Which way forward for the Oakland Port Workers Assembly

How can the Oakland Port Workers Assembly support the SEIU 1021 strike - building the class wide solidarity needed to win a non-concessionary contract? 

We have seen many one day strikes (the CNA makes a regular practice of using them as do the European trade unions) and they do not result in winning contracts. In fact, they are used by the union leaderships who tie the workers to the capitalist bosses’ political party, as a pressure release valve when leadership feels heat from the rank and file. However, in this period of capitalist crisis non-concessionary contracts will not won by one-day strikes or even a series of them.

Our support for the strike action at the port by SEIU 1021 this week must be unwavering and show that the Assembly is mobilizing boots on the ground and bringing the information about the Port to our co-workers and communities.  But we would be remiss if we were to say nothing about the failed strategy of one-day and limited duration strikes, about who promotes them, the whys  and how’s and that they disarm the working class.
Our assembly has a choice to make.  Will we limit ourselves to doing the work the labor council should be doing, substituting ourselves for the work the accumulated resources of labor (under control of the leaderships) should be put too?   Of course we must!  But this is not enough.

Read On

Support the Palestinian Resistance! Defeat the Zionist killing machine!

New Wave of Israeli terror against Gaza: Support the Palestinian Resistance! Defeat the Zionist killing machine!

Topnews photo

Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 15.11.2012,www.thecommunists.net

 

1. The Israeli state has again launched on 14th November a murderous wave of airstrikes and rocket attacks against the Palestinian people in Gaza. In the first 24 hours they have already killed at least 15 Palestinians – including several children and a pregnant woman – and injured more than 150. These numbers are rising every hour. Among the dead is also Ahmed al-Jabari, head of Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas’ military wing).
 
2. This is just the latest round of killing and oppression against the Palestinian people. Remember the war which Israel launched against the Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009 when it slaughtered 1.400 people! In fact the whole history of Zionism and of Israel since its foundation in 1948 is marked by oppression and expulsion of the Palestinian people. Israel is a capitalist Apartheid state which systematically oppresses the Palestinians.
 
3. While the Israeli state is the killer, it couldn’t do this dirty job without the decades-long support from Western imperialism. It could not even exist without the massive military and financial aid, which it receives every year from the Western Great Powers (e.g. Israel is the No. 1 among the recipients of U.S. foreign aid). Israel gets this support because it is acolonial settler-state which acts as a watchdog of the US and European imperialist interests in the Middle East.
 
4. The international workers movement and all progressive organizations must rally to the support of the Palestinian people who heroically defend themselves against the Israeli killing machine. We need solidarity actions all over the world – demonstrations, strikes, direct actions against Israeli and US symbols, boycott actions etc. The RCIT calls for:

• Defend Gaza! Victory to the Palestinian resistance! Defeat the Israeli aggression!
• Egypt must immediately open the border to Gaza! It must terminate all relations with Israel, including its ongoing gas deliveries to Israel.
• For unconditional material and military support for the Palestinian people and the armed resistance to fight the Israeli army!
• Transport workers: Stop all deliveries to Israel! Trade unions and all progressive organizations must support the ongoing global boycott campaign against Israel! Shut down the Israeli embassies all over the world! The racist trade union in Israel “Histadrut” should be expelled from the “International Confederation of Free Trade Unions”. For international trade union support for the Palestinian unions and for anti-Zionist workers organizations inside Israel! Progressive academic organizations should break off contact with Zionist institutions in Israel. At the same time they should expand cooperation with Palestinian and Jewish anti-Zionist forces.
• Unite the Arab Revolution with a renewed Intifada in Palestine! For committees and councils of action in enterprises and towns to organize such an Intifada from below.
• Israeli worker, Activists of the “tent city” movement: Raise your voice and demonstrate in protest against the aggression of “your” government! Israeli soldiers: Do everything possible to sabotage these war crimes!
• Support the Syrian Revolution against the reactionary Assad dictatorship!
• Down with the sanctions against Iran! Defend Iran against imperialist and Israeli war-mongering!

5. The RCIT supports the national liberation struggle of the Palestinian people. That is why in the struggle between the Palestinians and the Israeli state we are on the side of theformer – despite our absolute rejection of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois forces at the forefront of these struggles (like Hamas). All Palestinians must have the right to return to their homeland. Likewise, the land grab must be reversed and the Palestinians must get their land returned. The return of the displaced people of course means that the Palestinians will constitute the majority of the population.
 
6. We therefore reject the existence of a Jewish state in Palestine because it can only exist as long as the expulsion of the Palestinians continues to exist. We reject a “two-state solution”. This would deny the Palestinians the right of return. Likewise, a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza would be reduced to a Bantustan, a dependent de-facto colony of the much richer and more powerful Israel. The State of Israel must be destroyed and be replaced by a secular, Arab-Jewish workers’ republic in the whole of Palestine. In such a state, the Palestinians and the Jews, who accept the elimination of the privileges of the apartheid state of Israel, can live together equally and peacefully. We combine this perspective with the struggle for a socialist federation of the people in the Middle East.
 
7. The RCIT condemns all those reformist forces (like most left-wing social democrats and ex-Stalinist parties) which criticize equally Israel and “terrorist organizations” like Hamas, which defend the right of existence for Israel (including centrists like the CWI) or which refuse to support the Palestinian resistance because it is led by petty-bourgeois Islamist forces like Hamas (including many other centrist groups based in the Western world like the IMT or the British AWL). Of course, revolutionary socialists don’t share an inch of the political goals of thepetty-bourgeois leaderships of Hamas. However only a fool or a servant of imperialism can deny that this is a war between an oppressor state (Israel) and an oppressed people – the Palestinians! The Palestinians fight for their right to live and exist! Any left-wing organization which stands aside in this war, which refuses to support the struggle of the Palestinian resistance under its existing leadership against the Israeli aggression, under the pretext of secular democracy or socialism, betrays exactly such democratic and socialist principles!
 
8. While we support the heroic struggle of the Palestinian fighters of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other resistance organizations, we warn against any illusion in the petty-bourgeois leaderships of these organizations. The working class in Palestine and internationally need their independent fighting party for socialism. Forward in building a revolutionary workers party as part of a Fifth International based on a revolutionary program! Long live international solidarity!

