On March the 18^th, protesters will gather in towns and cities around the world to mark the third anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, and the beginning of a war that still kills thousands of Iraqis every month.

This year the anti-war movement faces the threat of a new imperialist war, against Iraq’s eastern neighbour.

The United States is leading a campaign against Iran’s nuclear programme, and threatening the country with military action if it does not dismantle the uranium enrichment technology in its nuclear facilities.

Bush’s government used aggressive diplomacy to make sure that the International Atomic Energy Agency voted to send the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme to the United Nations Security Council, where the US has a permanent seat and immense influence. Bush has repeatedly said that is prepared to use violence to stop Iran’s nuclear programme even if he can’t get his way on the Security Council.

Iran’s government maintains that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, and after the lies they told about Iraq’s phantom ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ the US and other Western governments can’t be trusted when they say they are certain Iran is trying to make nuclear weapons.

But even if Iran is seeking nukes, what right do the US and its allies have to complain?

The US is a country with many thousands of nukes aimed at targets around the globe and a history of aggressive action against scores of other states. The Middle East’s neighbourhood bully and US ally Israel sits on an arsenal of several hundred warheads.

Both the US and Israel continue to build new nuclear weapons – what right do they have to condemn Iran if it wants to do the same?

Poll after poll shows that Iranians support their country’s nuclear programme, and believe that they have a right to nuclear weapons.

Even the pro-Bush media admits the popularity of Iran’s nuclear programme. Karl Vick, the Iranian correspondent for the pro-Bush, pro-war Washington Post, recently admitted that ‘Ordinary Iranians overwhelmingly favour their country’s nuclear ambitions, interviews and surveys show’.

Why are the Iranian people so keen on nukes?

Some racist commentators in the Western media have suggested that it is because they are a fanatical, bloodthirsty people, who long to fight a holy war against the US and Israel. But the Iranians know better than almost any other people the bloody reality of war. In the 1980s a million of them died defending their homeland against an invasion by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. At the time Saddam was an ally of the US, and the US had encouraged him to invade Iran because it wanted to topple the government there. More recently, Iranians have watched the US fight two bloody wars against Iraq. The war that began in March 2003 is estimated to have killed 150,000 Iraqis already. Now the Iranians hear Bush threatening attacks on their own country.

It is because they don’t want another war that the Iranians want nukes. Iranians realise that nukes would be a powerful deterrent against an attack by the US. They can see that the US invaded Iraq knowing that it had no Weapons of Mass Destruction, but backed away from attacking North Korea because that country had developed nukes.

A look at the whole history of the nuclear era bears out the Iranian point of view. The US says that nuclear proliferation is a threat to world peace, but the only time nukes have been used was before nuclear proliferation began, in the days when the US had a monopoly on the weapons. US President Harry Truman bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki not to defeat Japan, which was already about to surrender, but to intimidate the rest of the world, and especially the Soviet Union and Red China. The US wanted to use nukes to make sure it controlled the post-war world.

In 1950 the US was bogged down in a war against Korea, and General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of their army, drew up plans to explode thirty nukes inside territory held by the North Korean army. Millions of Koreans were saved from death only because the Soviet Union had recently developed its own nukes as a deterrent to US aggression. The US was forced to shelve MacArthur’s plan after the Soviets threatened to retaliate for any nuclear strikes in Korea. Again and again in later years, the Soviet nuclear deterrent saved vulnerable Third World countries from US aggression. Who can blame the Iranians for wanting the same deterrent?

Most Kiwis dislike George Bush and oppose the wars he has started.

At the same time, though, many of us are uneasy about the prospect of another country developing nuclear weapons. If a poll were taken today it is likely that only a fraction of us would support Iran’s right to nukes. But we only think like this because we haven’t stood in the shoes of Iranians and other peoples threatened by US imperialism. We live on islands at the bottom of the world, far away from hotspots like the Middle East. We’ve never been invaded, and we don’t have the hostile army of a nuclear superpower camped on our doorstep. The Iranians don’t have the luxury of rejecting nuclear weapons, and we need to understand that. If we don’t, we risk taking the side of the US and Israel in a new war.

The Green Party has already fallen into the trap of supporting the US campaign against Iran, by urging that the UN be used to ‘restrain Iran’.

Others are in danger of going down the same path. In a debate on the Indy media website, one activist said that he wanted to show ‘solidarity with anti-nuclear sentiments among the Iranian and wider Middle Eastern population’. If he looks, he will soon find that the only people in the Middle East interested in campaigning against Iran’s nuclear programme are Israelis and the US armed forces. Anti-war activists should show solidarity with the Iranian people by supporting Iran’s right to nukes.

But solidarity with Iran doesn’t mean political support for the country’s government.

Iran is run by a gang of Islamic fundamentalists who hijacked the 1979 revolution against the US-backed Shah. The fundamentalists took power by killing their secularist rivals on the left, and they use violence to stay in power. In the last few months, for instance, the Iranian police and pro-government paramilitary organisations have been attacking and detaining the bus drivers of Tehran. The bus drivers have been campaigning and striking for better conditions and union rights, and three hundred of them have been detained for this ‘crime’.

It’s not only trade unionists that the Iranian government attacks.

Iranian women are regularly stoned to death for ‘crimes’ like adultery and pre-marital sex, and gay men are often hung if they are caught having sex.

We should support the Iranian nuclear programme, but we should also support trade unionists and other groups fighting against government repression.

Some Westerners argue that there is a contradiction between these two types of support. They say you can’t support Iran’s right to nukes without giving political support to the country’s government. What they ignore is the fact that Iranian people themselves support their country’s nuclear programme, at the same time as many of them oppose their country’s government. As Karl Vick notes, “Support [for the nuclear programme] runs deep in the population of 68 million, cutting across differences of education, age and, most significantly, attitudes toward the fundamentalist government”.

When we gather next month to mark the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, we should also protest against the aggression of the US and the UN against Iran. But we can only oppose Bush’s new war drive by taking the side of the Iranian people by supporting Iran’s right to a nuclear deterrent.

Leaflet issued by

Workers Against the War Of Terror (WAWOT) February 2006

Air NZ attacks its workforce

After 600 jobs were threatened by Air NZ management in October, in February the Engineers union EPMU came up with a deal to save 300 engineers jobs by sacrificing more than 200 jobs, shift conditions and wages. At that point it looked like a done deal so Air NZ management announced the redundancy of 120 cleaning staff. But then a handful of Christchurch Engineers refused to sign up. The wage cuts and loss of conditions were not acceptable. Air NZ’s response was to threaten to close the Christchurch workshop.

Within a day the workers voting ‘no’ had folded and the deal was done. 300 Engineers jobs would be saved because the frame maintenance would not be outsourced overseas. No sooner had this been confirmed, Air NZ announced a further body blow to workers. 470 administration and cabin crew are to be made redundant and some of their jobs outsourced to foreign workers.

Air NZ management’s approach is a typical capitalist response to the situation many airlines are in. They are driven in their role as agents of capital to restore profits for the owners. Worldwide airline industry profits have fallen over the last decade, as part of the general trend, (Marx described this as the ‘tendency for the rate of profit to fall’). Basically the airlines have to spend more on fuel and replacement aircraft (constant capital) while the airline workforces are cut through decreased staffing levels, casualisation (variable capital), yet the workers are the only source of new value!

The capitalist class takes their crisis to the workers. The airlines try to restore profits through cuts to the workers wages, conditions and through efficiency gains – to increase the rate of exploitation. Airlines have also sought alliances, amalgamations, and buy outs to gain efficiency through greater economies of scale (Marx - the concentration and centralisation of capital). Their struggle to restore profits, at the expense of workers, is the guts of the capitalist crisis. Maintaining, cleaning, stewarding and flying the aircraft are jobs that can be done by outsourcing to the cheapest labour.

Air NZ management hope to restore profits by making workers redundant and finding cheaper ways to maintain, service and operate their aircraft. These are attacks on all airline workers, but more than that the whole working class, as the defeats of airline workers in any country weaken the international labour movement. Typically, the response of the unions, in particular the EPMU that covers most of the Engineers, is to negotiate the loss of some jobs to save others. They appeal to patriotism by blaming foreign workers for taking local jobs. They demand that the government (especially when it is the majority shareholder) acts in the national interest to ‘save jobs’.

The EPWU response is a sell out!

The Engineers union (EPWU) response to the crisis has been get a consultant in to respond to Air NZ management’s proposal. Essentially the union has said: ‘we can restructure the workforce better than employers can. We can restore profitability and do it without as many jobs losses as Air NZ management proposed’. Like it has done on other occasions the EPMU is doing the job of management or employers in response to a crisis of profitability.

Should the working class be grateful that the EPMU and the Airline cooperated to save 300 jobs by selling another 200 jobs? Or that the remaining workers will have to work harder, longer, more unsocial hours for less pay? Loss of jobs or conditions is a loss, and a failure of the union to offer anything better. If jobs go or if conditions of overtime and regular work hours are lost, that is a sell-out by the EPMU. To protect some jobs at the loss of others (jobs and conditions) is trading the livelihoods of those workers.

So when some of the Christchurch engineers voted ‘no’ to the union/management deal to ‘save jobs’ they were told they were the ones selling out the 300 jobs! This is where divide and rule gets you. NZ workers pitted against Chinese workers, and Auckland workers pitted against Christchurch workers, instead of everyone being united against the boss!

And while the Engineers are infighting over the price of jobs sold, the other Air NZ workers, cleaners, cabin staff and other in the firing line, are left to fight alone. Why is this? Why does a union operate like it knows better than the boss how to run the company?

Why, because in the EPMU, the union is in a ‘partnership’ with the employers. In the view of Andrew Little, a view shared by the CTU top officials, there are ‘good’ capitalists (the ones they can work with) and ‘bad’ capitalists, (the ones where the unions can do a better “management” job). This is the usual practice of a union that is part of the union bureaucracy and functions as the labour lieutenants of the capitalists in the labour movement. It is a union that is locked into the capitalist system and fails to challenge the capitalists’ attacks on workers. But like a new paint job on a less fuel-efficient airplane, the EPMU leadership cannot hide from workers that rates of profit are falling. Capitalism demands from the working class ever increased efficiency and ever rising exploitation.

The need for rank and file control of unions

The treacherous leadership of the Labour Party and the EPMU has left workers with no choice but to organise independently of the established leadership. The real union saying: “An injury to one is an injury to all”, takes a class approach to the attacks on workers. Any cuts will do lasting damage to workers as a class – those jobs, and the conditions sold out will be lost forever. Jobs will not re-appear at Air NZ for the next generation of workers. When workers return to work in the coming months, and look around themselves, then they will see less workmates, and worse conditions.

To change this, workers need to be independent of the state. The response of the government to the Air NZ deal proves that the state belongs to the capitalists. This exposes the capitalist nature of the NZ State and the Labour Party. The NZ Government remains the majority shareholder of Air NZ, a hangover from the last time it was baled out by the government. But this was just to rescue Air NZ to prepare it for privatisation. At no time has the Labour Party leadership taken any action to protect workers jobs; instead they give their backing to the strategy of the EPMU to cut jobs and restore capitalist profits. The whole point of this massive job shedding and cost cutting is to get Air NZ ready to be snapped up by one of its much bigger rivals.

Overseas the one sure way that workers have protected themselves from the collapse of inefficient or unprofitable capitalist companies has been to occupy and run the workplaces themselves, sometimes demanding no compensation to the bankrupt capitalists.

