Aotearoa: Make the Bosses Pay for their Crisis!

Afghanisan: Defeat the Imperialist Invaders!

South Africa: Forward to the General Strike!

Argentina: Zanon occupation sold-out

Debate on China as Imperialist

IFLT delegation at antiwar assembly

Founding Congress of LFTI July 2009

 

Bennett Bashes Beneficiaries

As the recession deepens laid-off workers by the thousand are lining up to claim a right won through bitter struggle in earlier depressions- namely the right to an unemployment benefit. The capitalist overclass and their parliamentary representatives have anticipated this and are desperately seeking ways to divert the rising tide of working class outrage at the ways they are immensely profiting from a crisis of their own creation. Having in opposition wept crocodile tears about the emergence in NZ of an ‘underclass’ they are now in government reverting to their time honoured posture of blaming that ‘underclass’ of beneficiaries for all the social social evils spawned by decadent capitalism as a prelude to attacks on working class entitlements, including citzenship rights such as the client confidentiality of beneficiaries and the democratic right to criticize the government without having one’s privacy violated. In doing so they fully intent on creating an underclass in the sense of a stratum of society denied full citizenship status. The corporate media are complicit in this attack on society’s most vulnerable, and have abetted welfare minister Paula Bennett’s crime by publishing the names of those whose income’s she revealed and enthusiastically participated in the redneck abuse to which this has exposed them.

The strategy of picking on beneficiaries conveniently diverts media attention from parliamentarian’s perks such as travel allowances and subsidised housing. (While speaking of subsidised housing, let’s remember that amongst the supplementary benefits that can swell a beneficiary’s apparent income is the Accommodation Supplement, which is available to employed workers but is nothing but a state subsidy to capitalist landlords.)  However its main thrust is to create division in the working class and cultivate the fascist mentality which they will find so useful to smashing worker’s organisations. Workers, whether still employed or laid-off must not allow their solidarity to be so easily undermined.

The beneficiaries under attack had dared criticise Bennett for scrapping the Training Incentive Allowances which presumably had helped Bennett herself escape from the despised underclass. Other measures the Key government is currently undertaking to make the victims of their crisis pay for it are the cutting of funding for community education and the restriction of access to certain special benefits such as the Independent Youth Benefit. In the latter case young workers are being offered places in the Army’s Limited Service Volunteer Scheme and told that declining could mean the loss of IYB. As Key & Co deepen NZ’s involvement in imperialist war they are capitalising on the propaganda value of Corporal Apiata’s VC and following in Mussolini’s footsteps by ‘firing unemployment out of the barrel of a gun.’ The working class has seen it all before and the world has seen it once too often.

Kiwi Banksters Rule OK

The NACTS new ETS is a victory for international finance capital. They can invest in NZ and be confidence in the knowledge that there will be carbon costs to deduct from their super-profits. Industry can pollute without paying any of the costs. They don’t even have to go through the pretence of paying a carbon tax, or buying carbon credits and passing on the cost to the consumer. No the NACT government is so confident of its popular mandate that it doesn’t even both disguising the fact that the costs of  carbon emissions will be paid for by the taxpayer-  that is the working class.

This is something that the ACT party could have supported, but National has to make some gesture towards recognising Climate Change to continue sucking up to the US. On the other hand they did not want to impose even the minimal charges for Climate Change in the existing ETS passed into law by the Labour Government last year. So to balance themselves between ACT and Labour they did a deal with the Maori Party to get the votes they needed.

The Maori Party retracted its minority report which said the polluters should pay, in exchange for a few token beads and blankets (targeted welfare provision etc) but more importantly, Maori forestry and fisheries can take advantage of the massive cross subsidies from the taxpayer to pay for their pollution. Maybe Tariana Turia and Peter Sharples think that this is justice and recompense for the theft of land and the Foreshore and Seabed.

 

Make the Bosses’ Pay for Their Crisis!

 

Whose Recession?

World capitalism is a system that is now more destructive than it is useful.  Destruction has been to the lives of the labouring class, and to the productive land, building, machinery; destroying the forces of production. The financial crisis coming out of the USA banking sector and rippling out through their finance institutions around the world is one aspect of this.  Banks use interest rate increases to squeeze (with a death grip) profit from loans to industrial capitalists and that layer of workers who have taken loans (mortgages). Industry passes the bill onto its labourers through every-which-way; restructuring, plant closures, layoffs and wages cuts. 

The other feature of capitalisms destruction is causing direct damage to the means of production.  The biggest example is through the state of war that the USA has been in. They have to have the record for the  most invasions in world history: flying around dropping bombs and sending invading troops into numerous countries, the most recent Afghanistan and Honduras, not to mention their clandestine methods by the CIA. Dropping death and destruction: Labourers of the towns and cities lose their work when whole buildings (and machinery) are destroyed. Labourers of the countryside lose livestock, tools, crops, and land itself to the US bombing, since unexploded bombs ruin the land – unusable. 

This crisis is world capitalism in its death agony, yet in its convulsions it tightens its grip on the labourers to squeeze profit from our lives.  They are having the crisis and putting it all onto the working class to pay for it: It is the working class through our human labour that is productive, and is the source of all value.  Capitalism is so destructive it is strangling & killing the working class. 

Around the world capitalist governments defend the capitalists and attack workers.  Many states have said they will protect workers money in the banks by guaranteeing funds against banks/finance companies failing.  This is protection for the finance capitalist as a bailout, and the working class will pay for it since we produce the wealth. The governments are really protecting the financial capitalist, and they try to sustain the illusion / delusion that some workers have, that the system is alright. 

The government guarantee of the banks is essentially a loan from the working class (through taxes) to keep the finance capitalists afloat. Those same Finance capitalists who are squeezing profits from the working people: from labourers as waged slaves, or ‘self employed’ / (contract slaves) paid on piece rates (per finished job) or in a small business model where the banker (finance capitalist) is behind it all their owner / landlord, since the finance capitalist claims an ownership right on their means of their production.

The USA and other state have also used working class resources to provide a welfare for the industrial capitalists The bailout of General Motors to rebuild the company and attack the working class is all state funded (see article in Class Struggle 84)

The State has controlled the working class by dividing us against each other.  But they can no longer afford to pay the same premium that they used to the state forces police / army and private mercenaries. There are less crumbs from the capitalist table given as rewards to those workers who control the working class and defend the capitalists interests.

