborationist leaders, put to sleep by its illusions in the CA, many workers and farmers are unable to respond in time to the seriousness of the situation. Thus, the popular front calls on fascism not to break with the Constituent Assembly, sowing illusions in ‘administrative’ solutions, and creating the favorable conditions for the heroic revolutionary masses to be smashed by fascism.

The lessons of the tragedy of the Spanish working class are vital today for the Bolivian proletariat: the leaders of the COB call on workers to join in a coalition with Morales as a “democratic front” against the threat of the fascists, refusing to build workers and peasants militias and to attack the property of the transnational companies and the oligarchy of the Media Luna which is arming the fascist bands. It is doing no more than repeat the old treacherous politics of Stalinism in Spain, which said to the workers that to defeat to Franco and fascism first it was necessary to join forces with the republican bourgeoisie, and that only after the “bourgeois democratic republic” had been won, could the working class begin to fight for socialism.

Against this policy of Stalinist treachery, the Bolshevik-Leninist Leon Trotsky argued clearly, that, on the contrary, to defeat Franco and fascism it was necessary first to expropriate the landowners and give the land to the peasants; to impose workers control in the factories, to free the colonies like Morocco, etc. Thus, he said:

“The propaganda on their own front as well as on the enemy front and in both rears must be completely permeated with the spirit of social revolution. The slogan “First victory, then reforms” is the slogan of all oppressors and exploiters from the Biblical kings down to Stalin (...) The revolutionary army must not only proclaim but also immediately realize in life the more pressing measures of social revolution in the provinces won by them: expropriation of provisions, manufactured articles, and other stores on hand and the transfer of these to the needy; the redivision of shelter and housing in the interests of the toilers and especially of the families of the fighters; the expropriation of the land and agricultural instruments in the interests of the peasants; the establishment of workers’ control and Soviet power in place of the former bureaucracy” (The Lessons of Spain – The Last Warning, Leon Trotsky, 17 December 1937).

In Spain the policy of “first victory, then reforms” was that of Stalinism. The result was the smashing of the working class and decades of fascist terror.

This threat already exists for the Bolivian workers and peasants. The historical alternative “Communism or fascism” has become the immediate reality in Bolivia: either the working class, breaking with the popular front government and all ties to the bourgeoisie, creates workers militias and smashes the fascist bands, revives the alliance with the poor peasants in the streets, splits the bourgeois army, and with a victorious insurrection seizes power and expropriates the bourgeoisie, or ; it will fail to find any solution to its misery and will pay with years of sacrifice, and suffering, if not with years of fascist terror including the disintegration of the Bolivian nation at the hands of the imperialistic powers and secessionist fractions of the native bourgeoisie.

END OF PART ONE

9-11: NZ ‘Locks on’ to US imperialism

[editorial in Class Struggle #68 Aug/Sept 2006]

9/11 opened up a new period of inter-imperialist rivalry

9/11 five years ago was the excuse the US needed to launch the ‘war on terror’. This was a front for its imperialist oil wars to re-conquer the world. It opened up a new period of competition between the rival imperialist powers. 9-11 then, proved that we are still living in the epoch of imperialism. Here we explain how NZ’s role as a semi-colony supporting US imperialism’s War on Terror in order to get a ‘piece of the action’ is shaping the class struggle in this country.

Lenin famously defined imperialism as the rule of finance capital, that is industrial and banking capital concentrated into the form of large investment banks. This is still the case today.

The capitalist world is now being driven by the competition between US and Euro imperialism. Japan and Britain are minor imperialist powers that are allied with the US to get some of the rich pickings. Italy, Spain and Australia are small, weak imperialisms queueing up for the leftovers. Russia and China are emerging powers that want to be imperialist but remain semi-colonies of the existing imperialists, especially the US and EU.

The US used 9-11 and the War on Terror to rally its allies around its leading role in recolonising ‘failed states’ to grab the oil and other vital resources at the expense of its main rivals. So while it forced the EU to use NATO to take over the occupation of Afghanistan, it is US big oil that will benefit from the oil grab in the region. In Iraq, the ‘coalition of the willing’ occupation grabbed control of the oil and cancelled Saddam’s deals with EU big oil.