In Argentina when factories and Hotels went bankrupt, workers took over and ran run the places as cooperatives. In Venezuela, whole industries like oil, aluminium, paper etc are now led by plants run jointly by workers and the state. But instead of fighting union by union, or plant by plant, these occupations combine the unions and draw in wide support from working class communities. The struggle over how these occupations can go from occupations to genuine socialist property is then up for grabs.

A similar strategy applied in NZ would see unions stepping outside the ERA provisions which put strict limits on strike action, to back one another up. Occupations of Air NZ workshops would quickly bring the airline to a halt. The wider working class can offer support to Air NZ workers. Picket lines of hundreds or thousands of unionists in Auckland and Christchurch, activists from other unions (NDU, SFWU, Unite etc) and unorganised workers could defend the engineering sites for the benefit of the whole working class.

If all airline workers came out together they could return to work on their terms. They could prove that they could keep the airline running efficiently and safely. The rising cost of jet fuel could be solved by doing deals with Venezuelan workers who operate its oil industry, or with China which is currently doing huge bilateral deals for oil, gas, soy beans etc with the Latin American governments of Lula in Brazil, Chavez in Venezuela and soon, Evo Morales in Bolivia.

The whole thrust of workers control is to replace the capitalist management and its union ‘partners’ with industry that is democratically planned to meet social needs rather that private profit.

All-up Congress of rank and file unionists to defend jobs and conditions!

Because the EPMUs deal signals only the start and not the end of job selling, a strike committee made up of rank and file representatives of all Air NZ workers is urgently needed. But this fight cannot be isolated to the airlines. Build links with other workers whose jobs are also in danger like at Fonterra. Prepare working class support for self-defence pickets.

What is needed is an all-up congress of rank and file unionists to debate the way forward.
Prepare to occupy the engineering workshops and hangars!
For working class communities to build mass pickets to defend the occupations!
Put aircraft maintenance, service and operation under workers control, without compensation to the private shareholders of Air NZ

The WSF, along with the "left" of the US Democratic Party, was responsible for betraying the US national ‘day of absence’ against poverty, racism and war called for the 1st of December by a Committee of more than 700 worker and antiwar organisations. This was the first time for years that militant elements in the US working class had coordinated a counter-offensive against the Bush government and the US capitalist class.

It is this same collection of social democrats, Stalinists, "Greens", Castroites, Maoists, and fake Trotskyists – all associated with the WSF - that have mobilised to contain the awakening US working class in response to the crisis of the Bush administration, such as we saw in the Transit strike in New York, to make sure it remains subordinated to the Democratic party of US imperialism.

At the Sixth WSF were all those dedicated to the suppression of US workers struggles and all the mass struggles in Latin America in the name of the much heralded ‘Bolivarian Revolution’.First up was Chavez declaring "it is necessary to go forward to 21st Century Socialism”, speaking of "socialism or death", shamelessly singing the ‘Internationale’ to close the meeting, and taking photo opportunities with Cindy Sheehan - the mother of the US soldier killed in Iraq who fights for the return of US troops – while at the same time he continues to sell the US regime the oil it needs to occupy Iraq and kill its people!

Or course Chavez never calls on the oppressed workers of Iraq, or the mothers, wives, or daughters of the thousands of Iraqi resistance fighters killed by the invaders, to organise for the military victory of Iraq and the defeat of Anglo-Yankee imperialism!

Following Chavez were all the supporters of Evo Morales, the new president of Bolivia, just finished appointing to his cabinet millionaire industralists like the ministers of Defense and Public Works, and ex-state employees of the former government of the murderer Goni overthrown in a popular rebellion in 2003, as well as peasants, miners and ex-union leaders.

In other words, the Sixth WSF was a meeting for all those backing the class collaboration of Morales who has already announced that he will respect and defend private property, allow the private exploitation of the Mutún mine (the largest manganese deposit in the world), made deals with the Santa Cruz bourgeoisie (home of most of Bolivia's oil and mineral wealth), with the Spanish firm Corona, and with the oil monopolies, to contine to plunder Bolivia’s gas wealth.

After the Morales cheerleaders were the supporters of the current Ecuadorian government of Palacios such as the Maoist MDP, the Pachacutik and the CONAIE. They had tried to prevent the removal of his predecessor, Lucio Gutiérrez, who fell at the hands of a revolutionary mass uprising. Today these same forces are once more trying to stop the new uprising of the workers and poor peasants led by students, who have been fighting for two weeks against the the signing of a FTA between the Palacios government and the US.

These same leaders went to the WSF to embrace Chávez, who only months ago openly lent millions of barrels of oil to Palacios, thus sabotaging the strike and a political uprising of the workers and farmers of the Ecuadorian provinces of Sucumbíos and Orellana against Oxy and other imperialist oil companies. With the aid of his friend Chávez, Palacios used the Ecuadorian army to fiercely repress the people and to militarize these two provinces.

They can both count on the support of the Cuban bureaucracy of Castro - as can Morales – which also comes to the rescue of the US client regimes of Lula, Kirchner, Tabaré Vázquez, Bachelet and Co., as it prepares to complete the restoration of capitalism in Cuba.

Not to be left behind, there were four ministers of the Brazilian government, representing Lula and the PT (Workers Party), one of the most servile lackey governments of the US (like Kirchner, who has paid off the billions owed to the IMF in cash) which allows its troops along with those of Argentina and Chile, to occupy Haiti in the service of the imperial master.

The Argentine delegation included the Kirchnerites of the FTV, Barrios de Pie, bureaucrats like Yasky of the CTERA and Gutiérrez of the UOM - today a supporter of Kirchner in parliament. During the WSF a number of workers were attacked and jailed by the police and local politicians in Tartagal and Mosconi (in the North of Argentina), while in Caracas the state servants of Kirchner, the ally of Bush, Repsol and the IMF, met with the union bureaucrats and pro-government officials of the piqueteros (unemployed workers movement), bosses' politicians like Mario Cafiero, the mst, and Nestor Pitrola of the Workers Party which voted for the popular front government of Evo Morales.

Playing a key role in the WSF are the fake Trotskyists who destroyed the Fourth International and became reformists. Today, all are fervent defenders of Chávez, Morales, the Castro bureaucracy, and the "Bolivarian Revolution". They have openly broken with the struggle for the workers and socialist revolution, and have adopted the old class collaborationist policy of "revolution by stages" of Stalinism, telling the workers to put their hopes in the "good", "progressive" bosses, the "anti-imperialist" military, and the "democratic" and "pacifist" imperialists.

So the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’, the ‘star’ of the Sixth World Social Forum, is no more than a cover to disguise the sordid deals the national bourgeoisies make with each other and with the imperialistic monopolies, to decide who gets what share of the profits, according to what resources are available, and how each country is slotted into the global capitalist division of labor. It is also a cover for the politics of the Castro bureaucracy that wants to restore capitalism in Cuba and to re-invent itself as a new bourgeoisie.

Socialist revolution is the triumphant insurrection of the workers and poor peasants that seizes the power, overthrows the bourgeoisie and expropriates the imperialistic monopolies and all the bosses. That is the only way that the anti-imperialist struggle can be carried through to completion, breaking with the imperilialists and their national bourgeois junior partners and making a planned socialist economy possible.

That is why there are only two roads for the working class and the exploited masses of Latin America: either the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ in which the proletariat submits to the continued exploitation, misery, massacres and imperialistic sacking of our nations; or, the struggle for a victorious workers socialist revolution on the road to the Socialist United States of Central and South America which can plan production where the gas, iron and managnese of Bolivia, the meat and the soyabean of Argentina, the copper of Chile, the minerals of Peru, the oil of Venezuela, the industry of Brazil, etc., are all used to meet the needs of the vast majority of the exploited and oppressed workers and poor peasants.

Today the most important step along the socialist road for all workers and poor peasants of the continent is the fight for the victory of the heroic revolution of the Bolivian workers and peasants which the popular front goverenment of Evo Morales, backed by the counter-revolutionary WSF, is today trying to destroy.

Against the WSF, expropriator of the struggles of the masses!
For the Workers' and poor Peasants' Revolution!
For a Socialist United States of Central and South America!

Translated and condensed from
Supplement to Democracia Obrera 3rd February 2006

The loss of the 13 Sago miners (12 dead and one severely brain injured) of West Virginia in early January was the direct result of the mounting attacks by US imperialism on its working class, in an attempt to take back concessions and cut labor costs to compete with cheap labor in Asia and Latin America. While these attacks are made worse by the Bush administration and the failure of the union leaders to challenge the bosses, the underlying cause is the crisis of US imperialism and the attempts by the US ruling class to make the US working class as well as workers globally pay for its crisis.

US imperialism’s crisis is a crisis of overproduction of capital. In the 1970s the US economy faced falling profits due to the rising cost of capital investment in plant and machinery. Its solution was to export surplus capital to less developed countries to take advantage of cheap labor and raw materials. The super-exploitation of cheap labor and plundering of resources in the semi-colonies was achieved by the institutions of the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organisation acting in the interests of US finance capital. So-called neo-liberalism or globalisation are both words that describe but do not explain the US drive to escape its crisis of falling profits by the classic Leninist export of capital. The result is that US corporates are today producing most of their profits offshore in so-called ‘outsourced’ plants.

Nevertheless, the superprofits from US global expansion have been insufficient to resolve the crisis of overproduction and allow a return to an upward cycle of capital accumulation. The great mass of surplus capital remains outside the productive circuit as money in the form of ‘fictitious capital’ speculating in shares, futures and exchange rates. US capitalism has come up against the fundamental contradiction of capitalism – that the working class will no longer sit back passively and allow the forces of production (including its own labor and lives) to be destroyed to restore private profits. The plundering of labor and raw materials in the semi-colonial world is facing resistance from workers and poor peasants across Latin America, Asia and in parts of Africa. Inside the US the drive to restructure industry cut costs of production is now facing a potential revolt. The fundamental class contradiction in US capitalist society, long suppressed by its imperialist role, is re-asserting itself as an awakening of the working class to confront US imperialism at home and abroad.

US imperialism has always relied on waves of migrant workers and black workers to work for low wages to keep the bulk of services in America running. Some graduated upward into the labour aristocracy to join that layer of privileged workers who backed US imperialism so they could get high wages. Today, however, the crisis of US imperialism has trapped a large stagnant pool of labor, usually living in poverty – like the black population of New Orleans abandoned to Hurricane Katrina – and repressed as a ‘criminal underclass’ on the streets and in the jails. They do not see anything progressive about US capitalism.

Not only that, the crisis has forced the capitalists to attack large sections of the former privileged aristocracy of labour – high paid mainly male unionized workers in steel, auto, airlines etc. Over the last decades these former world-beating industries have gone into decline as low wage and high productivity foreign competitors have taken increasing shares of the US and world market. In most cases the ‘foreign’ competitors are actually US global corporates like the Auto industry which has closed 100s of US plants and ‘exported’ 200,000 jobs since 2000. The result has been that the US corporates have used their global expansion to drive down labor costs at home in an attempt to compete with themselves. The established union leaderships have gone into ‘partnership’ with the bosses to ‘save American jobs’ by negotiating massive cutbacks and takebacks in jobs, wages and conditions in the hope of retaining the privileges of a minority of the US labor aristocracy and their own privileges as a union bureaucracy.