Crisis of Capitalism in NZ

The outright pro-capitalist government of NZ tries to scare the working class by talking up the problem of the economic crisis, at every chance, it is their standard excuse for attacking the working class.  However they are still scared of waking up working class fight back. They have been using reports from “experts” or “committees” which they set up, to throw recommendations of cuts into the media and test public opinion; how much fight would that provoke from the working class. As usual in any round of attacks they attack the single mothers, on the domestic purposes benefit among the first (WINZ training allowance). http://tumeke.blogspot.com/2009/07/whats-good-for-paula-bennett-is-too.html

The government is selling bullshit to the working class. In Health, they tell the “public” that frontline services will not be cut.  But they are cutting by telling every health board to live within their budget and therefore forcing restructuring and rounds of costs cutting: cutting back room staff means the frontline have more work to do. The Minister of Health is demanding to know what services can be contracted out (at cheaper rates – less quality services for the working class). 

Minister of Local government wants to cut social services too. Rodney Hide wants to define the core business of councils. 

All these cuts are attacks on the social wages, which are paid as subsidise the whole of NZ capitalist class relations.  Social wages partly maintain the myth that we are all equal – because we can all get into the same library: the same swimming pool (in south Auckland anyway), or wait for free in the same queue for a state house, hip replacement, heart bypass, blood test... 

Industrial capitalists; Telecom was built by the working class and possession taken by private capitalists. Telecom has made less profit this year: Now they are setting about attacking the wages and conditions of the workforce. Telecom through a system of three sub-contracters for network engineers, are using Visionstream, Downer and Transfield to cut costs. The way they do this is to attack the wages and job security of its workforce by making them redundant, stealing their jobs. http://www.indymedia.org.nz/article/77530/telco-workers-take-lightning-strike-acti

Visionstream want workers to buy their jobs back vans and tools and they will be 100% dependent contractors.  The lines engineers would take an income hit of 50%+, with no guarantee of work. Vision stream are effectively offering a contract like back under the employment contracts act – type of industrial relations, only worse, no guarantee of work.

The other contractors, Downer and Transfield attacked their workers too. Downer is trying to force its workers onto piece rates while Transfield just made 154 staff redundant. Telecom aims increase profit at the expense of its workforce and the upkeep or maintenance of our telecoms infrastructure. Telecom will take the most profit they can from the working class, while we will have to pay for installing a whole network in new technology of broadband for faster better internet.

The overall effect of the bosses’ attacks is to create a larger reserve of workers, waiting for work, needing to work to survive. Marx called this the reserve army of labour.  Unlike the seagulls that used to be seen waiting for potential work on the ports – the modern reserve army (unemployed, under-employed, casual labourers and increasingly contractors) all wait at their phones in the morning to hear what work / if any – there is for them, on a day-to-day basis. And they will get called in to the WINZ office if capitalist state decides its time to put more pressure on about taking any job.

Engineers union (EU) has been forced into strike action by the telecom workers (now employed by subcontractors).  But actually the EU leads workers to accept the next deal offered by the employers – like the Air NZ engineers the EU didn’t take strike industrial action to ground the airplanes and stop Air NZs profits from rolling in. The EU wouldn’t let them – because strikes would have been illegal, and the EU is tamed by a legal whip. That sort of industrial action would have needed the unity of all the unions involved in Air NZ and breaking the bosses law, which kept unions on the leash. The EU just used lawyers and accountants to look at the Air NZ books and come up with an offer that was sold out the working classes - wages, conditions and jobs.  The employment laws have always been capitalisms tool to keep organised workers tamed – and they have been effective in NZs recent history.

Unions tied to the employment laws have the teeth taken out of any fight back.  Union officials are threatened by capitalism with seizure of their property, etc. if they lead workers into breaking the Employment Relations Act (ERA). That was a Labour Governments gift to the working class: yeah right.  Union officials lead organised workers away from fighting the system, into playing losing legal games with lawyers.  Union officials become capitalism’s police on the working class.

Organised workers need to prepare to go “underground” and act outside the ERA: otherwise we cannot fight for our needs, rights, or defend our interests. Union organisers caught in the tension between what the workers want to fight for (and how), and the limits they are held under. All union organisers need to be paid at the same rates as the union members. Genuine workers democracy in the unions would push/pull the union officials and break through the limits of the ERA leash. 

ZEAL deal is not the REAL deal

Anything less than the conditions of Air NZ short haul crews, is a cut in jobs and conditions as an occupation of flight workers. The short haul crew is the benchmark and should be seen as the minimum wage (& conditions) for any flight crew. Instead the EU tries to up sell the deal as a step in the right direction: “substantial improvements”.  The EU call this a victory “a 3.95% pay increase” (less than the cost of living), a  6.7% increase after 12 months, (a minimal salary step for experienced crew), an “$1000 up-front payment” (sugar to help swallow a bitter defeat).

“A working group to look at hours of work and rostering will also be established”: All talk and no useful action is the outcome of the dispute going to their lawyers (EU and Bosses). I can imagine the EU saying, ‘this will have to do this time, but we will have another go at them in 15 months’.

We say union workers take control of our unions and take control of our industrial action: make strikes hit the capitalist in their profits - real pickets have to stop the capitalist collecting any profit.  Ground the aircraft, block the access, road, phone, fax, and internet, stop their business from functioning – workers run the place, when we strike then we shut it all down. This is even easier to do on the inside – so have a strike on site – no work, but occupying the plant.

Fight capitalisms sliding scale of redundancies and cuts to wages and conditions. Share the work by reducing hours with no loss in pay: increase the minimum wages against bosses’ cuts. For a 30hrs week with no loss of pay and unite the employed and unemployed in the same unions.  Workers keep reducing the working week until there are jobs for all.

For independence of the unions from the capitalist state! Beware the labour laws and the union officials that are bound by them, the union officials are made to work for the capitalist by the ERA law – not for the workers that they are supposed to represent and who pay them (through union dues).  Build fighting funds (off the ‘legal’ union records). Prepare to pay a strike wage: and elect ordinary (rank and file) union members (or supporters) to run this. 

Organise local picket line defence committees, with telephone / txt communications set up, so that we can defend each other against attacks from the bosses – at short notice. Prepare to defend workers against redundancy, against mortgagee sales, against lockouts and against having to reapply or contract for our jobs on lower wages or conditions. For working class communities to build self-defence pickets to support any workers struggling against the bosses’ recession: support the telecom workers at any pickets. 

Fight redundancy with occupations and workers control!

Build revolutionary cells in the unions and across unions in local communities.

We need to link all of these struggles and to fight the system as whole.

For a national congress of the ordinary workers (rank and file) to fight or a workers programme to make the bosses’ pay for their crisis.  

We say that programme needs to be workers control through socialist revolution.

Join us in building a revolutionary party whose one purpose is to end this system.

