Contents

NZ Troops out of Tonga

Fiji heads for another Coup

NDU in bed with Labour

Nationalise Feltex

Re-Nationalise Air NZ

Is Labour ‘middle class’?

Battle for Huanuni Mine

Long Live the Oaxaca Commune!

Take back Stolen Maori Land!

NZ and the Pacific is Australian imperialism’s backyard . . .

Australian imperialism dominates the NZ economy reads the media headlines. The US and Australia are the biggest investors in NZ. That’s because NZ is a semi-colony of Australian imperialism. And Australia is a junior partner of US imperialism in the Asia Pacific region. They recently sent troops to Tonga to prop up the Monarchy and suppress the pro-democracy movement. See NZ Troops Out of Tonga.

Another Fijian Coup? Meanwhile in Fiji, that latest hotspot in the South Pacific region, a showdown between the Government backed by US and Australian imperialism (and New Zealand PM Clark) and the military has blown up in the form of a demand by the Army Commander Frank Bainimarama that the Government withdraw key legislation or resign. The local deputy sheriff and his dog have raised the alarm of another ‘coup’ and dispatched police and warships. Is this going to be another RAMSI-type military intervention such as we have seen in East Timor and the Solomon Islands to protect Australian and NZ interests done in the name of the US War on Terror?

The attacks by Australian and US corporates on Pacific workers must be met by militant unionism in the whole Pacific region, breaking with the Labourite social imperialist bureaucracy, and substituting rank and file democracy, occupations, and nationalizations without compensation and workers control of the economy!

For a Pacific Federation of Socialist Republics!

In this issue we highlight the cases of Air NZ which wants to add to the hundreds it has already made redundant and contract out 100s more jobs of those servicing aircraft. The State already owns 80% but the Government says its ‘hands off’. We demand total state ownership, no compo for the private owners, and put it under workers control!

Then Godfrey Hirst buys Feltex –sacks 100s of workers and closes plants. We say NATIONALISE Feltex under workers control with no bosses’ compo!

Then US forest giant Rayonier buys up CHH forests – and some Tuhoe occupy! We say re-nationalise the trees without compensation under workers control and renegotiate the rights to stolen land with the local iwi and hapu.

In the last issue of Class Struggle we spoke of the weakness of the NDU leadership in the dispute with giant Australian food corporate Woolworths. In this issue we argue that the settlement of that dispute ended in a draw for the bosses and workers, and that the only winners are the CTU officials and their partnership model. These officials rely on Labour Government to enforce the bosses ERA and not the rank and file. We conclude that the only way for workers to win is smash the leg iron of the ERA and fight for workers control and workers ownership. This means breaking with the bureaucracy’s partnership with the bosses and gaining rank and file democratic control of the unions.

. . . as Latin America is US imperialism’s backyard.

In Bolivia workers and peasants are fighting for real Nationalization and getting shafted by Morales and the union bureaucrats. Morales has signed deals with the oil corporations which guarantee their superprofits and their gas assets. So his bourgeois semi-nationalization is now no more than a wealth tax from which he will get around $4billion dollars over the next 4 years. The poor peasants and miners will see none of this. Morales already said that he doesn’t have the money to re-nationalize the mines. That is why the poor miners like those at Huanuni are taking them back and demanding nationalisation under workers and campesinos control. See our article on Battle of Huanuni

In Mexico a major crisis is developing! See our article on Oaxaca “All power to the people!”

The 6 month rural teachers strike has become a major challenge to the PAN, PRI and PRD regime. There is a pre-revolutionary situation in Mexico. The popular assembly (APP)) that occupies part of Oaxaca city and now confronts the Federal Police must be armed and supported by APPOs everywhere! The APPO can unite workers, peasants, indigenous and students against imperialism and their lackeys. Now we need a workers defence militias and a general strike to bring down Fox and take the power in the name of the working people.

In the face of the workers fightback the bosses rely on the popular front with the World Social Forum forces backed by the fake Trotskyists, to steer the revolutionary masses into the traps of populist, ‘democratic’ Constituent Assemblies and even ‘21^st century’ class collaborationist regimes. Even Daniel Ortega the old Sandinista, now the head of the Nicaraguan Government in partnership with the former boss of the Contras (yes it’s true!), is dressed up as a Chavista!

These halfway houses are death traps. In the dying stages of imperialism when the US is on a military crusade to recolonise huge chunks of the world, bourgeois democracy is impossible and must give way to workers democracy under socialism. This is proven by the fact that the victory of the Democrats in Congress means nothing more than a disagreement over minor tactics of US imperialism. The Democrats cannot deliver a ‘democratic’ imperialism. See article.

Nor can the populist leaders of LA, Chavez, Lula, Morales, even Kirchner and Bachelet, offer any real advances or victories over imperialism. In the final analysis they represent the national bourgeoisies whose interests are to protect private property from the expropriation of the masses. Their populist regimes are popular fronts that trap workers into class collaborationist agreements with the imperialists. They cannot do other than side with imperialism and repress the masses.

The mass resistance that is beginning to move against imperialisms offensive and its client regimes, is as yet defensive and spontaneous. As the Huanuni miners and Oaxaca communistas show us, the strength of these popular movements are not enough unless they become united, organised and armed, and led by a revolutionary internationalist party that has learned the lessons of history and can guide the masses revolution to victory!

What kind of party and program? Leninist Trotskyist!

Against the half-way house death traps of the World Social Forum!

For Workers’ Occupations, Popular Assemblies, and Workers Power!

“He (Fiji Prime Minister, Laisenia Qarase) has been on record to say that Fijians have been waiting for these bills for donkeys years when we all know that only a handful of people will gain from these…..The people have been waiting for water to be continuous in their taps for more than donkey’s years and the rising crime rate is not doing anyone any good, including the criminals. Poverty and unemployment have risen and Qarase is waiting for bills that we are not all going to benefit from.”

Commodore Voreqe (Frank) Bainimarama, Fiji Times Nov 9 2006

The Racial Tolerance and Unity Bill (RTU) and the Qoliqoli (traditional fishing grounds) Bill that are at the heart of the present crisis, are just the latest fight among the Fiji ruling class since the Rabuka coups of 1987 over who will reap the benefits of imperialist exploitation. Such troubles go back to an even earlier period when in 1874, Ratu Seru Cakabau (the King of Fiji), ceded the islands over to Britain in order to stave off a US invasion based on debts the King had run up with American business interests. Bainimarama’s current role seems to be a similar strong-man attempt to shield ordinary Fijians from the ravages of imperialist re-colonization.

The essence of the RTU which had the backing of the Great Council of Chiefs (GCC) and the leaders of the Methodist Church was to give amnesty to the right wing coup plotters of 2000 who were hell bent on subordinating all workers and non-ethnic Fijians to the tyranny of a militarised neo-liberal economic order. It was Commodore Bainimarama who prevented the coup from succeeding and who put Qarase in as a caretaker Prime Minister. He is enraged that his former protégé now has coup-makers in his government and proposes to amnesty the main ringleaders like George Speight.

Bainimarama described the RTU recently as a form of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and the Qoliqoli Bill ‘racist.’ At first glance, the Qoliqoli Bill appears to be the reverse of the state theft of the ‘Foreshore and Seabed’ in NZ. But looking at the outcomes, both the Qoliqoli Bill and the NZ Foreshore and Seabed Act, seek to wrest control away from the majority population (workers) and place them in the hands of the few for the benefit of the few. Today in NZ, the state is imposing Marine Reserves in areas that have been the traditional fishing grounds for coastal Iwi and recreational fishers while giving consent to marine commercial mining interests to exploit whatever minerals lie off the NZ coast at the cost of the environment and NZ workers.

Clearly Bainimarama fears that the coup-makers will regain their positions of influence and exploit the resources freed up by the Qoliqoli Bill in partnership with the Chiefs and imperialist corporations at the expense of the mass of Fijian people. George Speight’s coup of 2000 (4 years after Fiji became a member of the WTO), represented an attempt to divest all state owned property over to the private sector in accordance with WTO rules. For Speight and his powerful puppet masters the stakes were high, but the profits would have been even greater. Attempts by the Bill’s supporters to justify it on the grounds of restoring traditional values, are laughable because they represent Fiji’s elite who are the only ones who would profit. The ‘Qoliqoli’ would also see tribal bosses fighting over boundaries and falling victim to more powerful commercial forces in the same way as Ratu Seru Cakabau feared in 1874.

The economic collapse since the 2000 coup has forced the Qoliqoli Bill to the fore in the Fiji parliament as a last ditch effort to fall into line with the dictates of the WTO. This is in spite of concerns expressed by PM Qarase and his Foreign Affairs and External Trade Minister Kaliopate Tavola about the negative impact that the WTO rules have on small developing countries. PM Qarase (formerly a merchant banker) at a recent DHL Exporters function spoke of the urgent need to increase exports to satisfy WTO demands. The main beneficiaries of the WTO rules in Fiji until recently have been US and Australian interests.

Australian Imperialism

But what has become blatantly clear in the Pacific region in the last 10 years, is a shift away from the racist and patronising Australian/US economic influence towards that of Asia and especially China. This directly challenges the US doctrine for world dominance outlined in its Neocon ‘Project for a New American Century’ (PNAC), and it is a rude affront to Australia’s imperial ambitions in the South Pacific.

In 1998, the conservative kingdom of Tonga established ties with China whilst severing links to Taiwan. An act of economic expediency by Tonga’s rulers, it has however had the positive effect of exposing to Tonga’s workers the true nature of the relationship between Tonga and the US. This raises the question as to whether Australian and NZ intervention in Tonga in the aftermath of the recent riots, are really designed to impose a RAMSI-like solution to reverse Tonga’s deals with China, much as they have done in East Timor recently. (see article in this issue).

Ministers at the recent November 2006 Pacific Rim summit held in Hanoi, Vietnam; scoffed at a US proposed ‘Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific’ (FTAAP). This was an underhand attempt by the US to rein in all trade deals by individual nations under an umbrella that would be under the control of the US.

Recent visits to China by members of the Great Council of Chiefs (GCC), PM Qarase and military commander Bainimarama, reveal the common desire of both liberals and conservatives fractions of the Fiji national bourgeoisie to pull away from the overbearing dominance of Australia in Fijian affairs. Chinese Premier Wen Jiaobao’s description of the China-Fiji relationship as a “model for others to follow” hasn’t gone down too well in Washington, but comes as no surprise to the US’s regional sidekick, Australia which has recently met mounting resistance to its recolonization of Papua New Guinea, Solomons and East Timor.

Australian imperialism goes on the offensive

At the same time as Asia has become a major player in Fiji, there is little love lost between the US and Australia who are increasingly acting as competitors in the Asia-Pacific region, in particular in China itself.

As a long time investor in Asia, Australia has always seen China as its most important market which will soon eclipse Japan as its No. 1 export partner. In April this year, the negotiations on a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) began and a Nuclear Transfer/Co-operation Agreement (NT/CA) for the supply of Australian uranium to China was signed.