International Secretariat of the RCIT

The above statement is endorsed by the Liaison Committee of Communists 15/11/12
With one reservation the LCC supports the formation of a new workers International based on the programatic conquests of the 1938 Transitional Program but does not call for a Fifth International.

India: Struggle in Maruti-Suzuki at Manesar and the Workers Socialist Party

 
We reprint an article on the long standing workers struggle at Maruti-Suzuki by the Workers Socialist Party of India. 

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Two day protest dharna on 7-8 November, organised by the 546 dismissed workers of Maruti-Suzuki at Manesar, under the banner of now defunct trade union, Maruti Suzuki Workers’ Union (MSWU), failed to make any dent, as the pro-corporate media ignored it and its Centrist-Stalinist leaders isolated the action, consciously.


Giving no weight to the protest, Maruti-Suzuki India Ltd. announced that it is gearing up to increase production. “Production is normal at Manesar. By December, we plan to roll out 1,950 cars per day, compared to the 1,700 units we produced in July,” said a company executive.

At present 4000 workers are employed in the Manesar plant, which company is planning to increase to more than 6000, recruiting about 500 per month.

Earlier, Maruti Suzuki had cut by a third its regular workforce and dismissed 546 employees in connection with the violent labour unrest at its Manesar facility on July 18, out of which more than 160 are still languishing in jail.

Workers had been conducting struggle against the sweat shop working conditions and total absence of minimum trade union rights, since 2009, inside the Manesar plant. The month long strike in 2011, had resulted in production loss of 77,000 units to the company. Entering into a blind alley in face of determination of the workers to a spontaneous strike action in 2011, the management had smothered the struggle through outright purchase of the trade union leaders in 2011.

After the whole leadership of MSWU, headed by Sonu Gujjar, had betrayed the struggle, receiving hefty bribes from the company, the company had started to virtually pulverise the workers inside the Manesar plant. The result was a clash on 18th July 2012, between workers and the ‘bouncers’ appointed by the management, resulting in arson inside the plant, death of an official and injuries to many.

The trade union bureaucracies under Social-Democrats (HMS), Centrists (NTUI), Stalinists (CITU-AITUC) and Maoists (AICCTU, IFTU etc), took no time in condemning the ‘violence’ terming the same as ‘unfortunate’ or a ‘wrong turn’ to the ‘peaceful’ struggle.

Immediately after the incident, on 20th July, the Deputy Commissioner of the city called a meeting of trade union leaders to pacify the nerves of workers, preventing them from starting a broad solidarity action in support of the Maruti Workers.The trade unions affiliated to Social-Democrats, Centrists, Stalinists and Maoists of many hues, not only obediently came in attendance, but pledged support to all efforts aimed at “industrial peace”. These trade union leaders forthwith intervened to prevent the workers at other plants in Manesar, from starting a strike action. This emboldened the pro-corporate state to unleash a reign of repression against the struggling workers. The police immediately arrested more than 100 workers who had been most active in the struggle and started a blind hunt to rope in others. While the trade union leaders held back the Maruti workers to fight back and other sections of workers from coming to their aid, the police registered false cases against the workers, continued to arrest them and subjected them to most brutal torture, as is described in a later investigation by the PUDR team. With the implicit collaboration of these trade union leaders, police thus succeeded in imposing savage terror.

To further isolate the dismissed workers, the trade unions have facilitated the signing of a separate wage settlement with the management in September this year, stipulating historic increase in monthly salaries upto Rs. 14,800/-, and regularisation of 1870 contract/ casual workers. What is being done to meet the imperatives of future increase in production, would be used as a tool to isolate the dismissed and arrested workers.

To keep the movement under their grip and hold back the workers under their control, these capitulationists, covert servants of the capital, have forged an alliance among themselves into a 'unity forum' that includes 14 such trade unions affiliated with different stalinist-maoist-centrist parties and groups. The task of this forum is to keep the workers at Maruti within confines of legal action and insulate them from influence of revolutionary idea of initiating a class action against their class enemies.

Arrest of around 160 workers on fake charges of conspiracy, arson and murder had presented itself as a great opportunity for opening a huge political offensive against the Congress government in Haryana and at Centre. Bare fact, that majority of those arrested included the workers having roots in agrarian communities in surrounding villages of Manesar, cutting across the caste divides of dalit-jat-gujjar, the divide upon which rests the critical built-up of bourgeois politics in Haryana, was a ready bastion for united class action of workers and peasants against the corpoarte state and bourgeois parties. But the trade union leaders, those compromisers, pushed the workers into blind alley of 'peaceful and legal demands'.

Shamelessly opposing the proposal of activists of WSP for giving clarion call to the workers in Manesar and all over Haryana, for a indefinite general strike against the state government, these trade union bureaucrats, misled the workers towards alleged ‘peaceful’ means of sloganeering outside the Haryana Bhawan at New Delhi, representations to state authorities, sending fact-finding teams, legal action in courts etc.

While outrightly rejecting the idea to support the two day protest dharna of Maruti workers, Union leaders at the Gurgaon plant of Maruti-Suzuki, Maruti Udyog Kamgar Union (MUKU), have indicated they would render limited support to protest rally on Thursday, as expression of ‘solidarity’. “We will not participate in the hunger strike but will support the rally on Thursday”, said Kuldeep Jhangu, general secretary of MUKU.

Trade union leaders have actively assisted the management, since very beginning of the struggle, in failing the workers’ struggle, by inducing divisions among the workers and thereby isolating the struggling workers. Firstly, they isolated the striking workers at Manesar plant preventing other sections of workers from coming to their aid. Then they divided the regular and contract/casual workers inside the plant. Then they isolated the dismissed workers from those who were still working. And lastly they isolated those who are under arrest, by cleverly restricting the demand for reinstatement only for those who are not implicated in criminal cases. “We want the reinstatement of all colleagues not charged by the special investigation team (SIT) and a proper and unbiased inquiry into the incident,” said Om Prakash, a member of HMS. Demand for a ‘proper and unbiased inquiry’ is yet another tool for reposing the faith in legitimacy of the openly pro-corporate state.

Workers at Maruti-Suzuki, despite all of their sincere wishes and best efforts, cannot win the struggle against the united might of corporates and the state under them, through their efforts alone. The struggling workers must join hands with their class brethren to launch a real and broad offensive against the combined might of corporate and the state.