 

 

NZ: US Deputy Dog

New Zealand is one of US imperialism's client states that trades the lives of its troops for favored business deals with the US. It is about to heed the call from Obama to send 70 SAS troops to Afghanistan. Obama, NATO, Australia etc., and now John Key, the NZ Prime Minister, all claim that the war in Afghanistan is necessary to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban and stop them from breeding new generations of 'terrorists'.

This is a lie. This war is a proxy imperialist war for oil and gas, part of the US fight to get control of the vast oil and gas reserves of Central Asia. The Taliban are not "terrorists" but nationalists fighting for their independence. The Karzai US puppet government controls little more than Kabul, and even then Kabul is under constant rocket and suicide bomber attacks. What is more, Karzai is just another ruthless warlord making deals with the ethnic rivals of the Pashtun. This includes passing a law which allows men to rape their wives in the Shia minority. Thus the idea that Karzai represents ‘western democracy’ against the ‘barbaric Taliban’ is another huge lie.
http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2009/08/18/gordon-campbell-on-the-afghan-marital-rape-law/

Defeat all imperialist invaders

We say that the imperialists have no business in Afghanistan. They should keep their nose out of Afghanistan's business. The Taliban are mainly a Pashtun tribal people fighting for their national independence after centuries of 'Western' invasions and occupations. They always defeated imperialism in the past and they are about to defeat it again. We are for the defeat of the invaders and occupiers! This includes the so-called non-combatant Engineers (Reconstruction Team) whose presence in Afghanistan building schools and hospitals bolsters the legitimacy of the puppet Karzai regime. Unlike the reformist left that calls for ‘peacekeepers’ and reconstruction teams we are for the defeat of all kinds of imperialist invaders including the NZ Engineers and UN personnel. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0908/S00111.htm

We are for the victory of the Taliban!

We say this because while the Taliban are a reactionary national bourgeois faction only interested in profiting from its control of Afghanistan and the exploitation of its workers, we support it in its fight against imperialism. However reactionary the Taliban is in its social attitudes towards women, towards secularism, and towards democratic rights, imperialism, even the so-called 'democratic' imperialism of Obama, is 1000 times worse. Why? Because whatever the Taliban is today, this is the result of centuries of imperialist wars, invasions and oppression. Only by defeating imperialism will the popular masses of Afghanistan be able to rid itself of its main enemy, imperialism, and overthrow the reactionary Taliban leadership.

To win this struggle is it necessary for the workers and poor peasants to unite against imperialism and their tribal warlords. These warlords all want to be junior partners with one or other imperialist power. The Taliban control the opium trade (90% of the worlds supply) in collaboration with drug lords and drug multinationals. The Hazaras and Uzbeks have done deals with the US and Karzai against the Taliban. None of the warlords of these ethnic groups will break with imperialism. Only workers and poor peasants united behind a revolutionary communist party can defeat imperialism and open the road to socialism.

Hands off Afghanistan!  Hands off Pakistan!

End the national debt! Expropriate imperialist and capitalist property!

Opium trade under workers (producers) collective control! Oil & gas under workers control!

For the right to self-determination of all ethnic groups not only the Taliban!

For a revolutionary communist party independent of imperialism and nationalist or religious leaders!

For a Workers and Peasants Government and a socialist Afghanistan!

 For a federation of socialist republics of the Middle East and Central Asia!

The Stakes for Imperialism

The fact is however, that US imperialism needs to win this war to ensure its ongoing world dominance. It has used NATO to breakup Yugoslavia and create is protectorate Kosovo. It was behind the Georgia attack on South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It plans to break up the former Soviet territory in the Caucasus and in the Caspian region. The US plans to “Balkanise” the Caucasus by splitting off breakaway ethnic groups. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14779

Without control of Afghanistan the US will win the “great game”. I will not gain military dominance of this former Soviet Union sphere of interest and fail to break the hold of Russia and China on the energy resources of Central Asia. Russia has retained many of the former soviet republics as part of the CIS. It retains its nuclear arsenal and missile defence system. It has formed the CSTO (Central Security Treaty Organisation) with Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It still dominates the production and distribution of oil and gas in the region. China has joined with Russia in the (SCO) Shanghai Cooperation Organisation to protect Central Asia as a joint sphere of interest. The differences between Russia and China over who will ultimately control the region have been temporarily sidelined in the interests of presenting a united front to the US bloc.

So what is shaping up here is not a war against terror, but a war of terror - the start of a terrible escalation of regional wars into a global war against Russia and China that will inevitably run the risk of nuclear war. NZ is clearly joining the military bloc on one side of this escalation by sending combat troops to Afghanistan. Why is this?  The NZ finance capitalists want to share in the plunder of the prize of Central Asian oil and gas.

The Prize of Central Asia

What is a stake in Central Asia and the Caucasus is around half the world’s natural gas reserves. The US has won control of Iraqi oilfields from its imperialist rivals. Afghanistan is a key country to control oil routes from the Caucasus and the Central Asian partners of Russia and China.  China has oil interests in Iran and in Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. The US plan is to break up the SCO and Russia and China’s sphere of interest in Eurasia. US attacks on Pakistan puts pressure on both Iran and India which are associated with the SCO.

Critical to achieving this plan is control of Iran. Iran is today at the center of the zone of conflict between the two power blocs. Germany, Russia and China continue to trade with and invest in Iran while the US, France and Britain are imposing UN economic sanctions on Iran to stop it from developing nuclear weapons. Obama wants to regain control of Iran and is holding out the olive branch to Iran with one hand, while at the same time using the threat of Israeli bombs with the other. The US ruling class is torn between destabilizing the Islamic regime and risking a revolution in Iran which would spread to the whole Middle East. If it can break up the Caucasus, weaken Russia and China, and surround Iran, without sparking revolution, then it would be able to dominate and plunder the whole of the Middle East and Central Asia. NZ finance capital has backed what it sees as the victorious US bloc. Why?

NZ a minor semi-colony

NZ is clearly a minor semi-colony whose plunge down the OECD pecking order reflects its dire economic decline. The policy of the Labour Government reflected the interests of the weak NZ bourgeois fraction of productive capital that sought to do business with both US imperialism and the China/Russia bloc – its so-called ‘multilateralism’. It sent the SAS to Afghanistan in 2001 under the UN sanctioned "war on terror" but replaced them in 2005 with Engineers to build schools and other public utilities.

The National party represents that fraction of the NZ bourgeoisie that is aligned to international finance capital parasitic on productive capital. The National regime under John Key is signaling the desperation of that fraction of the NZ ruling class that is allied to the parasites of Wall St. Its class interests are to share in the profits of the plunder of productive resources of the world by backing US imperialism against the rise of China and Russia.

