CS 60 March-April 2005

Chavez in his closing speech before a full stadium in Porto Alegre, sported a Che T-shirt and was given a rapturous reception. Once more he talked about the need for socialism to achieve the goals of the Bolivarian revolution. On the face of it this sounded like Chavez was prepared to break with US imperialism and nationalise the property of the imperialists and local capitalists. Those whose hopes had been attached to Lula and his Worker’s Party Government in Brazil two years ago, and were now disillusioned by his attacks on workers and his sacking of left wing parliamentarians, now saw Chavez as picking up the mantle of the socialist cause of Castro and Che Guevara.

The Democratic Socialist Party of Australia is an example of a former Trotskyist group that has become an open cheerleader for Castro. In the recent APISC conference in Sydney, CWG members were told by a DSP militant that their ‘co-thinkers’ in Latin America were the Cuban Communist Party. When we said the Castro was restoring capitalism in Cuba and was a betrayer of the Latin American revolution, this comrade said that Castro was now fighting restoration and that the articles of Celia Hart showed that it was possible for Castroites and Trotskyites to be allies in the class struggle.

Celia Hart is the daughter of a two leading revolutionaries in Cuba. She has recently written about the need to adopt Trotsky’s view of permanent revolution in Cuba and Latin America. What she means by this is what Che Guevara meant when he said “either socialist revolution or a caricature of revolution”, that the Stalinist view of two revolutionary stages, first national, then socialist, must be abandoned. Chavez has also realised that Venezuela cannot be independent short of socialism. But what does socialism mean?

The fact is that Celia Hart’s ‘rediscovery’ of Trotsky is like the post-modernists ‘rediscovery’ of Marx. This ‘Trotsky’ is a museum exhibit like the mausoleum of Lenin. Celia Hart says that Trotsky’s ideas should be discussed like those of Gramsci and Mariategui! This is a dead Trotsky, whose politics have been transformed into their opposite. Instead of an uncompromising fight for working class independence, this ‘Trotsky’ calls a bourgeois president a ‘Marxist’ or even ‘Trotskyist’. Even serious ‘Trotskyists’ like the el Militante tendency of Alan Woods gives critical support to Chavez. This only confuses workers by presenting Chavez as capable of defending the revolution instead of warning workers that only they can defend their class against a counter-revolution. For example, Celia Hart recognises that a US attack on Venezuela will come, but instead of calling for soviets and workers militias now, she talks of an ‘international brigade’ like in Spain to come to the rescue of Venezuela!

Objectively Chavez is the President of a bourgeois state that defends private property. There is a huge gap between his ‘socialist’ rhetoric and his actions protecting Venezuelan capitalism. Towards the end of his speech at the WSF, Chavez defended Lula’s Government for facing up to the difficult task of defending the masses against imperialism. This was an indirect admission by Chavez that he too has to negotiate and make concessions to imperialism and sometimes attack workers directly, as he did at Sidor, on the ‘road to socialism’!

Those on the left who defend Chavez as a ‘Marxist’ or even a ‘Trotskyist’, are in effect liquidating the independent role of the revolutionary party in transforming a national revolution against imperialism into a socialist revolution. Instead they are substituting as the workers’ ‘vanguard’ a fraction of the national bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie, or Castroite bureaucracy, who all try to use the state and mass support to negotiate better terms with imperialism. Chavez has come to understand that he will sooner or later face a US blockade and end up going further than he formally intended. And rather than follow Allende, his model is clearly closer to Cuba where Castro was forced by the US blockade to go further than he intended and proclaim ‘socialism’.

But Cuba under Castro has never been socialist. It’s revolution was not based on a mass movement but upon a petty bourgeois national democratic independence movement. The class character of the Cuban revolution remains petty bourgeois and bureaucratic caught between the Latin American proletariat and imperialism. Its role is not to encourage revolution but to moderate the class struggle and negotiate a class compromise like Stalin did. Castro acted like Stalin in every Latin American revolution from the 1960s onward. In Chile he backed Allende’s refusal to arm the workers for fear it would provoke imperialism. Disastrous betrayal! In Nicaragua he backed the Sandinista’s attempts to negotiate with the US rather than mobilise mass resistance. Disastrous betrayal! Today, his advice to Latin American leaders is to follow Cuba’s current path in negotiating a deal between the market and ‘socialism’ –something called ‘market socialism’ – betrayal again!

However, despite its counter-revolutionary role in Latin America, Cuba did expropriate the imperialists and national capitalists. Therefore it must be supported and defended from imperialism and capitalist restoration. But the only way to prevent capitalist restoration is to remove the Castroite bureaucracy and install a workers’ and small farmers’ government in its place. We say the same with Chavez and the Bolivarian movement. We support his regime unconditionally against imperialism. But we cannot give him the slightest political support. Why? Because Chavez is the President of a bourgeois state balanced between the Venezuelan masses and US imperialism. Like Castro, who is gradually accommodating imperialism by allowing it to buy up state assets in Cuba, Chavez is reluctant to directly confront imperialism by nationalising imperialist assets.

This fact is clear from the one and only nationalisation of a factory that has taken place so far. Venepal, a paper-making plant owned by a US corporation, was recently nationalised and put under joint government/worker co-management. The workers occupied the plant over a year ago calling on Chavez to nationalise it, but Chavez did so only when he satisfied that the owners were closing it down and it could be nationalised under the Constitution as ‘unproductive’. What results is a state-owned corporation in which the workers compete with capitalist firms in a capitalist economy. The program the workers need is not piecemeal nationalisations but wholesale expropriation not only of bankrupt factories, but of all major profitable factories, farms and banks without compensation to the bosses and under workers control as part of a planned economy!

The Cuba model is wrong for another life and death reason. Unlike Cuba, there are no Soviet missiles to ‘protect’ Venezuela. Castro’s bureaucratised worker state survived because of the Cold War standoff between imperialism and the degenerated workers states. Venezuela would not survive an imperialist counter-revolution and invasion without armed workers and farmers militia. Chavez may declare his loyalty to the interests of the masses, but his actions expose the masses to a terrible historic defeat. Any illusions that Chavez can defend workers in the event of a US sponsored civil war (e.g. invasion from Colombia) can only disarm the workers and lead to their defeat.

What is needed is not pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric about the ‘Marxist’ Chavez leading the way on the road to socialism, but the organisation of the Venezuelan workers, peasants and soldiers into armed Soviets capable of mobilising a ‘Red Army’ to defend the national revolution from the counter-revolution and to go on to seize the power in the name of a workers’ and peasant’s government.

For a national congress of the CNT and workers and peasant organisations in struggle!

For the expropriation of land, industry and the banks without compensation and under peasant and worker control!

For soviets and workers and peasants militias and soldiers committees!

For a Workers’ and working Farmers’ government!

