Class Struggle 59 January/February 2005

 

Class Struggle is the Bi-Monthly of the Communist Worker’s Group. CWG has fraternal relations with the members of the Liaison Committee for an International Conference of Principled Trotskyists and Revolutionary International Workers Organisations whose members are:  Workers’ Democracy (Argentina), Workers Revolutionary Party (Argentina); Workers Internationalist Group (Chile); Trotskyist Workers Nucleus (Chile); Trotskyist Fraction –TCI (Brazil); Workers’ Opposition (Brazil); Marxist Workers’ Party (Brazil); Marxist Trench (Brazil); Revolutionary Communist Collective (Brazil); International Trotskyist Fraction of Peru and Bolivia.

 

Contents

 

·        Tsunami – a predictable capitalist disaster

·        Sent warmonger Peter Hain home!

·        Workers Against the War On Terror

·        Boycott Imperialist Election in Iraq

·        Revolutionary Program for Iraq

·        Abu-Mazen to Bush- “Kill the Insurgents”

·        Solidarity with US Million Worker March

·        World Social Forum prepares new sellouts

·        Brazilian militants in CONLUTAS meet

·        Perspectives and Challenges for Liaison Committee

·        Review: The West and the Arab Elite

 

 

 

The left has criticized the hypocrisy of imperialist responses to the tsunami. But who has called the disaster capitalist? What would a socialist tsunami look like?

 

The South Asian tsunami is a ‘natural’ disaster that is just as much the result of capitalism as the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. And just as in Iraq a workers revolution is needed to create an Iraqi socialist republic, so is a South Asian socialist federation of workers’ and peasants governments and a planned regional socialist economy.

 

The left become liberal humanists

 

Most of the left is horrified that the imperialist states are not going to cancel the debt outright, and call on them to do it. Monbiot’s left liberal line is typical. How come ‘our leaders’ can afford billions to kill people but have to rely on charity when tsunamis strike? The problem must be a bad attitude and need for attitude change.

 

“…our leaders appear to have lost the ability to distinguish between helping people and killing them. The tone of Blair's New Year message was almost identical to that of his tear-jerking insistence that we understand the Iraqi people must be bombed for their own good. The US marines who have now been dispatched to Sri Lanka to help the rescue operation were, just a few weeks ago, murdering the civilians (for this, remember, is an illegal war), smashing the homes and evicting the entire population of the Iraqi city of Fallujah…While they spend the money we gave them to relieve suffering on slaughtering the poor, the world must rely for disaster relief on the homeless man emptying his pockets. If our leaders were as generous in helping people as they are in killing them, no one would ever go hungry.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1382932,00.html

 

Workers Power offers an example of so-called Trotskyists picking up the reformist demand "Cancel the debt!"

 

“Of course it is vital to send money, rescue equipment, medical aid to those in desperate and immediate need. We should do all we can to force our miserly billionaire rulers to cough up everything that is needed to help save the lives of the survivors and restore their homes and livelihoods. But we must also fight to ensure that an early warning system, the equal of that which protects the USA and Japan, is rapidly put in place so that never again does such an event find a population so unprotected.

We should redouble the campaign, right up to the G8 meeting this July to demand a total cancellation of the foreign debt of these countries, indeed all the countries of the so-called Global South. The workers and anti-capitalist movement should send aid too, directly to the organizations of the farmers and fishing communities of the region so that the imperialist governments and their tame NGOs do not misuse it to "open up" their economies still more to the multinationals."

http://www.workerspower.com/index.php?id=49,411,0,0,1,0

 

Forcing "our" billionaire rulers to cough up “to help save the lives of the survivors and restore their homes and livelihoods" is a pipe dream short of a socialist revolution that does not require death and destruction to make a buck.  "Restoring homes and livelihoods" in countries were capitalism has enslaved, robbed and impoverished millions for centuries is to recreate the very social conditions that caused this disaster. The imperialists and their cronies in the third world are not motivated to prevent future disasters but only to prevent revolutions arising out of actual disasters caused by capitalist super-exploitation. 

 

Bosses’ will not pay for disaster prevention in third world

 

Nor will the bosses agree to their military and scientific early warning systems to be installed unless they can make a profit or at least prevent a revolution.  Trillions have been spend on MAD during the Cold War, and billions still spent on satellite spies in the sky. The Pacific Early Warning system is principally to defend the military bases of the US and its rich allies. Natural disaster protection is like social welfare, the bosses are only interested in paying out if there is something in it for them. The fact is that the third world loses many more killed from other preventable disasters – diseases such as aids, starvation, genocide etc – than from tsunamis. Revolutionaries have no business sowing illusions in capitalism which is indifferent to human suffering and destruction.

 

It is utopian and criminal for revolutionaries to give any political endorsement to aid that is being used to restore the exploitative and repressive social relations of colonial and semi-colonial capitalism.  All bosses’ aid as well as NGO aid is designed to make a profit from reconstruction. Capitalists in Thailand are taking advantage of the displacement of the poor from the beachfronts to seize the land and build giant new tourist complexes. Look at Iraq and the ‘crony corporates’ that are swilling from the oil trough. That’s why the US imperialists and their agents are using the reconstruction to conduct repressive civil wars such as in oil-rich Aceh.  The US created its client state in Indonesia by backing the Suharto coup against Sukarno in 1965. A million communists and nationalists died in the pogrom that followed. Shortly after, East Timor was invaded with over 250,000 dead before the UN granted it ‘independence’ in 1999. Now, in cynical disregard of this imperialist history, the US military is using the latest ‘disaster’ as a cover for it’s War On Terror against Islamic liberation movements in Aceh and elsewhere in Indonesia.

 

‘Workers aid’ is no alternative

 

Calls for aid to be distributed through the trade unions is no alternative to bosses’ aid,  unless the money is controlled by democratic rank and file workers and peasants organizations in the host countries. See http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/show_news_fc.pl?keyword=tsunami&title=Tsunami+2004:+The+global+trade+union+response&counter=ts/

 

The ‘official’ union organizations such as the ICTU, the ACTU in Australia and CTU in New Zealand are all virtually agencies of the capitalist states and are subservient to their bosses’ interests. Revolutionaries have no business promoting the bosses’ sickening ‘humanist’ moralism to rebuild capitalism among the ‘victims’ of the disaster. ‘Their’ morals are not ‘ours’, said Trotsky. It is immoral to recreate the social structures that will see more millions of workers killed by future ‘natural’ disasters. http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1936/1936-mor.htm

 

Workers must challenge the causes of disasters. Like the so-called ‘natural disasters’ of the past three centuries in Asia, such as droughts and famines, tidal waves only kill people in large numbers because their traditional defenses against such disasters have been destroyed by colonialism and imperialism. Large populations dying from ‘El Niño’ droughts in India and China in the 19^th century resulted from their forced shift from traditional agriculture where surpluses were stockpiled for such events into cash cropping for export where the surpluses were expropriated by capitalism. http://maximumred.blogspot.com/2005/01/mike-davis-on-third-world.html

 

Similarly the millions caught unprotected from floods in river deltas, or from tsunamis on the coastal strips, are the result of displacement of the peasant population and mass migration into rural and urban slums. This is why so many children rushed to the shore to pick up fish exposed when the sea retreated only to be engulfed by the next giant wave.

 

Workers Control of reconstruction

 

The aid that is being offered by bosses, by NGOs and by ‘workers’ organizations, will fall far short of what is necessary to create a viable economic base. Nevertheless, basic food, shelter and medical aid are vital to the very survival of hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants. But instead of accepting the bosses’  ‘strings’ attached to this aid, the workers and peasants of the regions suffering damage from the disaster must form reconstruction committees based on workers democracy and demand control over the distribution and use of this aid.

 

To escape the trap of the reconstruction of colonial and semi-colonial capitalism, workers, fisherfolk and peasants displaced by the tsunami must demand the collectivization of land and fisheries, and the socialization of industry, the banks, transport and communications, all under workers’ control. Where there are national or civil wars as in Sri Lanka and Aceh, the international workers’ movement must support these armed liberation struggles and their demands for national independence. Revolutionaries must seize this opportunity to propagandize for an end to capitalist disasters and fight for a socialist society.

 

Socialist disaster prevention

 

Disasters will never be prevented unless the people fight for and succeed in building a global socialist society.  All of the technology and the social wealth that workers have created for centuries which is now stockpiled as the private property and military death machines of the capitalist rulers will be expropriated and converted to the use of the people.  The people will decide how much of this wealth should be used to create disaster-prevention systems.

 

You can be sure that one of the first steps of any socialist plan will be the conversion of capitalist military satellite technology from bosses’ wars to early warning systems of the dangers of potential natural disasters. This will be followed by practical measures to harness nature’s resources for productive rather than destructive purposes.  Socialist prevention of disasters will be first and foremost the elimination of the system that profits from the deaths of millions of workers and peasants – in peace and in war, in daily existence and in ongoing disasters –capitalism!

 

Imperialist hands off South Asia!

Imperialist Troops out of Indonesia!

Self-Determination for Tamil Eelam and Aceh!

For independent workers organizations in control of disaster relief!

 

The following is a report on a demonstration organized by Direct Antiwar Action (Dawa) against the visit of Peter Hain as guest of the NZ Labour Party last November.

 

Labour Party Conference hosts UK Blairite Warmonger Peter Hain

Send UK warmonger Peter Hain home!

Protest Sunday 14th at 8-30 am, Bruce Mason Centre, Takapuna.

 

DAWA (Direct Anti-War Action) and other anti-war groups are organising a protest outside the Labour Party Conference, Sunday 8-30 am.

 

Prominent Labour Party Minister and Leader of the House in Blair's Government, Peter Hain, is due to speak at the Conference at 9 am.

 

Despite a record as an anti-apartheid activist and founder of the Anti-Nazi League in Britain in the 1970's Hain is now an apologist for Blair's invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein.