Our Party- Workers' Socialist Party (WSP) calls upon the workers to first break away from the trade union bureaucracies and their false and opportunist leaders and turn to our Party, the only party of revolutionary marxism. Most militant of them must organise themselves in ‘action committees’ to head the struggle. These committees must be developed gradually into soviets of workers. The struggle at Maruti-Suzuki, and for that matter every serious conflict between workers and corporates, must be made a spearhead of a revolutionary offensive against the capitalist class and its political rule. Every such conflict must be looked upon as a conflagration having potential to lead to a real revolution, through dragging of working class to the whirlpool of political struggle.


Check Our Earlier Reports:

http://new-wave-nw.blogspot.in/2011/10/maruti-strike-workers-remain-resolute.html

http://new-wave-nw.blogspot.in/2011/10/unity-of-workers-at-maruti-suzuki.html

http://new-wave-nw.blogspot.in/2011/10/workers-strike-resumes-at-maruti.html

http://new-wave-nw.blogspot.in/2011/10/maruti-suzuki-struggle-social-democrats.html

http://new-wave-nw.blogspot.in/2011/09/maruti-suzuki-workers-struggle-at.html

Revolutionary Greetings to Workers Socialist Party of India

 

We reprint the revolutionary greetings we sent in response to the New Wave group who invited us to the founding of the Workers Socialist Party of India on the 95th Anniversary of the Great October Revolution.
 
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5th November 2012

Dear Comrades of the Workers Socialist Party of India,

Revolutionary Greetings on this auspicious occasion!

We send our warm greetings and solidarity on your launching of the Workers' Socialist Party from the new wave tendency.

We have followed the new wave for some years and have much agreement with your program.

We especially endorse your purpose in 'resurrecting' the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India.

Our Liaison Committee has much in common with your program in its general outline, though we may differ on your history of the liquidation of the Fourth International. We see those who opposed Pabloism as also complicit in the betrayal of the Bolivian revolution of 1952. Therefore we see the tradition of the International Committee as no better or worse than the International Secretariat.

While we agree with you that India is not an imperialist country we think that China and Russia are both emerging imperialist powers.

Nonetheless, we have one fundamental thing in common and that is the necessity to build a New World Party of Revolution based on the method and program of the Fourth International of 1938. Without such a World Party there is no prospect that the decline and decay of capitalism and imperialism will escape barbarism and make the transition to socialism.

We therefore welcome the formation of the new party and express our revolutionary solidarity in the immense tasks that you are taking on in the subcontinent and internationally.

We also look forward to discussing our agreements and disagreements to test the prospect for fusion.

Dave Brown for the Liaison Committee of Communists

Revolutionary Workers' Group of Zimbabwe
Communist Workers' Group of the U.S.A.
Communist Workers' Group of Aotearoa/New Zealand

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7th November 2012 (Wednesday) at 12 pm
Press Club of India
1, Raiseena Road, New Delhi
(Nearest Metro Station: Central Secretariat)


Comrades,

As you know, years ago we had launched the struggle for a revolutionary program of working class and socialism. We proposed a draft program and comrades participated in the deliberations, leading to forging of a real program. More than one decade, we had mounted an offensive against alien currents inside the movement of the working class- social-democracy, stalinism-maoism and pabloism, and the political trends: bourgeois nationalism, petty bourgeois radicalism and reformism.

Needless to say that this struggle for a program was part of our overall struggle for forging a party of working class and to arm the workers with requisite logistics necessary to trigger the world socialist revolution. Presentation of the program and gathering of comrades around it over years, has created the conditions necessary for creation of such party.

We take pride in declaring that on the occasion of the 95th anniversary of Great October Revolution, we are making public declaration of our party, under the banner of  "Workers' Socialist Party". In organising the party, we are resurrecting the old BLPI, that existed in 1940's, the only revolutionary marxist party of Fourth International founded by Leon Trotsky. Our program is the program of permanent revolution, the program of fourth international. Here is the link to our program:  http://new-wave-nw.blogspot.in/p/our-programme.html

You are condially invited to attend the Public Declaration and Press Conference.

Contact: 9810081383
e-mail: workers.socialist.party@gmail.com
facebook: facebook.com/workerssocialistparty

China/US Rivalry for Asia-Pacific

Chinese anti-Japan protest featuring Chairman Mao

US imperialism as the dominant world power is under threat. The global crisis of falling profits has hit the US and EU economy hard and the great recession must become a great depression to restore profits. As a result US rivalry with other imperialist countries is hotting up as they all compete with one another to increase their ‘spheres of influence’ and their super-profits. The US now faces China and Russia as new, expansionary imperialist powers. The main threat to US imperialism comes from China rising as we have argued for some time. China/US rivalry is the driving force behind global geopolitics today. Grasping this reality is the starting point for Marxist revolutionaries.
 
China is now the second largest global economy though still lagging well behind the USA. Yet it is overtaking the US at about 8% a year while the US economy lags between 1 or 2%. The US has responded with trade protection and a political and military ‘pivot’ into the Asia-Pacific to contain China’s growing sphere of influence. It is also continuing to try to isolate China’s ally Iran and the influence of China in Central Asia, and stepping up its activity in Africa where China has made big inroads in the last decade. This raises the stakes globally and explains the political and military moves to contain China in the Mideast, Asia and the Pacific.

China as Emerging Imperialist power

China has become a world power today because it is now imperialist. Marxists define imperialism in the way that Lenin did, as the final stage of capitalism in decline when rivalry between giant monopoly corporations backed by their powerful oppressor states compete to divide up the world into “spheres of influence” to extract ‘super-profits’ from the colonies and semi-colonies. This economic competition inevitably leads to political and military conflict. Two imperialist world wars have demonstrated the truth of this theory. The current global crisis of overproduction sets the scene for more wars including a 3rd imperialist world war.

Marxists reject crude dogmas that see the re-emergence of China as a world power as due either to its dynamic revival of pre-capitalist glory, or to a Maoist-type post-capitalist society out-developing capitalism.

China is imperialist today because it had a national revolution that smashed the ancient semi-feudal landlords of pre-capitalist China, and then threw out imperialism and the weak Chinese bourgeoisie in 1949.