In NZ Key's "change" policy in NZ is to solve the crisis by making the workers pay for it. This means cutting wages jobs and taxes to capital to encourage foreign investment. It plans to privatize remaining state assets.  It plans to bulldoze this rightwing economic policy through using the neo-liberal shock tactics of the 1980s and 1990s.

Thus NZ is committing itself as a subservient client state of US imperialism both as a source of superprofits and as a mercenary military force in imperialist wars. The NZ lackey bourgeoisie expect to get a dividend from the blood of Kiwi soldiers (a majority are Maori from the working class) sold to their imperialist masters.

• No NZ troops, construction teams or ‘peacekeepers’ to Afghanistan!
• Mobilize working class action, strikes and blockades to stop NZ troops fighting in imperialist wars!
• NZ out of all imperialist alliances!

For workers to live, capitalism must die!

In the epoch of imperialism, each global crisis such as we face today, brings with it the threat of war, and as a result revolution and counter-revolution. These wars are inevitable as each imperialist power or bloc of powers must defeat its rival to grab its territory and resources. Imperialist powers have no other course as they can only survive at the expense of defeating their rivals. Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are wars for oil that can only be explained as proxy inter-imperialist wars with the potential to blow up into a global war.

Such wars, however, involve the working class on one side or the other using them as cannon fodder and exposing them to terror, starvation or genocide. If imperialist wars are not stopped by us workers turning our guns on our own ruling classes, then our fate will be counter-revolutionary defeats, the decline into generalized barbarism. Today facing the crisis of global warming caused by imperialist super-exploitation of the globe, this could mean the destruction of nature and the planet.

However, if the working class can organize internationally and stop imperialist wars by overthrowing their ruling classes, then such wars will not lead to counter-revolutionary defeats for workers. They will spark insurrections, a world revolution, the expropriation of the property of the ruling class, and open the road to international socialism and to the end of the destruction and barbarism of capitalist imperialism.

For such a revolution to be possible, workers internationally must organize into a revolutionary force across national borders, united behind a world revolutionary party and program.

The internationalist Leninist Trotskyists of our tendency call on all those who want to fight for socialism to unite their forces with ours and to build a new world revolutionary party based on the program of the Founding Congress of the Fourth International of 1938.

 

Communist Workers Group (Aotearoa/NZ); a member of the International Leninist-Trotskyist Fraction.
Cellphone 027 2800080   [email protected]   http://redrave.blogspot.org

 

Zanon occupation sold out by the reformists

 

A law of “expropriation” has been passed by the Neuquen government that allows the Zanon workers the right to retain control of the factory they have occupied since 2001. But the price of that right is that the Neuquen state will pay the creditors of Zanon when it went bankrupt 23 million pesos which will have to be paid from the earnings of the factory after wages and depreciation. In other words, what the reformist ‘left’ calls an “expropriation” or “victory” for the workers, is nothing of the kind. It is the worst form of bourgeois nationalization. It is a “provincialisation” that allows the state to retain final control and takes the workers surplus value for the pockets of the Neuquen state which is itself nothing more than the committee of the Neuquen provincial bourgeoisie!

 

When this law [No 2656] was passed on the 13 August, the workers who had been in a long fight to defend their occupation since 2001 must have felt a great sense of relief. They resisted years of armed attacks of the bosses, the government and sellouts by the union leaderships.  This proved that only the struggle of the workers was capable of defending their recovered factory.  Zanon, like other factories expropriated by the workers including the picketers in support, won these factories, not by any law or ruling class court decision. These occupations were the result of the untold suffering and heroic deeds of the revolutionary working class from 2001.

As we have said in our newspaper Democracia Obrera, many times, the mass revolutionary offensive that brought down the regime in 2001, forced between 200 and 300 companies into bankruptcy.  These were recovered and put into production by the heroic struggle of the workers to keep their jobs facing a unemployed rate of 26% or more in Argentina at that time.

Facing this offensive, the bourgeoisie remained in control of the productive forces and the nation's key businesses such as banks, transnational corporations, privatized services, but as a lesser evil allowed those bankrupt companies left abandoned by the employers in the hands of workers who refused to surrender.

After the bourgeoisie had regained their control of the state, they attempted to regain their control of their property and rebuild all the institutions of domination. So while some bankrupt companies were repossessed, others continued to operate under so form of workers’ cooperative under but under the law of the legislatures and judges, self-exploiting themselves on poverty wages, doing piecework or working with obsolete equipment, and in many cases in miserable living conditions.  Thus the workers of Zanon, Brukman, Chilavert,etc had fought to recover their jobs with great heroism and sacrifice, but without and real workers control, and subject to the bosses’ laws.

Meanwhile, in Argentina, a cycle of growth began in 2003 which saw the rate of profit rise at the expense of much greater exploitation of the working class. Super exploiting the working class and plundering the nation allowed the bourgeoisie and transnationals in Argentina to accumulate a huge mass of surplus value over the years, forcing 50% of workers onto the black labor market, working long shifts, while the regime paid off loans to the IMF and bonds to foreign creditors that brought a huge inflation which led in turn to a fall in real wages.

In these circumstances, the recovered factories remained isolated. The workers can not take more than $ 400 0 - $ 1000 per month in wages. They have no retirement pension. The truth is that Zanon, like the rest, is only a partial victory. Without recognition, and having to pay compensation to the bosses, and under the law of the state, the workers in the recovered factories remain as super-exploited as the rest of the working class. The only ones who have “expropriated” anything are the capitalists, bankers and big corporations, who continue to expropriate the surplus value of the workers. This is the truth we must tell the working class, not because we have not fought, and have taken back our jobs, but because our struggles have been betrayed, our forces divided, under the supervision of the Ministry of labor, the courts and the bourgeois parliament.

All class-conscious workers now know this to be the truth. The crisis has begun, big layoffs, suspensions, salary cuts and a other attacks on the entire working class come every day. Very soon we will be taking and making new Zanons to preserve jobs, as the workers did recently in France, USA and Greece. We will occupy the factories and take the bosses hostage to keep our jobs.

This crisis demonstrates that despite all the miserable wages, accidents, unemployment and slave conditions forced upon the workers to boost their profits, the bosses system cannot prevent profits from falling. All hope that this cycle of expansion could allow the workers to pressure the bourgeoisie to make concessions is shown to be false. The promises of the Bolivarians and the Castroists to negotiate new deals with ‘democratic’ imperialists to reduce the debt and increase living standards have exploded. Along came the world crisis, inflation, unemployment, wage cuts and new mass layoffs. The imperialists and the national bourgeoisies are now forced to take back all hard won concessions to survive. So for the workers to survive the capitalist system must die.