 

NZ Labour is trading on its 'liberal reputation' in only supporting the Gulf War UN sanctions during the 1990s to kill half-a-million kids, and not supporting the US-UK led invasion of 2003.

 

By bringing Hain to address them NZ Labour is showing that it does not care that this man supports the US-UK invasion and that its own refusal to support the invasion was unimportant. It is more interested in using Hain to provide a rationale for its 'left Blairism' in NZ.

 

We reject Labour's hypocrisy on the war on Iraq that is flaunted in our face by the presence of this British warmonger.  Here is a quote from an interview with Hain made earlier in the year:

 

Peter Hain said:

"I certainly stand by my reason for backing the action to get rid of Saddam Hussein. I saw clear evidence from intelligence sources about Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction which the UN itself set out in resolution 1441. And of course he had used chemical weapons against the Iranians and the Kurds. We will have to see the outcome of the Iraq Survey Group but its former head David Kay, whilst acknowledging that he had not discovered militarized chemical weapons, also said in statements to the US congress which were hardly if at all reported, that he was even more shocked at what he found about Saddam's WMD programs than he had expected and thought it was essential to have got rid of him.

I respect those who disagree with our action in Iraq who included relatives and friends. All I ask is that they and you accept that the government acted honestly in what we genuinely thought and still do, was the best interests of the Iraqi people, the wider region and the whole world.

On the 45-minute claim, the Hutton report confirmed that this had been accurately reported in the dossier. Indeed there was nothing in the dossier that went in against the wishes of the intelligence services. The 45-minute claim played no part in the critical parliamentary debate in March last year which led to a vote authorizing the action in Iraq. It was not relied upon by the PM in his opening speech or referred to by any other MP, so for me it was not a crucial issue. As I've said already he had already used WMD on his own people and fired missiles into Kuwait and Israel so we were not dealing with some hypothetical situation.

…the inquiry into the leaking of the Hutton report, which I and the rest of the government wholly condemned, is being carried out by Lord Hutton himself fully independent of government. No doubt he will report his findings in due course."

http://www.bigconversation.org.uk/index.php?id=685&chatid=64

 

DAWA (Direct Anti-War Action) FFI ring Keith (09) 8369104

 

Rank and file workers need to organize in the international labour movement to support the workers movement in Iraq to defeat the occupation and demand a Constituent Assembly. No to the WOT! No to attacks on Iran, North Korea! Cuba! Venezuela!

 

Report on Workers Forum held at Grey Lynn Community Centre 9^th December

INTERNATIONAL WEEK OF ACTION AGAINST THE WAR ON TERROR

ORGANISING AGAINST THE WAR ON TERROR IN IRAQ AND IN NEW ZEALAND

ASYLUM FOR AHMED ZAOUI!

SUPPORT THE MOHAMMED ABDUL RAHEEM CAMPAIGN IN SOLIDARITY WITH IRAQI WORKERS!

 

The meeting was hosted by the Communist Workers Group but those present represented a wider range of political positions. This short report is an attempt to summarise the basic concerns expressed and the types of actions needed. Those present on December 9, all active rank and file unionists, or with experience in unions, including: Engineers (EPMU); Maritime and Rail; NDU (Woodies); Service and Food; UNITE! (Waitemata); Association of University Staff (AUS); Association of Staff in Tertiary Education (ASTE)

 

Organising rank and file workers to take industrial action against the war

 

IMMEDIATELY Bush was re-elected he invaded and destroyed Fallujah. He authorised the use of napalm and many badly burned bodies have been found. The US ruling class and their front man Bush will stop at no act of barbarism to recolonise Iraq and rip off its oil wealth.

 

There has been a muted response in the West. Where are the millions who were on the streets in February 2003? The sad fact is that many Western workers are demoralised by Bush's reelection. They put their hopes in a Vietnam warmonger Kerry to rescue them from Iraq. False hopes!

 

Time to organise! Begging our leaders to get out of Iraq or to put pressure on Bush and Blair is futile. European Union leaders and Howard and Clark are all sucking up to Bush to get some of the spoils of war, via free trade agreements and more US Yankee dollars. Only the workers can stop the barbarism of the War on Terror from spreading and creating more Iraqs, more Guantanamos and many more victims like Ahmed Zaoui in every country.

 

Yet all is not lost! In Iraq, despite the treacherous factional leaders who use the masses as cannon fodder while they compete to do deals with the invaders - like the Sunni bosses who ran away from Fallujah leaving their militants to be slaughtered in the US attack - workers are rebuilding the smashed workers organizations.

 

Unions are forming; workers are defending their jobs arms in hand, and striking against the invaders. They are getting support from the international working class.

 

In Venezuela, workers have formed an anti-imperialist front to demand that President Chavez stops selling oil to the US to use in its War on Terror military machine. In the US the Million Worker March unionists are organising a week of action against the war from December 3-11. In Aotearoa-NZ it is time that we organised in the unions to get support for the Iraqi trade unionists and in solidarity with international workers actions such as the week of December 3-11.

 

Communist Workers Group are hosting this forum in solidarity with the Iraqi workers, the Venezuelan anti-imperialist fighters, the US Million Worker March against the war, and workers everywhere who are organising an international workers movement to Defend Iraq and stop imperialist war.

 

The two main areas of concern and need for activity expressed were:

 

First, building solidarity in NZ unions for the rebuilding of worker organizations in Iraq including the unemployed and women’s organizations. This does not exclude un-unionised workers; in fact it would make it a priority to unionise all unpaid domestic workers, unemployed workers, beneficiaries, 'voluntary’ workers, youth, temporary or casual workers, workers forced into self-employment, migrant workers etc and to strive to rebuild the unions on the basis of rank and file democracy. 

 

Second, information and actions that can be taken up by workers against the domestic WOT in NZ in particular the series of repressive laws that restrict basic freedoms to organise politically. It was observed that the NZ government is moving in line with the US to turn the WOT against NZ workers, e.g. restructuring the military and building more jails to deal with working class resistance.

 

 

Statement of Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq

 

The Iraqi authorities, backed by the occupation forces, declared January 30 2005 the date for the holding of elections, insisting that these would be the first real elections in Iraq for over half a century.

 

Holding elections to choose one’s political representatives is a basic right. But an election means choosing from among different alternatives. People participating in elections should be well informed about all parties and groups and be able to familiarise themselves with their political programs and policies.

 

This has not happened in Iraq. Moreover, many territories are under the control of various militias, which prevent their opponents from carrying out any political activity. This means people are unable to find out for themselves the agenda and political programs of each party. Above all most of the political parties and organizations involved in this election have not presented any agendas or programs, but only a few slogans and simple promises.

 

The candidates submitted by the various political forces in the coming ‘election’ are based on dividing the population on the basis of language, religion, sect and ethnicity. It is intended that the sectarian, ethnic and linguistic differences are to be incorporated in the constitution and become part of each human being’s identity. In this way, Iraqi society is being pushed toward ever deepening religious and ethnic division.

 

Most important is the fact that this ‘election’ is to take place in a country where there is presently no constitution or legal system. This means the assembly about to be ‘elected’ will create a constitution. This ‘constitution’ will be determined according to the current balance of power and will be framed in the midst of chaos, lack of security, foreign occupation and an absence of civil life.

 

The masses have been marginalised in the whole political process in society. Therefore workers have no political force which directly represents them in this ‘election’. The only choices available are those which are attempting to divide workers on the basis of sect and ethnicity.

 

Workers in Iraq should gather around their own objectives and platform and not participate in an ‘election’ where they have no representative. Workers should ignore forces which pose as defenders of the people, but use the deprivation of the people to achieve their objectives and goals.

 

Let us stand in the forefront of civil resistance to end the occupation in Iraq. Let the will of the Iraqi people be known: to elect their representatives outside of the political equation dictated by the US occupation and pro-occupation forces.

 

The objectives of workers will only be achieved by the progressive movement of workers who stand in the forefront of the protest movement for civil life, freedom and equality.

 

 

For the CWG, the FWC statement above,  while correctly calling for a boycott,  falls far short of what is necessary to liberate Iraq from imperialist occupation and from the competing national bourgeois factions only interested only in doing deals with imperialism.

The fake elections of January 30^th have confirmed the three-way split between Sistani’s United Iraqi Alliance, based on the Shia majority (around 48% of those who voted)  the Kurdish Alliance (around 26%) and Allawi’s ex-Barthist mainly Sunni Iraqi List with 14% (only around 2% of Sunnis voted). While all of these factions want the US out, it is only on terms where they can each improve their relative power in ruling Iraq. That means doing deals with the imperialists so that they get a better share of the surplus extracted from the Iraqi masses. To gain the advantage over their rivals they will be permanently fighting each other, using their militias to jockey for power at the expense of the workers.

 

We give unconditional support to the armed resistance fighting imperialism including attacking the Iraqi National Guard and police who serve the puppet regime.  But as communists we know that only an armed, independent working class can win this fight by taking the road to socialism. The workers must organize to assert their leadership of the popular struggle, reject the fake elections and puppet regime of the imperialists, and fight for a popular constituent assembly that represents all the people! For a Leninist-Trotskyist party and revolutionary program!

 

·         Jobs for all on a living wage! 

·         Immediate public works to rebuild Iraq!

·         End of the occupation!  No imperialist bases!

·         Mercenaries and imperialist corporations out!

·         For an emergency national economic plan!

·         US and UK reparations to rebuild Iraq!

·         For nationalization of industry under workers control!

·         For the nationalization of the land and collectivization of agriculture!

·         For workers’ councils and workers’ militias!

·         For poor farmers councils everywhere!

·         For a popular constituent assembly representing all Iraqis!

·         For a government of the workers and the poor peasants!

·         Victory to Iraq!  Defeat Anglo/US imperialism!

 

 

 

For a class program, anti-imperialist and the fight for the unity of the world working class

 

Solidarity with the  North American workers’ vanguard Support its anti-imperialist, internationalist and working class mobilizations for the 19th of March and 1st of May!