The revolution was led by a Maoist bureaucracy at the head of a peasant army that nationalised bourgeois property but prevented workers and poor peasants from taking power. So the ‘post-capitalist’ society that resulted fell well short of a healthy workers’ state and failed to develop the conditions for socialism.

The post-capitalist society did not have the capacity to develop the forces of production to keep pace even with declining global imperialism. China has huge resources and population yet the dictatorship of the Maoist bureaucracy together with China’s national isolation from the world market resulted in the planned economy stagnating. It could not produce enough to meet the needs of the masses nor increase the surplus for the parasitic bureaucracy. The bureaucracy decided in the late 1970s to reintroduce the capitalist market to revive the economy. But once introduced, the law of value began to spread and take over from the plan as the main driver of the economy.

When the Maoist bureaucracy smashed working class resistance to the growing inequalities of the market at Tiananmen Square in 1989 the way was open to restore capitalism to the whole economy. At that point, China was ruled by the law of value. Prices were set by market competition and not state officials so that labour power now became a commodity. The state now served the interests of a new bourgeoisie which exploited wage labour. The top leaders of the Communist Party became a ‘Red Bourgeoisie’. The bourgeoisie began to accumulate surplus profits and China had to ‘go global’ in search of super profits from raw materials and labour. This rapid expansion as a new imperialist power brought it into conflict with the existing imperialist powers, in particular the US.

US Imperialism takes up the Challenge

While China is a looming economic threat is lags well behind the US. However its growth trajectory puts it on collision course. The US has responded economically, politically and militarily. Economically the US is stepping up its ‘trade wars’ ramping up anti-China xenophobia, blocking Chinese investment and challenging ‘unfair’ competition.

China’s threat to the US is most direct in the Asia-Pacific where it wants an economic bloc, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), to advance its interests. The US has responded economically by joining the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) which excludes and isolates China and could create a rival US- dominated Asia-Pacific sphere of influence.

A second purpose is to compete more efficiently with China by using the TPPA to open up the Asia-Pacific economies to US investment on conditions which maximise profits and impose punitive rules to enforce the extraction of super profits. Thus the US wants to enforce its domestic law in the members’ states allowing it to enforce its property rights (see Box). This political domination is backed up by a beefed up military deployment including a missile ring that encircles China (and the whole of East Asia) drawing in key US allies in the region.

China responds to US encirclement

China is building its military capacity (see cover photo of China’s first and only aircraft carrier) but in most parts of the world does not deploy it. It can compete economically and relies on trade and investment deals with national regimes on a so-called ‘win win’ basis in Asia, Latin America and Africa. It has formed economic and military blocs with Asian states to mark its shared sphere of influence over central and South Asia with other powers especially Russia and India such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

However, it sees East Asia and South Asia as its own sphere of influence, and has for years been involved in territorial disputes in the South China Sea such as that with Philippines over Huangjang Island. China has regarded the Paracel and Spratly Islands as part of its territorial waters for centuries. The current reactivation of these disputes reflects first, the competition for control of rich economic resources, and second, control over China’s main sea route to the Indian Ocean through the Strait of Malacca, and a counter to US opening military bases in Australia and the Philippines.

Also indicating the rising inter-imperialist rivalry in the China’s core zone of influence is the recent dispute in the ‘East China Sea’ with Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands . This is a small scale version of the long standoff with the US over Taiwan. Like Taiwan, China regards these Islands as part of China much as it regards its ‘internal colonies’ in Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia as Chinese territory. The closer to China’s heartland the more these territorial disputes become inflamed by extreme xenophobia and public demonstrations against ‘foreigners’ and working class support of imperialist military adventures.

3rd World War vs Class War

New imperialist wars are inevitable sooner or later. Both the US and Japan are declining imperialist powers and belligerent in using military power to defend their spheres of influence against China. Japan’s Conservatives want to re-arm and redeploy to ‘contain’ China. China, to expand must sooner or later enter into military disputes with these powers. So far they are proxy disputes and civil wars ranging from Iran to Syria over control of oil in the Middle East and Central Asia. There are the makings of proxy wars in Africa, notably in Sudan where China and Iran are engaged in a shadowy war with Israel and the US. The most dangerous arena for military conflict, however, is in the breaking disputes over China’s claimed core sphere of influence in the Asia-Pacific.

In proxy wars between imperialist powers, and in direct military conflict, revolutionaries must be dual defeatists. This means that we oppose fighting on the side of any imperialist power to stop them grabbing of more resources, plundering and destroying humanity and nature. Where imperialism is at war with colonies or semi-colonies we defend them and fight to defeat the imperialist power, unless they are being used as proxies by another imperialist power.

So for example in the South China Sea Islands we defend Vietnam and Philippines against China. But if these nations are acting as proxies for the US, we are for the defeat of both sides while fighting simultaneously for the independence of Vietnam or the Philippines. In the Diaoyu Islands we are for self-determination from both Japan and China and oppose them being used as proxies in a war between any imperialist powers. In the latter case it is enmeshed in Okinawa’s long struggle for independence from both the US military which has bases on the island, and Japan which claims Okinawa.

Revolutionary Marxists call on workers to fight against all attempts by their ruling classes to rally workers behind their national flags into new imperialist wars. Workers have no country, we unite across borders as one international working class to fight to overthrow our ruling classes, seize state power, and bring about a new socialist global society!



Defeat US, Japanese and Chinese Imperialism!

Defend oppressed nations against imperialism!

For a Federation of Socialist Republics of the Asia-Pacific!

For a new World Party of Socialist Revolution!

Class Struggle 102 Sept Oct 2012

CS 102 September

DEFEAT STATE PERSECUTION OF ARGENTINE SOCIALIST MILITANTS OF THE LOI-CI

Some of the leading members of the Trotskyist LOI-DO of Argentina have been subjected to house searches and confiscation of documents and cell phones by legal authorities on false charges of fraud. This is a capitalist state persecution of the "Movement for Workers' Democracy" and an attack on the workers' movement internationally.

The Liaison Committee of Communists strongly supports the call for a campaign to fight the persecution of the socialist fighters of LOI-DO, to drop all charges and end the persecution of militants by the state.

We reproduce part of the Press Release of the Movement for Workers Democracy  below (any translation errors are ours). 