It follows that the workers of Zanon can not escape this law of the capitalist system. Either capitalism will take back all the partial gains of the occupations, including making the workers suffer to keep their jobs, or the partial gain of the occupation has to be defended by a revolutionary struggle that takes the working class to power. If the working class does not take power, it stands to lose everything.

"A law of the legislature in the service of employers or an historic triumph of the workers?”

So comrades, how is it possible for the entire Argentina reformist left that the new law on the expropriation of Zanon is a great historic achievement for the working class? This cannot be true. What property is expropriated here?

We argue that the law of this bosses’ provincial government and the bosses’ political parties of Neuquen (MPN, the PJ and UCR) serve the interest of the transnational oil companies and the provincial bourgeoisie in Neuquén. The purpose of the law is to enable the Zanon bosses to pocket the money owned to them by the bankrupt factory ($23,406,566 million pesos). This will be paid by the workers out of their labor as ‘compensation’ for their ‘cooperative ownership’.

You cannot play hide and seek with the interests of the working class. We must tell the truth. The first truth is that we are facing a reactionary law to serve the bosses, not the workers. True the law does not openly rob the workers because they operate the cooperative, and that is a victory that the employers do not have the strength to take back right now. But the law creates the conditions that will bring the cooperative to ruin. As a legal “cooperative” like any capitalist enterprise without capital, it will have to get loans from capitalist banks or form joint ventures. Then it has to compete in the market and risks failure and bankruptcy like any other cooperative in capitalist society.

So the truth is, as we say above, that this law creates conditions were the workers of Zanon have to exploit themselves to pay compensation to the capitalist creditors. At the same time the workers have to drop all claims against the employer of more than 20 million pesos in compensation for layoffs, pensions and wage arrears owing to the 380 workers-when the factory was abandoned.  That is, the bosses’law only recognises the debts of the capitalist creditors of the factory, and not the debt that the capitalist factory owner owes the workers.

This means the workers have to pay their former bosses’ creditors and drop all claims on the boss in order to get legal title to the factory. Of course they had to do this became the employers and the government has put a gun to their heads and said, pay up if you want to keep your cooperative. We can see that this ‘law’ is really the law of the bosses’ gun, because otherwise why would the workers agree to pay again the debts of the former boss when they had already provided from their labor, his profits and his assets? It is their class law that uses a gun against us.

This act of expropriation i.e. the "provincialization" of the Zanon plant required by the law means that the workers have to pay compensation, that is buy the plant from the creditors. How will they pay? From the surplus labor beyond their necessary labor, and income set aside for the depreciation of machinery [the cost of replacing worn-out machinery]. But they are not allowed to charge for the depreciation of their bodies to pay every cent of the 23 million that the state recovers from their surplus-labor.

Is this a victory? Up to now the conquest of the occupation was maintained by the workers struggle. The bosses were not able to force the workers out at the point of a gun. But now the occupation is legalised under a law which requires the workers to buy Zanon for 23 million pesos. This is not a nationalization, or provincialisation, and certainly not an expropriation. It is not a victory for the workers because the workers have agreed to pay with their surplus labor for private property and were not able to guarantee their occupation by force of a workers expropriation.

The conquest of Zanon was won by the workers' struggle and now they will lose their money and their labor and worse, their class consciousness if they believe that the parliament of the ruling class can pass a law that is favorable to the workers. Today the reformist left passes off this defeat as a victory for socialist reforms. This means that workers will be looking at Zanon as a model for workers expropriations, and when they fail, the reformists will blame the bosses, the lawyers, the workers, everybody but themselves – betrayers of the revolution.

The Zanon workers have every right to sign this deal, as they are isolated and do not have the power to say no. But you cannot say it's a victory. Instead of passing off this deal as a victory we need to prepare for the harmful consequences that this bill will have on the workers of Zanon, of Neuquén, Argentina, and further afield. What the workers of Zanon need, is the unity of the working class nationally and internationally to change the balance of power that forced them to accept this law that only benefits employers.

We must speak out we must tell the truth to the working class. How did the bosses’ get you to accept this law? Learn the lesson of the bosses’ using their agents the union bureaucracy to betray our struggles.  The workers of Zanon were left isolated for 8 years while the bureaucrats looked for a way to settle the occupation. What other reason is there to explain why after an uprising that overthrew 5 presidents we end up with the bare minimum, a law which says we can work provided we buy the bankrupt property from the creditors?

Let's see, in the U.S. the super banks that exploit and plunder the world go bankrupt, along with General Motors and Chrysler.  The ultra-liberals who spoke of the free market now demand that the state pays their debts and saves their profits. The bank bailouts will be paid by the workers out of their future wages. The bosses of GM demand as part of the bailout that the workers “share the pain” with loss of benefits, redundancies, transfer of pensions, loss of holidays etc.

Can you tell us what is different between Obama's law to rescue General Motors and Citibank for the bosses, and the MPN Neuquen law to rescue Zanon for the workers? Apart from the scale, they are the same. This this means that we have to call the expropriations of Chavez such as the steel plant of SIDOR in Venezuela a victory. In that case the Rocca family was paid compensation out of the cash reserves of the state owned PDVSA. In Argentina we would have to speak of the victory of the nationalization of British owned railways by the Roca-Runciman Perón government, for which they paid a huge amount of compensation.  

What they all have in common is a bourgeois nationalisatioin to save the bankrupt capitalists and make the workers pay their debts out of their wages, by giving up compensation, decent wages, jobs, holidays, pensions etc. Victory?  Balls! The only way the workers can win a victory is to make the bankrupt bosses’ pay, and to struggle to expropriate the bosses’ property by their own hands. Such a victory cannot be delivered by the parliament of the bosses!

To defend a reactionary law of capitalist parasites is as a workers’ victory is to throw out Karl Marx’s Capital. How far is the PTS prepared to go in its break with Marxism?

A PTS lawyer, Pedrano, a member of the SOECN-PTS, wrote in an  article on the 20 August with the title “Zanon has been expropriated from the capitalists”, that "The Zanon expropriation law has finally been passed. It's a step forward for workers' management, because the Law No. 2656 of the Legislature provides that the land Neuquén, (...), and plant will be transferred without charge to workers "(bold added). . . It is important to note also that the workers of Zanon ceramics do not have to pay anything as the state will sell the factory production for construction sites (homes, schools, etc.) at cost, which includes salary and depreciation of machinery "(bold added).

First, this is not an expropriation as Marxists understand the term. The PTS lawyer should know that compensation of 23 million pesos to the creditors is not expropriation. Both the former owner Zanon and his creditors get 100% compensation. No other creditors in Argentina get 100% compensation. An expropriation happened in 2001 when the workers took over the plant. That was a victory. Now they are paying 23 to transfer the property rights to the collective. That is not expropriation.