 

Call to the militant workers organizations of Latin America and of the world

 

The North American working class, the main ally of the exploited workers and peoples of the semi colonial world, because it can strike at the heart of imperialism, has begun to wake up.  The vanguard workers of the United States and their militant organizations have begun to look for a way to fight against the war in Iraq, opposing their own imperialistic bourgeoisie, and the attacks that Bush and the ruling class make on their historic gains and living standards, and against the rotten union bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO, servants of the imperialist bourgeoisie. 

 

They have launched the Movement of the Million Workers March against the war, adopting the call originally made by Local 10 of the Oakland dockworkers (ILWU). Hundreds of local unions have signed up to this call breaking the discipline of the bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO.  The MWM Movement mobilized about ten thousand in Washington on 17^th October 2004 calling for the immediate return of the Yankee troops from Iraq.  Now, it has issued a new declaration, calling for "the unity of the rank and file of the unions in the fight for the rights of workers and the end of the war in Iraq", raising an anti-imperialist and working class independence program, based on the united struggle of the international working class. 

 

This call by the militant workers vanguard of the United States, stands up against the union bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO which adheres to the sell-out World Social Forum.  This declaration by our North American class brothers and sisters challenges the subservience of the AFL-CIO to Bush and the Democratic Party that is creating a big crisis in the unions in the US.  The unions in the epoch of imperialism are totally dominated by the labor aristocracy and the labor bureaucracy and their reformist programs. This proves that the rebuilding of the unions will only come as the result of the most militant workers guided by a revolutionary program. 

 

This Movement and its declaration came as a breath of fresh air for the exploited workers and peoples of the world. It proves that the future of the North American working class is in the hands of its most exploited sectors, the African-American and migrant workers who are the backbone of the new militant movement. The African-American and Latino workers, immigrant workers, and the unemployed workers are the rank and file troops of this movement and they are flexing their muscles against the privileged workers aristocracy and the labor bureaucracy, struggling to unleash the power of the North American working class! 

 

19^th  of March, all out against the war in Iraq, all out for May Day all over the world!

 

In their struggle to revive proletarian internationalism, this new militant Movement has forged links with the Zengakuren students and the railway workers of Japan fighting against privatization of rail, marking a leap forward in the international cooperation of workers organizations.

 

A delegation of this Movement also joined with Japanese workers who traveled to Tokyo to protest outside the owners’ head office against the lockout of hotel workers in the USA.  It has also established international solidarity links with the Korean Confederation of Unions (KCTU) as it prepares for a general strike.

 

Its call to the antiwar and workers organizations in the United States to jointly organize on the 19 of March – marking two years since the invasion of Iraq –  a big mobilization in New York, demanding the immediate end of the war and the return of  troops from Iraq, is a major step forward in the anti-imperialist struggle.  Its call to reclaim the 1^st  of May as the international day of struggle for the world labor movement,  with a worldwide day of action against the imperialist war in Iraq and in defense of the demands and the rights of workers, clearly marks an historical event for the world proletariat.

 

Long live the North American workers’ vanguard and its militant organizations, who have erected in full view of the world’s workers a barricade for class independence against the imperialist massacre of our Iraqi brothers and sisters by their own bourgeoisie, and against the workers aristocracy and the union bureaucracy, and for proletarian internationalism! 

 

The North American workers vanguard raises the barricade of working class internationalism objectively opposed to the barricade of the World Social Forum and its politics of class collaboration

 

Though the leaders of the MWM Movement do not see this, the proletarian, anti-imperialist and internationalist demands of the Movement objectively raises a barricade against the World Social Forum and the policy of the AFL-CIO. In the heart of the imperialistic beast, class against class, there is now a class struggle barricade; a barricade against the World Social Forum, opposed to the policy of the AFL-CIO in the United States, and of the labor bureaucracies and the social imperialist parties of Europe, all serving the class interests of their own imperialist bourgeoisies; a barricade against the counter-revolutionary class collaboration politics of treacherous nationalism, which the Castroists, stalinists,  and labor aristocracies and bureaucracies of all types –with the collaboration of the liquidators and renegades of Trotskyism –  try to strangle the vanguard of world working class.

 

It will not be the Iraqi bourgeois fractions, Shiite, Sunni or Kurd, all minor partners of imperialism and the betrayers of the national resistance against the invader, nor even the heroic resistance of the workers of that blood soaked nation that wins the war against the imperialistic invader.  On the contrary, the main ally and the decisive factor in the victory and the liberation of the oppressed peoples of the world, is the North American working class that is now beginning to find its strength to attack the imperialist beast at  home. 

 

It is not Chávez, Lula or Kirchner – nor Fidel Castro, the stalinist unions, the bureaucracies and the reformist leaders of all colors, who subordinate the working class to the bourgeoisie and prop-up its regimes and governments – that are the allies of the working class and the poor farmers of Latin America. Rather it is the    working class of the United States and in particular, the African-Americans, Latinos and immigrants – the most exploited, oppressed workers who are treated like pariahs – who today begin to find their strength and to organise  themselves in the Million Workers Movement! 

 

The big majority of the liquidationist currents of Trotskyism have now officially joined the World Social Forum at the 5^th meeting in Porto Allegre at the end of January of 2005.  They have already chosen their barricade:  with the World Social Forum, blocking the road of the North American workers vanguard and its anti-imperialist, internationalist, working class program. 

 

These currents were the ones who took the most militant representatives of the workers vanguard of Brazil, of Argentina, of Peru, of Latin America, to the meeting of that traitors’ forum in Porto Allegre, to try to subjugate them to their reformist policy of class collaboration. 

 

Down with the World Social Forum of Lula, Chávez, Fidel Castro, of the AFL-CIO, all agents of imperialism and traitors to the Latin American and world revolution! 

No subordination of the militant workers and their class struggle organizations to the World Social Forum! 

 

To the militant workers organizations of Latin America and the world: Solidarity with the Million Workers March Movement and its mobilizations of March 19^th & May 1^st

 

We revolutionary internationalists who have signed this declaration enthusiastically welcome and  join our forces with the Movement of the Million Workers, and its two working class, anti-imperialist and internationalist calls of the March 19^th and May 1^s.   

 

We call on our comrades in the different groups which are members of the Liaison Committee for an International Conference of Principled Trotskyists and revolutionary internationalist workers organizations, to add their support and signature, and build together a great internationalist campaign. 

 

We call on all the militant workers organizations of the countries in which we are active, and in the rest of the world, to play their part on the barricade that has been built by our class brothers and sisters of the United States.  We call on the workers of the Subte [underground railway of Buenos Aires] and their delegates who are within reach of victory in their strike against the employer's association, the union bureaucracy and the government of the imperialist lackey Kirchner;  the miners of Turbio River, the piquetero movement, and the internal commissions, bodies of delegates, and militant workers organizations of Argentina;  to the worker and youth vanguard that in Brazil which has built CONLUTAS to confront the union bureaucracy of the CUT that supports Lula;  the militant working class organizations of Chile, of Peru, of Bolivia, and of New Zealand, all to adhere to the declaration of the Movement of the March of the Million Workers and to its two calls to action. 

 

The barricade of North American workers vanguard is also our barricade in the fight for the revolutionary students of the Technological University of Oruro (UTO) in Bolivia, and those of the National University of the Comahue (UNCo) in Argentina, that rose in struggle for a University in  the service of the workers and the people;  it is the same barricade for all the militant anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist youth of Latin America and the world.  We call on all of them to unite with the revolutionary students Zengakuren of Japan, who have adhered to and support the declaration and the calls to action of the Million Workers March Movement. 

 

We call on the militant workers organizations and the anti-imperialist youth to take the struggle into their own hands so that March 19 becomes a day of anti-imperialist mobilization and class struggle everywhere in the world for the defeat of the imperialistic troops in Iraq, and support for the heroic Iraqi masses. We fight against the rotten politics of the World Social Forum which tries to neutralize the mobilizations and to remove their proletarian class character and substitute a reformist and pacific politics. The revolutionary organizations that have signed this call, undertake to fight inside all united front actions on March 19^th to raise our class struggle program for the military defeat of the imperialist troops in Iraq, and for the victory of the indomitable resistance of the Iraqi masses.

 

We call on the militant workers organizations to reconquer the heroic tradition of proletarian internationalism of the world working class, which was suppressed by  social democracy and  stalinism:  let us reclaim, alongside the North American workers, May 1^st [May Day] 2005 as a day of world proletarian struggle, with strikes and mobilizations coordinated in every country!  This is what is most urgently needed by our Iraqi brothers and sisters! 

 

This is what we urgently need, the workers, and the exploited and oppressed peoples of the world!  This is what we need to free from the jails the tens of thousands of worker and anti-imperialist fighters who the bourgeois imperialist regimes and governments keep as hostages, in Guantánamo, in Turkey, in Bolivia, in Argentina, etc.! 

 

We call on workers everywhere to take the declaration and the two calls to action as motions to be discussed and voted on in the militant workers organizations of Latin America, of Europe, of Asia, of the world.  For our part, we commit ourselves, on the honor of revolutionary internationalists, to build this struggle and to take these motions to the heart of the workers organizations and all the struggles of the exploited and oppressed in the  countries where we are active.

 

Signed by FTI-CI (Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia), FT-PV (Brazil), CWG (NZ)

 

The 5^th meeting of the WSF prepares new sellouts of the Castroite restoration bureaucracy and US imperialists.

 

The World Social Forum (WSF) – meeting in Porto Allegre in January2005 for the fifth time, has an ominous significance for the organizations and the struggle of the workers of Brazil, Latin America and of the world. It mystifies and confuses with its  reactionary strategy of class conciliation, suppressing the direct action and revolutionary politics of the masses. The WSF unites the worlds reformists (social democracy, stalinism, and pseudo-Trotskyism), such as the PT [Workers Party of Brazil], the petty bourgeoisie, the NGOs, the church, the CUT [pro-Chavez bureaucratized union movement of Brazil] and leadership of the MST [movement of landless workers].  "Another World is possible", in the after life in the sky; here and now the WSF adapts to the declining capitalist State and its barbarism.