But the existing unions’ leaderships’ complicity in saving US capitalism at the expense of millions of workers whose labor capacity is being destroyed is beginning to create divisions in the ranks. The attempts by the AFL-CIO to defend American jobs by blaming foreign workers have failed and brought about a decline in the unions. More and more workers are awakening to the fact that US corporates are dominating the global economy and going to war to assert their primacy. Within the ranks of the labor movement there is a growing recognition that US workers must unite with foreign workers employed by the same corporates in common fight to limit their power and greed. The AFL-CIO has split and increasing grass roots dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party is challenging the grip of the bureaucracy on the unions. Into the breach left by the discredited ‘old bureaucracy’ and its failed strategy of defending jobs, steps the ‘new bureaucracy’ of the left aligned with the World Social Forum, presenting a new vision of the ‘peaceful, democratic road to socialism’.

Central to this reformist perspective is the bureaucratic bloc formed around the defence of Cuba, the Bolivarian Revolution, the MAS in Bolivia, and the anti-war movement against the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. This defence hinges on the ‘democratic’ labor movement in the US preventing the Bushites from invading these countries, which would then be allowed to develop their own resources rather then be plundered by US corporates. Thus the predatory role of US global corporates will be replaced by a ‘fair sharing’ of national resources between the indigenous and national populations and US investors. Back in the USA, the money wasted on military invasions and the armaments industry will go to much needed public health, education and social services. This unholy alliance of social democracy, Stalinism, Castroism and fake Trotskyism comes to the rescue of US imperialism by keeping alive the illusion that it can be pressured from below to adopt a form of ‘market socialism’.

Critical to this ‘left’ perspective is the active role of organized labor in stopping the supposed greedy, rogue, anarchic, warmongering, ‘dark’ side of imperialism from manifesting itself in ruthless attacks on workers. This explains much of the reformist left response to the Sago Mine disaster.

Could Sago have been saved by the union?

Of course industry must be unionized. Cost cutting in the coal mines has a bloody history. Disasters were commonplace until workers organized to demand improved safety standards. The unionization of the mines was the only way to defeat these terrible conditions. US mine workers fought many battles to get union cover. But today their unions have become open partners with the bosses in cost cutting. The level of health and safety protection has fallen dramatically. At Sago the Mine Safety and Health Administration recorded 208 violations of federal mine rules in 2005, including 18 orders to shut down parts of the mine while faults were corrected, yet there was no order to shut down the mine completely. http://www.kclabor.org/no_blood_for_coal.htm

At Sago mine 13 miners lost their lives because the employer would not pay for radio telephones or concrete barriers against explosions that would have cost a tiny fraction of its multi-million profits. Meanwhile, state regulation agencies under Bush have been filled with former coal industry executives who refuse to close dangerous mines. The UMWA (United Mine Workers of America) claims that the single factor that could have closed down the mine was missing at Sago– the union! Here is its statement released shortly after the disaster:

“International Coal Group (ICG), the US-based company responsible for 12 mining deaths last week in the state of West Virginia, operates 21 US coal mines in America, all non-union. Yet, three emergency-response teams from nearby United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) staffed mines, plus the ICEM affiliate’s Health and Safety director were involved in rescue efforts at ICG’s Sago mine on 2 January after 13 miners became trapped following a gas explosion.

ICG has become a major eastern US coal supplier to utility companies at a time of high demand and high prices. The company is a creation of Wilbur L. Ross, a bankruptcy buyout opportunist who has a two-decade-long record in steel, textile and now coal bankruptcies. Ross uses US court bankruptcy proceedings to gain tax deferrals and cancel workers’ bargaining rights, pension benefits and retiree health care.

ICG bought bankrupt Horizon Natural Resources, Anker Coal Group and CoalQuest Development, among others over the past few years. ICG gained a stake in Anker, the former owner of Sago, in the early 2000s and increased his holding as the company weakened and entered bankruptcy in 2002.

He only recently finalised buyout of the company for US$173 million, adding some eight coal mines and loading facilities to ICG. Also in late 2005, Ross took ICG—founded only in 2004—public, infusing US$250 million cash into the firm, and causing Ross to state: “It’s all new money for the company. Neither my firm nor the founding shareholders are selling any stock on the offering at all.” Rose’s controlling stake increased from 9.2% to 13.7% on the initial public offering.

` It is evident Rose’s “new money” and current coal revenue profit-taking are not intended for miners’ social welfare, whether it be retirement benefits or job safety. On 30 August 2004, 17 UMWA members were arrested by police when they and 800 others protested before a US bankruptcy court in Louisville, Kentucky. Some 3,000 UMWA members, both active and retired, were about to lose job security, and health care coverage as Ross and IGC took control of Horizon at a discount value in the bankruptcy court. . .”

But would the UMWA have made a difference? These workplace deaths can be multiplied across all the industries from steel to auto to airlines, key sectors of which are unionized. Over 100,000 workers lose their lives every year through industrial accidents. It is true that Wilbur Ross who bought the unsafe Sago mine has build his empire by scavenging companies and using bankruptcy laws to take back wages and conditions won by generations of workers. A prominent fundraiser for the Democrats, Ross makes a point of selling himself to union bosses as ‘saving jobs’ after firms have gone into bankruptcy. It seems that some union bosses’ actually believe Ross and ‘partner’ him to restructure US industry to ‘save American jobs’.

Where the UMWA and similar unions exist they have collaborated in Ross’s ruthless practices. In steel and textiles Ross restructured companies with huge loss of jobs, pay and conditions and in each case got the approval of the respective union chiefs. According to Andrew Pollack in Monthly Review Zine:

Ross’s “ . . . first big move was his February 2002 purchase of bankrupt LTV Corp, waiting until LTV had shed its health-care liabilities and dumped its pension obligations on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. Ross paid $90 million in cash and took on $235 million in assumed liabilities -- in return, he gained assets worth $2.5 billion. LTV became part of Ross's International Steel Group. After replacing defined benefit pensions with 401(k)s, Ross instituted an incentive pay program in which workers got paid more for beating production goals. The ISG cut man-hours of labor per ton of steel from two-and-a-half to one, a saving equaling $45 on a ton of steel selling for $300.

Because Ross had "saved" steelworker jobs -- even though their pay and benefits had been slashed -- USWA President Leo W. Gerard said the investor was "a breath of fresh air. Wilbur and his people actually cared about what we had to say." Apparently, all it takes to make a union bureaucrat happy these days is a friendly capitalist ear.”

Pollack says this was true of the textile industry as well:

“Steel union head Gerard's fondness for Ross was matched by a glowing endorsement from [textile union] UNITE HERE head Bruce Raynor, who said "I really think the future of domestic manufacturing is people like Wilbur Ross." http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/pollack060106.html

In the Auto industry Ross is said to be eyeing Delphi where CEO Miller (who took Bethlehem Steel to bankruptcy before Ross bought it cheap) is threatening bankruptcy if workers do not take a 2/3^rd pay cut and loss of pension rights. The current struggle at Delphi is to reject the deal struck between Miller and the UAW union bureaucrats and a potential Democrat ‘job saver’ buyer like Wilbur Ross.

Whether in steel, textiles, coal or auto, as proven collaborators with the bosses, the leaders of all these unions must be held responsible for the many defeats of workers under the US anti-union and bankruptcy laws. Why is this, when unions are commonly understood as acting in the interests of workers? What explains the active ‘partnership’ of the US union bosses with corporate bosses in restructuring US industry?

The labor bureaucracy

The fact is the union leadership collaborates with the capitalist class to subordinate and exploit the working class. More specifically it dominates the unions so as to contain dissent arising from the massive cutbacks and takebacks. As the crisis of US capitalism has developed in the last two decades the reactionary role of the unions has become more blatant. Now unions openly advocate win-win ‘partnerships’ with the employers to increase profits and, they claim, wages. But of course as the deals with Ross prove, the cost of keeping some jobs is the destruction of many more. The reformist left keeps pointing to ‘sellouts’ and ‘deals’ done by bureaucrats, but sees these betrayals as evidence of a wider ‘corruption’ found in the ruling class. And just as the Enrons can be brought to justice, rogue bureaucrats can be challenged and replaced. Yet this does not account for the systematic treachery of union officials. How to explain this?

The classic Marxist explanation has two legs. First, the labor bureaucracy is a layer of union officials that originates in the relatively privileged aristocracy of labor (those workers whose wages and conditions are raised because they work for monopoly corporations who super-exploit the semi-colonial or ‘poor’ countries). It functions to mediate between the labor aristocracy and the employers. Trotsky referred to them as ‘labor lieutenants’ of business. It is their job to collaborate with business in the super-exploitation of foreign workers so that the labor aristocracy at home can share in some part of this bounty. US unions have come to play the role of partner in US imperialism to ensure that the aristocracy of labor gets is share of imperialist super-profits. Recent examples of this international class collaboration by the AFL-CIO to promote US ‘friendly’ regimes in Venezuela and Haiti are reported at http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/scipes250106.html

Second, is the bureaucracy’s ideological role in promoting the fetishised view of capitalism as one of market relations between individuals. It accepts that the market’s normal state is one of equilibrium, and that crises and wars are disturbances caused by the behavior of the rich, powerful ruling class who cheat and prey on the weak and poor. The purpose of organized labour is to checkmate the power of global elite and allow the market to be stabilized, and equalized, by a ‘mixed economy’, sometimes called ‘market socialism’, today better known as the public/private partnership (PPP). This world view is presented as ‘realism’ or ‘common sense’. It is the ideological basis of the class collaboration or ‘partnerships’ between unions and bosses.

This is why the bureaucrats’ response to bosses attacks is to negotiate and concede cutbacks and concessions in order to save some jobs and some plants (and the union) but never to challenge the ultimate right of boss to hire and fire, and to even hire and fire on behalf of the bosses. The result has been the decimation of whole industries and the destruction of a large part of the US work force. Job losses and disillusionment with unions has seen the membership of unions sink to an all-time low at around 13% (36% public sector and 8% private sector). The recent split of the SIU and Teamsters from the AFL-CIO to form the breakaway labor federation Change to Win group was an attempt to meet this crisis by spending more money on recruitment. But it did nothing to challenge or change the class collaborationist role of the labor bureaucracy. According to Labor’s Militant Voice it entrenches the bureaucracy’s hold over these unions by taking away what little autonomy local labour councils have left. http://www.laborsmilitantvoice.com/pamUnions.htm

The current strikes at North Western Airlines, and NY Transit, and the looming fightback at Delphi, all illustrate the widespread complicity between the bosses and the AFL-CIO union leaders that has led to decades of defeats in the major steel, airlines and Auto industries. It is not a case of a few union sellouts, or leaders making mistakes or misjudgments. The labour bureaucracy specializes in sell-outs. They are chronic collaborators. Proof? Look at the ongoing NY Transit dispute.

Local 100 boss Roger Toussaint had a deal lined up with his ‘Partner’ the MTA, but was undone by the determination of the state governor and NYC Mayor Bloomberg to cut public funding to transit services of the largely black and migrant workforce by destroying their pension rights. The 36,000 transit workers anger boiled over and an illegal strike was on. Mayor Bloomberg called the strikers ‘thugs’ and threatened heavy fines and even imprisonment. Though the majority of NYC commuters supported the strike, Toussaint consulted with other top bureaucrats, not his membership, about how to end the strike.