Trotskyist say:  "... we claim the expropriation of companies monopolizing the war industry, railways, the main sources of raw materials, etc.
The difference between these claims and the stupid reformist slogan of nationalization is the following:
1.- We oppose compensation.
2.- We warn the masses against the demagogues Popular Front, which hypocritically advocate nationalization, but remain in reality agents of capital.
3.- We call upon the masses to rely only on their own revolutionary strength.
4.- We link the question of expropriation with the seizure of power by the workers and peasants ".

(Transition Program of the Fourth International, 1938).

 

Revision 1: hiding exploitation

Second, when a ‘marxist’ lawyer says that the workers do not ‘pay’ he is lying. This ‘marxism’ says that workers do not pay because they still get a wage and can replace and maintain their machinery.  That is they are guaranteed to reproduce their labor and fixed capital. But what is being hidden by this phony ‘marxist’ is the exploitation of their wage-labor. The basis of capitalist exploitation as explained by Karl Marx is being conveniently covered up to make this law a ‘victory’. The Zanon workers work necessary labor time to make their wages and keep their machines running, but they do not get any benefit from the surplus labor time they work and the surplus-value that they produce. Such a victory would mean that socialism can be legislated for by the employers.

 Pedrano hides the fact that the state is extracting the surplus value from the workers. The state gets its surplus value in the form of ceramics at cost prices which is uses for it state infrastructure projects like schools and clinics. This is the expropriation of the workers to provide for public services that are part of the social wage that reduces the factory wage. The bourgeoisie benefits from the workers paying for these services rather than higher taxes on their wealth. But of course, the Neuquen state is nothing but the organizing committee for the provincial bosses!

Well, we challenge Mr. Pedrero to find a capitalist factory that sells its products at cost. No capitalist parliament in the world would pass a law that capitalists will sell at cost. It is the opposite they will legislate to make sure that the workers pay to make sure that employers get more than cost i.e. rescue the bosses from bankruptcy.

Revision 2: Hiding the ruling class state

We have shown then that the law of expropriation of the legislature has been a blatant Neuquén business bailout of creditors, and that far from being a step forward and a victory for the Zanon workers it will mean they must endure greater sacrifices.

But the ‘marxists’ of the reformist left have made another revision of Marxism. If the Neuquen state can legislate for a victory for the workers of Zanon, this means the state can reform capitalism, and that the state can represent the interests of workers. Workers don’t need to create their own organisations independent of the state, instead they just let the reformist left negotiate deals with the state.

What this means is the Marx is replaced by Gramsci, so that workers don’t need to overthrow the state, they just need to put more pressure on the state to bring about socialism. We can see the PTS, as part of the reformist left of the WSF, is promoting the social democratic illusion that workers can pressure the capitalists into accepting workers occupations of factories as long as they are agree to allowing the state to exploit them. They mask this exploitation by saying the state is can be pressured to meet the interests of both employers and workers. All that is required is that workers have good reformist lawyers to represent their interests in the state.

There is an intimate connection between the two revisions. If the state has no necessary requirement to protect the bosses’ property or suppress class conflict, then ‘nationalisation’ can be presented as potentially class neutral. How the state uses the surplus value extracted from the Zanon workers is a matter of relative class strength. If the workers are strong enough they can earn a living wage and insist that their surplus value goes to the benefit of workers and not bosses as a wage subsidy. If the bosses are stronger they can force down the wages and extract surplus which goes straight into their pockets or is an indirect subsidy for profits.

This is pie in the sky reformism. We have seen how only class struggle can guarantee workers occupations. The same is true of their wages and conditions. It is not possible to negotiate with the bosses’ state for a living wage and living social wage, especially in the middle of a global crisis.  The Zanon workers have no power to maintain a living wage, and no power to ensure that their surplus value goes to boost the social wage of Neuquen workers. The only way this can be changed is for the workers to create their own power, ‘dual power’, against the bosses’ state, to expropriate not only Zanon, but all bosses property, the banks and the land, to create their own workers’ state and plan for socialist production for need and not profit.

Marxists are committed to the postulate on the state which says: "The state is an organ of class rule, an organ of oppression of one class by another, is the creation of" order "that legalized this oppression and secured by reducing conflict between the classes…
"The attitude towards the state is one of the most patent signs that our Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks are not socialist in any way (what the Bolsheviks have always said), but Democrats with a quasi-socialist phraseology. (The State and Revolution, V. Lenin)

We say to all the working class in Argentina and worldwide, that although for now the Zanon cooperative has been forced to give up control over their salaries and allowances, we will fight to defend their hard won class consciousness that the state is the state of the bourgeois class, from the corrupting influence of the left reformists.

Stand with the workers of Zanon

It is our urgent task that the entire working class stands alongside their brothers and sisters of Zanon to fight to make the capitalists, and not the workers, pay for the crisis. There is an “alternative” to the bosses’ law. 

• Open the Books! It is imperative that the Zanon workers vote for an Independent Investigation Commission to open the books of the employer and to discover the business secrets and deals made by the Zanon family.
• End the Isolation of Zanon! All organizations that call themselves working class must fight to get the four ceramics factories of Neuquén united to make the government pay the market price for their products and provide cheap credit for new machinery.
• Zanon workers do not pay $23,406,566! Instead of compensating the bosses, put tax on al the oil companies, the banks and the wealthy.
• Fight for a base salary of $4500 [pesos a month] for the workers of Zanon and the other three ceramics factories in the area. And for all workers in the country.
• Declare the factory has provincial heritage status, and that workers are paid the wage and social benefits of all state workers. Build standing committees to fight for the “Provincialization” of Zanon, without compensation and under workers control now!
• Work for all! Distribute working hours among those who want to work! A living wage pegged to inflation! Workers from the plant, with its union (SOECN) in the lead respond to all the appeals of the oil and construction workers in Patagonia who have been fighting against the imperialist multinationals, facing layoffs, pay cuts and suspensions!
• Re-nationalise without compensation and under workers' control, Repsol, Total Fina, APACHE, Pan American, Plus Petrol, etc. to stop the plundering  of the nation and to make the capitalists pay for their crisis!
• Throw out the union bureaucracy of the CGT and CTA, servants of the Kirchner government, servants and thugs of the agrarian bourgeoisie, and of the imperialist monopolies: Cargill, Monsanto, Dreyfus, etc!
• Oppose the bosses’ law that protects the gunmen of the trade union bureaucracy, business chambers, government and provincial governors!
• Stand up and fight for a strong unified National Coordinating Committee for all fighting workers, led by the workers of Terrabusi (Kraft-Foods), and the subway. Confront and defeat the treachery of the union bureaucracy, which betrays the workers struggle to save the capitalist profits.
• For a National Congress of employed and unemployed workers to defeat the isolation and division imposed by the union bureaucracy!
• Self-Defense Committees, to defend ourselves from the repression of trade union bureaucracy and state management!
• Immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners, and the dropping of charges again worker and popular fighters!
• For Workers and People's Courts to judge and punish the murderers of Teresa Rodriguez and Carlos Fuentealba!
      