Lebanon: a new front in the oil wars

In this issue of Class Struggle we highlight the latest front in the WOT, Lebanon. Bush and Olmert attacked Lebanon for one reason – to weaken the resistance of the Arab and Iranian nations to the WOT. Both Bush and Olmert claimed that Hizbollah was controlled by the Syrian and Iranian Shia-led regimes. So Israel’s attack on Hezbollah was meant to escalate the WOT to defeat the Iraqi resistance and open the road for an attack on Iran. All three forces had to be defeated for the WOT to reach its objective –US control of the oil in the region.

NZ workers must oppose this new front in the WOT. We have to stop the Labour Government from backing Bush and sending troops as part of the US ‘peacekeeping’ force in the South of Lebanon. We argue that NZ’s involvement would mean that the Labour-led government would be joining in Bush’s imperialist invasion. Worse, because NZ is not an imperialist country, and has a reputation for acting only with the authority of the UN, it would be giving credibility to the UN fig leaf being used in Lebanon to cover up the naked ambitions of US imperialism’s/Zionism’s War for Oil.

But to win workers to this position it is necessary to explain why the Labour Government has played the role of UN cover in the WOT since 9-11. A recent debate inside GPJA in Auckland showed how. CWG argued it was necessary to take a stand against NZ troops as ‘peacekeepers’ because this was creating illusions that the UN was a democratic, peaceful alternative to naked US agression.

First, it is necessary to point to the role of the UN as a front for US imperialism. In the FLT statement on Lebanon we reprint in this issue, we expose the hypocrisy of the role the UN has played in smashing resistance to imperialism, especially in Bosnia and Kosovo.

In these places the ‘blue helmets’ collaborated in ethnic cleansing by disarming the resistance and allowing the killers free reign. It will be no different in the south of Lebanon. Bush has gone to the UN to create a buffer zone in the south to disarm Hizbollah and protect its key ally Israel.

The ‘smart state’ produces ‘smart bombs’

A second argument is that in NZ, Labour’s support for the UN in the WOT is the price it pays to get NZ business funded by imperialist finance capital and to do deals with the US for some of the crumbs of recolonisation.

What could contradict Labour’s ‘peacekeeping’ front more than the fact that its prize winning poster child high tech corporate, Rakon, supplies quartz GPS guidance systems for the US and Israel’s ‘smart bombs’. Rakon, part funded by the NZ state's Super fund delivers ‘peace’ to the Middle East in ‘pieces’ (body parts).

This is proof that the Labour Government’s strategy of smart state subsidies for high tech and high potential corporate starts must be profitable for imperialism! It guarantees these profits by carrying the losses as in the case of Air NZ. Or it provides massive subsidies.

In the case of CHH there is a massive state subsidised forest sold off to US pension funds to refinance Hart’s Australasian asset stripping. In the case of Feltex, the ANZ (one of the four Australian owned big banks) has pulled the plug because it wasn’t profitable enough. It will be viable only if finance capital (ANZ or some other bank, or state subsidies) can restructure the company by sackings and speedups to make it superprofitable under smart management. In the case of Fonterra, massive state subsidies of infrastructure, plus farmer cooperative ownership, ensures that surplus value is milked in marketing deals with finance capital that controls its joint venture partners like Nestle. In sum, the state acts as the agent of finance capital in the NZ semi-colony to attract foreign nvestment in high value-added super profits for imperialist monopoly capitalism.

Labour’s strategy is not driven by its concern for ‘peace’ or full-employment, or a devotion to workers since it supports the US-Zionist killers in the south of Lebanon. It is driven by the obligation to deliver super-profits to imperialist monopolies. It is one of two strategies available to states in semi-colonial countries that lack finance capital. The first is to abandon any controls over the economy and allow the country to be re-colonised as a south Pacific tax haven for rich expatriates – the Barbados of the South Pacific. The second is to try to use the state to fill the void of finance capital and to subsidise new starts in the hope that more of the value added is retained in the country – the PPP (public-private partnership) paradise.

“Hollowing out NZ”: Barbados of the South or PPP Paradise

At a recent high profile seminar National and Labour spokesmen put forward their ‘solutions’ to the problems of NZ semicolonial capitalism – an outflow of surplus value and the migration of labour to the nearest imperialist country. This is given the fashionable term ‘hollowing out’ –meaning ‘gutting’ of value.