 

The 5^th WSF takes place at a time of intense class struggle with the US offensive against the Iraqi people.  The re-election of President Bush and the election of Abu Mazen in Palestine demonstrate that imperialism will ruthlessly pursue its objective to exploit, dominate and oppress the Iraqi and Palestinian people, in a wild drive to sack and plunder the natural wealth of the Middle East.  Oil, vital to the survival of North American industry, is what made it go to war to loot and plunder Iraq which has the 3^rd largest reserve. As well as oil, the US war industry also profits from the war.

 

The United States must exercise its world domination by the use of the force, occupying Iraqi territory, and trampling on every principle of national sovereignty, supported hypocritically by the international organisms of the bourgeoisie, like the UN, and the class collaborationist  line of the World-wide the Social Forum. Yet the occupation of Iraq has fallen far short of what the Pentagon wanted because despite the huge and escalating cost of suppressing the Iraqi resistance it has not yet forced the Iraqi people to accept the occupation. Already, the US has had more than 1,500 casualties (according to the bourgeois media). Another test of the hypocrisy of the US is its insistence on holding elections in Iraq, a farce which is designed to legitimize it domination military behind a screen of bourgeois democracy.

 

All this proves that the use of ‘revolutionary terror’ by the Iraqi masses against the US occupation is totally legitimate, and that the calls for peace and condemnations of the use of violence by Iraqis is a demagogic conspiracy by the bourgeoisies, the petty bourgeoisie and their agents designed to suppress the peoples’  instinct to defend their country.  All the gangsters are united internationally in the defense of the ideals and security of the capitalist society and their state regimes, that have as their ‘mission’ the exploitation and the domination of the semi-colonial nations by imperialism and "the legitimate" defense of imperialistic super-exploitation and oppression.

 

For that reason the servile lackeys of imperialism and defenders of capitalist exploitation daily condemn the use of the revolutionary violence of the Iraqi people, since this is the one true, real threat to the power of the imperialistic bourgeoisie and its accomplices.  If the opposition to violence was grounded in the interest of the working class, why do these pacifists not condemn the reactionary violence of the US that almost daily drops their bombs on thousands of innocent civilians, young and old;  that daily destroys public buildings, historical and cultural treasures, houses, hospitals and schools, causing indiscriminate and immeasurable genocide?  Why do they shut up before the tortures inflicted on  the Iraqi militia in the prison of Abu Graib and the prisoners of Guantánamo?  Or perhaps these do not constitute forms of violence?  The only violence condemned by the lackeys of imperialism, is that directed against bourgeois hegemony.

 

Bourgeois and petty bourgeois pacifism condemns the violence of the exploited against the exploiters, organizing themselves globally to legitimize the violence of capitalism including of state fascism, as is the case of the politics of the World Social Forum.  Thus it disarms the proletariat of its militant ideas and reinforces the oppression and domination of imperialism and capitalism in decline.

 

The WSF is an initiative of the global reformists (social democracy, Stalinism, and the pseudo Trotskyism), of the Workers Party (PT), the petty bourgeoisie, the NGOs, the church, the CUT (Workers Union Central of Brazil) and direction of the MST (union of landless workers of Brazil) all are financed by the governments and international organisms of imperialism,  to put pressure on the imperialistic bourgeoisies (that meet at the World Economic Forum at Davis) to  give more breadcrumbs to the poor countries. The main organizers are ABONG (Brazilian Association of non-Governmental Organizations), ATTAC (Action by the Taxation of Financial Transactions to the Citizens), CBJP (Brazilian Commission of Justice and Peace of CNBB), in addition to CUT, MST, UJS, UNITES, CMP and others, all related to national and international governmental organs.  Indeed because the FSM arose to make a counter-pressure to the Economic Forum of Davis, their meetings always precede it. (Leaders of the WSF like Lula, also go to the WEF).

 

The WSF announces that "Another World is possible", without violence, shared by all, with justice, without social exclusion, and of equality between all peoples. It recycles as its principles and justification, old clichés long used to suppress the independent struggle of the working class from the time of the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels that first said that "the liberation of the workers will be work of the workers", that is, that liberation will only come from the victory of the proletarian revolution, nationally and internationally. Thus, the World Social Forum orates at the funeral of the workers who are made to wait for a better world after their death.

 

Another method used to mystify the unions and workers struggle: the NGOs penetrate these movements with their humanitarian, pacifist and ecological ideologies, trying to replace the method of direct fight against capitalist exploitation, in all its forms, with the method of the pacific appeals and voluntary aid (alms, something typical of the religious mentality).  They say, that the proletarian method of direct action, armed or not, is ineffective in the transformation of the capitalist society into a world of social equality.  They say that the proletariat organized as a class to fight Capitalism, does not bring about any improvement in the lives of the workers and the people.  For that reason they try to sell to the governments their assistance projects (especially in the poor countries) which they claim can provide solutions to the social evils of prostitution, unemployment, violence, illiteracy etc.

 

Therefore, the WSF is promoted and justified by the strategy and world-view of the petty bourgeoisie desperate to survive as a class that lives on the dregs and the breadcrumbs of the bourgeoisie.  It is most damaging because it infects the movement of workers of Brazil, Latin America and of the world, with a conformist, stingy and anti-proletarian ideology. More importantly, the WSF is supported by the treacherous leaders of the masses, whose objective is to strangle the proletarian struggle on a global level and, in the case of Latin America, the revolutionary struggle of the workers and the exploited masses, like yesterday in Central America, today in Bolivia and Venezuela, and soon in Ecuador and Argentina, to subjugate them at the feet of the bourgeoisies.

 

In this fifth World Social Forum the NGOs and the churches are a key element, where they play the role "of mediators" sprinkling holy water on the revolutionary struggles of the masses, to bless those that were the key figures at previous WSF meetings, including its predecessor, the Forum of San Pablo, that are all today participating in bourgeois regimes and governments, or openly supporting them.

 

There is colonel Gutiérrez, leading the government of Ecuador, who presented himself in the previous meetings of "the patriotic" WSF as an "anti-imperialist", but selling out to the plans of the IMF, and preparing to sign a free trade agreement with the Yankees, and starving and repressing the workers and the farmers.

 

There are the old Sandinista commanders of Nicaragua and those of the FMLN of El Salvador, founders of the old Forum of San Pablo next to Chacho Alvarez of Argentina, the bourgeois red Cardinal of the PRD of Mexico, Aristide of Haiti, friend of Fidel Castro and killer of his people -, administering declining semi-colonial Capitalism in those nations and as mayors and parliamentarians, ‘dolarizing’ El Salvador, applying the plans of the IMF and making deals for imperialist re-colonization.

 

There we see the supposedly "anti-imperialist" Chávez who continues selling petroleum to Bush and the Yankees, who use it to fuel the military machine to massacre the Iraqi people.

 

There, in that Forum, are the communist parties of Latin America which hold their "World Seminar" every year to agree on their counter-revolutionary politics before traveling to the meeting of the WSF.  They are the stalinists and Castroists in all its variants, that all openly support the US lackey Kirchner in Argentina, as demanded by Fidel Castro when he visited that country in 2003; that like the Peruvian CGTP supports the hated government of Toledo;  that in Bolivia, along with Solares and Quispe, support Mesa with their truce;  that in the case of Castroite bureaucracy is prepared to complete the capitalist restoration in Cuba.

 

There, also in that Forum, are the communist parties and the union bureaucracies that in Europe have led the working class, as in Spain, Germany, Britain, into the governments of the social-imperialist parties who create the illusions of French-German-Spanish ‘democratic imperialism’. There also is the union bureaucracy of the US  AFL-CIO that yesterday supported Bush and marines in Afghanistan and Iraq, and today wants the US working class prostrate at the feet of the imperialistic killers in the Democratic Party.

 

Against this den of liquidators of the proletarian revolution and expropriators of the workers struggles, the members of the Committee of Connection counter pose the struggle for an International Conference of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary international workers organizations, fighting to regroup the healthy forces of Trotskyism to recreate a World Party of the Socialist Revolution.  For that reason, we commit ourselves to confront and to fight against that treacherous Forum, and to mobilize all our forces and energies, to defeat social democracy, stalinism, the labor aristocracies and bureaucracies of all types, and the liquidators and renegades of Trotskyism, who are dragging in the mud the name, the program and the flag of the 4^th International.

 

The revolutionaries who have signed this declaration, follow the Transitional Program of the 4^th International, and repudiate and fight uncompromisingly against  popular fronts and all political groups who hang onto the aprons strings of the bourgeoisie;  our task is the abolition of the capitalist domination;  our objective,  socialism, our method, the proletarian revolution.

 

We must make this fight with all our forces, because the international proletariat needs to raise a spotless flag, a program based on the international experience of the proletariats fight for the freedom of all oppressed peoples of the world; that is the flag of the Trotskyism.

 

For that reason, we are not part of World Social Forum, nor do we support it in any way.  On the contrary, we are here to denounce the farce called for WSF before the worldwide activist vanguard who are gathered here, the mass union movements, students’ movements, and unemployed people etc., who believe in the goal of socialism.  The World Social Forum is an anti-proletarian den.  For that reason, we denounce it before the poor people of the world;  we say that its politics does not serve the interests of workers;  we denounce its organizers as parasites that live off the taxes paid by the exploited labor power of the people.