  Based on article in Democracia Obrera - September  2009.

 

FOR REAL WAGE INCREASES!

JOBS, FOOD, HOUSES FOR ALL!
WE NEED AN EMERGENCY WORKERS’ PLAN!

Today the clothing workers and their unions stand on the point of being destroyed by the capitalists. These attacks are becoming generalised across all sectors, employed and unemployed. In 1994, millions of workers and unemployed had hopes of a better life, of permanent jobs, of decent wages, of adequate health care for all, of a better education.

Now, 15 years later, only 9 million have some sort of work out of a labour force of 28 million; many are casualised; workers are locked into multi-year agreements which reduce real wages; millions, mainly youth, face permanent unemployment; the health system has been collapsed and privatised; thousands of teachers were retrenched and the education system, inadequate as it was, has fallen apart, producing many who cannot even spell or count, millions are still without adequate housing and sanitation, many of the houses that have been built before and after 1994 are falling apart. While world prices of food and oil have fallen by over 40%, the food retailers and food monopolies deliberately starve us through high prices; the government maintains a high petrol price, although the real cost of a barrel of oil is 3-4US$. In 1994 the ANC-SACP-Cosatu leaders said the working class must reconcile with the exploiters.

Before and after 1994, the same group of monopolies control the economy (Anglo American, Liberty Life, Old Mutual, Rembrant, Sanlam). The bank of New York controls most of the gold mines, while JP Morgan Chase controls the Reserve bank; American banks control much of the mining, food production, construction, engineering as well as much of the food distribution. The international banks that control our economy are in crisis and are shifting their crisis onto the shoulders of the working class, through mass retrenchments, low wages, high prices, mass starvation and homelessness. Workers are expected to sit with folded arms, conciliate, while the monopolies have not ‘conciliated’ but accelerated attacks on the working class.

Every year, for decades, these international corporations send more than R200 billion out of the country. Since 1996 they have made much more profits than they even made under the repressive NP regime. Under the disguise of ‘broad black economic empowerment’ a small elite of the amabhulu omnyama have become overnight billionaires, while the masses are dying of hunger, freezing in shacks or concrete matchboxes. Some alliance leaders are themselves owners of labour brokers that are brutalising the workers. Workers money is invested in privatizing health care, in fishing companies (while the small fishermen starve), in Sasol (despite having workers resolutions to nationalise it); many trade union leaders promote multi-year agreements that cut real wages and work hard to deactivate the current wave of strikes and protests by the working class. They hand over billions of workers’ money to ‘bail’ out the capitalists. Many of the trade union leaders are themselves conveyor belts of the world capitalist crisis onto the shoulders of the working class. The main conveyor belt of the crisis onto the shoulders of the working class has been the economic policy of the ANC, be it the mild RDP, or the more-openly pro-capitalist GEAR and current ‘Zumanomics’ (neo-GEAR). In 1994 Cosatu and SACP leaders helped water down working class demands to draft the RDP. Recently, the Cosatu and SACP justify the current pro-imperialist economic policy though dispatching their own leaders into Cabinet.

In June this year, through a military base in Honduras, the Obama regime launched a coup to overthrow the government there. This shows that the crisis of imperialism-capitalism is so deep that they cannot depend any longer purely on ‘democratic’ measures of control of the working class.

Recently, there have been increasing number of unprovoked attacks by the police on community protests, workers’ strikes (such as the transport, municipal, postal workers), and now the protest of unarmed soldiers. The police are the direct paid thugs of the monopolies. How long must the working class conciliate with the murderous monopolies? These imperialists launch coups in Honduras, and for us, they are starting with increased attacks by the police, they want to target organisers of protests, they want to ban unions in the army, and who knows where this will all lead to? If they smash the soldiers unions and bring back the tens of thousands of SA mercenaries currently fighting in Iraq, what attacks will then be launched on the working class?

The ANC plan, HR2010, is precisely to dismiss all progressive forces in the army, including most veterans from the ex-liberation armies (lower ranks will have an age limit of 28; if you are not constantly promoted, you will be dismissed; upper ranks will be 4-15 year contracts and special skills will be head-hunted, eg from the CIA and mercenaries). What is more is that the Cosatu and SACP leaders who have been deployed to parliament support the mass dismissal of over 1300 soldiers. These leaders help bail out the capitalists, while companies, where workers have the so-called majority stake, such as Frame, are closed down. These leaders are implementing the attacks of imperialism, against the progressive forces in the army, against the working class. All worker leaders in government should be recalled immediately. Cosatu must break with the capitalists!

 

• We need an emergency workers’ plan.
• We call on all working class communities, the unemployed and all workplaces to send delegates to the Cosatu Congress, 21 -24 September at Gallagher Estate in Midrand, to work out a joint programme of action.
• We need an immediate general strike for real wage increases, jobs, food and houses for all!
• Down with the fatcat CEO’s Ministers and Generals!
• Reduce food prices by 50%. Reduce the working day without loss of pay and share all work among all those who can work. Increase wages whenever prices rise!
• For a general wage increase of a minimum of 30%!
• Stop all retrenchments and mass dismissals. What is needed is direct occupation of workplaces (not stayaways)!
• If we want work, if we want to eat, to have decent houses, then our rallying call must be to expropriate all imperialist assets, the mines, commercial farms, factories, banks, retailers, without compensation, under workers’ control (they belong to the working class in any case)!
• To prepare for attacks by the police we need armed workers’ defence committees, uniting workers and soldiers (in every industrial area and working class community)!
• For any union leader that stands in the way of a general strike in defence of the lives of the working class, let us exercise our right to remove them immediately!
• Even if they agree to a general strike, the current leaders cannot be depended on to really organise this struggle; we need extended workers’ control committees of every structure that co-ordinates the strike!
• The imperialists are terrorising and super-exploiting the working class across Africa. Down with the MDC-Zanu-PF regime in Zimbabwe!
• Down with the monarchy in Swaziland!
• Down with the puppet regime in Lesotho!
• Down with the imperialist plunder of the Democratic Republic of Congo!
• Down with the ANC government that reconciles with imperialism that is massacring the working class with unemployment, low wages, high prices and homelessness!
• We need a workers’ government!
• We need an internationalist revolutionary working class party, drawing the lessons from international working class struggles to begin the defence in the face of the world capitalist offensive.