Communist Workers Group (USA)
Communist Workers Group (A/NZ)
Revolutionary Workers Group (Zimbabwe)

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Press Release of the Movement for Workers Democracy

STOP THE ATTACKS AND PERSECUTION OF THE SOCIALIST FIGHTERS!

Against the Trotskyists, no. Against us, no. We are with Aleppo and the workers and exploited who in Syria fight against the genocide to Al Assad on behalf of imperialism!

Out with the judges of Mossad like the fascist Melazo and the bosses justice that attack the Socialist workers and fighters!


October 1st, 2012

[...]On Wednesday, in simultaneous raids, in several houses of Argentinian socialist revolutionary leaders some with more than 40 years in the national political arena, were raided. The office of the labor lawyer Viviana Noguerol was raided also. She is member of the Promotion Board of “Movimiento por la Democracia Obrera” (Movement for Workers Democracy) in Argentina.

Days before, Paula Medrano was phoned by the UFI 8 of the city La Plata in charge of María Victoria Huergo, prosecuting attorney of complex crimes in the [...] public prosecutor office where César Melazo, the Magistrate of “guarantees” works. 

Paula Medrano is a "daughter of the disappeared" of La Plata city. She had called the tribunal and public prosecutor’s office asking if the corpse of her mother had appeared in the year and a half since the corpse of her father “appeared”. The phone call in reply was to inform her that the prosecutor's office had found cause to charge her with "fraud". 

[...] As already happened with leaders of Quebracho 5-6 years ago, this fascist judge Melazo now accuses worker and popular fighters of “fraud” and “theft” as a means of political persecution. We face a repetition of this proceedure, this time against socialist leaders, labour lawyers, intellectuals, and sons and daughters of disappeared. They have been targeted  by the Bonaerense Police (from Buenos Aires Province) [...]. 

The judge Melazo, last April 2, said in the press that “here is a punch of the Quebrachitos - that hid their faces - till we  break their faces”. Thus, this magistrate called for an attack like the murderous Bonaerense Police made when they “went to punch the picketers in Puente Pueyrredon” that killed Kostequi and Santillán in 2002. Some of the killers were caught not because a judge was investigating the Bonaerense police but because they were filmed by journalists at the moment when they killed the comrades in Avellaneda Station.

We are facing a provocation. The raids against socialists including detention of people at their home address. People that have nothing to do with the search warrant and were detained in public, in the street like ordinary thieves. Dozens of policemen and prosecuting attorneys trashed the houses and lawyer’s offices seizing papers, mobile phones and computers. They sought telephone numbers, personal notebooks, names, ransacked wardrobes, turned mattresses over. They carefully checked the books on Marxism and socialism found in the houses one by one. 

The witnesses that supposedly “were passing by on the street” were arrested without the knowledge of anybody. [...] the police and experts opened their computers and mobile phones without the physical presence of the proprietors of the housing and without their permission [...]
[...] Nobody should be surprised by this attack, when the Macri, Chief of Government of the Ciudad de Buenos Aires is accused of listening telephone conversations of citizens demanding their rights. Nothing can be odd when all the political originators of the assassinations on December 20, 2001 are free, as well as of the assassination of Kostequi and Santillán and the thousands cases of “easy trigger” against the Argentinean youth, among others. 

[...] Of course, we will show, neither before judges of the dictatorship nor their prosecuting attorneys living in La Recoleta, but before the eyes of the working class and workers of Argentina and the world that the true criminal gangs are those who steal the rivers, minerals, water, oil, the Central Bank, 50.000 millions of dollars of the savers while  all the bankers remain free.

[...] we will denounce not before judges who belonged to the CNU, the fascists of the Triple A who killed students in Mar del Plata, who in partnership with Mossad persecute the fighters for the Palestinian cause. While the Triple A has kidnapped some of us it has not intimidated us.  Neither did the military dictatorship intimidate us, let alone, the CIA, Mossad and CNU’s judges against which we fight.
 
[...] Facing the provocation, against the courts of the oligarchy, we call for a public tribunal of the workers organizations and those who stand for true democracy to bring to trial the judges of the dictatorship, their collaborators, the prosecuting attorneys and the oligarchy and expropriators of the people. We will investigate them. We will judge them. And before the eyes of the people we will show they are impostors.

[..]The internationalist socialists of world working class organizations will denounce the persecution of our comrades of Argentina because they dared to lead the Campaign of international solidarity with the workers and people massacred by genocides in Libya, Syria and Palestine. We accuse the political chiefs of these judges and the State as responsible. They are the agents of the oligarchy and imperialism that pillages the nation.
 
We know that these threatens and arrogance and this attack against the democratic freedoms are a respond to a relentlessly fight in defense of the interests of the workers all around the world and in particular of the Argentinian workers.

[...] The UFI 8 says it has an expert team with the best technology to solve “complex crimes”. They say to have the “best men” and the “best technology”…so, why don’t they find the kidnappers of Julio López if they are able to solve so many “complex crimes”? If they are of such "high quality” and “efficiency” where is Julio López?  [...] where is the young Luciano Arruga and Daniel Solano-delegate of the agriculture workers? Until they fi find them this is living proof that they only catch “chicken thieves” and allow the kidnappers, the murderous military-men, the corrupted politicians, and the transnational companies, plunderers of the nation, to go free.

We know that we will get the support of the organizations that fight for democratic freedoms; the socialist and worker organizations of the world that support the fighters in Syria and Libya; those that in Wall Street and in Europe fight against the capitalists´ attacks. Those who fight for the freedom of the prisoners of Guantanamo, Chile, Colombia, Palestine will be side by side with us.

[..] Thousands of worker fighters have been under prosecution for “the crime” of asking for what belongs to them with justice. The capitalists’ state needs hostages and worker organizations with their leaders having “the Damocles sword” over their head so they will surrender rather than openly fight against this rotten society. And they speak about “democracy” when there are thousands of worker fighters under charges and hundreds of youth killed by the police. Even they speak about “democracy” when there are peasant peoples massacred to take away their lands like Qom in Formosa, and there are policemen sent by judges of the same quality of Melazo and other repressors that in order to defend the exploiters’ lands don’t need signed search warrants, or orders for assassinations and humiliations of all kind.