Bolivia is a hinge of the world revolution and counter-revolution

The events in Bolivia are critical to the whole balance of class forces internationally. US imperialism has gone on the offensive in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, and has contained the revolutionary upsurges in Argentina, Equador and Peru. A new worker and peasant uprising in Bolivia may tip the balance once more in favour of the masses and begin a new offensive against capital lthat is already signalled in the awakening of the US working class, the French mobiilsation against its government attacks on the pension. Thus much rests on the success of the Bolivian masses in breaking out of the containment imposed on them by the bureaucracy and the left reformists and fake Trotskyists who have come together in the World Social Forum.

The crisis of Bolivia’s semi-colonial economy shape the events today. First, the question of who will benefit from the gas resources, the imperialists or the poor people of Bolivia, makes this fight a fight to the death. Second, Bolivia’s national debt is not 80% of GDP and this dictates that the state must pay the debt by attacking the masses. The uprisings of February and October 2003 and December 2004 were all caused by increasing prices and taxes on poor workers and farmers. Third, the Bolivian bourgeoisie are weak and divided about how to solve the crisis. This thrusts the union and peasant leaders to the fore as the managers of the crisis. Each time the masses rise up the bureaucracy rescues the situation by doing a deal with Mesa. But this time the mass pressure from below forced the bureacuracy to call a 24 hour general strike on January 10. This coincided with an indefinite strike in El Alto (working class suburb above La Paz) to expel the French multinational Illimani which now owns the water supply. But the leaders of the unions and peasant organisations managed to prevent these strikes from turning into an offensive against Mesa.

March events

By early March 2005 the economic crisis was now expressed as a national political crisis. The mobilisations, strikes, pickets etc threatened to paralyse the country. The indefinite general strike of March 2 in El Alto was joined by a blockade of the refinery of Senkata on March 7 by 40,000 workers. In the rest of the country the occupation of oil fields and the cutting of roads in seven of the nine departments of the country continued. Again, the workers demanded that the leadership of the COB call a 48 hour national strike from March 15. Once again there was the possibility of a new revolutionary uprising of the masses. Mesa reacted by offering his resignation on March 6. This was an ultimatum to the ruling class to back him with new powers as a ‘referee’ to bring the different fractions from the bourgeoisie into line, to appeal to the reactionary petty bourgeoisie for support, and to try to go on offensive against the workers and farmers. Thus Mesa would impose social order and guarantee both the plunder of the gas by the US monopolies and payment of the external debt to the IMF.

The COB and peasant leaders stepped into solve the crisis again. They wanted to avoid an uprising such as October 2003. Evo Morales, the main peasant leader, and Solares of the COB signed a unity pact, proposing that the government impose a 50% royalty payment on the gas, and called for a Constituent Assembly. Against this pact with the national bourgeoisie against the workers, revolutionaries could have broken this pact with a program of transitional demands: "Neither 18% nor 50% royallties but nationalization without compensation and under workers control of the gas, petroleum, water and mines! Expropriation without compensation and nationalization of the banks under control of the workers, to reduce the debt of the small farmers and to give them cheap loans ". A call for a political general strike in the middle of the political crisis would have thrust the proletariat immediately to the head of the struggle and demonstrated to the rest of the exploited classes that only it can resolve the crisis of the oppressed and exploited nation by leading the fight against imperialism. The united intervention of the working class, led by the miners vanguard, would quickly have solved the situation in favor of the exploited, and would have sealed the fate Mesa, the puppet parliament and the mine owners state!

The result was that Mesa was re-confirmed as President by the unanimous vote of all the Deputies including the MAS (Morales) and MIP (Quispe). With this move the government bought some time. Yet it could not overcome the deepening division in the ruling class between those openly serving imperialism, and those acting for the reactionary national bourgeoisie. Mesa risked an open controntation between the army and the masses that could have seen a section of the military split in support of the insurrection. While Mesa still had the upper hand there was the potential for the masses to stage another insurrection. For that reason the oil monopolies held Mesa back. Instead they proposed new elections to win electoral legitimacy. But Parliament refused and voted to impose royalties of 18% and taxes of 32% on the monopolies. Mesa threatened to veto this law if the Senate did not reduce the royalties and taxes. Morales, who demanded 50% royalties, then claimed that the new law would provide another $600-$750 million dollars for distribution to the people and so called off the strikes and blockades.

At present there is an impasse. The ruling class is agreed on Mesa remaining in power and a pact of national unity to contain the masses. Imperialism is only interested in political stability to allow it to super-exploit the oil and gas. They do not yet have the power to defeat the masses outright in an armed showdown, and have to rely on the leaders of the peasants and workers to hold them back. They know this situation is unstable as the masses have the potential to break through this strangle hold.

Background to the current crisis

The events of March means that the truce made between the regime and the leaders of the workers and peasant organisations in October 2003 has come to an end. Already the existing regime based on a longstanding peasant/military pact had come under attack in February 2003. The October truce followed an uprising that included a split in the army forcing the resignation of President Lozada (Goni).

The truce with Mesa depended on the key role of Morales, Quispe etc who promised real gains for the masses to prevent them taking the insurrection on to the seizure of power. But this truce gave Mesa the time to rebuild his regime. He could not rely on the army because of the risk of further splits. Behind the cover of the truce he tested the masses resolve to fight with selected attacks on the most militant sectors, but met with strong opposition like the rebellion at Ayo Ayo and the student occupation at Ururo.

Mesa also tried to bolster his regime with the referendum on oil royalties and the local body elections of December of 2004. The result was the March crisis and Mesa’ re-confirmation under a new truce more favourable to the bosses. Mesa’s has been strengthened elevated as a Bonaparte balancing between imperialism and the national bourgeosie on the one side, and the masses on the other. Nevertheless, he is not strong enough to dispense with the treacherous petty bourgeois role of Morales, Solares and Quispe, still tying the masses to the bourgeois camp.

The present situation is therefore the direct result of the treacherous role of the misleaders of the workers and peasants organisations. Twice, between January and March this year they have held back workers from embarking on new revolutionary attacks on the regime. Instead they harness the pressure from below to bargain for more oil rent for the masses.

The Revolution is in Danger

The revolution that initiated the heroic workers and Bolivian farmers in February 2003 and was interrupted twice by truces is in danger. If the bourgeois fractions manages to use its unity pact with the labour and peasant misleaders (apopular front) to contain the masses, the revolution will come to a haltand counter-revolution will gain the upper hand. If the masses break this new truce, then Mesa may fall and the revolution will once more re-open. The crucial factor that will decide which way Bolivia goes is the independent organisation of the workers and peasants breaking with their treacherous leaders and freeing themselves to complete their insurrection against the hated bosses’ regime.

In colonies and semicolonies the dominant bourgeois fraction always serves imperialism. The national bourgeoisie may squabble over its share of the rent with imperialism on one side and the masses on the other, but ultimately its class interests are aligned with imperialism against the masses.

Opposing it is the working class leading the small farmers and all oppressed people. This can only mean victory or defeat for one class or the other. Either imperialism imposes its repressive regime of super-exploitation, or imperialism is overthrown and a workers’ and small farmers’ state is established.