Significantly, Australian Treasurer Peter Costello’s comment in October to East Asian central bankers about the need to divest from the US dollar as orderly as possible didn’t exactly sound like reassurance for its old buddy. Australia is emerging as a significant imperialist rival to the US. Hence the free trade deal it signed after many years of sucking up to the US is much more favourable to the US. The Australian Wheat Board-Iraq scandal being relentlessly pursued in Washington shows that although Australia is an important ally, the US has no scruples about putting the brakes on its imperialist designs.

Australia’s behaviour toward its Pacific Island neighbours has everything to do with its hunger to control resources over a vast collective economic zone to feed its regional empire. Its stand-over tactics in East Timor to acquire the oil rich ‘Timor Gap’ and intervention in the Solomons are practice runs to take on bigger fish like Fiji and the re-colonization of Papua New Guinea.

A joint deal known as the Indonesia and Australia Framework for Security Co-operation (IAFSC) was signed this week as part of a package that includes the sale of nuclear technology. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has made no secret of the fact that he wants the West Papua Independence Movement crushed, so that all efforts can be put into concentrating on resource plunder as part of Australia’s wider strategy. As a key ally of the Suharto regime during the suppression of East Timor from 1975, Australia continued to play an invaluable role to ensure that the status quo of outside hegemony over East Timor remained after Suharto’s demise.

Australian PM John Howard has made no secret of the fact that he wants to invoke the ‘Biketawa Declaration’ (a deal forced on the 16 member Pacific Islands Forum) that gives Australia the mandate to carry out military interventions under the guise of ‘regional co-operation’. All indications under the present (2006) political climate suggest that Fiji’s workers and the poor will suffer massive violence worse than in 1991 and probably far worse than what has been seen in the Solomons.

The call by Fiji’s political Right (including Qarase) for international intervention against a threatened coup, is fraught with all the contradictions that one expects from economic nationalists who call on Australian and NZ troops to protect their precious business interests. Their interventionist call is based on their recognition that the Fijian ruling class does not have the numbers to defend their privileges and therefore finds it necessary to plead desperately for an intervention force consisting of Australian and New Zealand troops to enforce the rule of international capital. It exposes them as sell-outs of the nation’s wealth before the eyes of the very people they claim to represent.

Fiji Labour Party betrays the workers

While the Fijian ruling class is united in its interests in inviting direct foreign investment, and is complying with the WTO rules, the working class made up of the majority of ethnic Fijians and Indo-Fijians pay the price of such investment with worsening economic and social conditions.

The Labour Party that once under Bavadra championed the poor and opposed the WTO has now become a junior coalition partner with Qarase’s conservative SDL (Soqosoqo Duavata Lewenivanua) Party. It has had its own internal differences going back to 1987. Under the abrasive leadership of Mahendra Choudhry, FLP support among ethnic Fijian’s has fallen as low as 2%, marking a clear racial divide. The main reason for this is that since 1987 there has been a determination by Fijian nationalists to split Fiji’s workers along ethnic lines with the result that they have ended up blindly supporting parties that are only interested in enriching the elite, both ethnic Fijian and Indo-Fijian.

The departure of prominent liberal-left founding FLP member Tupeni Baba to form the now defunct NLUP (New Labour Unity Party) in 2001 was a good example of this betrayal of the workers. After a short academic break in Auckland NZ his return to Fiji saw him make an opportunist shift to the Right by joining Qarase’s SDL.

The Qarase govt budget for 2007 that includes an increase of VAT (Value-Added Tax) to 15% has been supported by four FLP cabinet ministers. As a result, they face disciplinary action from the FLP Executive Council for going against Party policy. It is unlikely that the MPs will be forced to reverse their vote. As a result the poor mostly Indo-Fijians who support the FLP will suffer. Fiji Council of Social Services spokesperson Hassan Khan said recently “It is a prescription for social disharmony and has no justification.” Other social commentators say that the present poverty levels in Fiji are nothing compared to what will come after the increased VAT and other anti-worker measures.

For Fiji’s workers, the situation is pretty bleak. The Labour Party has abandoned them and the union leaders have proven to be in the pockets of the bosses.

Fijian workers were still numbed and coming to terms with the events of 1987 when, in 1991, the combined forces of military and police violently attacked hundreds of striking miners and their families involved in a dispute over poor working and living conditions. Most of Fijian society was horrified by what took place.

Since then workers have been at the mercy of corrupt union bureaucrats who serve the interests of bosses much like anywhere else in the world. For example, in May 2006 when gold prices were hitting record highs, the Fiji Mine Workers Union (FMWU) colluded with Australian-owned Emperor Gold Mine (EGM), to get rid of 300 workers by claiming a 6 month closure to cut costs. The real reason however was to dramatically increase profit margins.

Into this vacuum in Fijian politics where the majority of the population comprising ethnic Fijian and Indo-Fijian workers have no effective political voice let alone power, comes the military, and in particular Commodore Frank Bainimarama. Is it possible for the army chief to represent the interests of the workers against imperialism and its local lackeys, the voracious Fijian bourgeoisie?

Voreqe (Frank) Bainimarama: the next ‘Hugo Chavez?’

The rise and popularity of working class hero Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, has given inspiration to certain sections of the workers movement especially those gathered around the ‘World Social Forum’ (WSF). His brand of ‘Bolivarian Socialism’, while little more than a populist ideology and a return to economic nationalism, has gotten up the noses of the neo-liberals. Is Bainimarama cast in the mould of a Chavez of the South Pacific?

Like Chavez, Bainimarama hails from the military where both are highly respected at all levels especially by the rank and file. His timing of his attack on the Qarase Govt. while he was overseas, normally not a good time if you want to avoid being overthrown, was designed to demonstrate the support he had back home. Public opinion on the streets of Suva while he was still overseas saw him as the lesser of two evils. Fiji President Iloilo appointed Lt. Colonel Meli Saubulinayau as Bainimarama’s replacement, but the Colonel refused. With that, the unity of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) and its 3,500 personnel looks solid. The Fiji Police backed by the Australian government is pressing ahead with charging Bainimarama with sedition or even treason. However, Bainimarama’s position still looks relatively secure. But for what purpose?

Bainimarama is on record as having said that he would much rather work with Mahendra Chaudhry’s FLP rather than Qarase. OK, but that doesn’t make him a ‘socialist’. His comments about the plight of the poor and calling Qarase’s rightwing policies corrupt, are commendable and mirror many statements made by Chavez over the years.

But the ‘Bolivarian’ statesman is way short on ‘socialism’ in the strictest sense. Chavez’s engagement with trade unions has been bureaucratic and has so far prevented the formation of a labour movement independent of the state and the military. The question arises, is the role of the Fijian Army also one of posing as anti-imperialist in order to more effectively contain and subordinate a mass uprising under a worsening economic situation?

Fiji Land Forces Commander Colonel Pita Driti on the subject of Australia and NZ’s behaviour toward Fiji, The Solomons and Papua New Guinea, said it represented “The hegemonic shoving of big brother policies down our throat.” He also said “We will not accept any foreign intervention.” This comes after his allegation that the Australians were preparing to invade Fiji. If such a threat was real, why haven’t the two battalions stationed in the Middle East been brought home and why has there not been a general mobilisation? Like Chavez, Bainimarama has made no attempt to empower the trade unions and working class to prepare them for such an invasion.

In fact there is no evidence of Bainimarama being aligned to ‘left’ causes. In December 2005, developments were starting to look that way when Bainimarama was invited by the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) to China. Maybe a Maoist ‘Peoples War’ was on the agenda, who knows? The only obvious outcome was his support for the ‘One China Policy’. Then just eight months later, he led a contingent of Fiji military to the Pentagon sponsored and US State Department managed Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI) exercise held in Mongolia. The Israeli’s were invited, but were too busy killing people in Gaza to come.

Bainimarama’s trip to the Middle East to review his troops engaged in imperialist warmongering (UN, MFO, Private Security) basically says it all. He has no intention of changing the status quo. Gravy train trips to former Stalinist workers states, don’t make a revolution and certainly don’t inspire confidence that it will make Fiji a better place.

Like an army on 'welfare', the UN and MFO subsidises 1/3 of Fiji’s light infantry battalions to such a degree that Fiji can’t afford to bring them home. As ‘Peacekeepers’, Fiji’s former soldiers with the UN and MFO don’t even qualify for war pensions and so are forced to find work with private security companies in places like Iraq and Afghanistan etc. The 4000 troops left at home, are what Bainimarama expects to use to defend Fiji against an ANZAC-axis intervention.

For those tempted to regard Bainimarama as a South Seas Hugo Chavez, think again. Chavez is a populist whose popularity comes from spending some of Venezuela’s oil wealth on the poor. But if the poor were to rise up, he would use the army to suppress them. Bainimarama is not interested in the working people of Fiji becoming their own bosses. He preaches against imperialism, but his interests are no more than keeping Fijian resources for Fijian bosses. It the workers were to rise up he would put them down to preserve law and order and the rights of private property. The recent ‘stroll’ through the streets of Suva by the Fiji army in full combat kit, was an intimidating reminder of the instrument of oppression. But it is an instrument of capitalist power not of workers power. That power lies in the hands of Fiji’s workers and not the army’s guns.

South Pacific Workers Movement

The problem that has plagued the indigenous movements against colonization worldwide has been the failure to marry those struggles to the workers movement. A combination of dispossession of control of resources and political cooption by the oppressor, have conspired to reduce the struggles of the oppressed to ‘identity politics’ within the World Social Forum (WSF) or worse, inter-ethnic warfare, dividing the working class along national and ethnic lines.

The indigenous struggle in Aotearoa-NZ is no different. Its activists have ended up in a mixed bag of rightward shifting politics. Tuhoe activist Tame Iti’s support of George Speight during the 2000 coup substituted a popular front based on indigenous identity for a united workers struggle.

Union bureaucracies in the region have played their traditional role of stifling militant activity to appease the bosses, while workers have had to put up with the increasing pressures of market ‘liberalization.’ Reliant on labour organizations subordinated to the UN affiliated ILO and the newly formed International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) - a merger of the ICFTU and WCL - set the scene for a continuation of the treacherous leadership that workers have faced many times in the past. The rotten trend by union affiliated social democratic parties such as the ALP, NZLP and FLP to follow the path of economic neo-liberalism, is a betrayal, but one that comes as no surprise.

The fact is that the Pacific is in the process of being re-colonized by rival imperialist powers all under intense pressure to compete with the new giant in the region, China. The absence of a struggle based on the unity of the working class makes the task of organizing workers in the scattered and isolated islands of the Pacific very difficult. Yet the working people of the Pacific from East Timor to Tonga are proving that they can fight back against the deepening exploitation and oppression.

The Pacific peoples urgently need an internationalist Marxist party with a program that unites and mobilizes all the workers and poor farmers to fight for democracy and against imperialist re-colonization.

Such a Party and program would unite the peoples of the Pacific states in one struggle. In Fiji for example, the split in the Fijian working class along ethnic lines is fatal unless corrected. Workers need to re-found the FLP as a multi-ethnic workers party on a program of rejection of WTO, the national debt, re-nationalization of land and industry without compensation and under workers control, decent health and education etc. The FLP should organize the rank and file of the military to side with the people against both imperialist invasions and the coups of sections of the Fiji ruling class!