According to one report:

“Toussaint then nervously turned for help to Bruce Raynor, the general president of Unite Here, and a top dog in Change to Win, [The same Bruce Raynor who regards bosses like Wilbur Ross, as “the future of domestic manufacturing”! ] and Mike Fishman, president of the city's giant union of building service workers, Local 32BJ of SEIU. These two big shots had been strong supporters of Mayor Bloomberg's recent reelection victory. After talking to His Honor, they assured Toussaint that, while they had no formal guarantees, if he called off the strike City Hall would make sure negotiations would be fair. Others began to lean on Toussaint to cave as well such as Brian McLaughlin, president of the New York City Central Labor Council and United Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten.” http://www.kclabor.org/wir12262005.htm

After 3 days facing massive financial penalties and assured by the Change to Win officials that Bloomberg would go easy on them, Toussaint fixed a deal where transit workers would keep their pension rights but start paying for health insurance! Members angry with both Toussaint and the deal narrowly rejected the offer. Governor Pataki and the MTA came back with a worse deal and a threat to force the union into arbitration. The rank and file is currently divided with a minority actively rejecting both the new offer and arbitration (as of 1 Feb)

Toussaint, Raynor and McLaughlin are not isolated cases. They are fully paid up members of the labor bureaucracy. It is clear that the role of the labor bureaucracy subordinates the rank and file to the bosses and the state, but how do we overcome this problem?

First, we neither gloss over this problem claiming as does Workers World Party, which as the main force behind the International Action Center signed a statement calling for a January 12 protest rally in NYC labeling Wilbur Ross a ‘vulture’ and Roger Toussaint a ‘hero’. This is an opportunist signing up to the bureaucracy as a ‘progressive’ force on the side of labor able to checkmate ‘vulture’ capitalists. http://www.iacenter.org/images/mine-owner06.pdf It is no accident that the WWP regards Cuba as ‘socialist’ and is uncritical of Chavez’s ‘21^st century socialism’ in Venezuela. The WWP backs the labor bureaucracy at home and abroad.

Second, we don’t try to sweep the bureaucracy under the carpet like the Socialist Equality Party which correctly condemns the bureaucracy but wont fight it in the unions. Its position on the NY Transit strike is to leap over the demand for a general strike to call on all the workers of New York to join a new socialist party. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/dec2002/tran-d14.shtml.This is un-Marxist and sectarian. So long as key sectors of industry are bureaucratically unionized, and the majority of workers remain un-unionized, revolutionaries have to fight to re-build the labour movement on the basis of rank and file democracy. Articles condemning the labor bureaucracy will not convince unionized workers to break with them. This requires a concrete program of fight inside the unions and for an independent workers political voice.

Building rank and file democracy

As Marxists we know that US imperialism is in trouble and that it can only solve its crisis by attacking workers at home and abroad. These attacks will necessarily generate fightbacks even by unorganized or non-unionized labor. The ‘old’ labor bureaucracy’s strategy of defending the US aristocracy of labor is bankrupt. The ‘new’ bureaucracy seeks to contain the new labor fightbacks within the a reformist perspective of the World Social Forum. This reformist perspective sows illusions in the US imperialist state able to pursue a peaceful, non-exploitative international role in collaboration with democratic nationalists, or even 21^st century socialists, in the semi-colonies. This perspective is ‘social imperialist’ because it covers up the fact that the social reforms in the US will be still be paid for by the superprofits won by deals between ‘democratic’ imperialism and the national bourgeoisies at the expense of the workers and poor peasants. It is in the interest of the ‘new’ bureaucracy to promote this democratic ‘alternative’ because it is bought and paid by capitalism to keep the working class tied to the state. The first step in building a rank and file control of the unions is to break all ties to the state!

Revolutionaries begin with the fact that workers control of production is the only real basis of workers power. We have to build independent workers organizations to establish workers’ control. Despite its bureaucratic leadership, the existing labour movement is an historic gain we cannot write off. The AMWU in particular played a leading role in the class struggle unionism of the 1930s that led to the formation of the CIO. It has won major victories right up to the 1980s. As Trotsky said those who cannot defend the old gains cannot win new ones! Therefore work in the labour movement is ABC for revolutionaries. Our tactics must be to lead the rank and file in rebuilding the unions as ‘schools for revolution’. We have to be the best fighters in the frontline of rank and file rebellions against union boss sellouts to break the ‘new’ bureaucratic trap!

Two current fightbacks show that rank and file fightbacks are beginning to emerge. It’s early days yet and these struggles run the risk of being sidelined by a new layer of ‘left’ bureaucrats who step forward to replace the old bureaucrats who have lost credibility. Breaking with both layers of the bureaucracy is the urgent task ahead!

At Northwestern Airlines, the 4,400 mechanics who are striking against the employers drive to outsource 90% of the jobs and impose big wage cuts and takebacks, are in a democratically controlled union. The mechanics joined the Airline Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) in the 1990swhen their existing union, the International Association of Machinists (IAM), forced them to accept major concessions by bureaucratic methods. The IAM is now an open strikebreaking union, while other airline unions are supportive but have not gone on strike. The AFL-CIO leadership has refused to endorse the strike. The Teamsters (one of the main unions in Change to Win) is also hostile. To overcome these divisions driven by the bureaucracy, the mechanics have formed a fightback organization Airline Workers United to fight for rank and file unity across all the unions in the airline industry and to mobilize support from outside the industry. This is a move in the right direction but so far it has limited it self to ‘pressuring’ of politicians to change the bankruptcy laws, diverting the struggle from building national, coordinated strike action.

The second example is at Delphi a major multinational supplier of auto parts to General Motors. The response of the workers at Delphi points the way forward not only for the auto industry (currently facing many plant closures and over 60,000 job losses) but the whole of US industry. CEO Miller’ threat to bankrupt Delphi (formerly part of GM) to impose cuts and takebacks has jolted the workers into forming a militant rank and file group Soldiers of Solidarity to resist the ‘sweetheart’ deals being made between the bosses and the United Auto Workers union (UAW). While its efforts are also directed at putting pressure on the employers and politicians, the main thrust of SOS is mass industrial action. There is much talk of a return to the militant sit-down strikes of the 1930s such as that at Flint in 1936. The strength of the sit-down strike is that it keeps the workers inside the factories. More immediately a series of rank and file meetings across the country has debated the ‘work to rule’ tactic as a preparation for strike action. The immediate response of Miller was been to threaten closure of plants working to rule. This should be all the workers need to push for factory occupations and the demand that the industry be nationalized under workers control, along with health, education, banks and so on.

These are important fightbacks, yet the development of SOS and of militant rank and file control of the unions as ‘schools for revolution’ across the US, requires a revolutionary leadership. The main problem is that the Trotskyist movement that was active in the leadership of the major strikes of the 1930s does not exist today. Consistent with their ‘social imperialist’ perspective, the fake Trotskyists in the unions are intent on forming a new ‘left’ bureaucracy to limit the rank and file to pressuring the corporates and lobbying congress for ‘fairer’ laws and universal healthcare and pension reforms funded by taxing the rich. What they deny is the super-profiteering role of US imperialism abroad in paying for these social ‘reforms’ at home. Breaking with the ‘new’ bureaucracy means therefore, confronting US imperialism by smashing the roots of its global superprofiteering and oppression.

Break from the ‘new’ bureaucracy!

To develop SOS into a model for rebuilding the unions, the rank and file must control the unions. This means holding mass members meetings where decisions are taken by show of hands, elected and recallable delegates, election of strike committees, pickets and self defence groups, unions united nationally and internationally across the industry by rank-and-file-based congresses that can mount united front actions to force on the bureaucracy demands they cannot fulfill. Neither the AFL-CIO nor Change to Win leaderships represent the interests of rank and file workers. Neither backed the TWU wildcat strike in New York with anything more than words. The rank and file must coordinate national organizations, and demand that the bureaucrats of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win call for national workers conferences and fund and back illegal strikes and nation-wide strikes to break the power of the corporates and their anti-union laws. Strike action must always point towards the political general strike to bring down the government and to create a Workers and poor Farmers’ Government.

Such transitional demands cannot be met by the old or the new labor bureaucrats. Their exposure as bosses’ agents will educate and mobilize the rank and file to dump their misleaders and take over the leadership. That militant leadership must follow the principles of workers democracy. All negotiations should be done by delegates elected by the rank and file. Union officials should be elected each year for a fixed term, immediately accountable to the members, and paid no more than the average wage in the industry. The books should be open to all members and all union assets, bank accounts, etc open to member scrutiny.

Trotsky wrote that unions in the epoch of imperialism were subordinated to the state. His central demand was to break with the state and its class rule. Today this means breaking with the ‘left’ ideology of ‘social imperialism’. US labor must reject state reforms paid for by imperialist profiteering by plunder and war. Employers must be forced to carry the full cost of workers health, education, housing and pensions rather than state or federal welfare services.

The reformist left is calling for universal state funded universal health care in which they will fill the new jobs created to administer these services! This is central demand of the Change to Win federation. Some fake Trotskyist groups are also backing this reform. Dianne Feeley in the fake Trotskyist group Solidarity[ http://www.solidarity-us.org/ ]argues that the only way that everybody will be covered by health insurance is through universal state provision (Against the Current, Jan/Feb 2006). But there is no chance that unions that today take wage cuts to pay for health care can tomorrow mobilize enough pressure politically to force bosses to fund a federal health system. State provision of welfare services always offers loopholes for the bosses to cut their contributions. Workers have shown that they have the industrial muscle to refuse to pay for their pensions and health care and to demand that the bosses also pay for pensions and unemployed support.

For example, Roger Toussaint and his bureaucratic cronies tried to do a deal with the NY City Mayor which kept existing pension rights, but imposed a 1.5% payment for health insurance that would in future rise faster than wages! The rank and file refused to vote for a wage cut to pay for their health care! When NY City and NY State as public employers try to impose health costs onto workers what chance is there that workers can vote in a federal health provision? Yet when workers refuse to pay they show the potential power that can win successful occupations and nationalisations without compensation under workers control.

The only way forward is strike action on the job to break the bosses’ repressive laws that threaten fines, dismissal or imprisonment to make workers pay for their own health, education and welfare. The bosses’ use the bankruptcy provisions to break labor agreements and cream off vast profits. They ignore the labor laws and health and safety regulations which causes the deaths of more and more workers like the Sago miners. Workers must break these laws and enforce their own health and safety standards as the measure of their own control. Work to rule, sit ins and occupations are the necessary steps to workers’ control and workers’ ownership. They create organs of dual power from which the revolutionary workers can take state power. There can be no shortcut in which a workers party negotiates the expropriation of private property and compensation to the bosses as the fake Trotskyist SEP says in its 2006 election program. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jan2006/elec-j12.shtml

Just as workers must reject social reforms at home paid for by imperialist profiteering, so they must unite their forces with workers and peasants everywhere who are super-exploited by imperialism. We do not mean the ‘fake’ internationalism of the WSF anti-war movement that calls on Troops Out of Iraq because of the loss of American lives and the US$2 trillion cost of the war! We are for the defeat of the US in Iraq! We are for smashing the US military at home, the Patriot Act and its concentration camps! We do not call Chavez’s ‘21^st century socialism’ internationalism when it sells oil to the US to invade and plunder Iraq. We must be for a socialist revolution in Venezuela, Palestine and Iraq! We are for the political revolution in Cuba and the return of Guantánamo!

Real internationalism means that US miners fight the mine bosses in the US, in China and Latin America. The Sago miners are no different to the miners of El Teniente in Chile, Turbio in Argentina, Barakova in Ukraine, Mutun in Bolivia or Fuksin in China. US workers must join forces with all workers in every country to fight for the expropriation of the property of the landlords, the banks and the corporates. Only by such a common struggle can the national divisions that separate workers and poor peasants in different countries be overcome, and a new world made possible!

For a mass Labor Party with a socialist program!

The revolutionary transformation of unions into workers’ councils or soviets is our goal!