This means that Morales and the petty bourgeois leaders of the farmers and workers must objectively act for the national bourgeoisie and ultimately imperialism. Their program is no more than to negotiate and haggle over the rent. They will not fight to overthrow the bosses regime because that would elimitate their role as negotiators of class truces. Even if Bolivia won a larger share of the rent, say 50% royalties on oil, this money would go to pay off the national debt and not go to the workers or small farmers. That is why Morales and Co voted for Mesa to stay in power while at the same time calling for a Constituent Assembly as a talkshop for the bourgeois fractions to debate who gets what share from the oil rent.

Will the masses, or will the imperialists, pay for their crisis?

The exploited masses of Bolivia rose up in October 2003 against the imperialist plunder othe hydrocarbons (oil and gas) “Out Gringos, the gas is not for sale!". Today their misleaders tell them that the problem has been solved by increasing the royalties to 18% so that $750 millions are prevented from leaving the country. But increasing the share of the oil rent cannot solve the problems facing the workers and poor farmers.

At every meeting of the COB (Confederation of Workers), and at every meeting of the striking people of Al Alto (working class city above La Paz), the demands were:

· Down with the pact of nation unity between Mesa, Morales, Solares etc that allows the monopolies to rob the gas and petroleum and the national bourgeoisie to haggle over its share!

· Neither 18% nor 50% royalties! Oil and Gas for the Bolivians! Nationalization without payment and under workers control of the gas, petroleum, the water, the mines!

· Expropriation without payment of the banks under control of the workers, to reduce the debts of the small farmers and to give them cheap credit!

· Expropriation without payment of the great landowners and distribution of land to the farmers;

· Break with the IMF!

· A sliding scale of wages and working hours, as raised in the Theses of Pulacayo (the program of the COB in 1946 modelled on the Trotskyist Transitional Program) to end super-exploitation, poverty and unemployment; an emergency plan of public works and economic plan to make the bourgeoisie, the imperialists and the IMF to pay for the crisis.

For a national Congress of workers and small farmers delegates!

Workers are openly questioning the betrayals of their misleaders. Every meeting over the last few weeks of miners, teachers, regional and local COB branches, etc is demanding that Solares consult the rank and file before making agreements. There is no support for increasing royalties only nationalisations. In El Alto, the rank and file said that if Morales and Quispe betrayed again, they would apply popular justice like the mayor of Ayo Ayo (he was lynched).

After February 2003, to overthrow Goni and begin the revolution, the workers had to replace the old bureaucratic leadership of the COB. Today they have to break from their new leaders.

Against Class Collaboration! Against the leaders of the COB who want to trap workers in national pacts!

A National Congress of workers and farmers delegates, representing democratically the exploited millions of Bolivia would immediately have a million times more authority than Mesa, or the puppet parliament and that the handful of representatives of the imperialist monopolies and employer's associations that conspire against the people in back rooms.

It could immediately make a revolutionary decree calling for the nationalisation without compensation and under working control of all the natural resources, and for the immediate release of the jailed leaders of Ayo Ayo, the landless farmers and other political prisoners.

Mesa has once already called on the reactionary petty bourgeoisie to attack the workers and farmers in the streets. No doubt a National Congress would be met with a similar call for armed reaction to smash the Congress and its program. He will also call out the armed forces when he needs them to massacre the people. To defend themselves from armed attack, the Congress must immediately create workers and farmers militias and send out a call to the rank and file soldiers - the children of the workers and farmers under arms – to mutiny, to form committees of soldiers, and to send its delegates to the workers and farmers Congress.

This Congress would replace the collaborationist leadership of the COB with a General Staff of revolutionary workers and small farmers leaders, who would prepare and organise an armed showdown of the workers and farmers militias alongside the soldiers committee, to bring down the government of the mine-owners and the imperialists so that the Congress can take the power into its own hands.

For a class alliance of workers and small farmers led by the workers

The misleaders of the COB, while subordinating the workers to the capitalists, also breaks the workers’ alliance with the small farmers, beraying the farmers, also throwing thenm into the arms of the bosses. Only the workers can meet the demands and needs of the small farmers, because of the decisive role they play in production. They extract the oil, the gas, the minerals; they work them, they refine them, they transport them. Workers run the banks and telecoms. Workers can meet the interests of small farmers by taking over the refineries, banks, mines and gasfields, and distributing land, cancelling debts, and giving cheap credit, and providing access to water, machinery, technical advice etc.

But to lead the small farmers in a class alliance the workers must retain their armed independence of the capitalists. A national Congress of workers and small farmers deputies must have an independent program backed by workers militias and soldiers committees proving to the small farmers that they will fight to the end to over throw the regime. This would quickly teach the small farmers to abandon their petty bourgeois misleaders and their polices of truces with the national bourgeoisie.

Workers’ power lives in the strikes, blockades and occupations!

Solares and co have tried to smash the independent power of the workers organisations. But they have not succeeded, The flame of ‘dual power’ (workers’ power opposed to bourgeois state power) is alive in the workers city of El Alto which maintained a strike for 8 days. And when Morales and Solares called off the strikes and blockades in favour of negotiating 50% royalties, the popular meetings resolved: "Mesa, his ministers and all MPs out!"; and to continue to fightor the nationalization of the hydrocarbons for which more than 60 died and 400 were injured during during the street battles of October 2003. It is no accident that the bourgeois newspaper La Razon of Bolivia, has stated with alarm that today in El Alto "a soviet has been formed"!

In the same way, the flame of the dual power is alive in those militant organisations that made armed pickets and blocades of 72 highways, bringing transport and commerce to a halt and creating an embryonic dual power. These organisations already have the authority to convene a National Congress of workers and farmers delegates, to create workers militias and soldiers committees, capable of organising a decisive showdown with the government to dissolve the puppet parliament and take power in its hands by constituting a workers and farmers government!

The Bolivian masses are the best allies of the Iraqi resistance and militant US workers

The politics of class collaboration of the reformist misleaders is not ‘national’. It is the politics of the reformists of the World Social Forum of Lula, Chávez, the restorationist Castro bureaucracy, the union bureaucracies of every colour. At this year’s WSF at Porto Alegre, these people conspired to defeat the Bolivian revolution in the same way they did with the Argentine revolution. The treacherous Morales, Quispe and Solares want to make the workers and farmers of Bolivia believe that by electing them to parliament they can make solve all o their problems by making the national bourgeoisie extract higher royalties and taxes from the oil monopolies.

They point to Chavez to make their case. The same Chavez who sells oil to the US to use in killing Iraqis, and who agrees to a joint fight with Uribe of Colombia against ‘terrorism’. Solares hold up Castro as the model for socialism in Venezuela. The same Castro who backs Kirchner in Argentina and restores capitalism in Cuba. They praise Lula who attacks the landless farmers occupations, and allowed the recent massacre of 60 by landowners; or Kirchner who imprisons scores of political opponents; or Tabaré Vázquez, who rules Uruguay in the interests of imperialism.

It is not the national bourgeoisie who are the allies of the Bolivian workers and farmers! They are their enemies! Their allies are the heroic Iraqi resistance!+ They are the Brazilian workers who have formed CONLUTAS to fight Lula and the union bureaucrats of the CUT; they are the workers of the Subte, telephone, schools etc of Argentina, who struggle against the government of Kirchner and the rotten union bureaucracy of the CGT and the CTA.