On the one hand National’s John Key blamed the flight of capital and labour to Australia on high taxes. He says that NZ is losing about $3-4 billion in net capital outflow every year. So what is new? His solution is to cut taxes and turn NZ into a sort of tax haven like Barbados, or closer to home, Vanuatu or Nauru. These countries have few if any trade or investment controls and are wide open to imperialist monopolies to avoid taxes 100s of times greater than the notorious Cook Islands ‘wine box’ tax scam.

In other words, NZ would be a sort of retreat for wealthy US capitalists, celebrities or rock singers who would, like Julian Robertson, create luxury resorts to attract more wealthy expatriates. The capital inflow would fund an army of serfs and servants to keep the rich happy in their 'rest and recreation' from the WOT.

But while the Nats want NZ to be a safe haven for rich WOT and climate-warming refugees, Labour are smart social capitalists. They want the state to play the substitute role for weak NZ capital to seed corporates in their infancy to the point where they are attractive to imperialist finance capital. In the process Labour hopes that more of the value added inside NZ stays here.
That’s why it's subsidising a US internet firm to stay here. That’s why it’s planning for the SOEs to extend their operations offshore and into new areas of production. Its model is the PPP -the Public Private Partnership -that allows the SOEs ( state owned corporations) to spin-off new firms in partnership with the private sector, like the University spin-offs in biotechnology and health technology. As John Key points out however, this is just dripfeed privatisation.

The PPP is the sole surviving material basis of Labour’s long term economic nationalism. In the days of the post-war boom Labour stood for industrial capitalism protected from finance capital (UK banks) by tariffs and exchange controls. Today its protectionism is in smart subsidies to seed winners to retain more value for NZ capitalism. It plans to fund small scale to medium size firms and lauch the ‘knowledge society’. Here is the narrow economic base from which it defends NZ being relegated to No 7 state of Australia, just as Aussie laborites are opposed to being downsized to US state no 51.

But what about the workers?

But what about the workers? ‘Hollowing out’ is more like ‘gutting’ the economy. More and more of the value workers’ create is ‘gutted’ and exported. For workers the two main 'models' of development being debated by the bosses both mean a future of increased exploitation and a growing gap between a highly skilled minority and a wage slave majority. In reality both options co-exist.

So while Rakon sells itself as a trendy, progressive multicultural corporate (its newletter is called ‘Lock On’ – i.e. to the white racist imperialist crusade against ‘Islamic fascism’) it has only a few hundred high tech jobs. There is no way that Labour’s smart growth strategy can produce more than a few thousand ‘knowledge’ jobs producing super-profits for imperialism.

Nor can the few Kiwi ‘peacekeeper’ mercenaries used by the US do do its contract killing in the WOT in the Middle East and Asia create more than a few hundred jobs. The article in this issue on the US- Zionist secret war shows how tiny nations like Tonga (and Fiji) are forced to prostitute their people to the WOT for a fistful of dollars.

The hightech sector of the economy is grounded on a low-tech wage slave service sector. The current dispute between NDU workers and Woolworths show that. NZ is a low-wage semi-colony and the imperialist monopolies that invest here are not interested in anything but super-profits. They pay low wages and charge high prices. As Australasian monopoly corporates, Woolworths and Toll Holdings (which has swallowed up Patricks who tried to smash the MUA in 1998) are forced to attack the unions in Australasia to cut their costs and compete with their bigger US and EU rivals who are investing in othe much poorer semi-colonies like China and Mexico.

Whether they use collectives or individual contracts depends on which is the best legal route to super-exploitation. They regard Australia and NZ as one market, if not one country. They take no responsibility for workers familes hit by their super-exploitation and oppression. The cuts in social sevices and the social problems of crime and family violence that flow from capitalism are dealt with by using Murdoch-type media machines to foment right wing anti-social reactionaries who blame workers for these problems and call for more police, tasers, vigilantism, anti-terror clampdowns etc.