At the same time the workers of the imperialist countries and semi-colonies of Asia-Pacific, from Chile to China, must fight their own capitalist regimes, oppose imperialist military invasions and wars, and unite all nationalities and ethnicities in one revolutionary internationalist workers party.

Meanwhile, real solidarity action in support of workers in such places as Fiji, have to be initiated at the rank and file level if it is going to be effective. A big part of that solidarity is to get material aid to the affected workers by whatever means possible. The boycott of Fiji during the 2000 coup initiated by the CTU and ACTU was minimal, almost unnoticeable and absent of rank and file input. This must change! For an international revolutionary workers party and program!

Australian and NZ troops refuse to be used as tools of imperialism!
For a united multi-ethnic Fijian Labour Party!
Unite the rank and file of the military with their worker brothers and sisters!
For an internationalist revolutionary workers party!
For a Pacific Federation of Socialist Republics!
Whakakotahi Nga Kaimahi O Te Moananui A Kiwa! [Workers of the Pacific Unite!]

Te Taua Karuwhero Kahui

Communist Workers Group –

Member of the Leninist-Trotskyist Fraction.

On the face of it this dispute ended in a draw since the workers who stayed staunch survived the vicious lockout by Woolworths and returned proudly to their work on better conditions than they left. But at the same time Woolworths came out of it with a sweeter deal then it deserved and has a more dominant position in the industry then before with its maneuver to block Stephen Tindall’s plan to expand the Warehouse as a major competitor. The only clear winner was the NDU leadership and the Labour Party with the embedment of the ERA and its class collaborationist philosophy of ‘partnership’ between business and labour.

It could have been an outright win for the workers.

A number of aspects of the struggle were bad. From the start the workers didn’t run the show. It was run by the NDU leadership of Laila Harre and her allies from the Alliance, Matt McCarten and Co. That meant that it was always going to stay inside the legal limits of the ERA. So when the boss locked the striking workers out, Harre countered with law suits. One to challenge the lockout, one to challenge the use of ‘scabs’ to do the jobs of the locked- out workers, and one to challenge Woolworths refusal to agree to ‘conciliation’.

This is what we would expect a union leadership committed to a ‘partnership’ with the bosses to do. Substitute the class struggle for a legal struggle within the bosses’ law. Insofar as the law can be used to strengthen the workers fight, of course we should use it. But when it stops workers from using their class power then workers need to be in the position to weigh up their options themselves. This did not happen. The legal route meant that the lockout dragged on for 4 weeks without any real workers involvement in the decision making. It got bogged down in a legal battle played out in front of the media where Laila Harre tried to pressure Woolworths into a settlement by turning public opinion against the Aussie company. In other words, the NDU leadership showed that it had no faith in the power of the union membership by using public opinion to pressure the boss and the Labour Government.

Meanwhile Woolworths ignored the pickets at its distribution centres and set up ‘hubs’ or scab-run distribution centres at key supermarkets. The workers attempts to counter this were limited by the officials to token ‘flying pickets’ of NDU workers and assorted supporters of supermarkets and distribution centres with flyers appealing to drivers and the public to boycott Woolworth stores. While many truck drivers themselves members of the NDU or in solidarity with the NDU workers refused to cross these token pickets, most of the goods got through.

If the NDU leadership tactics did produce a settlement where the workers didn’t lose pay and conditions, it failed to get its central demand of a MECCA, and it let Woolworths of the hook when its custom was on the wane. If the lockout had been run by the rank and file much more could have been won. It was necessary for a rank and file strike committee to have been formed from the outset to let the striking workers democratically decide what tactics were necessary to shut down Woolworths and defeat its vicious lockout.

Winning tactics have to be ‘illegal’

First, the union should have abandoned the restrictions of the law when the bosses did. The bosses ignored the law to employ scabs. Instead of challenging the bosses in court, the rank and file could have mobilised mass pickets against the scab distributional centres. Once the bosses locked the workers out, instead of challenging this in court and keeping a picket outside the now abandoned distribution centres, workers could have been delegated into flying pickets to go to all the major worksites around Auckland and recruit workers to form the backbone of 24 hour community pickets around every Woolworths supplier, hub and supermarket.

Second, to hit Woolworths where it hurt it was necessary to build mass ‘Community’ pickets at all the major outlets and supermarkets to stop the trucks. These pickets were illegal under the ERA, but mass numbers of hundreds of unionists organised by local NDU rank and file teams could have had a major impact. The NDU leadership obviously rejected this tactic as undermining the legal challenges it was mounting in court. But the rank and file should have been able to weigh up these two tactics themselves and make the decision.

Third, the decision of the NDU officials not to try to involve the supermarket workers, also in the process of negotiating an agreement, was entirely based on the legalities and public opinion. They judged that the support of supermarket workers would have been weak given the low level of union membership, and that the loss of members due to the supermarket managers hostility to the distribution workers strike, may have led to a rejection of strike action, or worse a strike that led to a second lockout. On top of that the NDU officials wanted to sign off on the supermarket agreement anyway and would have been worried how the court would view a sympathy strike.

A rank and file strike committee could have changed all that. Mass pickets at the supermarkets would have tested the level of support from supermarket workers and made the opening of a second front against Woolworths a possibility. In that event, whatever the outcome, the union could have forged links at the level of the rank and file as a base for unity at the next rounds of negotiations.

Get rank and file control of the union!

Had a rank and file strike committee existed, and had these ‘illegal’ tactics been adopted, the company (which abused the law anyway) would have been under much more pressure to concede not only a MECA but much better agreements than the workers got in the end. The ERA would have been invoked by both the company and the NDU leadership to enforce a settlement, but the gains would have been won outside labour’s industrial law leg-iron, and outside the control of the union officials who are the bosses’ police inside the labour movement.

However, before this sort of victory can happen, the rank and file need to assert their democratic right to run the union and to elect delegates and officials that are mandated by the rank and file, recallable immediately when they fail to follow the members’ mandate, and paid no more than the average wage on the jobsite.

Break with the class collaborationist partnership between bosses and the CTU!

Break with the Labour Party aligned CTU bureaucracy.

For militant, democratic unions under the control of the rank and file!

When Feltex was put in receivership the workers at Riccarton (Christchurch() responded with a brief occupation of the canteen to get their redundancy payouts protected.

A member of the CWG wrote a letter in support of the occupation Indymedia:

“As a former spinner who worked at the Riccarton Plant many years ago, I support the workers occupying the factory AND keeping it in production. By keeping it producing they prove that it is the workers that run the company not the incompetent management or the big banks.

It doesnt matter which capitalist company ends up buying the bankrupt firm, the workers will get screwed. The Aussie banks, Godfrey Hirst and the kiwi Bros Turner are all in it to make a profit from the workers labour. Its the workers value that built up the company and it is the workers who should reap the rewards of their labour not the bosses or the banks.

They should follow the example of workers in Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela and demand that Feltex be nationalised with no compensation to the ANZ or to the shareholders who are only gambling with the labour and lives of the workers.

Nationalisation would require the state to refinance the company to make it viable and competitive. But what could be a smarter investment decision by this Labour Government than to add value to the wool off the sheep’s back?

But this process needs to be under the control of the workers themselves. After all the state works in the interests of the bosses not workers. The workers must insist that instead of the investment going as a subsidy to the bosses (so that the firm can be sold off later), it should be a public shareholding that is held in trust for ALL wage workers and does not get allocated to individual workers so they can flog it off on the stock exchange.

The workers should decide how much of the earnings of Feltex could then be shared out equally among the Feltex workers to pay a living wage and the rest would go to finance growth and build up the public shareholding.

I'm sure the workers at Feltex, with support from other workers, have more than enough guts, experience and ingenuity to figure out how to make this a goer and work out what needs to be done along the way. Like what our Latin American brothers and sisters are doing, it could be the start of something big.” Dave Brown

Feltex employed 785 staff at yarn spinning plants in Lower Hutt (200), Feilding (85), Dannevirke (150) , a woven carpet manufacturing plant in Christchurch (170), and a scouring plant in Kakariki (45). The receivership meant that those made redundant lost most of their redundancy payouts. A union delegate talked about the reaction of the workers to this news.

(Oct 5) “Stuffed around for 2 years” says Feltex Delegate at Kakariki, while NDU officials offer support and condolences:

‘Workers from the closed Feltex scouring plant in Kakariki are shocked and angry, says site delegate, Joseph Murray.

The 32 plant workers, all members of the Meat Workers Union, from the scouring plant near Marton, went back to work for the last time this morning to pick up their possessions under the watchful eye of security guards.

"I feel bloody sorry for the other guys, especially those who have recently gotten a mortgage. Now where are they going to go? There aren't any jobs in Martin and there's a 10 week WINZ stand down."

Mr Martin said that the workers could receive $15,000 in redundancy from the Godfrey Hirst deal. However, like many of the long term staff before the receivership, he was entitled to a redundancy of up to $35,000 based on his annual earnings. He said that is was a double blow, as his redundancy would have been higher two years ago as his annual earnings had dropped significantly due to the poor board management of Feltex over the past two years.

Representatives of the 750 National Distribution Union and Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union Feltex members visited the worksite today to give them support and condolences.’

The CWG posted another comment on Indymedia (now edited and enlarged)

“The NDU leadership can’t win this one because the Aussie banks and companies it loves to hate have legally locked them out of the future of Feltex.

When the receivership hit the NDU was already on the 'back foot' demanding that the redundant jobs should be sold at the highest price! To get on the 'front foot', the NDU should be demanding that its mates in government back the nationalisation of Feltex in lieu of lost redundancy payouts. At the very least this will create a debate about why Labour is talking ‘buy kiwi' but not defending its own kiwi workers jobs, even in the SOEs or in Air NZ (see article).

Of course we know that Labour will not do this unless put under huge pressure (pay up for the pledge card!). The government owns the majority of Air NZ and its not protecting the 100s of jobs at risk there. Why should it nationalise Feltex when it has an interest in seeing Godrey Hirst restructure Feltex to make it efficient and win more export orders?

It will only intervene if the workers themselves take a stand and get huge public support for a state buyout. They would really have to go on the 'front foot'. Facing closure they would have to decide that it is better to occupy and fight than go down the road to look for other jobs.

If the NDU swings a higher redundancy (its mates may cough up to make the NDU look good) then that may close off this option. If not, it will depend on how many want to fight and who will support them. That's something that only the workers concerned and their supporters can decide.

The time is long overdue to demand that the Labour government backs its own statements about keeping production in NZ and developing kiwi design and technology. All those privatised workers in the 1980s and 1990s that went down the road never really got the chance to fight for their jobs. This should not be motivated by NZ nationalism i.e. protecting 'our' jobs from foreigners, but as a step towards workers control of production internationally.