But the main ally of the Bolivian masses is the North American proletariat, in particular the oppressed black and Latino workers who are treated as pariahs by the bosses and the union bureaucrats of the Afl-cio. They are the black workers of Local 10 of the ILWU (harbour workers) of Oakland, who stopped work on March 19, to mark two years of the US occupation of Iraq, and who sparked the militant workers who formed the Million Worker March Movement. These are the true allies of the workers and small farmers of Bolivia and Latin America!

The crisis of revolutionary leadership of the working class must be overcome

The re-opening of the Bolivian revolution reveals once more the absence of a revolutionary party. Without that party the revolution will not be finished and suffer again counter-revolutionary defeats.

Once more the events of the 2005 expose the treacherous politics of Stalinism and Castroism. For the second time in less than two years, Castroism has stopped the workers revolution from taking power. This new betrayal is of the same order of those of Chile in 1973 and of Nicaragua in the 1980s. But the Castoites need the fake Trotskyistst to cover their left flank. This is the role of the POR Lora (Revolutionary Workers Party of Guilliemo Lora). POR talks of “insurrection” but without building workers’ militias or arming the masses. Like the Castroites its program is subordinated to a popular “anti-imperialist” front with the national bourgeoisie like 1971. This will defeat the 23^rd Bolivian revolution as it defeated the 2^nd in 1971.

Others, like the LOR-CI - the satellite group of the PTS of Argentina exhibits a enthusiams for parliamentary and trade union cretinism, calling on the COB to liquidate itself into a reformist workers’ party! The COB which keeps alive the embryo organs of dual power will become another parliamentary talking shop. The 3^rd Bolivian revolution reveals the total bankruptcy of those who have broken with Trotskyism.

We are in a race against time to build a revolutionary party to lead the revolution before the forces of the counter-revolution prevail. Only the workers’ vanguard breaking with the bureaucracy can rescue the revolution by fighting for a national congress of the COB and farmers organisations, and to transform these into soviets, workers’ and farmers’ militias and soldiers committees capable of taking power.

In those organs, a small nucleus of revolutionaries can openly fight to win the masses, convincing them of the justice and correctness of our revolutionary program. For this it is necessary that that nucleus of revolutionaries is part of the struggle to regroup internationally all the healthy forces of the Trotskyism against the all the treacherous liquidaors of the 4^th International.

The student-worker group Internationalist Red October (a member of the FTI-CI, born in the heat of the rebellion of the students of the UTO of Oruro, has made this fight as its own. In support of IRO we must mobilise all the forces of healthy Trotskyism for the socialist revolution. A start is the Call for an International Conference of Principled Trotskyists and Revolutonary International Workers Organisations made be the Liaison Committee (see Class Struggle 59, January-February 2005).

The full text in Spanish is on our website http://www.geocities.com/communistworker/boliviatheses.html

Any errors in translation and condensing are the editors.

The myth of European Union Peace and Unity

All of the above political forces promote the myth that the capitalist class can unify Europe when only the working class can do this by overthrowing the capitalists. Europe is not like America. The USA was a state created by the bourgeoisies of the British colonies of North America at a time when capitalism was still juvenile, when the bourgeoisie was still able to play a revolutionary role, to lead the popular masses, and mobilise and to arm them against the colonial power (War of Independence) and, later, against the slave-owning landowners (War of Secession).

The European Union appeared much too late when capitalism was in its epoch of old age and decay. It has been a patch up job of the old national bourgeoisies, today all reactionaries because they none are capable of leading any progressive struggle to abolish their bourgeois states.

The budget of the European Union shows that the EU is not a real state. First, the EU taxes only 1.27% of its member states’ income, whereas the US taxes more than 20% of the national income.

Moreover, the largest part of this tiny budget, 45%, goes to agriculture. The largest spending in the USA is on the military 350 billion. The total spending of all 25 armies of the UE is no more than 150 billion euros.

The European Union so is divided that it does not have its own troops, aside from the "Rapid Reaction Force". This was formed after the European Council of Helsinki of 1999. It is not a supranational force or an embryo of a European Union Army. It is limited to co-operation between the armies of only four states (Germany, Belgium, France and Luxembourg). Not only that, but most European states are still members of the military alliance controlled by the United States, NATO.

The Balkan wars of the 1990s and the second imperialistic war against Iraq, proves that the EU is no more than a heterogeneous federation around an unstable agreement between German and French imperialism.

The 1957 agreement that founded the UE, aimed: "To strengthen. . . and safeguard peace and freedom" (Introduction to the Treaty of Rome). The new EU Constitution of 2004, affirms: "The Union’s objectives are to promote peace, the values and well-being of its peoples" (art. I.3).

Balkan wars explode the myth of peace and unity

These pious platitudes were contradicted by the devastation of ex-Yugoslavia from 1990 to 1999, as a result of the persistent rivalry of the European powers. To preserve and to extend their zones of influence, French and German imperialisms actively contributed to the break-up of the Yugoslav Confederation, supporting one or another national sector of the old Titoist bureaucracy. All the fractions of the bureaucracy wished to restore Capitalism, to convert themselves into bourgeois, and to prevent a united working class staging a political revolution to kick them out of power and create a real workers’ state.

Germany backed the independence of Croatia and Slovenia providing arms and military advisors. France backed a "Greater Serbia" and armed Serbia against Croatia and Bosnia. The United States made use of their diplomatic and military superiority to end the conflict and to advance their influence in Europe at the expense of their European imperialist rivals.

The EU oppresses the nationalities

The UE pretends to liberate the peoples and to assure their well-being. But since it guarantees the borders of the existing states, it also guarantees the oppression of many different peoples of Europe for example; Basques, Albanians of Kosovo, Irish. Still worse, it entraps the overseas territories of the old British, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, Danish colonial empires as "countries and overseas territories of the European Union" (PTUM) and as "ultraperipheral regions" (RUP). These PTUM are associated with the UE: Greenland, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, the Dutch Antilles, Aruba, Anguila, Falklands Islands, Bermuda, etc. The RUP, often further removed from the European continent than Turkey, are also art of the territory of the UE: French Guyana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, La Reunion, Azores, Madeira, Canary Islands.

Peace falls to pieces

The goal of "European Peace" overlooks the participation of the armies of almost all the capitalist countries of Europe in the war against Iraq in 1991, the scandalous UN embargo that strangled the Iraqi population for the next ten years. Its "peace" is blind to the bombing of Serbia in 1999, Afghanistan in 2002, by NATO and the US military; ignores the many armed interventions where the "democracies" of "old Europe" invade the Ivory Coast, Haiti, etc. Its "peace" forgets the support from all these states to the oppressor state of Israel in Palestine, or Turkish oppression of the Kurds, and the new capitalist Russia’s oppression of Chechenia.