Along the way we must break from the bureaucrats and their funding of the party of US social imperialism, the Democrats. To do this we must call for a real workers party based on democratic unions to be built. Trotsky argued that in the US in the 1930s the labor movement had yet to find its own political voice. He took into account that workers would not jump out of the Democrats into a mass revolutionary party overnight, but would support a Labor Party in which revolutionaries raising the transitional program could be instrumental in transforming it into a mass revolutionary party as part of a new revolutionary international. Over 60 years later the need for a Labor Party is even more urgent.

Jobs for all on a living wage!
30 hours work for 40 hours pay!
No concessions on wages, jobs, health or pensions!
Strike to make the bosses pay for full pension and health care!

· If bosses threaten redundancies and bankruptcy demand they ‘open the books’!

Occupy under workers control all plants threatened with closure!
Open the borders to economic and political worker migrants!
US troops out of Iraq, Haiti, Cuba and bases in Asia and South America!
Victory to Iraq! Defeat the main enemy at home!
Strike against the US war industry and build soldiers committees against the war in Iraq!
Nationalize industry, transport, communications and banks without compensation under workers control!
For a Workers and small farmers government and a planned socialist economy!

· For a Socialist United States of the Americas from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego!

In China, he embraced the former Stalinist bureaucrats who as the new national bourgeoisie, have become the servants of the imperialist transnational companies who make big profits from exploiting millions of Chinese workers as wage slaves. In Spain, before Zapatero and Corona, he swore his loyalty to the oil company Repsol; in France, in front of Chirac, president of the 5th Republic of imperialist France, he swore fidelity to the oil company Totalfina, an important partner of the Brazilian state-owned Petrobras, which is one of the major foreign investors in Bolivia.

Before the tour to reassure the oil companies that their property would be protected, and only days after his victory in the elections, Morales met and embraced the fascist bourgeoisie of Santa Cruz, saying he shared their economic program. So, it is clear that the victory of Morales has created a classic pro-imperialistic popular front that can only serve to strangle the Bolivian revolution which still remains very much alive.

This government is supported at a continental level by the foreign bourgeoisies – imperialist and national - and by the Cuban restorationist bureaucracy. This is proof that Evo Morales heads a government of all the fractions of the bourgeoisie, the US and EU imperialist monopolies, the national bourgeois ‘sepoys’ of Latin America, and of all the various factions from the Bolivian bourgeoisie, including the the Santa Cruz bourgeoisie.

All of them gamble that the government of Morales, by breaking the worker and peasant alliance forged in the streets during October 2003 and May-June of 2005, will strangle the Bolivian revolution, forcing the masses back from the semi-dual power regime that they won during their heroic uprisings – removing two presidents and throwing all the institutions of the Rosca [mine owners] regime into crisis – to that of a ‘parliamentary republic’ to prepare for a further backward step with the Constituent Assembly this July.

That is to say, we now have a new regime of the mine owners oligarchy, based on a pact between Morales and the oil and mining monopolies, and the rich farmers, to guarantee the imperialist monopolies superprofits from the gas, and to allow the exploitation by these companies of billions of dollars from the manganese and iron deposits at the Mutún mine. As a result, the fate of the working class and the poor peasants is to sink further into misery and a new and more brutal exploitation of the oppressed people.

At the same time - in case the siren songs and the sweet phrases of the popular front and class collaboration does not suppress the proletariat and strangle their revolution – imperialism, the bourgeoisie and and Morales government have already prepared the officer caste and the fascist gangs of Santa Cruz to use brute force against the revolution, while in reserve there is the ring of military bases surrounding Bolivia. The US has built a military base in Paraguay, has held ‘Operation Ceibo’ and other joint manoeuvres involving Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela in Argentina. US and UK imperialism has armed the Chilean army with the latest technology for direct armed intervention against the Bolivian revolution.

The "Bolivarian revolution" is the expropriation of the anti-imperialist fight of the masses and the subordination of the working class to the interests of the bourgeoisie

Morales’ government is prepared to renegotiate with imperialism in the interests of the Bolivian bourgeoisie as a whole to save it from the attacks of the revolution. At the same time, the Bolivian national bourgeoisie discusses how it will collaborate with Morales to renegotiate its contracts, disputing the price of the gas paid by the national bourgeoisies of Argentina and Brazil, so as to guarantee Petrobras (and its partner Totalfina) and Repsol will continue to make superprofits.

Morales is a supporter of the so-called "Bolivarian Revolution" led by Chavez, Fidel Castro, with the backing of the World Social Forum and the fake Trotskyists who provide a left cover for populist regimes that try to do deals with imperialism for a slice of the profits created by workers and peasants in their countries.The "Bolivarian Revolution" uses the masses like bargaining chips in pursuing the class interests of the national bourgeoisies. This policy of class collaborations is sold to the workers by the Stalinists, Castroists and the fake Trotskyists that voted for the goverenment of Morales.

The "Bolivarian Revolution" is opposed to the workers and poor peasants revolution. It aborts the anti-imperialist struggle of the masses by doing deals between the national bourgeoisieis and imperialism, and so preventing the workers and peasants from expropriating the imperialistic monopolies and bourgeoisie property which is the only way that the anti-imperialist fight can be won.

For that reason, the victory of the workers and poor peasants revolution in Bolivia has to break all ties with imperialism and to begin the advance towards the socialist revolution to meet the needs of the exploited masses, as a first step in the struggle for the Socialist United States of Central and South America. A socialist revolution is necessary to plan production on a continental scale where the gas, iron and manganese of Bolivia, the meat and the soyabean of Argentina, the copper of Chile, the minerals of Peru, the oil of Venezuela, the light industry of Brazil, etc., are all used to meet the needs of the vast majority of exploited and oppressed workesr and poor peasants.

The treachery of the workers leaders

The expropriation of the heroic struggle of May-June 2005 that overthrew Mesa, the deal done to make Rodriguez interim president, the diversion of the struggle into the December elections, and the electoral victory of Morales, would not have been possible without the treachery of the leaders of the working class, Solares of the COB, Patana of the El Alto COR, and the bureaucrats of COR and COD.

The workers leaders took the workers and poor peasants off the streets, breaking the alliance of workers and poor peasants and handing back to Morales the leadership of peasant masses. They sidelined the COB, subordinated the COD and COR – the regional organs of dual power in the cities - to the local mayors and civic committees, stopping the workers organs from centralising and coordinating their embryonic dual power.

Even so, they did not manage to convince the proletariat which hates Evo Morales to fall into the trap of the elections. In order to convince the workers they were forced to call a popular assembly one week before the elections, demanding that all workers vote for Morales to prevent the right from winning, and then go forward to the new Popular Originary (indigenous) Assembly in April.

And now, while they debate the ministers appointed by Morales to his bourgeois government, the leaders and bureaucrats of the working class are preparing to sabotage the revolutionary threat of the Popular Originary Assembly by postponing it and transforming it into a Constituent Assembly, and founding an “instrument of the workers" (IPT), that is to say, of a reformist working party that will send its representatives to the Constituent Assembly to finish the task of strangling the organs of dual power of the masses.

Morales - last stop before fascism

The Morales government is the third crisis regime of the mineowners oligarchy. It is the government of the bourgeoisie. The treacherous leaders of the COB, the COR and the COD are today advising Morales on who he should appoint as ministers. In this way these leaders have put the workers into the popular front government of the mine owners, of Repsol, Totalfina, and other imperialist monopolies such as Techint steel. Whoever is in the cabinet the government is one that will act only on the interests of the class of Goni, Mesa and Rodriguez.

Imperialism and the national bourgeoisie have won a great victory They have put a left bourgeois government in power to smother the fire of the Bolivian revolution. But in doing it they are aware of the risk of playing with fire. Trotsky said: "When the bourgeoisie is forced to establish, by means of its left wing, an alliance with the workers organizations, it has more than ever the necessity of maintaining its officer corps as a force in reserve. For them the question of the protection of private property is the most important question."

Thus, like when Morales was in opposition, now he is in government he has promised the Bolivian bourgeoisie to protect the officer caste of the army. The parliament has voted to declare as “heroes of the nation” those who killed Che Guevara so that they are allowed to remain in the army and avoid criminal prosecution. Those who were responsible for killing more than 100 workers and peasantss in the revolutionary uprising of October of 2003 have not been punished. But the militant workers have their own popular justice [hanging] such as that they used against the corrupt bourgeois mayors of Ayo-Ayo and other places.

The Santa Cruz bourgeoisie, while it applauds Morales, at the same time keeps its fascist bands formed during the revolutionary days of May-June 2005 at the ready. With its left hand the regime plays with class collaboration to smother the revolution while with its right hand it keeps its officer caste in reserve in case the workers throw out the treacherous Morales and misleaders of the workers.

And if all these measures fail, the Chilean army armed to the teeth and the Yankee military bases in Paraguay will be mobilised to massacre the revolutionary Bolivian workers.

The survival and future destiny of the entire working class of Latin America depends on the outcome of the workers and poor peasants revolution that has begun in Bolivia. The Bolivian working class and poor peasants have many times shown that it can win the streets with the slogan "neither 30% nor 50% nationalization of hydrocarbons" [meaning we want 100%!]. In the ranks of the masses of workers this goverenment is not trusted, yet the corrupt and treacherous leaders of the workers try to tie the workers hand and foot to the new government.

“Gas for the Bolivians", "Out with foreign and the transnational companies!", and "Nationalization of gas, petroleum and the mines now!" These are the slogans of the Bolivian revolution that the masses have made their own, as well as the demands for land and machinery for the poor peasants. This new class collaborationist goverenment can deliver on none of these demands.

Only a workers and poor peasants government based on the armed organizations of the masses, destroying the government of mine owners, expropriating the property of the expropiators, will be able to grant the minimum demands for which the workers and poor peasants of Bolivia have risen up.

The heroic workers and poor peasants revolution cannot be left to its fate: It is the hands of the national bourgeoisie, the union bureaucracies and World Social Forum, that strangles the heroic Bolivian revolution!

No confidence in the Morales government and the servile bourgeois of Mercosur that want to defeat the Bolivian revolution!

For an immediate National Congress of rank and file Delegates of the workers and poor peasants organizations!

It is a task of the Latin American working class to break through the hostile ring of the regimes of Mercosur and the imperialist monopolies!

For a coordination of all Latin American workers in support of the victory of the Bolivian workers and poor peasants revolution to ignite the revolutionary struggles in all of these countries against the superexploitation oppression of the imperialist monopolies.

No confidence in the government of Evo Morale and the mine owners!

For assemblies of workers and poor peasants to demand that not one worker representative collaborates with the bourgeois government!

Long live the Bollivian workers and poor peasants revolution!

For a new revolutionary internationalist party

Besides the imperialists and national bourgeoisie, Castro’s bureaucracy and the treacherous labor leaders of Latin America, the Morales government has the support of the fake Trotskyists, such as the Lambertists who control the oil union in in i.e. CUT in Brazil which organized the "Continental Encounter" to subordinate the revolutionary vanguard of El Alto to Chavez last August; such as the Mandelist United Secretariat, the P-SOL (Party of Socialism and Liberty) of Brazil, the Uit-ci, the Workers’ Party (PO)of Argentina, etc., that supported the election of Morales and today welcome his victory.

On the other hand, POR Lora has taken a position covering the left flank of the popular front. Its role is to contain the most militant and radicalised sectors of the Bolivian working class, that in El Alto, the mines of Huanuni, in the heart of the proletariat,who hate Evo Morales for defending the interests of the bourgeoisie. In order to contain this sector of the working class, POR Lora today denounces Morales government as pro-imperialist, raising the same demands of the masses for "gas for the Bolivians", land for the landless, living wages, work for all, etc., but saying that the key is the fight for the "independence of the unions".