None of the factory occupations in Argentina or even Venezuela (under a sympathetic government) were straight forward or happened overnight. In most cases workers had to occupy for months or even years facing long legal wrangles and often evictions. Some lost, some won. The main example in Naomi Klein’s documentary ‘The Take’, a heavy engineering shop, was not typical. 'Brukman' was more typical. That was basically 30 women machinists putting up one hell of a fight with 3,000 supporters. Now instead of making designer garments they make working clothes.

What could Feltex do with 100 workers and 10,000 supporters?” Dave Brown

Postscript: (8 November)

The occupation of the Riccarton workers fizzled out quickly. They went back to work so that those not made redundant would be re-hired on the same pay and conditions. That took some steam out of the fight! And no doubt there are some other jobs out there for redundant workers that took further heat off a serious occupation. Obviously NZ workers are not feeling the total devastation that has led to occupations of factories under workers control in Latin America. And most still have illusions in the ability of the unions to negotiate better redundancies and conditions under the bosses ERA. But the ruthless lockouts and closures of the imperialist monopolies that now own most of NZ business outright will increasingly become the norm, and it is now time for the militant sections of the union movement to start making plans for a national rank and file movement to challenge the class collaborationist leadership of the CTU.

For a National Rank and File movement to Challenge the class collaborationist CTU leadership!

The sellouts of the Labour party are continued because the Clark Labour government has not undone those changes, and sits by without intervening, while destructive competition continues to hurt the working class. This Labour government is selling out, and always has.

That destructive competition is clear when companies collapse or sub-contract their workers, when quality is lost, when wages and conditions and staffing levels do not keep up with inflation or previous standards.

In railways it is clear that 10-15 years of private ownership, did not adequately maintain the tracks and the Government had to buy back the tracks and pay for their maintenance. Likewise the locomotives, carriages, etc, are run down and the quality of services has decreased. Staffing levels were slashed but quality has also fallen.

In Air New Zealand the government owns 80% of the company, yet fails to protect workers jobs. The Labour government bailed out Air NZ in the ‘national interest’ and has said it would not sell the airline. To protect the working class, it has to preserve the standards of Airline workers jobs and the standards of airline maintenance. Already Air New Zealand failed in its’ ANSETT company leaving workers unemployed and without redundancy. The government had to rescue it then, with $885 million.

Will we see the running down of the quality of airline services after the massive job cuts which Air NZ are part-way through doing? – already that has been predicted.

CTU negotiates redundancies and increased exploitation

The Employment relations law has the potential for increasing industrial bargaining strength. If unions can force employers into negotiations through Multi-Employer Collective Agreements (MECAs) then these have the potential to set (wages and conditions) like awards, across a whole industry. However, the NDU – Woolsworths dispute has shown that relying on the ERA failed to gain even a multi-site agreement with the same employer. It seems that to force the bosses to accept MECAs etc the workers have to step outside the ERA and use their collective power.

This shows the weakness of Air NZ workers who are trying to defend their wages and conditions in the face of the competition of other airlines. Air NZ management is trying to cut costs by contracting out almost all its jobs. To defend their wages and conditions Air NZ workers need MECAs to prevent other airlines from offering ‘cut price’ services by cutting their workers wages and conditions. That would mean efficiencies between airlines would not be based on lower wages or conditions of workers in the ‘cheapest’ airline.

Air NZ plans to contract out the jobs of staff who load the planes, is the latest in a long list of workers invited to apply for redundancy. Last time it was maintenance engineers who were being threatened massive jobs cuts. The Engineers Union (EPMU) tried to out manage, Air NZ management. Not behaving like a super union – but a super capitalist. They paid management consultants to come up with a counter-proposal to show that their workers could out-produce the contracted out workers and meet Air NZ cost cutting. This allowed some engineers to keep their jobs by agreeing to work harder and smarter, but sacrificed 100s of others. Obviously the EPMU agrees with the principle that the job of unions is to make workers produce more. They trade off job losses for increased exploitation of those whose jobs they ‘save’ doing a better job than the capitalists in screwing the workers to increase profits.

The EPMU has tried the parliamentary road to try to protect workers, spending hundreds of thousands to support Labour Party and get it elected to government. Similarly the Service & Food Workers Union (SFWU) has supported Labour and got it’s own, former bureaucrats elected. This very same Labour government has stood by and will stand by and watch another round of job cuts at Air NZ. Job cuts which are attacks on the organization and membership of those same unions.

Renationalise, no compensation, under workers’ control

Neither of those strategies worked to prevent job losses in the past and they won’t work this time either. An effective strategy to fight job losses can only be found if workers are united to make an effort to protect these jobs. United strike action would need to be backed by pickets to stop management or casuals doing the work. Instead of redundancies all jobs should be shared by reducing the hours of work without loss of pay. Increased worker productivity would be reflected in further reduction of hours without loss of pay. But such a fight for the rank and file control of the union and for job sharing without loss of pay would challenge the rights of the private owners, including the 80% ‘public’ shareholding of the government to cut the losses and subsidise the profits of the private sector. It would then become clear that to win these basic demands, workers would have to take over the ownership and control of the industry.

This would require the re-nationalisation of the airlines without payment of compensation and operated by the workers. If workers really had control of their unions and could force the government to nationalise under workers control the major industries then we would be talking about a workers’ government. Because such a nationalisation would be an expropriation of capitalist property no capitalist government would do this. The fate of the Airline industry then like all industries, banks, etc would be determined by a workers plan. This plan would allocate resources, set wages, conditions, safety standards etc. to meet the needs of all working people, without considerations of cutting costs to meet profits.

Privatising the Ports

Port companies were also left in a rotten position by these Labour governments. Ports have been competing against one another and have cut labour costs by casualising the waterfront workforce and decreasing health & safety standards. Stevedoring companies compete on costs, and it is workers whose wages and conditions are driven down. The working class loses out. Health & Safety standards are not able to be adequately enforced by union members when industrial action may be met by the entire company ‘going bankrupt’ and throwing workers out into unemployment without redundancy, and another company can replace the workforce. The record of the ‘Wharfies’ union is shocking. Not only has it gone along with the privatisation process, it has joined it, now holding shares in a stevedoring company! It is the mark of a rotten union when it goes into business exploiting its own members as workers!

Port Unions get out of business!

For a national rank and file movement to take back control of the unions!

Re-nationalise the ports without compensation under workers’ control!

The Socialist Workers Organisation idea that the Labour Party is now a 'social liberal' party only confuses and fudges the question of the class character of the Party. The fundamental question is: has the class character of the Labour Party changed? It was formed in 1916 as a bourgeois-workers party, i.e. with a bourgeois program and working class base represented by its organic links to the unions. Has the class composition of the Labour Party shifted to the ‘new middle class’?

“Increasingly, NZ Labour is a party not of unions or of business, but of lawyers, administrators, ‘creatives’ and others from the new middle class. The party¹s new rulers support social reforms dear to their heart, but embrace neo-liberal economics which kicks the working class in the guts. This fusion of social reforms and neo-liberal economics gives us a label for NZ Labour today: social-liberal.”

There is no question that Labour has embraced neo-liberalism in the form of Blairism – a rightwing social democracy that accepts the rule of the market. But does this shift in its program to the right need to be explained by a ‘new middle class’ takeover?

According to the SWO: “Today¹s Labour Party is dominated by lawyers, administrators, academics, professionals, artists, designers, researchers and others from the new middle class. They play an important role in late capitalism¹s information technology and global production. The new middle class aren¹t direct exploiters of workers, nor do they have a boss breathing down their neck all day. They form a layer between capital and labour, often mediating between these two main classes.”

So this ‘new middle class’ is the modern version of the ‘old middle class’ of self employed people. Only now instead of shopkeepers and farmers they are professionals, lawyers etc. They are not ‘exploited’ by capital, nor do they ‘exploit’ labour. They are a ‘layer’ of small business people between capital and labour’. Yet for every self-employed lawyer, farmer or business person in the leadership of the Labour Party, there are ten who are not self-employed. They are not ‘new middle class’ but drawn from the salaried professions – teachers, lawyers, public servants, union officials etc. The scientific Marxist term for these workers is the labor aristocracy. They still sell their labour for a higher wage or salary and are more privileged than ordinary wage workers, but that does not make them ‘middle class’.

The fact that the Labour Party and its CTU partners are led mainly by ‘professionals’ i.e. ex-teachers, ex-lawyers, ex-union organisers etc. does not make them ‘middle class’. It means the leadership of the party and the CTU is in the hands of the hands of the labor bureaucracy a layer of functionaries that has emerged out of the labor aristocracy. Just as it’s always been.

Long history of Class Collaboration

This is not new. From the beginning the Labour Party bourgeois program (i.e. defence of private property) was administered by the labour bureaucracy. This bureaucracy has its origins in the labour movement but is promoted into parliament. The best known Labour leaders were unionists or professionals. Their function was always to collaborate with the employers to contain the workers movement to the legal channels of bourgeois parliament.

Hence Labour's class collaborationist character was determined from the start by its adherence to a bourgeois program and defence of capitalism, combined with its organised labour composition and working class support.

Those who argue that Labour has changed its allegiance to the capitalists are ignorant of Labour’s historic pro-capitalist program. Those that argue that Labour has lost, abandoned, or replaced etc its working class base are naïve about the class collaborationist role that Labour continues to play. In reality class character of the Labour Party is unchanged as is the labour bureaucracy that leads it. What has changed however, are the conditions of the world market and the conditions which dictate what policies the capitalists want Labour to impose on the working class.

There are three stages of Labour’s evolution that have nothing to do with its class composition and everything to do with the dictates of capitalist rule. First, from 1916 to its election in 1935, was the task of diverting the militants into parliament; second, from 1935 to 1984 was the task of massive state regulation and protection of the economy from direct foreign competition; third, from 1984 to the present, was the task of de-regulating and opening up the economy to global market forces.

Labour bribed the workers into the welfare state

The Labour Party was founded by the labour bureaucracy to coopt the labour movement from the general strikes and class warfare of the period 1908-1913 into parliament where the 'socialisation' of the means of production, distribution and exchange would be legislated rather than expropriated. It was necessary to offer a very radical sounding program to con workers away from the Red Fed and its independent breakaway unionism, despite serious defeats, and back into the arms of the ‘class neutral’ state and its Arbitration Court.

By the time it was elected in 1935, Labour had the loyalty of mainstream organised labour, as well as landless and poor farmers, and a group of national capitalists like James Fletcher. Even the CPNZ in its popular front period after 1935 joined Labour. Labour got away with this class collaboration as so long as it could deliver 'reforms' that allowed workers to materially share in the wealth of NZ capitalism.

This was possible under the form of economic nationalism where NZ capitalists were protected from having to compete on the world market allowing workers to share in the prosperity that resulted. Labour could pass off this economic nationalism as class compromise and class peace. But in reality it was the protection of the NZ capitalist class that was behind these reforms, not the demands of workers. This was proven by the anti-worker attacks of the period up to 1951. The workers were no less exploited under protection and paid for their social welfare out of their own surplus labour.

The reality was that these social conditions could not outlive the crisis of NZ capitalism once the protected companies got too big for the local economy. To grow they had to compete openly on the world market and the protected economy had to be deregulated. So as the economic conditions changed NZ capitalists had to switch from protection to international competition. These demands of the capitalist class (BRT etc) completely determined Labour's every move.