Labourite economic nationalism defeatist

In the face of this imperialist attack on workers in NZ, the CTU response is to work within Labour’s ideology of economic nationalism (that is workers putting their faith in NZ capitalists to do good deals) and the legal straightjacket of the ERA. This is defeatist. It is not that Woolworths is ‘Australian’ or has a tough CEO in NZ that explains its attack on its workers –Graeme Hart is just as ‘ruthless’ as Woolworths. Its behaviour is explained by its character as an imperialist monopoly driven to make super-profits from slave-wage labour in NZ. We have seen the the material basis of NZ nationalism today is the supply of state subsidised labour and technology to imperialism; that means super-exploitation for workers in both hightech and slave labour sectors with all the negative social consequences.

Nor is the CTU strategy of confining disputes within the ERA able to defeat these attacks. The ERA flows from Labour’s economic nationalism. It assumes that both NZ capitalists and workers can unite as ‘kiwis’ in the ‘national interest’ and arrive at some class compromise.

But when the boss locks you out for asking for a collective for 500 workers and uses scabs in clear defiance of the law, it’s clear that the industrial law cannot offer any protection from imperialist monopolies. The ERA may provide a minimal protection but as soon as workers organise independently the ERA will be used to stop workers defend their jobs, rights or their survival against monopoly capitalism.

Nor can any reform of the industrial law provide that protection. 'Workers Charter' and the 'Workers Party' are both calling for the legal ‘right to strike’. But no bosses will agree to any right to limit their profits. They will concede some profits only when forced to by militant, mass labour organisation; such ‘rights' must be won by industrial action not by votes in parliament.

The rank and file of the unions in dispute have to break from the capitalist state and mobilise generalise and extend their strike action to all sites of production to close down their industry and open the way for workers control of industry. The same strategy of generalising strike action into a general strike to bring down the government that is being advocated by the revolutionary left in Australia against Howard’s Work Choices has to be adopted in NZ against imperialist monopolies and their state protector, the Labour Government.

All around the world, the struggle to stay alive in the wage slave labour sector shows there is no future for workers under either ‘model’ – 'smart social' or 'crude market' -capitalism. Independent workers movements coming into existence to fight for their survival are forced to take on capitalist ownership and control of the economy, a movement which some are calling ‘21st century socialism’.

Whose 21st century socialism?

In other semi-colonies where the process of imperialist ‘gutting’ has gone much further than NZ, workers have had to stand up and fightback or starve. Facing growing underemployment, poverty and destitution, and the social destruction that follows from that, workers have taken back workplaces, jobs and some control over their lives.

In Latin America mass social movements in Bolivia, Equador, Argentina and Venezuela have brought about big changes. The focus of these struggles is the nationalisation of resources, the occupation of workplaces and the fight for workers’ control of production. Along with these come demands for the nationalisation of industry, land and the banks. These are the same demands that NZ workers have to raise in their struggles against imperialist attacks on their jobs, rights and living standards.

The demand for nationalisation of industry under workers control should be raised in every dispute. Workers labour power built the assets that have been stripped in this country. Workers labour power makes the superprofits of the multinationals. Workers labour power pays the taxes that subsidises the smart economy. These assets should be taken back without compensation. Only in this way will workers come to control the means of production and defeat the destructive, superexploitative rule of imperialist finance capital.

However, as the article on Cuba in this issue shows, workers insurgency in Latin America is being held back by the fake leaders of the labour movement, who like the Labour government in NZ sow illusions in nation states doing deals between national capitalism and ‘democratic’ (today European!) imperialism. As we have seen, ‘imperialist democracy’ is an oxymoron: its democracy for the rich and death for the poor.

These misleaders are using the national state apparatuses to contain the insurgent labour movement. More alarming, this dog collar is being applied with the approval of Chavez and Castro and the forces organised around the World Social Forum. Neither of these ‘socialists’ have had bad words to say about Kirchner and Lula, who are open class collaborationists doing the dirty work for the capitalists. By giving these client regimes of imperialism a ‘progressive’ label, such‘socialists’ are once more turning socialism into a dirty word.

So we have to make sure that ‘21st socialism’ is not merely the recycled ‘market socialism’ of the Russian and Chinese bureaucrats looking for a way to become a new bourgeoisie .

We have to break from the capitalist state and the WSF left bureaucracy!
For independent rank and file struggles!
For horizonal coordination of workers struggles locally, regionally, nationally and internationally to smash capitalism globally!
For a world party of socialism!