That is to say, they refuse yet again as they have done right throughout the revolutionary struggle, to defend the organs of semi dual power that the masses have built, or to centralize them at a national level along with workers and peasants militias. The role of POR then, is to take the political fight out of the hands of the working masses, and to divert it into a struggle for power in the unions. That is the route by which POR collaborates with the popular front to drive the masses back from their position of semi dual power to that of the parliamentary republic. The bankruptcy of POR Lora and the fake Trotskysits is total.

For that reason, it is more urgent than ever to build a new revolutionary Trotskyist, internationalist party of the Bolivian revolution, that can confront the popular front, defeat the false Trotskyists who tie the workers hands, and defend the workers from the terror of fascism. The forces to build this party are still strong: they are in the proletarian heart of El Alto, the mines of Huanuni, and the advanced workers and militant youth who support the Theses of Pulacayo, that historical program adopted by the Bolivian proletariat in 1946 under the influence of the Trotskyists of the 4^th International founded in 1938.

The Theses of Pulacayo are more than ever a living program in the revolutionary struggle of the Bolivian working class. That internationalist Trotskyist program of the Bolivian proletariat has been a guide to its revolutions for more than half a century and has passed the test of history. The Theses call for a struggle against the popular front, and all politics of class collaboration, and for the independence of workers’ organizations from all bourgeois governments and the state. Today they remain completely valid 60 years after they were written. It is the Lorists, the Pabloites, and other false Trotskyists who have not passed the test of history and who have betrayed the Theses of Pulacayo, just as they betrayed and destroyed the 4^th International.

The comrades of the Internationalist Red October of Bolivia (ORI), along with the LOI-CI/Workers’ Democracy of Argentina and all the groups who belong to the Leninist-Trotskyist Fraction, have taken on our shoulders the responsibility to build that new revolutionary party that can lead the revolution of the workers and poor peasants of Bolivia to victory. To achieve this, we must struggle to reclaim the authority of the founders of the 4^th International in 1938. As its defenders we must return to the vanguard of the Bolivian proletariat today with the living program that the Trotskyists of the ‘30s and ‘40s took to their parents and grandparents: the Theses of Pulacayo.

And we must make the same commitment as the founders of the 4^th International: to unite the American working class, from Alaska to Terra del Fuego, by means of a new revolutionary proletarian organization that can take any class struggle at any place in the Americas, and transmit it immediately the length and breadth of the continent.

This is the challenge which has been taken up by the internationalist Trotskyists of the FLT, first, by our comrades of the ORI of Bolivia, who in their leaflets keep alive the program of the Theses of Pulacayo against the popular front government of Morales.

Origins and History

The CWG origins date from 1970 in NZ when a number of students active against the imperialist attack on Vietnam formed the Spartacist League. This group split in 1972 when one group led by Logan and Hannah joined the US Spartacists, while another led by Gager opposed fusion on the basis that the Spartacists had not completed their split from the SWP (US). In an article titled ‘James P Cannonism’ Gager argued that Cannon was a US chauvinist. The Gager group viewed both the International Secretariat and International Committee as having broken from Trotskyism in the early post WW 11 period. They took the position that the 4^th International was dead from that time and that a 5^th International must be founded. Gager moved to Australia in 1972 and formed the Communist Left of Australia (CLA).

In 1981, a small group of NZ comrades, who had meanwhile established fraternal relations in 1972 with the Revolutionary Communist Group (later Tendency then Party) of Britain, also formed fraternal relations with the CLA and became known as the Communist Left of NZ. We adopted the tradition and program of the CLA. Fundamental to this program was the 5^th International position also shared by the RCP (Britain). For us the post-war Trotskyist currents had all abandoned Trotskyism. The cause was ‘empiro-centrism’, the class location of the Trotskyist currents in the imperialist countries were embedded in the labour aristocracy (those privileged layers of workers benefitting from the superprofits of imperialism) which was wedded to the privileges of social imperialism (‘socialism’ at home paid for by imperialism abroad).

Empiro-centrism spawned ‘national Trotskyism’ in the semi-colonies. National Trotskyists joined forces with national bourgeoisies against imperialism instead of going all the way to lead the national revolution to socialist revolution. Thus they were complicit in holding back the complete break from imperialism, thus serving the interests of social imperialism. The Gager group traced this abandonment of Trotskyism back to Cannon’s war-time deviation into US chauvinism (defeat Hitler first) and to Pablo’s view that Tito was an ‘unconscious Trotskyist’ in 1948. If Stalinists could become Trotskyists by some ‘unconscious’ transformation this dispensed with the need of a Trotskyist party and a Trotskyist international. The betrayal of the Bolivian revolution in 1952 by the Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers Party (POR) under the leadership of Lora was the direct result of this process of degeneration.

We drew the conclusion that the way back from the historic defeat of 1952 was to rebuild Trotskyism in the semi-colonies and smash the social roots of the evil twins of empiro-centrism and national Trotskyism in the imperialist heartlands.

In the late 1980s CLNZ broke relations with the RCP (Britain) which had degenerated into a British chauvinist current, and fused with Workers Power (Britain) in 1992. In the discussions preceding fusion, we found WP to be a left moving centrist group that was making a strong break not only from Cliffism (i.e. from state capitalism to orthodox Trotskyism on the question of the ‘workers’ states’) but also from empiro-centrism. In our view the formation of the LCRI in 1990 from the MRCI was made possible by the influence of POB and POP the ex-Lora groups in Bolivia and Peru around Jose Villa. In adopting Villa’s analysis of Lora’s betrayal of the 1952 Bolivian Revolution, WP showed itself capable of learning the lessons of the post-war degeneration and the evil twins of empiro-centrism and ‘national Trotskyism’. For implicit in this lesson was the role of empiro-centrism in engendering the national Trotskyism of the Lora group that entered the popular front MNR Government. Yet, while the Villa group did not draw the conclusion that the 4^th was dead, the majority of WP including the CLNZ did so and called for a 5^th International.

WPs left moving centrism under the impact of the Villa groups’ break with Lora came to a halt and went into reverse with the collapse of the Stalinist states. WP began a rapid retreat into British or European social imperialism. It supported Yeltsin’s coup in 1991. The reunification of East with West Germany was welcomed. The NATO bombing of Serbian territory of Bosnia in 1994 was welcomed. It seems that whatever the ‘workers’ states were, they were not as progressive as ‘democratic’, preferably British, imperialism. Yeltsin’s ‘democracy’, West Germany’s ‘social democracy’ and NATO’s smart bombs, were better defenders of the ‘workers states’ than any brand of Stalinism. Just as Cannon said that imperialism was better than fascism, WP said that imperialism was better than Stalinism. http://www.geocities.com/communistworker/interbul3.html#10%20Years%20of%20the

CWG, POP and POB split from WP in 1995 to form the CEMICOR (Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International). In desperation, WP entered discussions with the PTS of Argentina in 1996 which came to nothing. CEMICOR produced analyses (including a critique of the PTS –see below), political commentary and three issues of an International Bulletin, largely through the efforts of Jose Villa and the CWG, but POP and POB became inactive. By 2000 Villa had also become politically isolated and demoralised and CEMICOR was more or less defunct. It seemed that the CWG’s vision of building a 5^th International in the Latin American semi-colonies was also at an end. We corresponded with the Revolutionary Workers Party (POR) of Argentina and reproduced some political statements with the POR. What we did not yet know was that a split in the PTS in 1998 produced the Workers International League (LOI-CI) in Argentina.

http://www.geocities.com/communistworker/interbul3.html

In late 2000 members of the CWG helped set up the Google group, Salta Solidarity which then became Argentina Solidarity in response to the revolutionary uprisings of that period. Among the contacts we made was Vicente Balvanera of the LOI-CI of Argentina who reported on the uprisings of the piqueteros in Salta. Balvanera left LOI in 2001 and was highly critical of it and full of praise for Altimira’s PO which he had rejoined. As a result of some frank exchanges, CWG was kicked off Argentina Solidarity. But more important, CWG made contact with the LOI-CI and began the collaboration that led to the foundation of the Committee for an International Conference of Principled Trotskyists in December 2002.

The LOI-CI breaks with national Trotskyism

When the CWG (and POP and POB) split from the LRCI in 1995, almost immediately the LRCI began discussions with the PTS in Argentina. CEMICOR criticised the ‘parity committee’ that resulted as an unprincipled bloc. The PTS was an incomplete break from Morenoism holding still to the view that the IC and in particular Moreno had maintained a ‘continuity’ with the Trotskyist program until 1989 and only then, when the greatest betrayal led to the restoration of capitalism in the workers’ states, declared the 4^th International in need of ‘regeneration’. The LRCI on the other hand considered the 4^th International to be dead in 1951, although its members were split between ‘refound the 4^th’ and ‘found the 5^th’ positions.

In reality, however both tendencies shared a similar origin. The LRCI had its origin in Cliffism which in rejecting the unconditional defence of the Soviet Union was the most extreme liquidation of Trotskyism into the labour aristocracy in Britain. It moved left towards orthodox Trotskyism in the late 1980s but reversed direction in the early 1990s. The PTS was a split from Moreno’s national Trotskyism, itself a chauvinist mirror image of European and US imperialism. To what extent then, had the PTS remained trapped in national Trotskyism, and more important, to what extent was a break with national Trotskyism the basis of the split of the LOI-CI from the PTS in 1998?

Under the impact of the collapse of the Soviet Bloc from 1989, the LRCI in imperialist Britain began to degenerate back into social imperialism which it justified in terms of ‘reformist resetting’. In Argentina, the PTS under the same pressure of events took a parallel course, reverting to the patriotic national front. The convergence of these two tendencies was expressed in 1995/6 by the formation of an unprincipled international bloc where political differences were buried for the sake of creating a new international tendency dominated by the LRCI. (see CEMICOR article ‘Another Rotten Bloc in IB No 1) http://www.geocities.com/communistworker/interbul1.html#ANOTHER%20ROTTEN%20BLOC?

The struggle of the LOI-CI (then the Trotskyist Proletarian Faction - TPF) inside the PTS was against the degeneration into national Trotskyism and its subordination to social imperialism. It objected to the PTS rightwing leadership’s adoption of the LRCI’s draft document on the world situation without discussion, and the LRCI’s concept of ‘reformist resetting’ In 1998 the TPF was bureaucratically expelled from the PTS and formed the LOI-CI/Workers’ Democracy to defend the program of the PTS before its post-1989 degeneration.

Both the CWG and the LOI were fighting rightward moving tendencies capitulating to the post-1989 defeats of the world working class. Despite our different origins and experience, we did eventually arrive at a common conception of the cause of this capitulation. The CWG originated in a British semi-colony and early took a 5^th position because our first international experience was a fight with the Spartacists over the heritage of the SWP (US). By 1974 we had rejected the dominant imperialist based sections of the 4^th as degenerate from 1946. Our analysis was that imperialist based Trotskyism had capitulated to the labour aristocracy and bureaucracy. Our experience of the UK imperialist based LRCI in the 1990s confirmed this analysis.

The LOI on the other hand developed out of Morenoism as a national Trotskyist tendency. As mentioned above we see national Trotskyism as the reciprocal semi-colonial ‘evil twin’ of imperio-centrism. It expresses the dominant interest of the imperialist ruling class by trapping the permanent revolution within the stageist schema of the national revolution. It forms patriotic popular fronts with petty bourgeois and ‘progressive’ bourgeois classes against imperialism and justifies this as the ‘anti-imperialist united front. As a result the working class remains trapped and incapable of carrying the national revolution forward to the social revolution.