[...] This is one more of so many political fights that our socialist movement has made in the Argentinean, Latin American, and world working class. In the particular case of the “Movimiento por la Democracia Obrera” of Argentina which has begun its campaign to stand in the next electoral campaign to present, this time with electoral legal status, its positions in public. This provocation is aimed at preventing  a socialist, independent, and intransigent voice being heard denouncing the interests of the exploiters and their political representatives in Argentina. They will not achieve it. We know of the great national and international solidarity that we will get through this appeal.

[...] The “Movimiento por la Democracia Obrera” is member of an international movement in support of the Syrian masses to stop the genocide of Al Assad on behalf of all the imperialist powers of the world. We take up again the socialist tradition of the Argentinian workers that in the ´30s sent volunteers, money and medicine to the battlefield in Spain against Francoism. We know that the “franquist” Argentineans of today are the ones attacking us and they want to stop us. They will not achieve it.

Paula Medrano
Viviana Noguerol
Juan Pico
W.M.


Clarification:

[...] Melazo ordered no less than 25 raids. What he found in these raids is secret.
What supposedly he found in the houses of the fighters members of the “Movimiento por la Democracia Obrera” that they had during a week confiscated by the SIDE, Mossad and Bonaerense will be exposed in a “public expert´s report”…since this note was already in the street and they knew about its existence.

Beware Falling BRICS: South Africa and China

Strategic Alliance: Jacob Zuma bows to Hu Jintao

The Marikana Massacre has exposed the reactionary ANC regime as a client state of imperialism. The ANC is attempting to head off a growing mass uprising of workers by building a new ‘strategic partnership’ with China in the hope that this will produce ‘win-win’ deals to allow the country to develop its economy and reap the wealth produced. China, however, is no saviour as it is no different to the former colonial exploiters. As an emerging imperialist power its interest is in the super-exploitation of South African workers. The global crisis is creating a militant opposition to the rule of capitalist imperialism everywhere. In South Africa, as elsewhere, for workers to live they will have to unite to overthrow capitalism. Forward to the South African Revolution!

Marikana – A South African Spring?

What is behind the Marikana Massacre? It is a re-opening of the democratic revolution that has the potential for permanent revolution similar to that of the Arab Spring? Why does the national democratic revolution need re-opening? In 1952 the ANC and SACP joined forced to lead the national democratic revolution to power. The ANC adopted its program on national development, the Freedom Charter, from the Stalinist SACP which held that SA must go through a bourgeois stage of capitalist development to create the pre-conditions for socialism.

We trace this Stalinist theory of stages to the Menshevik position in Russia in 1923 which Stalin reverted to once he was in power in the Soviet Union. The democratic revolution would empower the working class to nationalise the means of production to speed up the transition to socialism. This would be possible if the bourgeois state was under the control of the ANC representing the Black majority working class. The Freedom Charter written in 1955 made ‘nationalisation’ of the mines central to its program of national development. Thus ‘nationalisation’ meant ownership by the bourgeois state ‘governed’ by the ANC, not the social ownership of the working class in a socialist workers’ state. The working people would delegate this task to the ANC and not have direct control over its implementation.

When the ANC came to power in 1994 the SACP program of ‘nationalisation’ was already realised in the Soviet Union by its return to state capitalism. The Stalinist policy of Perestroika and Glasnost had opened the road to the restoration of the capitalist market. Yeltsin in 1992 defeated any resistance to capitalist restoration forcing state property to be privatised or the remaining SEOs to be subject to the law of value in global capitalist market. This translated globally as a retreat from not only workers property, but from bourgeois ‘nationalisation’, to the ‘mixed economy’ dressed up sometimes as ‘market socialism’. So by 1994 the Stalinist world was already rejecting ‘nationalisation’ as the preferred road to socialism. Thus the bourgeois national revolution in SA was deformed at birth as part of a historic defeat of the world working class that brought the downfall of the degenerate workers states including the Soviet Union, destroying workers property, the main gain of the October 1917 Revolution.

In coming to power in 1994 the ANC junked the Freedom Charter for a developmental state model of ‘market socialism’ where the state regulates the market to meet the goals of ‘socialism’. It wasn’t until 2002 that it succeeded in overcoming resistance to the nationalisation of mineral resources in the ground. Today the ANC leadership still rules out nationalisation of the mining companies’ assets as too costly and politically destabilising. It says the nationalisation of the assets of listed mining corporations would cost $1 Trillion and bankrupt the country leaving it at the mercy of a Structural Adjustment Program. It therefore continues to opt for a range of taxes, royalties and other ‘value-sharing’ measures to implement its particular brand of ‘national development’.

Has the national revolution created the pre-conditions for socialism?

The ANC/SACP policy of the bourgeois national revolution is one of using the state to redistribute surplus value towards the gradual social ownership of the means of production. Imperialism is understood as based on unequal exchange where normal profits (surplus-value) are inflated into super profits by extracting ‘super-value’. The two main mechanisms are using a reserve army to force de-value wages below the level of reproduction, and undervaluing the price of the commodities produced and exported via transfer pricing. This means that on top of normal capitalist profits (surplus value), imperialist corporations ‘steal’ super-profits (super-value). The ANC/SACP policy is that the national revolution ‘empowers’ workers governments to tax or regulate imperialism to reduce or eliminate unequal exchange as the basis of super-profits. There have been ongoing attempts to achieve this using a number of rules including the latest attempts to stop transfer pricing. But there is now a growing consensus that this has failed and that SA is one of the most super-exploited semi-colonies on earth.

This means that in practice for 18 years the ANC has proven that its Stalinist SACP theory of the progressive national revolution is a fraud. It has presided over the return of EU and US multinationals into the mining industry and failed to put an end to imperialist super-exploitation of low wages (reflected in the poverty living standards of workers) and transfer pricing. The lion’s share of value pumped out of mining continued to go into the coffers of the mining multinationals, Anglo-American, Lonmin, Glencore etc. The rate of super-profit remains massive. The minority share that came to the regime via royalties, taxes and minority shareholdings such as the BEES (Black Business Empowerment) did not benefit the mass of South Africans, but went into the pockets of a newly emerging Black bourgeoisie. The ANC is now shown up by its failed national revolution as the party of a new Black national bourgeoisie presiding over the super-exploitation of the South African working class.