 

The greatest violence that humanity imposes on the oppressed is capitalism itself (private ownership of the means of production) and the crises of overproduction that are inherent in that system, (the minimum wage does not correspond to 10% of working families’ necessities).  According to bourgeois sources:  the number of poor people in the world has risen to around 307 million.   The Report of the Conference of the UN Committee for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) published recently, shows that in the last 30 years the number of people who live on less than one US dollar a day has doubled. It predicts that by 2015, the poor countries will have 420 million people living below the poverty line.  In some regions, mainly in Africa, part of the population already live on less than US 57 cents, while a Swiss citizen spends US$ 61.9 per day.  In the 1970s around 56% of the African population lived on less than a dollar a day.  Today, this proportion is 65%.  Poverty is increasing, not diminishing. The workers and youth in general are at the mercy of this absolute violence, of hunger, misery, unemployment, prostitution, drugs etc..

 

The remedy for the violence of the capitalism that social science reveals, is the international socialist revolution, the expropriation of the expropriator, the socialization of the means of production.

 

·          Out with the imperialistic troops of Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan and Haiti! 

·          For the military defeat of all imperialistic troops occupying Iraq! 

·          For  the victory of the heroic resistance of the Iraqi masses!

·          For the triumph of the Latin American working class and the world socialist revolution!

·          Long  Live the struggle on the workers and exploited people of Bolivia who lead the way!

·          Imperialism out of Bolivia!  Down with the government of Mesa, break the truce made by Evo Morales, Solares of the COB, and Quispe of the CSUTCB!

·          For a national Congress of delegates of rank and file of the COB and the farmers unions, for a political general strike, with barricades, pickets, workers militias and committees of soldiers, that can overthrow Mesa and the regime of the mine-owners, imposing a revolutionary provisional government of the COB and the  farmers unions, supported by the armed, independent organizations of the masses!

 

Signed by FTI-CI (Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia), CWG (NZ), FT-PV (Brazil) and CLA (Australia)

 

 

For a CONLUTAS with Soviets everywhere!

 

The electoral victory of the popular front in Brazil and the participation of the CUT in the government of Lula, proved conclusively the bankruptcy of the bureaucracy which began in the  80s and crystallized in the last twenty years.  The CUT, PT bureaucracy never called for the overthrow of the bourgeois state. Its record of struggle was limited to fighting for improvements for workers within capitalism 

 

The conformism and adaptation of the CUT bureaucracy was accompanied by a form of undemocratic union organization separated from its membership base that gradually consolidated into the extreme that we see today:  the statization of the CUT, the vertical structure, and the defense of the privatizations and neo-liberal reforms.  While the CUT defends sectorial representation and ‘organic unionism’ it is already completely bureaucratized with only 1 delegate for by each 1500 members; the high wages paid to the officials creates a privileged and corrupt gangster layer whose interests are totally opposed to those of the membership; a caste that uses the union apparatus of the central command to serve Lula.  For this reason the CUT could not give birth to an anti-capitalist program.

 

The CONLUTAS is a progressive initiative of a sector of the vanguard militants who have  broken with the CUT and are opposed to the government of the Popular Front of Lula PT/PC neo-liberal health reforms, and in response to the CUT entering the FNT (National Labor Forum) definitively abandoning its roots in the working class.   The formation of the CONLUTAS is the vanguard’s answer to the complete servility of the CUT to the government of the PT and the bourgeois State.  It is also a demonstration that the will to struggle of the proletariat in Brazil did not die with the betrayal of the CUT with the subservience of the PT to the reforms of the bourgeois State.

 

The CONLUTAS and POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS

 

The CONLUTAS is made up of several political organizations including the PSTU that today is leading the process of construction and strengthening of the new union, reorganizing the vanguard, the union and the popular movement for the defense of social and labor rights. We must support and participate in that process. 

 

But it is necessary to say clearly that the PSTU, for a long time, was also in the leadership of the CUT.  In fact, it played the role of left cover for the right policy the majority.  Now, as a calculated political and electoral move, the PSTU decides to break with the CUT and to create CONLUTAS.  Sadly, the PSTU does not have revolutionary politics.  It will try to transform the CONLUTAS into a pressure group on government, into a sort of "CUT No 2".  Thus, in the unions it leads, it does not organize the membership base; the mobilizations it leads are token marches to pressure the bourgeois parliament in Brasilia.  The political program of the PSTU does not go beyond the limits of capitalism either:  that is, not beyond opposition to the union, labor and university reforms, the FTAA and the "neo-liberal model" in general.

 

The PSOL -  the Party of the Socialism and Freedom, organized by the sector of the PT left that broke with the PT - is, in fact, "a new" version of the PT.  It does not participate actively in the construction of the CONLUTAS due to its electioneering focus; it has a foot in both camps. While the PSOL has broken with the CUT, only some of their tendencies (e.g. Cliffites) defend CONLUTAS.  PSOL does not call for its members to break with the CUT. On the contrary, it reinforces the illusion that the membership should stay in the CUT and fight to take over the leadership.

 

Marxists, Leninists, Trotskyists and CONLUTAS

 

What worries us is that the Marxists, Leninists and Trotskyists who are active in the day to day building of CONLUTAS - and we call on all the activists and fighters who are engaged in this process to listen to our concerns - is that the CONLUTAS must bury all the bad habits of the bureaucratic unionism of the CUT, or risk recreating a new union bureaucracy which will again deceive the vanguard that is fighting for a democratic CONLUTAS. 

 

We use this occasion to denounce the PSTU’s use of the same policy as the CUT bureaucracy to finance Cesar Benjamim and James Petras to come to the 2^nd Congress of CONLUTAS.  We are against this because it uses the funds of the workers struggle without demanding that the money be repaid. On the contrary, anybody who has the interests of proletariat in its struggle against capitalism at heart will pay out of their own pocket for that fight.  While we workers rely on our poor wages to be at the congress, these gentlemen are privileged to have their hotel, food and transport costs guaranteed.  These gentlemen, who live much better than workers, should have to donate to the movement, not to be paid by it.  The PSTU hypocritically condemns this practice, used for years by the CT bureaucracy as a means of corrupting militants and activists, before the membership, but defends it to the intellectuals.

 

No to the CORRUPTION of the MILITANTS ("We must live for the movement and not on the movement ", Leon Trotsky – Transitional Program).

       

There must be maximum workers’ democracy in the daily operation and decision making of CONLUTAS.  Transparency, respect and equality in relation to minority sectors, discussion and decision making by the rank and file membership,  are essential conditions to guarantee workers’ democracy inside the union. CONLUTAS, taking the example of the Soviets, must be open to a broadest membership, from the union organizations, student movement, popular movements and revolutionary political organizations, to prevent the formation of a bureaucratic apparatus. 

 

This form of organization must be combined with a workers and farmers political platform:

·          Down with the Lula/PT/PC government of Brazil and its neo-liberal reforms!

·          Down with the regime of the social pact  headed by Cardoso yesterday and Lula-Alencar today, supported by its agents in the CUT,  accomplices in the murder of the poor farmers and the domination of Brazil by imperialism!

·          Expel from the unions the CT bureaucracy sold out to the regime! 

·          For a CONLUTAS with a proletarian and Soviet program, and down the reformist program of the PSTU for the CONLUTAS!

 

CONLUTAS cannot avoid being a minority and the fact that most of the proletariat is still controlled by the CUT bureaucracy.  It is not enough to offer the workers a place to go.  It is necessary to go and look for them where they are and to show them the way.  For this, it is necessary to raise the fight against the statization of the unions, for workers’ democracy and a revolutionary leadership of the unions; to create organs of workers’ democracy of the masses that overcome the barriers that the bureaucratic caste has imposed on the unions. 

 

·          No interference of the state in the working organizations! 

·          No union law with which the patterns and their state regulate the working organizations! 

·          Neither the current law, nor the new one that they want to impose! 

·          Down the compulsory conciliation, the boss’s state’s hands off the worker’s organizations!

·          Independence of workers organizations! 

·          Down with the union bureaucracy! 

·          Pay union leaders the workers’ average wage, with mandates recallable at any time by decision of the assembly and bodies of delegates, and a return to the workplace without right of re-election!

·          End the compulsory discount of the union quotas! 

·          For leaders and delegates to meet monthly in the factories and workplaces!

 

It is necessary that CONLUTAS boldly promotes the formation of strike and factory committees and pickets, which are the only means to organize the exploited layers of the proletariat alongside the committees of unemployed and landless farmers, united around the central demands for a sliding scale  of wages and working hours, against the wage agreements and labor concessions signed by the bureaucratic officials, against the notorious social pact of exploitation and slavery, and for land for the farmers.  This is the way to advance and realize a national Congress of workers’ and farmers delegates with self-defense committees - embryos of the workers’ militia with the perspective to defeat the regime of the social pact and its government, and to advance towards the creation of a workers’ and farmers’ government based on the armed, revolutionary masses in struggle.

 

NO SUBORDINATION of CONLUTAS to the WORLD SOCIAL FORUM

 

But the real danger to the revolutionary perspective of the CONLUTAS is its subordination to the World Social Forum that the PSTU is trying to impose.  Because while the  organizers of the WSF have not finally accepted that the 2^nd national Congress of CONLUTAS is an official event of the Forum, it is clear that this is the policy of the PSTU:  to make sure that CONLUTAS is born and develops inside the cave of bandits of the WSF –traitors of the world revolution, enemy of the Iraqi resistance, loyal servants of the apartheid forced on the heroic Palestinian people, stranglers of the Argentine and Bolivian revolutions, betrayers of the Central American revolution, lackeys of Bush with the AFL-CIO and of French-German imperialism along with the bureaucracies and workers’ aristocracies of Europe. 

 

Thus, the PSTU, while on one hand it calls for a break with the CUT and to integrate itself into CONLUTAS, on the other hand it takes the combative vanguard that looks for a way to defeat the bureaucracy, the employer's association and the government, and puts it on its knees before the WSF, that is to say, before the bureaucracy, the government of Lula, and the Castro bureaucracy that is preparing capitalist restoration in Cuba, etc.