As for European unity, the reality is a cruel contradiction. Against their main rival, US imperialism, the European states are clearly divided. Great Britain, Spain, Italy and the countries of Central Europe, supported the US when it unleashed its war of terror and looting against Iraq, when the policy of French and German imperialisms was to use the UN to bleed Iraq’s oil wealth.

This rivalry also appears in the increasing antagonism between European imperialisms over their foreign trade and investments, in order to increase their shares of the resources of Eastern Europe or Africa, Latin America, Asia and Australia.

The Europe of Capitalism, Racism and Militarism

Therefore it is evident that the European imperialistic powers cannot deliver ‘peace’ and ‘unity’. They joined in the brutal restoration of capitalism in the former workers states; the recolonization of the dominated countries, such as the imperialistic invasion of Iraq led by the US (Great Britain, Spain State, Italy, Poland...); the invasion and occupation of the ex-Yugoslavia by NATO, the occupation of Afghanistan by NATO (with France, Spanish State, Germany), and the invasion and occupation of Haiti (France, Spain State, along with the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Turkey, etc.).

But to mask this super-exploitation and oppression, the imperialists must legitimise their rule by means of patriotism, the mass media, religion and the education system. Where that fails it needs to repress, and if necessary destroy, the resistance of the exploited and oppressed majority. Without counting the expenditures on police and prisons, which constantly rises, the 25 countries of the UE spend on average more than 2% of their national income on their armies.

The attacks on the agricultural and urban workers today, have nothing to do with the ‘neoliberal’ ideology of the European institutions. The struggle between the bourgeoisie and the working class is inherent in capitalism. Increasingly since the onset of the world economic crisis in 1973, every capitalist in the world is forced to attack the working class to increase the rate of exploitation and to devalue the value of the labour-power of the work force.

The result is that from 1975 to 1999, the share of wages in the 15 European states has been cut by an average of 9%. The rate of unemployment of the UE today averages 9.1% of the active population. The right to a decent pension, unemployment insurance, access to health and education, public services, which are all past conquests of the European labour movement, are cut back because they are a drain on the profits of the capitalist system that increasingly destroys the basis of all economic and social life.

The myth of a "social Europe"

Far from being a victim, as the reactionaries claim, the nation state is reinforced as a repressive apparatus by the formation of ‘Europe’. All the European bourgeoisies are strengthening their state apparatuses, especially the mercenaries that keep order: police of all sorts, secret services, and the army. At the same time they all attack democratic liberties.

The developing capitalism of 19^th century justified colonialism by racism. At the beginning of 21^st century all the reactionary demagogues attribute the evils generated by capitalism (unemployment, poverty, delinquency...) to foreign competition (always "disloyal"), to export of jobs, the "technocrats of Brussels", etc. Fascists and, sometimes, even respectable bourgeois politicians, traditionally show no mercy to the Jews but cover up their racism in the case of Pakistani, Arab, Turkish immigrants, etc. or to their descendants. But this racism is exposed by capitalism in decline as it continuously secretes the xenophobia by means of its "immigration policies", the "fight against the terrorism", the national and racial division of the working class, the social segregation into urban ghettos.

All the governments of Europe restrict the right of asylum. They reject Arabs and the inhabitants of the Kabila whose lives are threatened by Islamic fanaticism and dictatorships; they attack the Kurdish or Turkish immigrants persecuted in all the countries of the UE; the Basque militants persecuted in France and tortured by the Spanish state; the Italian militants who look for refuge in France where they are extradited to the mafia boss Berlusconi.

Every state restricts the freedom of movement and the rights of the immigrant workers, treating them brutally and locking them up in infamous detention centres, super-exploiting those who are not locked up and thus dividing the working class.

Capitalism has demonstrated it is incapable of overcoming national borders of Europe

The two great imperialistic wars were, first of all, the expression of the rebellion of the productive forces against the limits of the national borders, particularly archaic in Europe. On two occasions German imperialism tried to unify Europe under its military hegemony. In the second it did it under the rule of Hitler and nazism, the extreme incarnation of the bourgeois counterrevolution and capitalist reaction. On two occasions, the European ruling classes, with the aid of the North American bourgeoisie, made war to re-divide the world, sacrificing millions of young working people, devastating the continent, massacreing the civilians, and using their colonial subjects like cannon fodder.

Against the endless horror of imperialistic slaughter the proletariat rebelled and opened up another road for humanity. The socialist revolution began in October of 1917 in Russia and the overthrowing of the monarchy in Germany. Thus, the working class ended the war between the bourgeoisies, a war in which it was the victim.

During World War II, the defeat of Nazism began, thanks to the Russian workers, in Stalingrad in February of 1943. The same year, the Italian proletariat rose up against Mussolini. But the big revolutionary fires that were sparked off by World War II were damped down by the counter-revolutionary alliance between the imperialistic bourgeoisies of the United States and Great Britain and the Stalinist bureaucracy of the USSR (the agreements of Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam); an alliance thrown together by its fear that the potential proletarian revolution in Western and Central Europe that would have extended to the USSR. Stalin dissolved the 3^rd International in 1943, as a pledge to the imperialists that he would suppress the international revolution. The “democratic" coalition of Wall Street and the Kremlin feared the revolution more than nazism. Their armies let the Nazis massacre the insurgents of Warsaw and deliberately attacked the German civil population to terrorise it and to destroy any will to revolt.

Their political agents in the working class, "the socialist" parties, "communist" parties and reformist union apparatuses, were all against the struggle of the working class in 1943, the date of the Italian uprising. They were able to contain the revolution disarming the workers of France, Greece..., participating directly in the reconstruction of the bourgeois states broken by the military defeats and the armed uprisings, denouncing and suppressing strikes, and slandering the revolutionaries.

Victorious imperialism reconstructed the bourgeois nation states in Europe, restoring the discredited bourgeois exiled regimes, risking the modification of some borders. With the complicity of Stalin, the Democrat Party presidents Roosevelt and Truman, divided up the European working classes more than ever, particularly that of the largest one, the German proletariat. At the same time, the counter-revolutionary alliance of Yalta ensured that the colonial peoples of Africa, Asia and the Middle East continued to live under the boot of their European masters.

The workers democratic and social conquests were the results of working class struggle

Only when threatened with revolution did the European bourgeoisies make large concessions to their respective proletariats: restoring democratic freedoms and the right of strike, extending Social Security and nationalizations. In Albania and Yugoslavia, armies of partisans controlled by the Stalinist parties took power in spite of the orders from Stalin.

The British and North American bourgeoisies had sent to young working people to all the fronts and across all seas on the pretext of fighting fascism. But as soon as their Japanese and German rivals were overcome, the US bourgeoisie turned against the USSR and allied with the fascist regimes of Portugal and Spain. The US bosses provided aid to the weakened European bosses with the Marshall Plan in 1947. From its bases in Germany, the US mounted an offensive against the USSR with the objective of restoring capitalism. This "Cold War" received the support of social democracy and most of the union leaderships.