But the PTS did not break from Moreno’s stalinophobia which included the Stalinists and Castroites as part of the counter-revolutionary imperialist front. In the 1990s this put the PTS into popular front alliances with right wing nationalists like Walesa, the Mujahedines and the Bosnian Muslims, against the Stalinist/imperialist front! When after 1989 the Stalinists restored capitalism and turned into the new bourgeois the PTS welcomed the end of Stalinism as the opening of a new revolutionary period! But like the LRCI, this revolutionary period was covering a rightward retreat into broad left social democracy.

The LOI-CI fought inside the PTS against this rightward movement, in particular against the turn towards social democracy. It opposed the anti-imperialist united front as a form of popular front. Since its expulsion it has taken this fight further. It recognized the roots of the PTS degeneration as ‘national Trotskyism’ which enters popular fronts with the national bourgeoisie, petty bourgeois governments like the MNR in Bolivia in 1952. Today is opposes Chavez’ Bonapartist regime in Venezuela, Morales popular front government in Bolivia etc. Against national Trotskyism that provides a left cover for these popular fronts, the LOI fights for an international regroupment of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary workers organisations to refound the 4^th International and fight for the permanent revolution.

The Collective and the Liaison Committee

The form that this struggle for regroupment is taking is that of high level united fronts between principled Trotskyists of all currents in which programmatic agreement is the basis of joint action and the development of program, while at the same time programmatic differences are publicly debated. The Collective formed in December 1992 under the immediate impact of the Argentinazo and the US war on terror, began with the collaboration of the LOI-CI, the Bolshevik Tendency of France, and its sister organisation, Germinal in Spain, and the CWG, Lucha Marxista (Peru), (and a year later) the Poder Obrera Bolivia, all adherents of the defunct CEMICOR. We agreed on a program around the life and death struggles of the Iraq war, the popular front, united front, Leninist party and so on.

The Collective did not go beyond a fraternal federation and despite the high level of programmatic agreement, the BT, LM and POB resented the influence of the LOI in the Collective and accused it of using its funds to create an Argentinean ‘mother’ party and sending its cadres to infiltrate their organisations. These resentments developed into open hostilities and personal attacks on the LOI leadership as Argentinean chauvinist and domineering. In April 2004 these tensions came to a head and a split occurred.

Would a greater degree of democratic centralism have averted the split, or did the split represent an underlying difference over method and program? CWG thinks that the two are necessarily related. LM, BT and Germinal, and POP, read the LOIs drive to regroupment as predatory and sought defence in their national organisations – in the case of BT its residual Franco imperio-centrism, and LM and POB their respective national Trotskyisms. These organisations had failed the test of revolutionary regroupment by means of a dynamic struggle against national chauvinism in both its imperialist and semi-colonial forms. They could not break with the root cause of the degeneration of post-war Trotskyism and formed a propaganda bloc, the Permanent Revolution Collective.

After this split in the Colledive a Liaison Committee arose out of the originators of the Collective, the LOI-CI, the CWG, along with the POR Argentina and its Brazilian fraternal group, the FT, which had begun discussions with the Collective in 2003. It met for the first time in July 2004 when several other Brazilian groups, Marxist Workers Party (POM), Marxist Trench (TM), CCR, and Workers’ Opposition (WO) also took part. Within it, the LOI-CI, CWG and FT soon formed a left pole while the POR Argentina and CRI (Revolutionary Communist International) of France formed a right pole. POM, CCR and WO represented a centre group which since July 2004 has moved left from national Trotskyism around the questions of supporting and defending the Bolivian Revolution inside the Brazilian CONLUTAS. The left pole was prepared to form a fraction in January 2005 but delayed this until December to try to bring the center into agreement with its program. The Founding Documents of the FLT are published separately in the first issue of the Fraction Newspaper,

Long Live the Leninist Trotskyist Fraction and the fight for a new World Party of Socialist Revolution!

For 5 days the contract workers of El Teniente, Andina, Chuquicamata, Tomic and Ventana have held an indefinite strike for a US $972 bonus for 2005. Over these days the class enemy of the bosses’ parties, the presidential candidates Bachelet and Piñera, the church which was part of the Pinochet fascist regime, the press etc., have all been preaching peace and reconciliation. The government tries to deceive the striking workers by changing the law on subcontracting claiming to have the interests of the workers of the subcontractor companies at heart. It wants to bring contract workers under the ‘legal’ coverage of the existing workplace unions. Lagos, Bachelet and Pinera want this law changed urgently because 50% of Chilean workers are currently working under subcontracts. But the purpose of this new law is to break the strike using the official union leadership to prevent it from spreading and developing into a national strike that sets off an uprising in the whole Chilean working class capable of smashing the FTA with US and European imperialism, breaking with the IMF, and bringing down the ‘socialist’ government of Lagos that covers for the Pinochet regime – in short, of revolting against the re-colonisation of Chile.

Go on the offensive to defeat the Subcontracting Law!

The Government is ruthless. There is no bonus on the agenda in its negotiations with the CUT and the Coordinatora [national union of the contract workers]. Only secondary questions that can be included in the reformed law are being discussed. Lagos has already rejected any bonus for contract workers because this would reduce the superprofits of imperialism. That is because the huge profits made by the state-owned Codelco in 2005 (around 33% of the copper production in Chile) do not go to the State but to pay the external debt to the imperialist IMF, or to buy new weapons for the Chilean military to use against the people (10% of the copper revenue funds the Armed Forces). It is a sad joke that Lagos claims that he will use the money the contract workers claim in bonuses to help benefit youth in poverty when his government has privatized many State companies, the ports, health and education, road construction, bridges etc.; in short, when it is his policies that are responsible for the poverty and oppression of workers in Chile.

We can gain nothing from reforming a law that ‘legalises’ the slavery of the working class. We must fight to defeat it. But who is against this law? Not the leaders of the CUT [trade union federation] who are the puppets of the Ministry of Labor and the Government. Not the leaders of the Coordinatora who also agree with the Government’s law. Only the workers who have gone on strike are against this law. The bourgeoisie only grants concessions to workers when it is afraid of losing everything, and these conquests can only be defended by constant struggle. Instead of negotiating with the class enemy over the terms of their exploitation, workers must go on the offensive and fight to smash the subcontracting law of Lagos, the FTA, Pinochet’s 1980 constitution, and the plundering of copper by imperialism, by renationalising the industry under workers control!

For a national congress of workers and poor farmers delegates in Rancagua!

The indefinite strike has been very strong up to now. In Rancagua the highway 5 South that is used to ship copper has seen strong confrontations with the police. In the cities the strikers have mobilised to stop the buses carrying strikebreakers. There have been many demonstrations in support of arrested comrades. The same strong actions have been made by the comrades of the Andina mine, who have cut the highway to Mendoza (Argentina) to stop buses reaching the mine.

Despite threats of dismissal, non-renewal of contracts, use of strikebreakers etc, the strike has held firm. But the contract workers of Codelco who are leading the struggle against super-exploitation cannot be left to fight alone for one more second. By uniting the miners with the maintenance and service contract workers in the fight for the bonus, they have set an example to the workers of the whole country on how to fight for their demands. But the leaders of the CUT and the Coordinatora do nothing to unite and generalise the strike. By burying the demands in negotiations, the leaderships hold back the offensive, preventing the building of the strike through street protests, pickets, barricades and workers self-defence committees.

One thing is certain, the workers will not win if instead of trusting in their own forces, they allow their fight to be subordinated to the politicians, the church, the fascists, the mayors and the bureaucrats. Comrades, if we want a strong union of contract workers we cannot allow it to become dependent on the state. The state unions are legally recognised but impotent in the face of the privatisations. We must build the union on the basis of rank and file solidarity with the working class method of workers democracy and direct negotiations independent of the state and the union bureaucracy.

Only a rank and file union can demand that the leadership of the CUT, Martinez (head of the Coordinatora) and the Communist Party, break with the bourgeoisie and with the civil-military pact of the government of Lagos and all those who backed the Pinochet coup. We must demand that the union leaders immediately summon a National Congress of workers and poor farmers based on rank and file delegates to strengthen the indefinite strike of the contract workers of El Teniente! Organizations like the CAT, the SINTRAC, CGT MOSICAM, the National Coordinatora of Dock and Ship Workers, all the unions and federations of the country, must break with class conciliation and give support to a National Congress.

Demand that the CUT breaks with the bosses and calls an immediate workers congress in Rancagua!

The contract workers or El Teniente are the symbol of Chilean working class slavery. The contract workers of all the other mines, all the factories, workplaces, ports and plants, must send one delegate for each 100 workers elected by mass assemblies, to El Teniente, to make a National Congress that can begin immediately to plan and prepare for a national general strike of masses; to create Self-Defence Committees to face the repression of the police; to defeat the subcontracting system completely; the privatisation of the mines; and the Lagos Government and the Pinochet regime – the Agreement of the Constitution of 1980 – of the client state of US imperialism’s IMF and FTA.

The Congress must plan for the re-nationalisation without compensation and under workers’ control of the whole copper industry! The non-payment of the external debt! The break with all Free Trade Agreements! An end to 10% of the copper revenue going to the Armed Forces! An end to the military investments in the Chilean army, to stop the Chilean bourgeoisie acting as the servant of US and UK imperialism to smash the Bolivian revolution!

Only by these means will the contract workers of Codelco win a bonus of 1 million 600 thousand pesos and the same conditions as the wage workers of Codelco. For a 7 and a half hour day without increased work! For equal pay for equal jobs, including overtime and other payments! It is vital that the contract workers get the same conditions as the wage workers as this is the only way to unite the workforce against the subcontracting system. There have been over 9000 ‘regular’ jobs, ‘protected’ by the union under collective agreements, lost since 1990 to the subcontracting system.

The most important demand is: Proletarian Internationalism!

We are the militants of Internationalist Workers Party (POI), members of Leninist-Trotskyist Fraction (FLT). We think that proletarian internationalism is the most urgent demand of the Chilean working class. Since 2003 the vanguard of the working class struggle of the Latin American continent has been the miners of Huanuni, Bolivia. They fight for the nationalisation of the Bolivian mines and the gas under the control of the workers, leading the struggle of all the American working class to strike a blow to the head of the bourgeoisie and its private property, that it has defended since the 1970s by means of military dictatorships and which it continues to defend by its ongoing repression and massacres.

Our continent continues being plundered and bled by imperialism. The natural resources and the enslaved manual labor is their main prize. It is the same way that the US mine owners have killed 12 miners in West Virginia because they took their profits without paying for the safety of the miners. This was what happened in 2004 in Rio Turbio in the south of Argentina in August 2005 when 14 coal miners died in a Rio Turbio coalmine after a gas explosion, and in El Teniente copper mine in 2005, where the number of workers killed was also 12. The demand of the miners of Huanuni is the only way to stop the imperialists from murdering miners for profit, because the workers would control and manage the mines ensuring good health and safety conditions.

The manifesto of the miners of Huanuni and of the Bolivian workers is the internationalist manifesto for the whole American working class. For that reason it is necessary that the Chilean working class fights for the re-nationalization without compensation under workers control of copper and all natural resources. But even more important, is that the workers of the continent rally in support of the victory of the Bolivian revolution. The Bolivian working class holds the key to the victory of the working masses and poor farmers of South America. With the gas controlled by the Bolivian workers, the fuel necessary for all industry to operate under the control of workers in the Continent would be made possible. This and no other reason is why the Leninist-Trotskyists of POI say that the victory of the Chilean working class will be decided in the streets of Bolivia, in La Paz, in El Alto, Oruro, etc.