 

For that reason, the Marxists, Leninists, and Trotskyists, who signed this declaration, put forward a motion to the assembled workers and youth vanguard in CONLUTAS:  we propose that its Congress resolves explicitly to fight for “Down with the World Social Forum of Lula, Chávez and Fidel Castro, of the AFL-CIO, those accomplices and servants of imperialism, traitors of the Latin American and world revolution!  No subordination of CONLUTAS to World Social Forum! 

 

We propose that alongside this struggle and as the first internationalist task of the Brazilian working class, that the 2^nd Congress of CONLUTAS denounces the counter-revolutionary continental policy of the government of Lula that, with the support and the support of the bureaucracy of the CUT, Fidel Castro,  Chávez, and the reformist World Social Forum, which is at the point of the imperialist’s spear to contain and to strangle the revolutionary struggle of the Argentine, Bolivian, and Peruvian working class and of all Latin America. 

 

·        Down the continental counter-revolutionary policy of Lula, of the Castro bureaucracy that is preparing the completion of capitalist restoration in Cuba, and of Chávez who sells petroleum to the Yankee imperialists to kill the Iraqi people! 

·        It is necessary to declare war against that holy alliance that, at the hands of the mercenaries Lula, Kirchner and Lagos, sends troops in the service of imperialism to massacre the Haitian people!

 

 

 

Perspectives and Challenges facing the Liaison Committee for an International Conference of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary internationalist workers’ organizations

 

THE masses that heroically resist the imperialist occupation of Iraq, and check the Ango-American imperialists, see today how the national bourgeoisies reach an agreement with the invaders to force the combatants to give up their arms. But the masses resist.

 

In the heights of Oruro, in Bolivia, the revolutionary students of the UTO revolt against the agreements signed by the bureaucratic leaders of the COB, and the COD,  that with the aid of POR Lora want to concede the gains won by the students in their struggle.

 

In Argentina, the regime of the Social Pact closes down the remaining vestiges of the  revolutionary process that began in December of 2001 with the fall of de la Rúa at the hands of the masses.

 

In Brazil, the pro-imperialist government of Lula, supported by the union bureaucracy, furthers the implementation of the plans of the IMF and imperialism, despite the growing resistance of workers and poor people with strikes like the that of the workers of the state unions, the strike of private and state banks, the heroic student fight in Bahia, among others, to which Lula and the employer's association responds with persecution and repression.

 

At each step, the struggle of the masses is contained and betrayed by its leaders, who tie their hands and stop them settling accounts with the imperialistic bourgeois regime.  The liquidators and renegades of Trotskyism also do their worst, being subordinated to Castroism, Chavism, the union bureaucracies and the labor aristocracy, to  social democracy, and all the  reformist leaders assembled in the World Social Forum.  They do not leave one stone in place of the theory and program of revolutionary Marxism.  Their bankruptcy is total.  The crisis of revolutionary leadership of the world proletariat continues to deepen.

 

Under these conditions,  is born the Bulletin of International Discussion  of the Liaison Committee for an International Conference of principled Trotskyists and  revolutionary internationalist workers’  organizations.  This Liaison Committee was formed on the 10 and 11 of July, 2004 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, during the international Pre-conference summoned by the Coordinating Committee of all the Brazilian groups that have taken into their hands the revolutionary struggle for a an International Conference of principled Trotskyists and workers’ organizations.  Proudly, in the Act of constitution of this Liaison Committee, we declared  war to all the treacherous liquidator and renegade leaders that drag the flag of Trotskyism in the soil, and we raised the flag:

 

“…To fight against the treacherous leaders of the working class, social democracy, stalinism, the labor bureaucracy and labor aristocracy, the great majority of grouped in World Social Forum, that  tries to reform the capitalist state.

- Against the popular front and the governments of the bourgeois-worker parties in power.  Against all class collaboration. To denounce and to confront the counter-revolutionary role of the government of Lula, Castroism, and its continent-wide politics of containment with which they strangle the revolutionary fight of the masses of Latin America and keep in power the client governments and lackey regimes of imperialism.

- Confrontation and struggle against the liquidators and renegades of Trotskyism.  Against the pseudo-Trotskyist centrism that is actually subordinated to the reformist apparatuses, like for example, in Brazil, supplies ministers in the pro-imperialist government of Lula as does Socialist Democracy (United Secretariat of the Fourth International), or act as pressure groups on the government like the PSTU ".

 

In that meeting there participated delegates of Marxist Workers’ Party (Partido Obrero Marxista - POM); the Trotskyist Fraction (FT, member of the TCI);  Revolutionary Communist Group (CCR), Workers’ Opposition (OO);  Marxist Trench  (Trincheira Marxista – TM) and Revolutionaries in Struggle (Revolutas), all of Brazil.  Also POR Argentina (member of the TCI);  and the delegates of the Fti-ci, represented by the International Workers Group (Grupo Obrero Internacionalista -GOI) and the Trotskyist Workers’ Nucleus (Nu'cleo Obrero Trotskista - NOT) of Chile;  the Organizing Committee of International Trotskyist League (Liga Trotskista Internacionalista -COLTI), of Peru ';  the Fti-ci in Urus in Action, of Bolivia and Internationalist Workers League –Workers’ Democracy (LOI-CI) of Argentina.

 

After two days of rigorous, exciting and democratic programmatic debate, we collectively formed the Liaison Committee for an International Conference of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary internationalist workers’ organizations, on the basis of clearly defined agreements, as well as the differences that exist  which will be the reason for further deep discussion. The comrades of the Communist Workers Group (CWG) of New Zealand, despite not being able to be physically present at the meeting sent their enthusiastic greetings to the meeting and agreed to join the Liaison Committee.

 

Those of us who formed this Liaison Committee come mostly from the breakdown of the 4th International, and we are trying to regroup on the basis of the  revolutionary lessons of the struggles of the masses and the betrayals they have suffered. In order to regroup the dispersed ranks of revolutionary internationalists, and stop the flags of Trotskyism falling into the hands of the liquidators and renegades who usurp them, we take on the task of convening an international conference on the basis of these lessons and around a revolutionary program, and of creating a transitional and democratic centralist International Center for the regroupment of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary internationalist workers’ organizations on the way to re-building the World Party of Socialist Revolution.

 

The Bulletin of International Discussion that is today presented, has the objective of defending the common program agreed by the Liaison Committee, as a base line for the regrouping of  revolutionary internationalists, and to make public a programmatic debate challenging the world workers’ vanguard and the currents who claim to be  revolutionary Marxists,  to throw light on the discussions among revolutionaries and to seek in the lessons and revolutionary program  confronting the decisive events of the world class struggle the Marxist truth which clearly separates the reformists and centrists from the revolutionaries. The members that sign this Bulletin of International Discussion are also the Editorial Committee of the Bulletin..

 

A stop forward in the revolutionary struggle for an International Conference principled Trotskyists  and workers’ organizations

 

The formation of the Liaison Committee and the publication of this International Discussion Bulletin are a great step forward that will allow us to begin to advance further the existing achievements of the Call for an International Conference and its program of 21 points.

 

Two years ago, towards the end of 2002, the revolutionary struggle of the working class and the exploited people of Argentina, the heroic revolutionary struggle of the Palestinian working class and people, the movement of workers all over the world to take an anti-imperialist stand against the colonial war that imperialism was preparing against Iraq, allowed those various healthy forces of Trotskyism, dispersed and seeking a revolutionary path, to recognize as revolutionary internationalists the lessons and the program posed by those explosive events, resulting in the formation of the Collective that put forward the call to the International Conference and its program of 21 points.

 

Subsequently,  the defeat and crushing of the Palestinian workers and people at hands of the genocidal army of Sharon and Bush;  the partial counterrevolutionary victories won by imperialism in Afghanistan and Iraq;  the imposition in Latin America of a containment policy and class collaboration imposed by the reformist leaders, meant that some members of this Collective retreated and it did not pass the test of the new acute events of the world class struggle, such as the rebellion of the Spanish working class after the attacks of Madrid;  the electoral triumph of the PSOE, the upsurge in the Iraqi resistance, the situation in Bolivia, the elections to the European Parliament, among others.

 

In spite of this, the fight for the Call to the International Conference and its program of 21 points, were taken up  the hands of new forces and groups greater than those who formed the Collective.  Most of these forces we those that met in Brazil on the 10 and 11 of July 2004, forming the Liaison Committee.

 

Once again, here also, it was the heroic struggles of the working class and exploited people that allowed us to regroup,  making sure that the continuation of the fight for the International Conference and for its program of 21 points as the basis for regroupment, was not lost.  The rebellion of the Spanish workers;  the intensifying of the resistance of the Iraqi masses against the imperialist occupation;  the comuneros uprisings in Ilave, Peru, and in Ayo Ayo in Bolivia, alongside the struggle against the pro-imperialistic referendum of Mesa in Bolivia;  the struggle of the miners of the Rio Tinto in Argentina;  the fight against the pro-imperialist government of Lula-Alencar in Brazil, among other events, created water sheds in the ranks of the international Trotskyist movement, just as they created a demarcation line in all the discussions of 10 and 11 of July in Sao Paulo.  The political discussion and debates for frank, fraternal and open in this meeting, allowing us to arrive at principled positions to mark the working class trench line in these events, and to launch the struggle against the treacherous leaderships and the renegades of Trotskyism, which are expressed by the Liaison Committee in the Act of this Pre-conference, advancing the Call for an International Conference.

 

Today, the Liaison Committee and its International Discussion Bulletin, are a weapon to create a new impulse to the fight for an International  Conference that, on the basis of a sound program with clear majorities and minorities, can establish a democratic centralist International Center, for the purpose of regrouping principled Trotskyists revolutionary internationalist workers’ organizations, on the road to the rebuilding of a World Party of Socialist Revolution, that centrists, opportunists, revisionists and Trotskyist renegades have subordinated to the treacherous leaderships for decades. Today, they act like a left wing of the World Social Forum, that gang of counterrevolutionaries that subordinate the working class to the bourgeoisie and prevent the advance towards the proletarian revolution.