With its own caste privileges safeguarded, defending at the same time in its own way the USSR against North American imperialistic aggression, the bureaucracy of the Kremlin in 1948 expropriated the capitalists of Central Europe. It established workers’ states bureaucratised from their birth, as copies of the USSR, states in which the workers did not really hold power, nor have basic democratic rights, such as the right to strike, but in which they had access to free health and education.

Everywhere around the world US imperialism supported or created dictatorships against any revolutionary threat. In Europe, it participated directly in the constitution of an authoritarian regime in Greece in 1967.

Yalta burns with new sparks in 1960s

But the dictatorial bourgeois regimes of Greece, Spain and Portugal could not resist the revolutionary flames which broke through the post-war order of Yalta in 1968, as much in the West as in the East of Europe.

In 1960, the Portuguese state faced a crisis with the uprising of the peoples of its African colonies (Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Angola). In 1974, the Portuguese revolution overthrew the dictatorship of Caetano the heir of Salazar. The fraternisation of soldiers and workers on the May 1^st brought an end to the secret police, the occupation of factories and the winning of democratic liberties. Only class collaboration and the ferocious split in the ranks of workers between the PSP and the PCP, with the support of centrists of all types, allowed the bourgeois state to remain in power and to save the weakened Portuguese capitalism. At the same time the road to the European Economic Community was opened in Spain.

In Spain, still greater contradictions faced the Francoist regime. The working class reconstructed its forces, angry youth entered the struggle and the oppressed peoples reactivated their struggles. To stop a possible revolution, king Juan Carlos de Borbón and Parma, designated by Franco as his heir, introduced preventive reforms in 1976. Both the PSOE and the PCE supported the king and their "transition" plan. They supported the constitution of December 6, 1978 which restored some democratic freedoms, while maintaining the privileges of the Catholic Church, denying the right of secession of the national minorities, Basque, Catalan and Galician, and restoring a monarchy with strong Bonapartist traits

Although the reformist leaders Hollande, Buffet, Zapatero, Schröder and company, falsely claim that the workers’ conquests are the progeny of the "republic" or "parliamentary democracy", the truth is very different: both in the East and in the West of the continent, the great conquests of the European proletariat in the 20^th century were the by-product of the world-wide revolutionary uprisings that were unleashed in 1917, 1943 and 1968.

EU: an unstable French and German alliance

The UE is the base on which the European imperialists defend their position in the world economy and try to conquer new wealth in the former bureaucratic workers’ states of Central Europe, China, Vietnam and Cuba, in the traditional semi-colonial countries, and in the imperialistic countries themselves. The bourgeois governments hide this reality behind speeches on the "unity of the continent" and on "peace".

The European Council, speaking for the governments of the 25 states members, adopted on the 18 of June of 2004, a project for an obviously capitalist constitutional treaty: "the Union acts in favour of the sustainable development of Europe founded on... a social economy of a highly competitive market... (I-3 article of the project). The word "social" only has a decorative function. The expression "market economy" refers, in hypocritical terms, to capitalism.

The capitalist mode of production, born in Europe, is not only a market for products but the exploitation of wage-earning workers. In capitalism the labour-power of the proletarians is, itself, sold to the minority class in society that owns the means of production. The social product escapes to the control of its producers, to benefit the capitalists who can, thus, monopolise the social product in the form of its own property.

The concentration of capital, that has continued on a world scale at the cost of economic crises and wars, takes the form of large capitalist transnationals. Nevertheless, it does not lead to the disappearance of nation states and borders. On the contrary, it tolerates the increase in the competition between companies and the national territories in which these move and on which they depend.

On the one hand, the overwhelming majority of the "multinationals" have a clearly identifiable national base; on the other hand, the most powerful states not only guarantee the profits of all capitals by the maintenance of the conditions of extraction of capital gain against the resistance of the wage-earners, but in addition, defend the interests of their national fraction of the capital against their competitors.

What politicians, university professors and journalists call the "European project" arose from secret deals between the politicians of France and Germany mainly, although these negotiations have also included Great Britain, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands.

From the 1950s, to overcome the narrow limits of their territories, and to counter the loss of markets in Eastern Europe and the colonies, some states agreed to form a free trade zone. First the three countries of "Benelux" of 1948, then the six countries of the "European Economic Community" of 1957. This infant "Europe" was rebaptised the European Union in 1992: a commitment made between national capitalists to overcome the barriers to the accumulation of capital posed by their own borders.

Germany and France have controlled all the stages in the evolution of the UE, from the creation of the European Community of Coal and Steel in 1951 to the proclamation of the UE in 1992. No significant decision (as the adoption of the Euro in 1999 or the extension to ten countries in the 2004) has been taken in the UE without the agreement of the governments of the Germany and France.

On the other hand, these two states can break the UE rules if their interests require it, as was the case in 2003 and 2004 when their budgetary deficits widely exceeded the criteria of the Maastricht Agreement of 1992 and of Ámsterdam Treaty of 1997. Thus, through their prime ministers and the other members of their governments, the European Union is under the control of the big corporations of these two countries. The European Commission of Brussels, far from having power, is in charge only of the application of these policies. The new constitution will not question these foundations of UE.

Workers for or against the new Constitution?

Referendums on Turkey’s admission and the Constitution are underway in some countries.

The new Constitution, drafted by Giscard d'Estaing, old president of the 5^th French Republic, guarantees the hold of the great powers on the European Union and their control over the other members:

On the one hand, national governments will continue to make the essential decisions, although the European Parliament will have to give its approval in some domains (budget estimates, internal market, immigration...).

On the other hand, the decisions will be by consensus (fiscal policy, social policy...), or by a "qualified majority", so that agreement must be by, at least, 15 states representing 65% of the population (I-23 articles, I-25...). In this form, France and Germany can paralyse any decision that they choose.

Consequently, the new Constitution maintains the economic domination of the continent by the imperialist states, but also the survival of the monarchies, the existence of state religions (Christian), and the maintenance of the oppressed peoples of Europe within the existing capitalist states. Thus religion is enshrined as a founding value (introduction); it forces the European Union to consult the Churches (art 1-52). Under the pretext of the "fight against terrorism", the new Constitution allows for the secret collaboration of the states, police and services, against the oppressed countries and radical organisations (articles I-42, Iii-271, Iii-276, Iii-309).

No conscious worker can support this constitution. But equally s/he cannot be associated with the chauvinists that oppose the constitution, to block with the chauvinist capitalists.

The reformist leaders of the main workers organisations and their centrist allies try to claim that there are only two alternatives. Either to concede to a imperialist Europe, or to fight for a ‘social’ Europe. Both concede that European capitalism can unify the continent. Most of them think that a ‘social’ Europe is the only way to resist US competition; others reject European integration altogether and bloc with the weaker fractions of their bosses who remain tied to "their" nation against the "dictators of Brussels". All of these positions are utopian.

The peaceful unification of the continent would be historically progressive. But the bourgeoisie, in the epoch of imperialism, is totally incapable of doing this –“social” Europe or not. The economy suffocates in the iron shackle of private property and the inherited borders of the previous historical period. The bourgeoisies of Great Britain, France, Italy, and Germany cannot abandon their nation state, indispensable in their struggle against their proletariat and against the bourgeoisies with which they compete.