From the mid 30s to the 1970s workers saw Labour as their party because they shared in rising prosperity. They still thought this during the 1970s years of mounting crisis. Muldoon refused to face this reality for ten years from 1975 to 1984. Ironically he was trying to be King Canute turning back the tide of neo-liberalism. He borrowed and hoped and ran up the debt. The NZ economy was rapidly heading for bankruptcy.

Rogernomics was no mistake

When Labour was elected in 1984 its new program, Rogernomics, was determined by its fundamental class loyalty to NZ capitalists and their property, not any loyalty to its working class supporters.

The long term loyalty of workers was severely strained during this period. Yet Labour's role as a Bourgeois-workers party did not change. While the abstention of workers saw Labour lose in 1990, by 1993 it had almost regained its lost support. The reason? New Labour was going nowhere except back into Labour and National had launched a direct massive attack on the working class in the form of benefit cuts, ECA etc

In the 1990s workers continued to vote for Labour. However, after MMP workers split voting saw NZ First draw on Maori and workers votes, and due to Winston's opportunism, National stayed in office but as a lame duck government that could not advance its more market program significantly.

Labour's re-election in 1999 reinforced its organised Labour support by reforming Labour law to re-empower the unions as 'social partners', and a range of minor social reforms. Its brand of of neo-liberalism is a blend of British Blairism and European social democracy, which tries to reintroduce the state as an active player in the market pushing the strategy of 'public private partnerships'.

Does this mean its class collaborationist character had changed? No it continues to operate in the same old way sucking workers into a modified version of neo-liberalism on the claim that this is good for workers.

How to break from labour

So the question persists: if Labour is still seen to represent workers and claims to be able to deliver a class 'partnership' (most clearly expressed in the CTU strategy of productivity sharing) along with a national culture and national identity, doesn’t it still operate crucially as a class collaborationist party diverting the big majority of workers away from independent class politics into parliament?

The answer has to be yes. And until the militant left has won considerably more support to form a mass workers party that fights mainly outside parliament to overthrow capitalism, then it is necessary to base our tactics to break workers from Labour's class collaboration on this understanding.

One tactic is to fight at every dispute for rank and file control of the dispute to expose and replace the labour bureaucrats and the Labourite 'partnership' strategy. Calling for rank and file discussion and voting on dis-affiliation to the Labour Party is part of this.

Another tactic, like Radical Youth pickets, is to attack Labour's 'worker party' pretences on issues like youth rates etc. While Labour is in office it should be attacked unmercifully for its class collaboration.

Third, always behind these tactics is the need to build support for a mass workers party with a revolutionary socialist program. But until this gets support, most politically active unionists will continue to vote Labour as the party that gives them something back. No amount of talk about Labour and National being the same will convince these workers to vote for a Party that cannot be in a Labour-led government.

That's why come election time refusing to bloc with these workers in a united front to put Labour in office to once more expose its fundamental class collaboration and prove in practice that workers cannot put faith in this party, or the CTU leadership that is the main prop of the Labour Party, is sectarian in the true sense of the word i.e. putting narrow party interests ahead of the workers’ class interests.

After two days of hard fighting to resist the attack of the counterrevolutionary forces of the small cooperativista bosses supported and armed by Walter Villarroel – then mining Minister in Morales` government and a cooperativista boss himself –the heroic Huanuni miners stopped their attackers taking of the mine. 500 wage-earning miners and their wives, sisters and daughters of the Housewives Committee confronted 2000 cooperativistas and defended their mine, their houses, their town, their families and their historical gains. They had to pay the price of several comrades fallen in the struggle.

Thus while bargaining with the fascist Media Luna bourgeoisie and the transnationals in the fake Constituent Assembly, Morales intended to secure the huge tin reserves of the Huanuni mine, especially Posokoni Hill’s 948,000 tons valued in 4000 million dollars, for the profit-hungry “cooperativista” national bourgeoisie, driven by a world tin price which has risen from U$S 4890 per metric ton in 2003 to….. U$S 7385 in 2006!

The attack of the cooperativistas bosses was the Morales' government reply to the successful struggle of Huanuni miners who, with campesinos, unemployed and a sector of the workers exploited by the cooperativista bosses, had just forced the government to let the state mining company Comibol (Corporacion Minera Boliviana, or Bolivian Mining Corporation) work the mine in Posokoni Hill and to create 1500 new jobs in Huanuni.

Following this agreement, thousands of unemployed miners and many of those enslaved by the cooperativista bosses, started to arrive from all over the country at Huanuni in the hope of getting their jobs back in the state mines, and to win back their rights, their old living standards and their dignity.

The popular front government of Morales, servant of the transnationals, would not allow the agreement with the Huanuni miners to be honored. That is why it encouraged and organized the cooperativista bosses to attack the Huanuni workers and retake the mine.

But Morales’ plan failed because of the heroic resistance of the miners and their workers self-defence organisation. On the evening of 6 October, a provisional truce was signed between the wage-earning miners and the cooperativista bosses, and negotiations were opened.

During the next weekend, the wage-earning miners and Huanuni townspeople held a wake for the dead and then buried their five comrades who fell in combat, along with the three Huanuni townspeople killed by dynamite thrown by cooperativista bosses.

After the Huanuni battle, both Evo Morales and the bourgeois tried cynically to present themselves as the “peacemakers”.

But it is they, together with the imperialist transnationals, who steal the wealth of Bolivia and drive the masses into misery. And it is they who sent the fascist gangs, the army, the cooperativista bosses thugs to kill the workers.

Reaching the height of cynicism, Evo Morales asked the people to be “understanding” with him about the “mistakes” that he made due to his “inexperience” as he “had never governed” and that was “learning”. “Learning”….. yes! “learning” how to kill workers, as bosses do, and every bourgeois government serving the interests of the transnationals and imperialism like the one he is heading!

There is no doubt that Morales has proved to be a very apt “student”. In just a few months, he has murdered in Oruro a worker from the Movimiento Sin Techo (Movement of the Homeless); in the Chapare, two coca peasants, and now the Huanuni wage-earning miners.

After sending the cooperativistas to massacre the miners, Morales “denounced” it all as a “conspiracy” against his government and raised the alarm of a ‘coup’ being prepared by a “united front of destabilizers” including police, army officers, the separatist bourgeoisie of the Media Luna and… the school teachers with the wage-earning miners and their unions, the COB, the COR of El Alto, etc.!

Bastards! The only “conspiracy” here is that between Morales' government with Villarroel and the cooperativista bosses to massacre Huanuni miners and steal their mines! It is the transnationals and the national bourgeoisie together who conspire against the exploited masses of Bolivia to steal its hydrocarbons and its minerals! It is Morales' class collaborationist government and MAS members in the parliament together with the fascist bourgeoisie of the Media Luna, who conspire against the people and the worker and peasant revolution in that fake Constituent Assembly!

It was Evo Morales with MAS and the collaborationist leaderships of the worker and peasant organizations who in October 2003, conspired behind the rebellious masses’ backs, expropriated their victory in overthrowing Goni and handed power over to Mesa! And they conspired again in June 2005, when the masses in struggle had overthrown Mesa: they delivered the power to Rodriguez overnight, within a session of an unlawful parliament brought together in Sucre and surrounded by the hatred of those masses!

Morales' government –as every class collaborationist government led by the national bourgeoisie associated with the transnationals and the international financial capital –has not even thought about confronting the bourgeoisies from Santa Cruz/ Media Luna, which are openly secessionist and are barefacedly arming fascist brigades in order to smash the workers and peasants.

Before taking charge, Morales went to Santa Cruz to ask the oil and landowner oligarchy to “teach him how to govern” because he was going to take care of controlling the rebel worker and peasant masses. He has learnt perfectly from his teachers, to kill workers and poor peasants. This is the government that makes pacts with the secessionist bourgeoisie of the Media Luna in the Constituent Assembly, while sending the counterrevolutionary forces to massacre the miners.

This is the infamous role of the popular front, of the old Stalinist policy of class collaboration with which hundreds of revolutions and the world proletariat have been strangled for decades; a policy supported today by that den of counterrevolutionary bandits of the World Social Forum.

Down with the pact between the anti-worker and repressive government of Morales and the native slave-owner bourgeoisie, the Cruceña oligarchy!

Enough of making the proletariat and its struggle organizations kneel at the feet of the bourgeoisie!

Let’s regroup forces now around Huanuni heroic miners resistance!

The Bolivian working class needs a program and a strategy to win and renew the revolution that, from October 2003, has been snatched by the World Social Forum!

The COB and FSTMB leaders call for the “militarization” of Huanuni to subordinate the workers to the supposedly “patriotic” soldiers and give away the tin business to them.

Spilling their blood in their struggle, the heroic Huanuni miners spoiled the counterrevolutionary plan of the popular front. They prevented the mine from being stolen and re-opened the prospects for the worker and peasant revolution, now stolen, to rise up again. They could have re-conquered –this time in Huanuni- the “headquarters of the revolution”, raising its key demands.

Nationalization without compensation and under workers’ control of all the mines and the hydrocarbons!

Out with the transnationals, expropriation of the landowners!

Land for the peasants, bread and good jobs for all the workers!, etc.

But this prospect has been barred time and again until now by the collaborationist leaders of the worker organizations (mainly the COB and the FSTMB) that support Morales' bourgeois government.

Facing this counterrevolutionary attack of the cooperativistas against the Huanuni wage-earning miners, these leaders called for “pacification” and asked their “friend” Morales to send the armed forces to Huanuni to “defend” the mine, as the COMIBOL is state property. Moreover, these leaders use the possibility of a new attack by the cooperativistas, as a gun pointing at the miners’ heads to scare them and their families so as to force them to accept the policy of leaving their fate in the hands of the “nationalist” sector of the murderous military.

Montes and the COB leadership are asking “their” government, “their” friend Morales to send the supposedly “nationalist” officers that support him, to impose order because of the danger that the workers in Huanuni fighting back could mean the regrouping of the whole Bolivian proletariat.

The policy of COB and FSTMB leadership is only one more step in their treacherous class collaborationist politics of keeping the workers subordinated to the bourgeoisie, their ranks divided, and the worker and peasant revolution strangled.

These same leaders – the COB bureaucracy in first place – have abandoned thousands of unemployed to their fate, without organizing them, so allowing them to be enslaved and super-exploited by the cooperativista bosses and today used as anti-union armed thugs against the Huanuni wage-labour miners. The COB bureaucracy – formerly Solares, now Montes- have devoted themselves to dissolve the embryonic dual power organisations that the masses had built. Moreover, they handed over power twice to the bourgeoisie, first to Mesa, then to Rodríguez, and on top of that they called for workers to support their “friend” Morales.

Today when demanding the “militarization” of Huanuni, Montes and the Miners Union leadership are only repeating the old treacherous Lechinite [from the MNR union bureaucrat, Lechin, who sold-out the 1952 Bolivian revolution] policy of the COB bureaucracy of looking for “patriotic”, “anti-imperialist”, “red” soldiers to subordinate the proletariat to those “saviors”.