 

Thus, next to the recycled stalinists, and the labor aristocracy and labor bureaucracy of all stripes,  the betrayers of Trotskyism constitute the "quarter" of that counter-revolutionary International, that is the World Social Forum, in the same way that Trotsky in the ‘30s called that opportunistic group that was the London Bureau of centrists, "the 3-and-a-quarter International".  As Trotsky spoke on them: 

 

“… the bourgeoisie, the reformists and the Stalinists will continue to label these creators of the “Fund” as  - “Trotskyists or “semi-Trotskyists.” This will be done in part out of ignorance but chiefly in order to compel them to excuse, justify, and demarcate themselves.  And they will actually vow, with might and main, that they are not at all Trotskyists, and that if they should happen to try to roar like lions, then like their forerunner, Bottom the weaver, they succeed in “roaring” like sucking doves. The Fenner Brockways, the Walchers, the Brandlers, the Sneevliets, the Piverts, as well as the rejected elements of the Fourth International have managed in the course of many long years – for some decades – to evince their hopeless eclecticism in theory and their sterility in practice.   They are less cynical than the Stalinists and a trifle to the left of the left Social Democrats – that is all that can be said for them. That is why in the list of the Internationals they must therefore be entered as number three and one-eighth or three and one-quarter. With a “fund” or without one, they will enter into history as an association of squeezed lemons. When the great masses, under the blows of the war, are set in revolutionary motion, they will not bother to inquire about the address of the London Bureau".  (‘A Fresh Lesson – After the Imperialistic “Peace" at Munich, October 10, 1938’ in Writings [38-39] Pathfinder, p. 75)

 

The epoch of national programs is finished

 

This internationalist struggle is indispensable in order to regroup the healthy forces of Trotskyism to overcome the dispersion of groups country by country and to avoid being dragged into the degeneration by national isolation.  The time of national programs is over.  The world-wide policy and the economy dominated by imperialism makes a reactionary utopia of all intentions to create groups national that can orient themselves in a revolutionary way without being part of international  revolutionary grouping.

 

Revolutionaries must try to lead the world struggles of the  working class which now are made powerless by the counter-revolutionary leaders in the pay of international finance capital, in the same way as the labor aristocracies and bureaucracies..  Opportunists and centrists, swearing allegiance to the Transitional Program of the Fourth International, to the resolutions of the first four  Congresses of Third International, have done no more than besmirch all the lessons of international Marxism in the decisive battles of the world class struggle.

 

How is it possible to make revolutionaries without the lessons of the revolution and the counterrevolution in the face of the most burning facts of the international class struggle?  There, in those acid tests acid of class struggle, separates as white from black, those who speak in the name of Marxism and the revolution, and those who kneel before the treacherous leaderships.

 

The liquidators and renegades of Trotskyism, the new batch of Mensheviks that arose from the decades of decomposition of Fourth International, taking out the Transitional Program on holidays, never do more than fight for minimum programs, while proclaiming to the four winds that they fight "for socialism" and for "the dictatorship of the proletariat".  For that reason, today along with 20^th century Menshevism –Stalinism –they proclaim: "While fighting every day in order to relieve the toiling masses from the misery which the capitalist regime imposes on them, the Communists emphasize that final emancipation can be gained only by the abolition of the capitalist regime and the setting up of the dictatorship of the proletariat".

 

Against them Trotsky wrote “The Marxist political thesis must be the following: “While explaining constantly to the masses that rotting capitalism has no room either for the alleviation of their situation or even for the maintenance of their customary level of misery; while putting openly before the masses the tasks of the socialist revolution as the immediate task of our day; while  mobilizing the workers for the conquest of power; while defending the working organizations with the help of the workers’ militia;  the Communists (or the Socialists) will at the same time lose no opportunity to snatch this or that partial concession from the enemy,  or at least to prevent the further lowering of the living standard of the workers.”” (‘Once Again, Whither France’, in Leon Trotsky on France, Monad Press, pp. 82-3)

 

The opportunists and centrists, renounce, in the same breath,  the Transitional Program, at a time of crisis, abrupt and convulsive wars, revolutions, leaps forwards and backwards, that: "brings about an immediately revolutionary situation, in which the communist party can try to take power, or the victory of the fascist or semi fascist counterrevolution, or the provisional regime of the right (block of the lefts in France, entrance of the social democracy in the coalition in Germany, coming to the power of the party of MacDonald in England, etc.) to postpone the sharp contradictions which like a razor clearly pose the problem of the power "("Stalin, the great organizer of defeats", Leon Trotsky)

 

Centrism, as Trotsky said, is the most important factor of our time.  Whoever does not have a policy to fight centrism, cannot find a way to the masses and, what is more serious, allows the centrists the room to exist, and so also becomes a centrist.  Thus, "centrism very is keen to proclaim its hostility towards the reformists, but never mentions centrism.  In addition, it considers our definition of centrism is "unclear", "arbitrary", et cetera;  in other words, centrism does not like to be called by that name." (León Trotsky, "Centrism and the Fourth International").

 

To settle accounts with the liquidators of the Fourth International that every day cause the demoralization of the proletarian vanguard, it is necessary to find a way to the revolutionary masses that enter the struggle.  Without this perspective, the small isolated groups that seek a revolutionary road, will only be able to repeat in a more bastardized way the construction of national Trotskyism, lost in the swamp of  parliamentarism, and in the impotent trade union swamp.

 

To create revolutionary insurrectionary parties will be impossible without the fusion of  revolutionary internationalists with the advanced workers who are looking for ways to break through in the struggle against opportunism, centrism, and against the treacherous leaders.

 

For that reason, the fight for an international regrouping on a principled basis, must condemn all types of diplomatic and opportunistic regroupings in the style of "International" federations of the Social-Democratic type, where each "national section"  is boss in its country and no-one criticizes any other, or in the style of the Second or 2 and a half "International" where  everything in general but nothing in particular is discussed.  It must condemn all ‘centrist alchemy’, as Trotsky stated when he wrote: "A Revolutionary resolution for which the opportunists could also vote was deemed by Lenin to be not a success but a fraud and a crime. To him, the task of all conferences consisted not in presenting  a “respectable” resolution but in effecting the selection of militants and organizations that would not betray the proletariat in the hours of stress and storm.” (‘Centrist Alchemy or Marxism?’,  Leon Trotsky,  Writings [34-35] p. 260).

 

The experience of these centrist alchemies has already been condemned by history: the impotence of the International Committee in 1953 to defeat Pabloism that took over the Fourth International;  the impotence of federations of small groups, have demonstrated and still demonstrate they have failed the most important tests of the international class struggle.

 

An international regroupment on a principled basis must also condemn all types of self-proclamation and ultimatism, whether it is of small groups that claim to be "the" International, or Trotskyists who build national ‘mother-parties’ with satellite groups in different countries.

 

The formation of the Liaison Committee and the publication of its International Discussion Bulletin, is therefore a step forward in this struggle.  The forces that compose it, as we show in this Bulletin, have made fundamental agreements to debate publicly before the international workers vanguard, on the nature of the agreements and the differences among us, and to explore therefore the conditions that will make it possible to proceed to an International Conference to create a democratic centralist International Center for the regrouping of principled Trotskyists, that restores the continuity of  revolutionary Marxism.

 

But to take a step in this sense from the Leninist point of view, will only be possible on the basis of the testing of the different positions, on the basis of a public and fraternal debate, in order to convince or to be convinced.  We must prove the agreements and the differences that we have, in the face of the  world-wide revolution and counterrevolution.  There, in life,  is, and will be the verdict.

 

Our Committee of Connection thus constituted with its foundations in revolutionary Marxism, is neither an "international brand" nor a base maneuver of a national group that breaks with the legacy of the Marxism.

 

The open and public debate, facing the world proletarian vanguard, and this Bulletin of discussion, alongside the evidence of life itself, will be the only arbiter of the currents that we dedicated to  revolutionary Marxism.

 

New global class struggles; new tests for the revolutionary international movement

 

After the Preconference of July new class combats developed in Latin America and around the world – such as the  referendum in Venezuela, the massacre in North Ossetia, as well as others from which it is necessary to give new answers and to extract new lessons and revolutionary conclusions.  These are class combats with political and programmatic lessons that once more create watersheds - in the international Trotskyist movement, and also a new and higher challenge for those who are members of the Liaison Committee.

 

Two trenches have been formed: in one the working class and the exploited masses fight heroically with the principled Trotskyists next to them.  In the other trench is imperialism, the subservient bourgeoisies and the treacherous leaders of the masses.  Alongside them, are the renegades of Trotskyism and the liquidators of the Fourth International who have taken a further step in their subordination to the World Social Forum: in Venezuela they capitulate to Chávez, saying to the workers that they are in an  "anti-imperialist camp" against Bush.  They capitulate to the Castroite bureaucracy that introduces capitalist restoration in Cuba.  They capitulate to the “democratic” imperialists of France, Germany, and Spain, and now also Kerry, with the argument that they confront  the "fascist" Bush.

 

The liquidationist and revisionist currents of Trotskyism the regimes and the treacherous leaders,   including  ministers in the Lula government in Brazil that kills the landless farmers, as in  the case of the Mandelist current.  In Brazil, in Argentina, in France, in the United States, they act like pressure groups on the union bureaucracies.

 

They are responsible for keeping in power regimes and governments in crisis like that in Bolivia, where POR Lora is already betraying the third revolutionary attack of the workers and farmers in fifty years, supporting the truces of Castro, the Stalinist leaders and the petty bourgeois who support Mesa.

 

As Trotsky would say, the liquidationists and opportunists of Trotskyism speak of "socialism" and the "dictatorship of the proletariat" when the struggle for power is not yet on the horizon.  And when it is on the horizon, when the working class faces the question of power, this new batch of Mensheviks only understands the language of negotiation, truces and pacts. They sing the wedding march at funerals, and the funeral march at weddings.