“Another Europe" must be a Socialist Europe.

The unification of Europe is the historical task of the only progressive class of our time, the proletariat. The ever- increasing contradiction between the development of the productive forces, its tendency to internationalisation and socialisation, and the capitalist relations of production, can only be overcome by a social revolution, carried out by the class that is simultaneously the product of capitalism, its condition of existence and its potential negation: the working class. This class has the capacity to overthrow the exploiting class, due to its numbers, concentration and the strategic place that it occupies in production.

In order to rise to this historical task, the proletariat must begin to affirm its independence of the bourgeoisie and all its political fractions.

It is possible that the workers of a certain country will see in the referendum the occasion to declare themselves against the government in power, whatever its composition (reformist parties, coalition between reformist party and bourgeois party, bourgeois parties only in power). But these referenda will be used for the division of the workers ranks.

It will not be with a ‘no’ vote that workers will show their force. The campaigns for a ‘yes’ vote will not be, overall, a means to break the link between chauvinism and xenophobia, especially against the Turks.

Where workers are asked to vote on the modification of the European constitution, they must boycott it: Neither Treaty of Nice, nor the Constitution of Giscard! Neither reactionary nationalism nor the parody of European unity!

Workers must boycott the vote on Turkey

Like the present Russian state, the Turkish state has part of its territory in what is called "Europe", and most in "Asia". From 1963 Turkey has been associate the EEC. From 1995, this agreement included a customs union. Since 1987 successive Turkish governments have requested entry into the European Union.

Some bourgeois parties are against the entrance of Turkey because they exploit a xenophobic fear of Turkish migrants. Others don’t want to pay agricultural subsidies to Turkey. Also there is hostility to Muslim religion and culture which is already used to justify attacks on democratic rights in the EU.

On the other hand, the possibility of extending the European market to include Turkey and win it away from the US appeals to some sectors of the European bourgeoisie. At the moment, the European Council (the executive of the UE constituted by the prime ministers of the member states) continuously defers the question of Turkey’s entry.

The workers and revolutionary communists in Turkey must fight against the US, the NATO bases, as well as German and French imperialism. They have to reject all illusions in the Turkish and Kurd workers towards the UE, but also all political illusions in the national bourgeoisie, secular or Islamic.

The Kurdish people must be able to freely decide their future inside or separated from the existing bourgeois states in the Near East. Following the march of history, the Turkish proletariat will freely decide to contribute to the Socialist United States of Europe or the Socialist United States of the Near East.

On the other hand, the vanguard of the workers of the member countries of the UE cannot endorse the reasons the bourgeois give for exclusion or entry of Turkey. We must be against all chauvinism and all imperialistic influence on Turkey; for the unity of all workers of the continent including all those of Turkish nationality or of Turkish or Kurd origin; the workers of the UE countries must fight for the free movement of Turkish workers into Europe and for the acceptance of our Turkish sisters and brothers as our equals.

The bourgeoisies tries to trap workers into voting on the fate of Turkey in the EU.. Neither the workers of Turkey, nor the workers of the UE, can win any political victory in a vote that makes them side with one of two bourgeois options: the annexationists or the chauvinists. Therefore, in case of referendum on this question, the slogan of the proletariat must be –to boycott!

Against all the bourgeois governments of Europe, against the UE, NATO, and national chauvinism.

The future that capitalism offers the European peoples is that of decline, reaction, massive unemployment, increasing competition between imperialistic powers, and world economic crisis and war.

But the working class, first victim of the constant degradation of the conditions of existence of the vast majority of the population, also has the power to put and end to capitalist rule and truly unify Europe. To do this the proletariat take over the leadership of all the exploited and oppressed peoples.

Against the political alliances with the bourgeoisie, practiced by traditional social democracy, and Stalinism trying to convert itself, the Bolsheviks fight for the united front of all workers against the bourgeoisie, the building of a political coalition of all the workers’ organisations against the bourgeois governments, their states and their European Union, in order to achieve its complete overthrow.

We demand of all the parties and organisations who base themselves in the workers to break politically with the bourgeoisie and commit themselves to fight for a workers’ government and a revolutionary program. Bolsheviks should support any step along this road:

· No to unemployment! No to dismissals without an equal job! Defend all the proletarian conquests! Free quality Education, health and housing for all!

· No to labour flexibility and anti-union laws! 35 hours per week! Fight unemployment with shorter working week! Wage, pension and benefit increase! Sliding scale of wages!

· Abolition of the VAT! Not subsidies to the capitalist corporations! Workers control of the industry and services! Expropriation of the capitalist banks and big companies! Plan production and distribution under workers’ control!

· For unified industrial unions! Total democracy in the unions! No to co-management or partnership! Workers assemblies and elected workers’ committees to lead the struggles!

· Real equality between men and women! Right to free contraception and abortion! Equal rights for all forms of sexual orientation!

· For a secular Europe! Separation of Church and State! No state finance for religious institutions! No state recording of religious affiliation! Emancipation of youth from all clerical control!

· Independence for remaining European colonies! Self-determination for Kosovars, Basques, Irish, Kurds, etc.!

· Abolition of the agreements of Schengen! Open the borders for all workers! Recognition of all rights and of citizenship to worker immigrants!

· Freedom for all revolutionary and union militants, for all the activists of the oppressed nations! Working self-defence! Dissolve the professional armies and repressive police forces!

· Abolition of all the monarchies! For the abolition of all ‘Upper Houses’ (Senates, House of Lords, etc.)! For the right to recall the representatives and wages of representatives limited to that of a technician!

· End of all military threats against China, North Korea, Iran and Syria! Close all the US military bases! Dissolve NATO! Disarm the "European Rapid Force"!

· Cancel the debt of the poor countries! Defence of the collectivised economies of Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam! Hands off the Ivory Coast, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq! Workers United Front to block the military transport and transmissions! Victory for the people of Iraq! Defeat imperialism!

· Against the UE, against all treaties and capitalist agreements of the EEC, and the UE, from 1957 to 2005! Workers’ governments in every country of Europe! For a Socialist United States of Europe!

Every serious demand of the masses reaches beyond the limits of the private property. So, the workers have to unite to overthrow the bourgeois state that allows the minority of capitalists to exploit and rule over the masses. Only a workers government can give humanity a future free from barbarism. The workers government will have like task of expropriating the expropriators, to put the giant corporations under workers’ control, so they can begin to reorganise society on a national, international, and finally, world-wide basis.

All previous social conquests of the working class in East Europe were lost because the bureaucracy was not overthrown and capitalism was restored. All the political and social conquests of the working class of Europe of the West are being eroded and threatened because the bourgeoisie is still able to control the working class through the reformist unions and political parties. The proletariat faces an inevitable struggle to fight for socialism or else collapse into the barbarism of economic crisis, fascism and war.