In that way the bureaucrats manage to deepen the division in the proletarian ranks, keeping them subdued to the popular front and so preventing the workers and peasant alliance being reforged again. As a reward for this “service”, they lure the sector of the Armed Forces that supposedly supports the national bourgueoisie –offering it the lucrative tin business.

This policy of finding “patriotic officers” had been already raised by Solares during May-June 2005. Then he went to knock on the doors of the barracks looking for allies to sell out the masses’ revolutionary days of struggle which were aimed at completely disorganising the bourgeois power institutions.

It is the same policy of Juan Lechin Oquendo then leader of the COB, who along with the Stalinists and Lora`s POR, which betrayed the 1971 revolution. Then they hand the revolution to General Torres –who even talked about “socialism –and joined his “Revolutionary Anti-imperialist Front” while Banzer`s bloody dictatorship was massacring the workers and poor peasants.

The imposition of this ‘patriotic’ class collaborationist policy of the bureaucratic leadership, meant the miners victory won through their joint struggle with the poor peasants and the unemployed, winning 1500 jobs under COMIBOL collective contract conditions was lost.

This class collaboration policy deepens the divisions in the workers’ ranks because it separates the Huanuni wage-earning miners –supposedly “guarded” by the armed forces –from the thousands of cooperativista poor miners. It leaves these super exploited workers at the mercy of the cooperativista bosses to enslave them and use them as armed gangs against the working class.

This policy also separates the Huanuni miners from the poor peasants, because the miners are prevented from joining forces with the campesinos who had their martyrs killed Armed Forces in 2003, and today suffer the repression of the “anti-drug” army brigades in El Chapare or Las Yungas!

The COB called a “national strike” for October 10, precisely with this program of demanding Huanuni`s militarization. A program that that is intended to make the miners and the whole working class kneel down before the criminal policy of class collaboration with the supposedly “nationalist” sector of the murderous army officers caste! But this totally symbolic measure wasn`t followed by the large majority of Bolivian workers that hate the murderous officers caste and still call for justice for their class brothers and sisters killed in October 2003.

But once more, the COB and FSTMB leaders enjoyed the assistance of the fake Trotskyism to carry throug this policy. Lora`s POR joined the chorus of those calling for the militarization of Huanuni, applying that old policy of Stalinism in search of a “red” military to subdue the proletariat to. (see box below)

The same old Stalinist policy of a bloc with the “patriot” military has long been tragic for the Latin American proletariat. Thus, during the glorious Chilean revolution of the “cordones industriales” (industrial belts, the name given to the linked nuclei of soviet-type organizations in that revolution) in the ‘70s, the Socialist Party and the Comunist Party –both of the supported by the same counterrevolutionary policy of the Castroite bureaucracy – made the Chilean workers believe there could be a “peaceful road to socialism”.

They made them believe that without arming themselves they could defend their gains; that without creating dual power, splitting the army and the murderous officers caste, they could achieve national liberation. In hundreds of revolutions this Stalinist policy has been already been proved to be counter-revolutionary. In the Chilean tragedy, the “patriotic” officer who was appointed by Allende as Commander in Chief of the Amy, was no other than… Pinochet, the dictator who massacred the Chilean workers and poor peasants.

Stop the workers’ organizations kneeling at the feet of Morales’ government with its pacts with business and the Cruceña oligarchy!

Down with the murderous officers caste of the Bolivian army!

For committees of rank and file soldiers that democratically choose their officers and send delegates to all the worker and peasant organizations!

Against the policy of Morales and the COB Castroite leadership, we Trotskyists say that the only way to stop the killings in Huanuni and to smash the fascist gangs that are being formed , is to take the path of the heroic Bolivian revolution of 1952 that destroyed the army and created worker and campesino militias of the COB.

Throw out of the workers organizations the bosses’ agents and the murderous officers’ caste of the armed forces!

Everybody to Huanuni!

Assemblies from all the workers and campesinos movements to send delegates to Huanuni now!

The Bolivian revolution must rise up again, rebuild its headquarters, expel from its ranks the treacherous leaders who collaborate with the class enemy, and re-enter the road of October 2003 and of the Bolivian revolution of 1952.

Oppose the fraud of the “Bolivarian Revolution” proclaimed by the national bourgeoisie and their major imperialists partners all over the continent (such as MERCOSUR and the TLC) who are preventing the masses from defending themselves from the governments and regimes attacking them as in Mexico and Chile.

Oppose the traitors who make the proletariat kneel at the feet of Chávez whose oil feeds the US-UK war machine that massacres in Iraq, and prepares the way for Fidel Castro to restore capitalism in Cuba.

In summary, oppose the den of thieves of the revolution in the World Social Forum, and renew the Bolivian revolution again to fight for the workers and campesinos revolution, demolishing and destroying the machinery of the bourgeois state.

Out with the counter-revolutionary armed thugs of the cooperativista bosses sent by Evo Morales Government and the transnational companies to divide and smash the miners!

Stop the “Bolivarian Revolution” fraud!

For the worker and peasant revolution!

International Supplement of the Internationalist Trotskyists of Bolivia and Argentina

Jointly Issued by Octubre Rojo Internacionalista (Bolivia) – Liga Obrera Internacionalista-CI (Argentina) Members of the Leninist Trotskyist Fraction (LFT)

10 October 2006

POR and LOR: The Role of the fake Trotskyists at Huanuni

The renegades –fake Trotskyists – (former Trotskyists who claim to still be Trotskyists) are a left leg of the treacherous class-collaborationist policy of the COB leaders that sells-out the workers struggle.

Facing the Huanuni events, Lora’s POR again played the same deadly role it has been playing since October 2003: as the fundamental support of the Castroite bureaucracy (first Solares, now Montes) at the head of the COB.

POR leads a number of unions e.g. the La Paz city teachers, retired miners of Cochabamba, and student unions in different Bolivian universities. POR could have sent dozens of delegates with a mandate from the rank and file, voted by grass-root assemblies of the organizations it leads, in support of the wage-earning miners. Those forces, together with the Huanuni miners, could have called for the El Alto worker organizations to break with the collaborationist leadership of Patana and Mamani and to recreate the headquarters of the revolution. POR has done none of this.

Far from this, speaking about Morales’ government, POR wrote in its paper:“Facing the bloody evidence of the systematic assaults of the cooperativistas whose aim is to control all of Posokoni Hill, (Morales government) refused to use the public force to prevent the confrontation. And when the bloody events occured, it proved its incapacity to prevent the slaughter choosing to transfer its responsibility to (the state office for) Human Rights, the Ombudsman and the Clergy (Masas Nº 2012, 13/10/06, our emphasis).

So Lora’s POR, like Montes of the COB and the leaders of the FSTMB, makes Evo responsible for not having sent the “public forces” –that is, the cops and the murderous Armed Forces- to Huanuni. Not very surprising! It is the same old POR policy of telling the workers they have to build an alliance with the (supposedly) “red officers” of the army, which that party has organized for decades in the organization “Vivo Rojo”.(Red Alive) Today the POR advances the same policy that 35 years ago help to strangle the 1971 Bolivian revolution, by supporting – together with COB bureaucracy and the Stalinists – General Torres the then-president of Bolivia whom they introduced as an “anti imperialist” and even “socialist” officer.

So, while the leadership of the COB, the Stalinists, POR and other groups were entertaining themselves talking in the Popular Assembly, they adamantly refused to organize the workers and peasants’ militias to confront the coup General Banzer was openly preparing. As a result workers and peasants were utterly defeated and massacred, while Lechín (then COB’s head), Lora and his POR and General Torres (already deposed), organized abroad, “in exile” a “Revolutionary Anti-imperialist Front” that had the goal of seizing power and achieving socialism in Bolivia.!!!

But POR`s infamous policy doesn’t end here. The article above also says “…in this struggle, the wage-earning miners embody Bolivian interests and it is inconceivable that the State will not assume its responsibility for holding onto its own wealth (…). The wage-earning miners’ struggle is the struggle of the entire country. It is all about the destiny of the national economy and that is why a big mobilization of the exploited is imperative to force this government to renew the state mining business. Which means the restitution to the COMIBOL of the management of the most important mines that are today operated by private (both national and transnational) medium and large mining companies," (our emphasis).

It is impossible to speak more clearly. Lora’s POR calls to exert pressure on the popular front government and the bourgeois state. It is feeding illusions of the possibility that a bourgeois government, which in the end is a servant of the transnational monopolies, to meet the Bolivian miners and entire working class’ demands of nationalization of the whole mining business without compensation and under workers control! Alas, it is the same government that has just handed over El Mutun hill, just sent the fascist cooperativistas’ armed gangs to kill the Huanuni miners!

POR proves once more to be the party of the Castroite bureaucracy in the Bolivian revolution, the same role played by all the liquidators of Trotskyism on our continent, having dragged the flag of the Fourth International under the feet of Stalinism.

As a fifth leg of this treacherous class-collaborationist policy, there is the PTS from Argentina and its satellite group in Bolivia, LOR (CI). The PTS says: “the wage-earning miners had got solidarity not just from their community but also from other miners, students and popular sectors of Oruro. The Bolivian Worker Center (that is, the COB) marched on Tuesday along La Paz streets in solidarity with Huanuni and its demands” (LVO 208, 12/10/06). There is no mention of Montes` policy of “militarization”, so in fact covering up and whitewashing the COB class-collaborationist leadership.

In these matters of life and death for the proletariat, the PTS and its satellites don’t show the least interest. Why bother? They already have their Constituent Assembly, that which they claimed during 2003 had to be set up in Bolivia!

For them, the masses would be now “having their experience with bourgeois democracy”. PTS’ policy for an IPT [Workers Political Institution, a euphemism for PT] has already failed as well as their flirting with Solares [former COB head] and the COB bureaucracy. They are unquestionably a useless link in Bolivian reformism, but always happily hanging from the skirts of those responsible for the handing over of the Bolivian revolution –the COB bureaucracy.

We ask them: Would you please show us a program to confront fascism with a tactics of united front of all the working class and popular fighting organizations in Bolivia? Silence. Perhaps, a policy to remove definitely the COB treacherous leadership, sending delegates to fight in Huanuni and re-group working class ranks? Silence. What do you think about “national” armed forces going to “defend” the miners, as Montes and POR proclaim? Silence…. Silence is the only answer.

http://redrave.blogspot.com/2006/10/bolivia-leninist-trotskyist-statement.html

On the 2 of October, 38 years since the massacre of Tlatelolco in 1968,(1) the eyes of the proletarian vanguard of the Americas and the world are fixed on the workers and people of that Mexican city that have created their own Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) against the power of the bourgeois ruling class.

There, on the 14 of June, defeating the police and the forces of repression sent by the PRI Governor Ulises Ruiz to smash their occupation of the central plaza of Oaxaca, the Zocalo, the striking teachers, took control of the city, created the Popular Assembly, formed their own self-defense committees, and established the workers and campesinos’ Commune of Oaxaca.(2) This commune is a revolutionary conquest not only of the Mexican working class, but of America and the world, yet it will not prevail unless its struggle and demands are generalised and adopted by the rest of the workers and poor farmers of Mexico and the world.