 

All the currents that claim to be revolutionary Marxists are being put on approval before the new events of the world-wide class struggle. This first number of the International Discussion Bulletin of the Liaison Committee expresses this fact, and to it we have dedicated a Dossier with articles and controversies on the elections to the European Parliament, the massacre in North Ossetia, and centrally, the challenge of the referendum in Venezuela and the policy of the Trotskyists in the workers defense of the Cuban nation and the program of political revolution against the Castroite bureaucratic restorationists, which is inseparable from the fight for the Latin American revolution and the proletarian revolution inside the United States.  Only in the international political struggle of groups and tendencies to regenerate the revolutionary movement, is it possible to find the Marxist truth and to conquer  the lessons and the revolutionary program necessary to confront these acute events of the world class struggle.

 

More advances combats are in preparation, then, in the arena of the struggles of the international working class.  The Liaison Committee prepares a new Preconference to be held in January  2005 in Buenos Aires.  Our objective until then is to deepen discussion to determine the extend of our political agreement to see if another period of additional discussion in the Liaison Committee is necessary,  or if there is sufficient programmatic agreement to enables us to move towards setting a date for the International Conference and to create and International democratic centralist Center.

 

The Liaison Committee calls on all the healthy forces of Trotskyism and revolutionary workers organizations to join the campaign for an International Conference

 

The Liaison Committee takes up the challenge to fight for an International Conference to create a transitional and democratic centralist International Center to regroup the healthy forces of Trotskyism and revolutionary workers’ organizations.  This regrouping becomes every day more urgent day, with the intensification of the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletariat, and every day more indispensable to challenge the liquidationists and renegades all over the world who steal the flag of the Fourth International.  A regroupment is necessary as an instrument that creates, as a by-product of the political contest of groups and tendencies, the regeneration of the international revolutionary insurrectionist movement in all the many divided countries so that the proletariat and the exploited people can take the power.

 

The Liaison Committee calls on all the healthy forces of Trotskyism and internationalist revolutionary workers’ organizations who agree with the basic points, to join the Liaison Committee and to add to the debate and to the campaign for an International Conference.  For this, it is a condition, as stated in the Act of the Preconference of the Liaison Committee (reproduced in this Bulletin), to pronounce oneself "on the original call of 21 points, on the points where there is agreement,  on the differences and debates raised here, and to publish the 21 points in its printed materials", as well as "the defense of the principles and proletarian and revolutionary morality, as is stated in the 21 points, in particular point 19". It is fundamental that,  for the development of a discussion which prioritizes workers’ democracy, all those who have become members of the Liaison Committee affirm that: "(...) to guarantee a democratic discussion, no current, group or tendency that, after the formation of this Committee, expels comrades who raise political differences that adhere to any position of other groups or tendencies of the Committee, can participate". (Act of the Preconference of Sao Paulo.)

 

The International Discussion Bulletin:  the organizer of the debate towards the January 2005 Preconference in Buenos Aires

 

With the objective of organising the debate, then, we will publish three numbers of this International Discussion Bulletin before the Preconference of January 2005 in Buenos Aires.  We put forward here the expected contents of the following numbers of the Bulletin  that will continue order and express the debate towards Preconference of January  2005.

 

The second number of this Bulletin, whose publication is expected at the end of November, will be dedicated to the controversy around the Anti-Imperialist United Front, with texts presented by the TCI, Fti-ci, the POM and Marxist Trench on this question.  It will also include the controversy on how characterize the state of the class struggle and how to define a revolutionary situation, developed by the comrades of the POM, the Fti-ci, the TCI and Marxist Trench.

 

A priority will also be the discussion on Brazil, on the situation in this country, the combat against the government of Lula-Alencar, the fight against the union bureaucracy, and the liquidators of Trotskyism, and on the transitional program of demands that form a bridge between the present needs of the masses and the insurrectionary struggle to take the power.  It will also contain a key discussion on the situation in Argentina and the struggle against the government of Kirchner, servant of Bush, and his social pact regime.

 

We will also included in this number an article that the companions of the Fti-ci put forward for debate in the Liaison Committee, giving account of the advance of the process of the capitalist restoration in Cuba, and raising the program and the policy for the defense of the conquests of the Cuban Workers’ State and for the fight for a political revolution against the restorationist Castroite  bureaucracy.  As thus also all the contributions to the debate that make the other organizations.

 

The third number of the Bulletin of Discussion the International, whose publication is expected in mid-December 2004, will be dedicated to the controversy on the world the political situation, the balance of the events of 1989 and the restoration of capitalism, and the present character of the former workers’ states and the program in these states.

 

An important debate will be on the character of the revolutionary international which needs to be created, since among the forces that belong to the Liaison Committee, there are those who fight for the Fifth International, as is the case of the comrades of the CWG of New Zealand and Workers’ Opposition Brazil;  others, fight for the reconstruction of Fourth International, like the comrades of POR Argentina, the FT and the POM of Brazil;  whereas others, like the comrades of the Fti-ci fight for the regeneration and refoundation of the Fourth International.

 

Being the last Bulletin before the Preconference of 2005, it will include all the positions and political discussions and programmatic criticisms of the original program of 21 points, contributed by the different forces and groups that compose the Liaison Committee, as well as those that have joined in the debate since.  It will also include the different proposals from resolutions to be debated in this Preconference, and will thus allow us to evaluate whether a further period of programmatic and political discussion is necessary, or if we have managed to conquer sufficient conditions and programmatic agreement to  march onwards to the constitution of a Parity Committee that sets a date and puts out the call for the International Conference to create an international democratic centralist Center to work for the  regrouping of principled Trotskyists and  revolutionary internationalist workers’ organizations. 

24 of October of 2004

 

Ft-vp (TCI) of Brazil; Workers’ Opposition of Brazil; CWG of New Zealand; GOI and NOT of Chile (Fti-ci); Co-lit of Peru (Fti-ci); Fti-ci Bolivia; DO (Fti-ci) of Argentina.

 

 

A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite.  

By Said K Abolish.

 

This eye-opening book provides a comprehensive account of the neo-colonial system of indirect rule inflicted on the Arab nation by Western imperialism immediately after World War 1, and maintained, as Aburish is at pains to emphasis, right up to the present day. It can be highly recommended as a salutary corrective to the utterly misleading pre-conceptions prevalent in most English language history books, which have evidently barely changed since the era of overt imperial expansion.

 

Before World War 1 imperialism was indeed overt and blatant. Political maps published up till the 1960s showed its apparent geographical limits. More recent maps show by way of contrast its apparent cessation. 20^th century Arab history as recounted by Aburish shows what a profoundly false picture such maps give. Far from disappearing, imperialism metamorphosed to accommodate ideological opposition.

 

Allied propaganda in World War 1 required the mobilisation in the home countries of mass democratic sentiment, largely aimed at winning the military support of an avowedly anti-colonialist USA influenced by Wilsonian idealism. Military commitments on the Western Front moreover required economising on the expenditure of manpower and money to maintain armies of conquest and occupation elsewhere.  These two considerations suffice to explain the subsequent choice of indirect rule for territories seized from the Ottoman Empire. The strategic objective in the Middle East was to evict the Ottomans from the oil-fields of Iraq.

 

The most economic means was to instigate the Arab Revolt, recruiting its leadership in a minor local dynasty of the Hijaz whose charismatic credentials were descent from the Prophet of Islam. The illusory reward promised for their co-operation was the restoration of the Caliphate, thus implicitly recognising the unity of the Arab nation. Having used the revolt to achieve their objective, the imperialists promptly reneged on the deal and set about dividing a culturally homogenous region geographically into a collection of weak states with artificial boundaries. Socially, the populace was further divided into rulers and ruled. As compensation for the betrayal, Hashemite princes were installed as artificial monarchs in the newly created states.

 

Selected as administrators were reactionary elements willing for the sake of personal or tribal ambition to sacrifice the interests of their subjects to those of their imperialist sponsors. Of particular current interest is the origin in the Ottoman army of the  Sunni military clique that has dominated the Shia majority in Iraq from the time of its first defection to Britain down to its latest exemplar in Saddam Hussein.

 

By the time  more oil-fields were discovered by American companies in the Gulf and Arabia, the Saudi dynasty had been bribed and assisted by the British to depose the original Hashemite client, resentful and uncooperative after his betrayal. Hastily improvised neo-colonial techniques of control had been tried, tested and found worthy of imitation. The cloak of Wilsonian idealism became more and more ideological as the USA joined in the game.

 

Setting each example in its historical and local context, Aburish describes in detail the full panoply of weapons in the neo-colonialist arsenal – deceit, duplicity, blackmail, bribery, assassinations, coups, Balkanisation, exploitation of religious delusions, favouritism towards religious and ethnic minorities.  Rebellions alternately promoted and suppressed at the convenience of the imperialist powers. Ambitions rivals cultivated and held in reserve least incumbent clients prove uncooperative upon betrayal and turn to the masses for support.

 

Published before 9/11/01, Aburish commented on the rise in Islamic militancy, attributing the phenomenon to three causes. As guinea-pigs for the neo-colonial techniques of indirect rule, the Arab masses have endured the indignities longer than most other national groups, and found in Islam a resource for the preservation of personal dignity. The architects of neo-colonialism have on the other hand regularly co-opted and promoted Islam whenever it suited their designs, especially as an insurance against secular nationalism and communism. And the humiliating military defeats suffered by secular nationalist regimes in the struggle against US sponsored Zionism, in contrast to the successes of Hezbollah in the Lebanon and the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan, have boosted the prestige of Islam.

 

Aburish’s mistake is in attributing the chronic strife in the Middle East to the cultural ignorance and attendant shortsightedness of imperialist powerbrokers, as if they cared whether their policies wreck the lives of millions. If remorse could induce them to abandon their power-games, books such as this could help bring about the change. It is clear that the change will come through the repugnance of the world’s working classes towards the actions of their rulers. In this regard, Aburish’s book may be an educational contribution to that revolutionary struggle.