All of this was predicted decades ago by revolutionary Marxists who fought the Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union. The Stalinist popular front empowered a bureaucracy and a new bourgeoisie by disempowering the working class. These revolutionaries are once again vindicated by events in South Africa. The ANC Tripartite regime has trapped SA into dependency on Western imperialist super-exploitation. It has led to the rise of a Black bourgeoisie and crony capitalism, and the rising mass dissatisfaction with the successive leadership of the ANC, its statified union Congress, Cosatu, and of its political leadership in the SACP, is today beginning to rise up. The miners of Marikane are but the first wave of mass insurrection that rejects the ANC regime and its state force and is embarking on the road to workers power!

ANC Response

Despite the recent attempts at Polokwane to outline a new plan for national development based on a greater share of the resource rent these pathetic paper proposals have been overwhelmed by the global crisis and falling demand for minerals which has put pressure on the regime to contain and discipline mining workers to screw down labour and production costs to restore levels of super-profits. This created a wave of dissatisfaction with the NUM and the series of disputes that ultimately led to the Marikana Massacre.

The ANC response to the Massacre has been to resort to police suppression of the militants to defeat and contain the miners’ strike, and at the same time try to keep control of the moderates by holding a public inquiry and promising major economic reforms. These reforms amount to promises to tax the mining super-profits via tougher Resource Rent Tax that will create a Sovereign Wealth Fund to invest in national and economic social development. This conception of national development is tied to SA’s membership of the BRICS led by China. It is being promoted as an attempt to reduce its dependence on Western imperialism by collaborating with the ‘market socialist’ giant whose developmental model can be copied. Instead of ‘Western’ imperialist exploitation the ANC sees China as an alternative economic power with which it can enter a “win-win” partnership based on “equal exchange”.

Thus in the SIMS plans launched in March 2012 the ANC proposes that on the back of a SWF funded by the 50% RRT it can develop upstream in energy (power and infrastructure) and downstream, manufacturing, education, housing etc much as China has. It wants to build Pilot Beneficients Hubs based on the Chinese SEZs which allow new investment, technology etc to drive up the ‘value chain’ to add-value and fund jobs and rising living standards. This, they say will allow SA to follow China’s path to national development overcoming the barriers of super-exploitation, unemployment and poverty.

For some in the ANC this is not enough to stop super-exploitation. By its own calculations, SIMS proposed 50% RRT taxes only half the super-profits of mining companies. Julius Malema, the expelled ANC Youth League leader, and his faction want to replace the leadership of the ANC and its policy of taxing profits. Their main demand is ‘nationalisation without compensation’. Here we can see that Malema is trying to contain the political radicalisation of workers to rescue the ANC and the Tripartite Alliance by promising a more radical reform than the current leadership. Malema is popular with the striking miners who support more militant moves to share the wealth. Many are now breaking with the NUM and Cosatu and calling for directly negotiated share of the profits.

Malema’s factional fight inside the ANC does not break with the popular front. Nationalisation without compensation is still a bourgeois nationalisation. This is not a nationalisation from below based on workers occupation and workers control! ‘Nationalisation’ undertaken by the ANC would be a bourgeois nationalisation. The process will remain one led by the Tripartite Alliance of the ANC, Cosatu and SACP in which a bourgeois state is the agent of national capitalist development continuing to act as a junior partner of imperialism. Malema is unlikely to win a majority in the upcoming ANC Congress for ‘nationalisation’ as a panacea, because the ANC leadership is confident that its reforms will be bankrolled by China. “This time round” the global crisis which has now burst to the surface at Marikana and spreading to all the mines is pushing the ANC leadership to ‘reinvent’ itself by modelling SA development on China’s ‘market socialism’.

In other words ANC wants SA to “takeoff” and raise living standards like China and the other BRICS. “Not surprisingly then, the new investments from China will be centred on “geology and mineral resources” as well as on financial cooperation between the Development Bank of South Africa and China Development Bank. But according to Kgalema Motlanthe, South Africa’s deputy president, things are different this time around. The deals, he said, are meant to “strike a healthy balance” in trade volume between the two countries.“This financial cooperation agreement is between development banks and the specific projects in which they are going to invest, they have to identify these projects,” Motlanthe, who is on a three-day trip China, was quoted by Reuters as saying. “To that end, the difference is, instead of just exporting these minerals as raw materials, there will be…value add to create jobs on both sides,” he added.”

In other words a ‘win-win’ deal. China may be investing in the old ‘imperialist’ ventures of energy, minerals and banking, but it won’t be extracting super-profits! Or at least the super-profits will be divided equally – hence ‘win-win’ for both Chinese and South African bourgeoisie! A recent delegation from the province of Gauteng visited China to sign up to a deal on infrastructure projects. It was led by Gauteng Premier Nomvula Mokonyane who said: "Our people's lives will improve because after this partnership is sealed, we will see a massive roll-out of infrastructure projects. Already in Tshwane, we have a number of flagship projects in the pipeline including the construction of the Tshwane International Conference Center and Rainbow Junction, among others," said Ramokgopa.

Can South Africa develop like China?

Let’s look at this prospect. The global crisis and the slump in demand for minerals as well as the hardship facing workers that led to Marikana, may speed up the China connection. China continues to keep the economies of the BRICS steaming along so long as its own economy is still growing rapidly. The current slowdown in China from 8% to maybe 7% is still a raging boom by comparison with Western imperialist states. In this sense China appears to be different from the established imperialist powers in continuing to keep the world economy from slumping into deep depression.

So is Chinese investment an alternative to imperialist super-exploitation? Is China different to the Western Powers? Can it sustain the world economy and in particular the BRICS. Will South Africa be able to attract more trade and investment out of China, and also increase its share of the rent from mineral extraction? And will he Chinese model of development reproduce in SA an increase in added value based on transfer of technology and knowledge?

Deborah Brautigam of China in Africa: The Real Story sees China as different from the European powers, but still expecting a commercial advantage from its investments in Africa. China is not copying European colonisation which sucks out resources and labour power without concern for upstream or downstream development, but can see the benefits in developing Africa after the Chinese model. Not only is China exporting its model to semi-colonies like South Africa but since 2000 and the policy to “Go Out” and membership of WTO, it is demonstrating this process of going up the value stream from cheap labour to high tech in its FDI in SA. This shows that China has used FDI in semi-colonies like South Africa to launch its “Go Global”. It does not compete directly against the established brands of EU, US and Japanese corporate, but starts cheap or contracts to established brands to develop a competitive product and then develop its own brands globally.