The heroic struggle of the Oaxaca Commune is at the head of the enormous workers and campesinos’ insurgency that has been shaking Mexico for several months, like the miners and steel workers of Michoacán, and the workers and campesinos uprisings in Atenco and Texcoco. The call has gone out to the workers of Mexico and the world to come to the defence of the Oaxaca commune. It is surrounded by the military forces of Fox and his successor Calderón, and by the PRI paramilitaries, who are defending the PRI state government of Ulises Ruiz, demanding that the leaders of the APPO “negotiate”. But If the APPO remains firm in its central demand to replace Ruiz, the ruling regime of the Mexican bourgeoisie in collaboration with US imperialism, is prepared to smash the Commune in blood and fire.

It is no accident that this rising insurgency has its parallel on the other side of the “border” in the United States, where 12 million Latino migrants have begun to fightback against the slave labor conditions and racist persecution of the immigration laws in the United States. Joining together in this struggle, the US and Mexican masses are rising up against imperialist domination of Latin America, and against its re-colonisation offensive under NAFTA that imposes slave labor conditions and super-exploitation of workers and campesinos on both sides of the border. Because in Mexico and the United States there is only one working class and one revolution, the ghost of the Mexican revolution now haunts the US imperialists who know that no 'Wall', ‘border police’ or ‘minutemen militias’ can prevent that revolution from entering the heart of US imperialism.

The revolutionary upsurge of the working class and exploited peoples of Mexico, creating their advance guard in the Oaxaca Commune, joined with the struggle of their class brothers and sisters in the US, and alongside the heroic struggles of the Chilean working class and the resistance of the Bolivian workers vanguard defending the mines of Huanuni, proves that the Latin American revolution is alive and resisting the fraud of the “Bolivarian Revolution” of Chávez, Morales, Fidel Castro and the World Social Forum that is today showing its true face by killing miners at Huanuni to defend the client regimes and governments of MERCOSUR that serve the imperialist monopolies.

NAFTA enslaves Mexico to imperialism and the fraudulent and repressive ‘transitional’ regime of ‘alternates’

Today the Mexican masses are rising up after 12 years of resistance to the North American Free Trade Agreement, the NAFTA, which began on 1st January 1994. The day that NAFTA came into effect, the campesinos of Chiapas rose up in an armed rebellion. To the war cry of “Down with the NAFTA” the insurgents stood up against the pact that allowed imperialism to strip them their land rights under the 1917 Constitution. The Chiapas popular rebellion and the economic crisis – the “tequilazo” – that followed shortly after, severely weakened the legitimacy of the Priato, the regime of the PRI that had ruled semi-colonial Mexico for more than 50 years. (3)

In order to prevent the masses from sweeping away the Priato, the imperialists and the Mexican bourgeoisie negotiated the “transition pact” – also supported by the PAN and the PRD – which consisted of measures to combat electoral corruption and fraud, including the “democratization” of the PRI.

But despite these reforms, the Priato collapsed in 2000 under renewed attack by the masses, who breaking from their bureaucratic leaders began mobilisations of students, workers and campesinos. For example, in the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) students went on strike for 10 months, and then occupied the university to force the release of 200 prisoners. At the Mexe Teachers College (in Tepatepec, Hildago province) students went on strike over poverty conditions and were supported by workers and campesinos who disarmed police and took them as hostages to force the release of imprisoned students.(4)

In the face of what looked like the re-opening of the Mexican revolution, imperialism and its lackey bourgeoisie, abandoned the Priato and its failed “transition pact” and devised a new plan to divert the masses back to the elections to vote for ‘alternatives’ to the hated PRI. The different fractions of the bourgeoisie create a new regime – the “regime of the alternates”. Instead of a single-party system like the Priato, the three parties, the PRI, PAN and PRD (both the PAN and PRD had emerged out of the PRI in the 1990s) were to be presented as ‘alternative’ governments.

The PRD and EZLN ‘baits’ the trap

To set this trap, they used the ‘leftist’ credentials of the leaders of the PRD, in particular Cardenas, and the EZLN, who had already signed the ‘San Andréas Accords’ in 1996 with the PRI, in which they renounced the fight against NAFTA and the Priato for land rights, in exchange for the “formal autonomy” of the Chiapas peasant communities. In 1997 the PRI lost control of Congress, and in 2000 Fox and the PAN won the presidency, ending the 70 year rule of the Priato. So came into existence, the first ‘alternate’ government, that of the PAN.

Thus in Mexico the political regime changed without any direct intervention of the revolutionary masses, but on the basis of an agreement between different fractions of the bourgeoisie and imperialism. This self-reform of the bourgeois regime from above we call ‘Bismarkism’ as it is loosely analagous to the policy of the bourgeois German Chancellor, Bismarck, in the late 19th century.

In the revolution of 1848 in France, for the first time in history, the rising proletariat had entered the fight against the monarchy on the side of the bourgeoisie, but then threatened to overthrow the bourgeoisie itself. The terrified French and European bourgeoisies turned and smashed the working class with blood and fire. To avoid the same threat in Germany, Bismarck negotiated a ‘peaceful’ transition to a bourgeois regime which allowed German capitalism to develop without the revolutionary overthrow of feudal social relations.

It is in this sense that we call the plan of the Mexican bourgeoisie to reform the regime from above in a pact with US imperialism, ‘Bismarckian’. But today, it is ‘senile’ because in the epoch of imperialism the destruction of the productive forces means that the ‘compromise’ between reactionary imperialism and the national bourgeoisie leaves no room for ‘democracy’, and so ‘Bismarckism’ must directly attack the proletarian revolution.

With the electoral victory of Fox in 2000, the Mexican bourgeoisie paraded this senile Bismarckian regime before the masses as the ultimate in 'democracy'. But this regime was just as dedicated to the NAFTA and administering the double and triple chains of super-exploitation of Mexico, that it was a no less fraudulent, corrupt and repressive than the old Priato. The ‘alternate’ PAN government became the direct agent of US imperialism. Despite its formal ‘parliamentary democracy’, it took on a Bonapartist character, attempting to reconcile class conflict in the ‘national’ interest. Yet, like the Priato, it resorted to the same old fraud in stealing the 2006 Presidential election from the PRD. So in the eyes of the masses, it took the PAN just 6 years to exhaust its ‘democratic’ credentials and to pass on the defence of ‘democracy’ to the defeated ‘third alternate’ the PRD.

The ‘alternate’ PRD led by Lopez Obrador (AMLO) and supported on the ‘left by the Stalinists, Castroists, and the fake-Trotskyists in the WSF, today plays a key role in containing the exploited and oppressed masses, preventing their protest against the Fox-Calderón electoral fraud from turning the Federal District (DF) and all of Mexico into one big Oaxaca Commune.

This explains the occupation of the Zocalo of Mexico City “against fraud” and “for democracy”, and the PRD's support of the APPO’s demand to remove the PRI machine in their state by constitutional means. By posing as anti-imperialist and pro-democracy the PRD leadership tries to fool the masses into thinking that they can have ‘democracy’ without breaking with imperialism. This is the real fraud because Obrador and the PRD have no interest in breaking from NAFTA and US imperialism.

The critical role played by Lopez Obrador, and also by the EZLN – as we shall see below – is in response to the uprisings of the workers and farmers to the NAFTA regime. When the masses threaten to make a revolution and wipe the NAFTA regime off the map, the ‘third alternate’, the PRD comes to its aid, backed by the prominent Latin American leaders of the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ and their agents in Mexico, and supported by Castroism and all the reformist leaders in the World Social Forum.

Defend the Oaxaca Commune!

Down with Ulises Ruiz! All power to the APPO!

For all militant workers and campesinos organisations in Mexico to send mandated delegates of the base to Oaxaca to organize its defense and a nationawide general strike!

After 12 years of NAFTA, US imperialism has intensified its offensive against Mexico to complete the re-colonisation of Mexico and guarantee its superprofits. It wants to privatise PEMEX (Mexican State Petroleum) and and the national electricity company. It is no accident that the new president, Felipe Calderón, winning by fraud, is the ex-minister of energy of the Fox government.

The anti-imperialist uprisings are the workers, campesinos, and students reply to imperialism’s offensive, and the Oaxaca Commune is the most advanced of these uprisings. The Mexican bourgeoisie, the government of Fox-Calderón and the NAFTA regime are well aware of the terrible danger that the Commune – whose example begins to spread far and wide in Mexico to Guerrero and at least 10 other states – poses to their private property and class rule.

They understand clearly that in Oaxaca there are two absolutely irreconcilable class forces facing each other. On one side, is the power of the imperialistic monopolies, the national bourgeoisie, and its armed institutions and paramilitary gangs. On the other side, is the power of the workers, campesinos and other oppressed people of Oaxaca with their own institution – the APPO. The APPO unites almost 400 workers', campesinos', students' and popular organisations in struggle, provides its own independent justice, has formed its own organs of self-defense, and is now the only power recognised as legitimate by the workers and the all exploited Oaxaqueños.

That is why US imperialism and its lackey NAFTA bourgeoisie offer APPO the “carrot” of negotiation, but at the same time prepare their military forces to smash it. This is just like the popular front government of Morales in Bolivia. While seated at the negotiation table with the union miners of Huanuni and agreeing to the 1500 jobs that the people of region demanded, at the same time it was conspiring with the self-employed miners to attack the union miners and to privatize the mine!

The same trap is being prepared against the Comuneros of Oaxaca. While the Secretary of the Oaxala state government says that he will meet the demands of the teachers for increased pay, drop the charges against the leaders of the APPO and release the political prisoners, the Senate rejects the only non-negotiatable demand of the APPO, for the removal of the state governor Ulises Ruiz (URO), on the constitutional grounds that a ‘vacuum of power’ does not exist.

Some of the leaders of APPO take this as a signal to pressure the rank and file teachers to give up this demand and return to work. But in the event that the rank and file votes to continue the strike then the Fox-Calderon Federal government is preparing, together with the PRI Oaxaca state government, to use the troops and the “porros”, the PRI paramilitaries who have already killed at least 6 strikers, to smash the Commune with blood and fire.(5)

It is necessary to rally the international working class forces in response to the call of the Commune:

Long live the Commune and its demand “All power to the people”!

Down with Ulises Ruiz!

All power to the APPO!

Immediate and unconditional freedom for all political prisoners!

All the militant workers' and campesinos' organisations must send delegates mandated by the rank and file to Oaxaca to guarantee the defense of the Commune and to organize a national general strike to prevent the repression, and to generalise the Commune and its objectives to all the Mexican masses!

The heroic oaxaqueños comuneros have already organized for their self-defense, creating more than 3,000 coordinated and centralized barricades, and workers' and campesinos' self-defence committees to defend them, “Cuerpo to topiles” or “guard corps”.

Immediate formation of defence committees nationwide to defend the workers and campesinos, their organizations and their struggles from the the police and the army, and from the “porros” of the union bureaucracy “charra” and of the white guards of the landowners who openly kill the campesinos!