Chilean Workers must support the victory of the Bolivian Workers’ and Poor Peasants Revolution!

Workers International Party (Leninist-Trotskyist Fraction) 2006-01-10

Brokeback Mountain has been getting a lot of press in the US and elsewhere as a breakthrough movie from Hollywood that’s deals openly with gay issues. The Hollywood movie moguls have not been known for their willingness to embrace these issues and very few mainstream movies have dealt with them in a positive manner. Vito Russo in The Celluloid Closet said:

"In a hundred years of movies, homosexuality has only rarely been depicted on the screen. When it did appear, it was there as something to laugh at—or something to pity—or even something to fear. These were fleeting images, but they were unforgettable, and they left a lasting legacy. Hollywood, that great maker of myths, taught straight people what to think about gay people … and gay people what to think about themselves."

Most of the intelligent films on these issues have tended to come out of the Independent film movement in the US or British, European and even New Zealand cinema.

The movie is a departure for director Ang Lee as well. His last movie was Hulk and action-adventure movie and even his highly acclaimed Crouching Tiger, hidden dragon while being a fantastic film is still a far cry from an intense drama about a love between two cowboys that spans many years.

While some of the reviews about this film talk about the way in which Hollywood is finally coming to terms with gay and lesbian issues other reviewers have said it is not really a gay movie as such, more a love story. There are problems with both of these views.

It seems to me that the reviewers who take the “love story” angle have missed the whole point of the film.

The fact the two characters, Ennis (played by Heath Ledger) and Jack (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) cannot be together as they want to be is completely a result of the incredible homophobia they face in society and have internalized themselves (particularly in the character of Ennis).

The story starts in 1963 when the two young cowboys are sent out on the range to look after the sheep of a local rancher, Joe Aguirre (played by Randy Quaid). Once the initial shyness of Ennis wears off he begins to warm to Jack and the two become good buddies. Once it goes further (initiated by Jack) the two develop a secretive relationship which is broken up when they are espied by Aguirre, although he uses other excuses to get rid of them.

The film then follows them through the following decades as they both marry, settle down and have families. The relationship is re-initiated and the two men are only able to share intimacy a couple of times a year.

This is a constant frustration for the more dominant and self-accepting Jack, who wants Ennis to leave his wife and has a dream that the two of them can have a ranch together. For Ennis this is out of the question. In one particular scene he recounts how as a nine year old boy his father had taken him and his brother to look at the corpse of a man who had his been dragged around by his penis until it was ripped from his body, all because he was in a gay relationship.

The film reminds us of what it must have been like growing up and being gay in the 60s and even beyond. The difficulty was compounded by the fact that these two men were in a very macho environment. As time goes on and takes us into the seventies, it is worth noting that the gay liberation movement was well established (beginning in the late 60s). But that liberation movement was not alluded to in the movie, and nor should it have been.

The movement for gay and lesbian rights was largely an urban based movement and centered around cities such as New York and San Francisco. For Jack and Ennis, that movement and those sorts of people might as well have been on another planet. Though it seems that the movie is a hit with prospective tourists elsewhere on the planet earth. A representative of the Wyoming Travel and Tourism Division says many people in other countries are expressing interest in visiting Wyoming because of the film:

“It's gotten rave reviews from the international community,” she said. “I don't know if they're more tolerant or something, but they're viewing it as a great Western movie.”

This is a good point. The film takes the ‘western’ as the stock statement of all the virtues of European settlement of patriarchal farm families and the tough heterosexual male stereotype, and turns it on its head. Although things have improved for gays and lesbians in the rural states, it is worth noting that the movement to ban “gay marriages” and anti-gay initiatives still largely come from the South and rural states. These places still have a long way to go before gays and lesbians feel safe in this environment. One reaction from a Wyoming woman playwright who had “never encountered a gay cowboy” was: “Don't try and take what we had, which was wonderful -- the cowboys that settled the state and made it what it was -- don't ruin that image... There's nothing better than plain old cowboys and the plain old history without embellishing it to suit everyone."

The film is very believable. You can well imagine the dilemma facing two men who met and felt this way about each other. They clearly wanted to be together but couldn’t due to the attitudes in the ‘western’ farming community.

Ang Lee has made an intensely political movie which when you look below the surface has some interesting class elements as well.

These two men are both poor working class cowboys, who didn’t have a dime to spare. Jack marries into money (his father in law owns a farm machinery business) but is still trapped. He is in a stronger position to break his connections but the money aside, he still has to contend with society’s attitudes. Ennis, meanwhile continues to struggle from one ranch-hand job to another and certainly has very little economic independence. If these two men had been wealthy enough, they probably could have ridden the storm and maintained a relationship. They may still have had a lead a double life but it would have been easier for them.

In taking on the subject of two working class cowboys who love each other but who can’t maintain their relationship, Lee has made a bold statement about how society could deny love to two such people purely on the basis that they were the same sex.

But if its not a simple love story, does that mean that Hollywood is redeeming its shameful past in dealing with gay issues? Actors such as Rock Hudson and Anthony Perkins both went to enormous lengths to hide the fact they were gay as did many others. Not just in failing to present them objectively in movies but also in it’s black-listing of actors who were left wing and gay (such as Will Gear). If there was anything McCarthy hated more than communists it was pinko-communists.

What is the state of play today? Michael Bronski writing In Zmag thinks that gay films have yet to make a serious breakthrough to the mainstream:

“Nearly a decade ago it looked as though we were about to enter a Renaissance of gay and lesbian filmmaking. Unable to have access to mainstream movie making, independent filmmakers, writers, and producers began turning out a remarkable body of work. Todd Haynes’s brilliant The Karen Carpenter Story and Poison that moved a gay sensibility to new levels of cultural critique and intelligence, were revelations as was Tom Kalin’s queer re-telling of the Leopold and Loeb story in Swoon. Rose Troche’s Go Fish and Isaac Julian’s Looking for Langston broke new territory and Jennie Livingston’s Paris is Burning expanded the parameters of what a queer documentary might do.

But since then it has been down hill; particularly in the past three years. The enormous possibilities opened by the success of independent queer cinema have become a dumping ground for third-rate and unimaginative comedies and feel-good movies. In 1997 we had Kiss Me Guido, I Never Met Picasso, Love and Death on Long Island, and I Think I Do followed the next year by Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss, Late Bloomers, Leather Jacket Love Story, and (slightly better) The Opposite of Sex. Not that there weren’t some fine films as well—Cheryl Dunye’s Watermelon Woman was imperfect, but ambitious; John Greyson’s Lilies was a triumph of style and intelligence; Lisa Cholodenka’s sharp and pungent High Art and Bill Condon’s Gods and Monsters were about as perfect as movies get.

While it was nice to see homos in mainstream Hollywood movies, films like The Object of My Affection, In and Out, and My Best Friend’s Wedding, they lacked edge, intelligence, and any semblance of queer wit. Of course, mainstream films also presented us with the most stereotypical of gay “types”—Bruce Willis’s gay victim in The Jackal, Kevin Spacey’s wealthy queen in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Lauren Joey’s least-believable lesbian in Chasing Amy, and Ian McKellen’s repressed gay Nazi war criminal in Apt Pupil. While Edge of 17 had a few bright moments, it felt like a 20-minute short that had been blown out of proportion.

The British Get Real was sweet, but came nowhere close to the perceptiveness and potency of 1997’s Beautiful Thing. Relax...It’s Just Sex had some interesting moments, including a plot twist that dealt with sexualized murderous rage that followed a queer-bashing, but the film had no consistent center. Trick, with its cute boys, pre-packaged ghetto humor and edgy-but-sentimental sex was homogenized, formulaic, and empty. Beefcake, a faux documentary about Bob Mizer and Physique Pictorial, had flashes of humor, but ultimately had little point. Even Rose Troche, whose Go Fish showed so much promise, failed with Bedrooms and Hallways, a light, sprightly look at love, friendships, and sex in London that never rose above standard sit-com quality. The Canadian Better Than Chocolate offered little more than a lesbian version of its gay male independent counterparts, with pretty girls, the prerequisite political stances, and a happy ending that made no thematic or organic sense.” http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/feb2000bronski.htm .

Hollywood has never been known for campaigning for minority rights. It’s following the money. So does that mean that the huge popularity of Brokeback Mountain signals the ‘breakthrough’? Marxists, would gloss this ‘popularity’ to mean that as the traditional standards of the ‘western’ crumble under the impact of globalisation, there is more money in cropping the multi-millioned film audience and world adventure tourism than in the family plot. The economic interests of small town petty capitalism are blown away by large-scale capitalist agriculture, wage labour replaces family labour, Wal-Mart replaces the local store, and gays become part of the production line. When there is a profit to be made gays are no longer pariahs but ‘pretty men’.

As for the Hollywood machine and all the talk about Oscars, the film richly deserves them, not just for the fine acting and great script but for the breath-taking photography as well. If, as widely tipped, it does get Oscars and walk away with the Best film award, it will unfortunately be more because of a gilt-trip by members of the Academy than because of the artistic merit of the film.

Regardless of the motives, it will be a good day at the Oscars if this film gets the recognition it deserves for being such a fine and well-crafted film. Not just because it is a fine film but because such a movie in the mainstream will maybe give some of those homophobes (of whom there are still plenty) something to think about.

But more important than this, is my hope that the movie reaches out and touches the people who need it most. Somewhere in Wyoming (or maybe even rural New Zealand) there is a 16 year old boy or girl who when they see this movie will get some positive affirmation from it and realize that is ok to be gay and that it is better to be with the person you love than to spend your whole life leading a lie.

http://www.geocities.com/communistworker/ http://redrave.blogspot.com/

Contents

Defend Iran’s right to a nuclear defence!

Engineers sell Air New Zealand jobs

Sago Mine Disaster symptom of US crisis

Brazil Morales strangles revolution

New Zealand

1200 jobs threatened at Air New Zealand!

For an all-up Congress to debate the way forward!

Air NZ attacks its workforce

Caracas: Meeting of the 6th Counter-revolutionary World Social Forum

US imperialism and the Sago Mine Disaster

Could Sago have been saved by the union?

The labor bureaucracy

According to one report:

Building rank and file democracy

Break from the ‘new’ bureaucracy!

For a mass Labor Party with a socialist program!

· If bosses threaten redundancies and bankruptcy demand they ‘open the books’!

· For a Socialist United States of the Americas from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego!

Statement by the Internationalist Red October of Bolivia, February 2006.

The treachery of the workers leaders

Founding the Leninist-Trotskyist Fraction

Origins and History

The LOI-CI breaks with national Trotskyism

The Collective and the Liaison Committee

_{We Fight for Socialist Revolution!}

Class Struggle is the Bi-Monthly paper of the Communist Workers’ Group of New Zealand/Aotearoa, a member of the Leninist Trotskyist Fraction.

The other members are the International Workers League (LOI-CI) Argentina, International Workers Party (POI) Chile, Revolutionary Trotskyist League (RTL) Peru, Red October International (ORI) Bolivia, and the Trotskyist Fraction (FT) Brazil. PO Box 6595, Auckland, NZ.

http://www.geocities.com/communistworker/ http://redrave.blogspot.com/

Mail address: PO Box 6595,

Auckland, New Zealand.

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Class Struggle is also on our website http://www.geocities.com/communistworker/