In SA Chinese FDI took off after 2000 where it used SA as a ‘learning arena’ for the globalisation of its banks and industries. So China is not only doing swaps of loans for resources, it is investing in upstream energy and infrastructure, and downstream consumer goods such as domestic appliances, electronics and communications. “Adding these estimates suggests that Chinese assets in South Africa in mining alone were probably worth close to US$700 million at end of 2007. This suggests that MOFCOM’s figure of US$702 million was reasonably accurate, in contrast to the SARB figure of US$70.” The Edge, p8. “The period since 2000 has seen a major expansion in the Chinese presence in South African mining with the doubling of Sinosteel’s investment during 2006, and the entry of other mining companies as discussed above. Several major Chinese corporations have entered the banking and construction sectors.” Ibid p 18. Thus China’s ‘demonstration effect’ is a major factor in reviving hopes that ‘win-win’ deals will see South Africa and other African states make the same leap from underdevelopment to development made by China. 

China’s 21st century imperialism

This is not the familiar 19th or 20th century imperialism, but rather a supersession of 19th and 20th century imperialism as a new form of 21st century imperialism. On the surface it is easy to see why semi-colonial governments can hope to do ‘win-win’ deals with China. Moreover, the Chinese developmental model which is regarded widely as a form of ‘market socialism’ fits snugly with the central role of the state in ownership and control of African economies in the ideology of the ANC, ZANU PF and other African governments. All of this hinges on the assumption that China is a new form of economy – a hybrid of a socialist state and the capitalist market – which is not governed by the laws governing the economies of the other big powers. Thus it appears that China has escaped the trap of Western imperialism and shows the way for the rest of the BRICS and other ‘developing’ countries to follow the same road.

But on closer analysis, China is not essentially different from Western Imperialist economies as its policies are dictated by the laws of motion of monopoly capital and by the growing rivalry with other imperialist states. Standard neo-liberal economic theory argues that China’s Overseas FDI is different from established developed economies as they are not global leaders in any sector. This view is echoed on the left, that China cannot catch up with imperialism because it does not have competitive advantage in any global sector of production. Some argue that this fits with Lenin’s concept of imperialism where imperialist firms must be world leaders to monopolise a sector of production, e.g. oil, banks, steel, autos etc.

What this theory overlooks is that China with its centralised state capitalist apparatus is able to leverage its 100s of millions of low paid workers to create huge surpluses to catch up with its stagnating rivals. This means that it has a massive accumulated super-profits to buy existing assets or resources and form joint ventures to break into sectors where seeks to dominate in the future. In South Africa as well as FDI in minerals and financial services China sought markets for assembled CKD goods and offer more competitive, cheaper, brands and services on the basis of technology transfer arising from FDI inside China itself.

Thus, China has been able to ‘capitalise’ on its history as a Degenerated Workers State to accumulate surplus value rapidly and ‘go out’ by applying its developmental model in key countries like South Africa. So not only has China demonstrated by its rapid expansion that it is an emerging imperialist power, it is also proving that it is not immune to the deepening global capitalist crisis and is showing signs of overproduction of capital. This is now becoming evident as China’s economy is slowing down. Perhaps China’s slowdown is only because it is tied to the global market, and not due to any inherent crisis of overproduction? This is the most common view on the reformist left, a view shared by the ANC and other African regimes. Because the ANC views capitalism as capable of being reformed into ‘socialism’ by equalising exchange, China is ‘socialist’ to the extent that it can use ‘Keynesian’ state deficit spending to compensate for falling trade. But in a capitalist economy state investment in infrastructure will generate stagflation unless that infrastructure contributes to the production of commodities that China can sell in the world market.

China’s crisis then, exposes for all to see, the limits of ‘market socialism’ as dependent on the underlying laws of global capitalism. The BRICS look to the ‘China model’ of state managed development to strengthen trade and investment relations and move toward swap deals where China provides long term loans or infrastructure deals in exchange for resources. Yet the BRICS categorised as ‘emerging markets’, hides essential differences behind surface similarities. The essential differences are that Russia and China are imperialist countries and have no interest in ‘developing’ the other BRICS unless they can reap super-profits. This means that BRICS like South Africa cannot escape the ‘sphere of influence’ of Chinese and Russian imperialism without a socialist revolution.

Russia and China are newly emerging imperialist countries having made the transition from DWS back to capitalism. Despite massive problems associated with capitalist restoration, their strong state and relative independence from existing imperialist states has allowed them to escape the fate of the other BRICS which remain trapped in their colonial dependence. We can see how Russia and China have formed a new imperialist bloc competing with the US led bloc by creating its own sphere of influence in Asia, Africa and Latin America. This sphere of influence now includes the other BRICS (Brazil, India and South Africa) as well as other intermediate states such as Iran, Venezuela etc. Yet inevitably this sphere of influence is one in which Russia and China dominate and super-exploit their semi-colonial clients. India, Brazil and South Africa are all characterised by the continued dominance of imperialist FDI which limits their ability to develop an independent bourgeoisie and accumulate capital on their own account.

Way Forward

Our conclusion is that the ANC cannot lead South Africa out of imperialist super-exploitation by following China’s development model. It has proven that the bourgeois democratic revolution cannot be completed by means of a popular front government but in fact holds back its completion by trapping the working class in a client state of imperialism. This will prove to be the case with China also. China is not a new form of society that can escape capitalist crisis. It is an emerging imperialist power that is now the main rival of the US bloc in Africa. The ANC’s strategic alliance with China will see it staying trapped in semi-colonial super-exploitation and its people trapped in poverty and misery.

The miners of Marikana will not win freedom or economic security without leading a socialist revolution in SA. For that to happen the workers need their own Revolutionary Party and a program that opens the road to revolution. It is necessary to build a working class movement based on the mines; workers councils in every workplace and township; workers defence militias; for the seizure of power and formation of a Workers and poor farmers Government to expropriate imperialist and capitalist property and plan a socialist economy!

Build a Workers Party that unites the militant vanguard from China the Middle East to the USA!

For a new World Party of Socialist Revolution!

Liaison Committee of Communists

Revolutionary Workers Group (Zimbabwe)
Communist Workers Group (USA)
Communist Workers Group (Aotearoa/NZ)