The EZLN has the responsibility to stop the isolation of Oaxaca!

The workers and campesinos of Chiapas and Guerrero must stand next to their Oaxaqueños brothers and sisters!

Oaxaca cannot be isolated when its slogans, “Down with NAFTA”, “Land for the campesinos” and “Down with the the hated regime”, are the same slogans raised by the Chiapas insurgents in 1994. In the neighboring state of Guerrero the oppressed masses are already building Popular Assemblies.

The workers and campesinos of Chiapas and Guerrero must be the first to respond to the call of their brothers and sisters of the Oaxaca Commune and unite in a same fight against imperialism and the NAFTA regime of the PAN, PRI and PRD!

The EZLN is at the moment giving its verbal support to the fight of the oaxaqueños communeros. Subcomandante Marcos (Delegate Zero) writes letters and crosses Mexico by motor scooter organising the “Other Campaign”. Enough of passivity and verbal support! The EZLN must make available for the defense of the Oaxaca Commune and its struggle for victory, all its resources, and call on the workers and campesinos of Guerrero to rise up and to follow their example, and create a Federation of Workers and Campesinos’ Communes of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas. This is the only way to revive the Mexican revolution, of overthrowing the fraudulent regime of the PAN, PRI and PRD, finishing with imperialism and the NAFTA, expropriating the land for the landless, and realising the demands for which so many of the chiapanecos gave their lives from 1994.

Down with the fraudulent NAFTA regime of the PAN, PRI and the PRD!

To make sure that the Oaxaca Commune survives and is victorious, its struggle and its demands must be taken up by all Mexican workers and campesinos. This means smashing the NAFTA regime of the PAN, PRI and PRD and its fraudulent ‘democracy’. For that reason, it is necessary to raise the demands that the Mexican workers and campesinos organisations break all their ties to the bourgeoisie, and that their leaders immediately convene a National Popular Assembly of delegates of the rank of file of all the workers, students and campesinos’ fighting organisations, to centralize the struggles, and organize national general strike that will continue until the government of Fox-Calderón and the NAFTA regime of PAN, PRI and PRD are swept away, and that a new government that can meet the urgent demands of the exploited masses of Mexico has been created.

Down the regime of the fraudulent NAFTA regime of the PAN, PRI and PRD!

End the NAFTA plunder of Mexico!

Expropriate without compensation the landowners and the imperialists, Land to the landless! Expropriate the bankers without compensation, and create one state bank under workers’ control to provide cheap credit for the campesinos!

No to the privatization of PEMEX!

Nationalize without compensation and under workers control all monopolies and the privatized companies!

Worthwhile work and living wages for all, distributing the working hours among all those willing to work with a minimum wage set by the family cost of living!

Real national independence, land for the landless, and bread and work for the workers are objectives that can only be won by a provisional revolutionary Workers’ and Campesinos' Government, supported by workers’ and campesinos’ militias, following the revolutionary overthrow of the hated NAFTA regime.

A Workers’ and Campesinos’ Government will be the only government capable of guaranteeing a truly sovereign Constituent Assembly that breaks with imperialism, solves the agrarian question and in which the oppressed masses of Mexico can discuss democratically the solutions to its problems.

Emergency call to the workers and poor farmers of the United States, Latin America and of the world:

Stand up in defense of the Commune of Oaxaca!

The main ally of the comuneros of Oaxaca and the Mexican oppressed peoples, is the North American working class, and in particular, the millions of Latino immigrant workers of the United States. For the North American proletariat, the NAFTA means dismissals, wage cuts, loss of rights and privileges, and losses of benefits such as health schemes and pensions. For the Mexican working class and exploited people, the NAFTA is super-exploitation, free trade zones (maquilas), slavery, plundering the nations resources, and driving peasants off the land. The working class of the United States must rise in defense of the Commune of Oaxaca and its Mexican class brothers and sisters, demanding:

We are a same class on both sides of the border!

Down with the NAFTA! Down with the Wall of Bush, Hillary Clinton and Co!

End the persecution, super-exploitation, deportation and murder of the Mexican and Latino immigrant workers in the United States!

Immediate citizenship and all social, economic, political and trade union rights for all immigrant workers!

The NAFTA increases the profits of the US monopolies and the Mexican lackey bourgeoisie, and decreases the wages of the combined North American working class. It is necessary to increase the wages of the the workers and reduce the profits of the bosses on both sides of the border!

Equal pay for equal work!

The same conditions of work and benefits won by North American workers, for Mexican workers!

For the unity of the working class of North America in defeating the union bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO servants of US imperialism and the “Republicrats”, and the Mexican union bureaucracy, “charra”, hired thugs of the NAFTA regime of PAN, PRI and PRD!

The Leninist Trotskyist Fraction, answers the call of the Oaxaca Commune with its own Emergency Call to all workers', students' and poor farmers' organisations of America and the world to take to the streets, to surround the Mexican embassies and consulates, to make mobilizations, strikes etc., in support to the heroic fight of the workers and the oppressed people of Oaxaca to stop the repression and any attempt by Fox, Calderón and the hated NAFTA regime to smash the Commune in blood and fire.

Leninist Trotskyist Fraction - 20 October 2006

http://redrave.blogspot.com/2006/10/all-power-to-people.html

Afterword, 10 November 2006:

Since the above was written events in Oaxaca have taken a serious turn. On 27^th October Priista paramilitaries shot and killed 3 people, one teacher, one neighbor and a US Indymedia journalist Bradley Will.

The next day Fox sent in the the Federal Preventative Police (PFP) a militarised riot police that Fox recently created to suppress popular uprisings.

The PFP continues to occupy Oaxaca city having taken over the Zocala. However, they have not prevented the APPO from retaining control of most of town outside the Zocala, and from holding the University which houses Radio APPO from a determined assault on Thursday November 2^nd a staunch defence in which the supporters of APPO confronted the PFP with rocks, sticks and any weapons they could find. Another megamarch of over 1 million took place in Oaxaca on Sunday November 6 drawing thousands of supporters from many parts of Mexico.

Fox’s tactic is to use the PFP as an overwhelming force to prevent the APPO from regaining the Zocala and public buildings while he negotiates with the APPO leadership and tries to get Ulises Ruiz to resign.

Meanwhile the CND (National Democratic Convention) which arose out of the widespread resistance to the fraudulent election of Philip Calderon in July, is now supporting the APPO and trying to bring this grass-roots movement together with the PRD leadership plan to declare and alternative government to the PAN on November 19, the anniversary of the Mexican National Revolution of 1910.

Our program is to call for the formation of APPOs and defense militias everywhere, to call for strikes in the key industrial sectors, to build for a general strike to bring down the PAN regime, and to split the PRD base from the AMLO leadership, and the base of the military from the officers, and so form a Provisional Worker and Campesino Government

_.

_{We fight for Socialist Revolution!}

We fight to overthrow Capitalism

Historically, capitalism expanded world-wide to free much of humanity from the bonds of feudal or tribal society, and developed the economy, society and culture to a new higher level. But it could only do this by exploiting the labour of the productive classes to make its profits. To survive, capitalism became increasingly destructive of "nature" and humanity. In the early 20^th century it entered the epoch of imperialism in which successive crises unleashed wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions. Today we fight to end capitalism’s wars, famine, oppression and injustice, by mobilising workers to overthrow their own ruling classes and bring to an end the rotten, exploitative and oppressive society that has exceeded its use-by date.

We fight for Socialism.

By the 20th century, capitalism had created the pre-conditions for socialism –a world-wide working class and modern industry capable of meeting all our basic needs. The potential to eliminate poverty, starvation, disease and war has long existed. The October Revolution proved this to be true, bringing peace, bread and land to millions. But it became the victim of the combined assault of imperialism and Stalinism. After 1924 the USSR, along with its deformed offspring in Europe, degenerated back towards capitalism. In the absence of a workers political revolution, capitalism was restored between 1990 and 1992. Vietnam and China then followed. In the 21sst century only Cuba and North Korea survive as degenerate workers states. We unconditionally defend these states against capitalism and fight for political revolution to overthrow the bureaucracy as part of world socialism.

We fight to defend Marxism

While the economic conditions for socialism exist today, standing between the working class and socialism are political, social and cultural barriers. They are the capitalist state and bourgeois ideology and its agents. These agents claim that Marxism is dead and capitalism need not be exploitative. We say that Marxism is a living science that explains both capitalism’s continued exploitation and its attempts to hide class exploitation behind the appearance of individual "freedom" and "equality". It reveals how and why the reformist, Stalinist and centrist misleaders of the working class tie workers to bourgeois ideas of nationalism, racism, sexism and equality. Such false beliefs will be exploded when the struggle against the inequality, injustice, anarchy and barbarism of capitalism in crisis, led by a revolutionary Marxist party, produces a revolutionary class-consciousness.

We fight for a Revolutionary Party

The bourgeois and its agents condemn the Marxist party as totalitarian. We say that without a democratic and a centrally organised party there can be no revolution. We base our beliefs on the revolutionary tradition of Bolshevism and Trotskyism. Such a party, armed with a transitional programme, forms a bridge that joins the daily fight to defend all the past and present gains won from capitalism, to the victorious socialist revolution. Defensive struggles for bourgeois rights and freedoms, for decent wages and conditions, will link up the struggles of workers of all nationalities, genders, ethnicities and sexual orientations, bringing about movements for workers control, political strikes and the arming of the working class, as necessary steps to workers' power and the smashing of the bourgeois state. Along the way, workers will learn that each new step is one of many in a long march to revolutionise every barrier put in the path to the victorious revolution.

We fight for Communism.

Communism stands for the creation of a classless, stateless society beyond socialism that is capable of meeting all human needs. Against the ruling class lies that capitalism can be made "fair" for all; that nature can be "conserved"; that socialism and communism are "dead"; we raise the red flag of communism to keep alive the revolutionary tradition of the' Communist Manifesto of 1848, the Bolshevik-led October Revolution; the Third Communist International until 1924, the revolutionary Fourth International up to 1940 before its collapse into centrism. We fight to build a new, Fifth, Communist International, as a world party of socialism capable of leading workers to a victorious struggle for socialism.

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, New Zealand.

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

Mail address: PO Box 6595, Auckland, New Zealand.

Email [email protected]

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

NZ Troops out of Tonga

Fiji heads for another Coup

NDU in bed with Labour

Nationalise Feltex

Re-Nationalise Air NZ

Is Labour ‘middle class’?

Battle for Huanuni Mine

Long Live the Oaxaca Commune!

Take back Stolen Maori Land!

NZ and the Pacific is Australian imperialism’s backyard . . .

. . . as Latin America is US imperialism’s backyard.

Union Fight

NDU/Progressive settlement embeds class collaborationist partnership model

Nationalise Feltex under Workers Control!

Take Back Air New Zealand, no compensation,

and under Workers’ Control!

Occupy! Get union Green bans on the block!

Take back stolen Maori Land!

LABOUR PARTY

From ‘working class’ to ‘middle class’ Party?