The union apparatuses and political reformists divide the workers ranks and collaborate with the bourgeoisie

In the course of the last world-wide revolutionary wave, the European proletariat one once again demonstrated its capacity for the struggle: Belgium in 1961, France and Czechoslovakia in 1968, Italy in 1969, Poland and Great Britain in 1970, Turkey in 1971, Ireland and Portugal in 1974, Spain in 1976, Poland in 1980. Recently, facing the counter-offensive of the global bourgeoisie, resisting the local offensives against their political and social rights, against the imperialist wars, strike movements and massive demonstrations have taken place in Spain, Italy, Greece, Great Britain, Germany, France, and Austria.

Nevertheless the spontaneous protest of the workers and youth is not sufficient. The union bureaucracies and the traditional parties of the working class are the paid agents of the bosses and are used to contain and divert workers’ struggles. The petty-bourgeois nationalists (the SSP, Batasuna, the IRA...), the Islamist currents and the Christian youth organisations, the “anti-globalisation" movements (ATTAC...) and "the ecological" parties..., they also contribute to the confusion of proletariat and youth. Many of these fakers feed the masses with the myth of "another Europe", that would be less "neo-liberal" (but equally capitalist) or divide the masses along the lines of gender, nationality, race or religion.

Across Europe, the union bureaucracies and bourgeois-worker parties practice class collaboration daily. Most of the Social-Democratic and Communist parties in the European countries who were accomplices in the restoration of capitalism in the soviet bloc, have abandoned talk of socialism. They try to make workers believe in a "social Europe", as if the capitalist European Union could satisfy even the elementary social needs of the masses.

Actually, the reformist parties are accomplices in the bosses anti-worker attacks. The prevent general strikes and the self-defence of the workers, they preach confidence in the police and the army, they agree with the bourgeois parties or they support the representatives of the bourgeoisie, accept the boot of Israel on Palestine, are accomplices of the oppression of the nationalities of Europe, support the UN and the intervention of its troops. When they are in the power, they further the privatizations and the anti-worker plans, and deport or jail migrant workers.

Their allies on the "far left" also call for "another Europe". The most audacious ones promote a "Europe of the workers", without socialism, nor revolution, and, definitely without a “dictatorship of the proletariat”!

For instance, in France, LO and the LCR claim to transform the UE, which is a coalition of bourgeois states, into a “Workers Europe”. Meanwhile, the PT accuses the UE of the deterioration of the life of the workers, as the most reactionary parties do. The liquidators of the 4^th International are actually the left wing of reformism, because of growing adaptation to capitalism and accommodation to their bourgeois states.

For a long time, some of them have been praising the parliamentary road (ex-Militant now CWI and Socialist Appeal – El Militant tendency), and nowadays renounce more and more openly the revolution. In France, the centrists call for a vote for Chirac (LCR), defend the "bourgeois Republic" (PT), support the protests of police officers or the Chirac law prohibiting wearing the Islamic headscarf by Arab and Turkish young people (LCR, PT). In Britain, they give up the struggle for one secular and democratic Palestine, for the right to abort and for scrapping of all immigration controls (SWP). Across Europe, they become increasingly part of the corrupt union apparatuses. Such "Trotskyists" along with petty bourgeois anarchists are typically enthusiastic supporters of the "World Social Forum", led by the Christian churches and their recycled Stalinist friends, the NGOs financed by the bourgeois states and the ecological parties.

Libertarians and centrists oppose the building of a revolutionary party. In this way, anarchists give room to the lieutenants of the bourgeoisie. The ones who claim to be Marxists, prefer a “broad” party, not firmly separated from reformists. Its aim is to manage capitalism better. In France, the former PCI disappeared into a reformist and chauvinist party, the PT. In Britain, the Militant majority, when expelled from the Labour Party, built up a SP with a reformist program. SWP and ISG are launching (with Islamists) Respect, led by George Galloway who is against abortion and for the control of migrants, following the collapse of their hardly less reformist project the Socialist Alliance.

Pseudo-Trotskyites have for more than a decade supported former Stalinist parties: PRC in Italy, IU in Spain, PDS in Germany, PCF in France, etc. Sometimes, they have entered political parties with no connection to the working class: German ecologists, Catalan nationalists, Scottish nationalists. All these organisations have nothing more to do with socialist revolution.

Workers of the World Unite!

For a Revolutionary Workers International!

In order to defend themselves and to prepare its future, the proletariat needs a new leadership, a party of the Bolshevik type, internationalist and revolutionary, that use all proletarian tactics for evacuation of the armies of European imperialisms in Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Bosnia, the Ivory Coast, Haiti; for the defeat of imperialism. The party must stand shoulder to shoulder with the proletariats of all other countries on the side of the countries oppressed by the European, Japanese and US imperialists. It must defend the national rights of all oppressed peoples, like the Iraqis, Palestinians, Chechens or Kurds.

But the most important task of the internationalists, in particular those who live in the imperialist countries, is to work to overthrow the bourgeoisie in their own countries.

The European workers vanguard must regroup in revolutionary internationalist Marxist parties in each country, parties based on the Trotskyist-Leninist nuclei that we fight to build. This is the International that will fight to the end against its own bourgeoisie, that creates workers’ militias, that fights for the overthrow of the bourgeois state and impose a workers government to expropriate the capitalists and open the road to a Socialist United States of Europe. This union will be open to all the workers’ republics that wish to join it, from Turkey to Norway, from Switzerland to Russia, because it will be only a stepping stone towards a Socialist United States of the World.

The unification of the continent only can be made by a social revolution. Such a revolution only can be made by the exploited and oppressed class that has nothing to lose, and that “has no country”. The victory of the revolution in Europe will be an inspiration for revolutions elsewhere; the US, Japan, and the ex-workers states, China and Russia and create a socialist international division of labour to further the transition to communism, the end of classes and the withering of the state.

Europe is the cradle of Capitalism. Consequently, the modern proletariat first appeared in Europe, and the latter was also the theatre for the first workers’ revolutions and the first seizure of power by the workers: Paris in 1871, Petrograd and Moscow in 1917. Although capitalism has been restored in Russia and the centre of Europe; although the social conquests have been eroded little by little in the West of Europe, the proletariat of Europe has not said its last word. Tomorrow it will once more take up the cause of the Paris Commune and the program of October 1917: it will take the power.

Let us construct the International whose red flags will proclaim:

· Long live the union of the workers of the city and the country of the entire world!

· Long live the workers and working farmers of the entire world!

· Let us overthrow the bourgeoisie in every country!

· Long live the world socialist revolution!

25 March 2005

Permanent Revolution Collective:

Groupe Bolchevik (France), Grupo Germinal (Spanish state), Lucha Marxista (Peru)

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Venezuela and the Cuban road to ‘socialism’

For a national congress of the CNT and workers and peasant organisations in struggle!

For the expropriation of land, industry and the banks without compensation and under peasant and worker control!

For soviets and workers and peasants militias and soldiers committees!

For a Workers’ and working Farmers’ government!

The Europe of Capitalism, Racism and Militarism

The workers democratic and social conquests were the results of working class struggle

We fight for Socialist Revolution!

Class Struggle is the

Bi-Monthly of the Communist Workers’ Group of Aotearoa/New Zealand.

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