 

The International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction (based South Africa, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, Chile, New Zealand, USA) stands ready to support this very necessary task.

15.09.09

Issued by Workers International Vanguard League, 1^st Floor, Community House, 41 Salt River rd, Salt River, 7925, ph 021 4476777; ph 0822020617; [email protected] web:www.workersinternational.org.za

 

 

 

1. The comrades of the CWG and the HRS agree that when they defend their position that China has a “dual character”. For the HRS China is both an emerging imperialist nation and a semi-colonial country with its proletariat super-exploited by both foreign finance capital and that of its own emerging bourgeoisie. For the CWG China is an Independent nation emerging as an imperialist power. The HRS and CWG center their argument on the incremental advance in accumulation of capital into the bosom of the new Chinese capitalist class who have no choice but to seek profit sources beyond their own borders. They contend that the most significant factor in Lenin’s characterization of an imperialist nation is the export of finance capital. 

 

2. We do not claim that China as an imperialist country means that capitalism is still progressive and it is still capable of developing the productive forces. We are not revising the basic position of Trotsky and Lenin on capitalism in the imperialist epoch. Neither Lenin nor Trotsky ever said that no new imperialist country could emerge in the imperialist epoch. But clearly it could do so by repartition the global economy at the expense of existing imperialist powers. Nor did Lenin or Trotsky say that that a new imperialist country if it emerged from a state of being a relatively independent semi-colony must develop the productive forces and therefore make capitalism "progressive".

 

3. The fact that in the imperialist epoch capitalism cannot develop the productive forces does not mean that capitalism cannot develop technology. Technology in the imperialist epoch is characterized by intense drive for profit as the rate of profit continue to decline, hence the workers the great majority of human beings and well being of the planet are expendable. Therefore, we see mass death from injury and health problems (cancer for example was not a big health threat in the 19th century) as technology "advanced". Technological advancement in the period of imperialist decay leads not only to environmental disasters but unless there is a socialist revolution, capitalism/imperialism despite the advancement in technology is likely to destroy the entire planet, since it develops technology for one reason: profit, and the destruction of civilization via the advanced military means of the imperialist countries.

 

4. Any development of a new imperialist country will only contribute to the destruction not the advancement of the productive forces and the well being of the working class and humanity. China is not an exception. Since we live in an era of dramatic increase of imperialist decay on the international scale, any new imperialist country can only function as the rest of the imperialist countries: increase the rate of exploitation and oppression wherever it sets its foot prints. In the current imperialist epoch China cannot become an imperialist country by progressing the standard of living of the Chinese workers and masses in China and the rest of the world, quite the opposite by driving the masses into living in hellish conditions. This is so, because in the current state of imperialist decay, this is the only way that a country can become an imperialist country and try to compete with the rest of the imperialist gangs. It is easier for a person to jump to the moon, than it is for a new imperialist country to build its "empire" by elevating well being of the masses in the current unstoppable decay of the international imperialist epoch.

 

5. For us the dual character of China (for HRS it is a still a semi-colony, and for CWG an Independent country, but is becoming imperialist), which means that Chinese workers suffer from one of the worst conditions for workers in the planet, regardless if they work for Western or Chinese companies. Many of them live in places that can only be characterized as cages not homes. Millions have been cast out of their jobs back into the country to stagnate. What progressive about this? Of course, this only manifests life under imperialism in its last stage of decay.

 

6. Chinese export of capital overseas along with the attempts to develop Chinese sphere of influence manifests the "destructiveness" of Chinese imperialism, not its “progressiveness”. In Chad China delivers mass weapons (including soldiers and workers) to inflame the genocidal war so that China can control the area and plunder the oil there. What is progressive about this? In Congo they build mines for their electronics factories in China and like the rest of the imperialists they muddle in the country affairs. The results: The intensification of the civil wars over the mines that kill millions and created huge areas with refugees. And in Iran the Chinese, who of course are interested in the oil there, have a special connection and influence on the regime who as we know just killed hundreds and is torturing (many time to death) the protests' prisoners.

 

7. Are we revising the theory of the permanent revolution which says that only the working class can lead the completion of the national tasks by making a socialist revolution? Since the 1980's there has been some big changes in the functions of imperialism that do not change the essence of the permanent revolution but it forces us to deal with new living contradictions. And it is these changes that eventually made it possible for China to become an imperialist country 30 years later. In the super-exploitation of the semi-colonies since 1980 the rise of the proportion of the proletariat has given more weight to the working class in taking the lead in completing the national revolutionary tasks in a socialist revolution.

 

8. The new Chinese bourgeoisie has not resolved any national tasks. It has pushed these tasks backwards by privatizing worker’s property and by re-enforcing the regimes brutality towards national minorities in China. It retained some political independence from the period as a degenerate worker’s state. It was this independence based on both a strong state apparatus and a strong state owned sector of the economy that allowed the new bourgeoisie to become an imperialist ruling class. The consequences for the permanent revolution are these: the Chinese revolution won national independence and the bureaucratized planned economy allowed the forces of production to develop but insufficiently to compete with the most backward imperialism. Its degenerated form meant that it did not complete the national tasks. The restoration of capitalism has put this independence in question and it and the other national tasks such as the rights of national minorities can only be resolved by a socialist revolution led by the working class.

 

9. With the outgoing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) exceeding incoming FDI for the first time in 2008 and the acceleration of this trend in 2009 a quantitative threshold has been crossed and China is emerging onto the world stage as an imperialist gangster in its own right, despite its finding itself at the bottom of the pecking order of imperialist powers down with other lesser imperialist countries (particularly in Scandinavia) with export FDI/import FDI amounts and ratios similar to Chinas.

 

10. The HRS and CWG further contend that China is not in an economic or military position yet to contest in a conventional war for control of markets and sources of raw materials. At this stage in its development it will bluster loudly but scramble to avoid direct military conflict with the major imperialist powers as it knows it is not prepared to confront the military might of the USA and any head on war could quickly degenerate to a nuclear exchange. This does not exclude the possibility of China intervening militarily on its own behalf to advance or protect its interests in other semi-colonies unless it can get the comprador bourgeoisie to protect its interests as Alan Garcia did in his murderous attacks last month on the indigenous people trying to reclaim their lands.

 

11. At this stage the main danger of war involving China comes from the USA or Japan (not to exclude the unlikely possibility of other powers) seeking to contain China, break open its markets, access its raw materials and labor force. The intention of such a war would be to drive China from its emerging duel character back to its prior condition of having the sole character of a semi colony and open its doors for further imperialist plunder and subjugation. The HRS and CWG contend that such a war would be characterized as an imperialist war of subjugation not an inter-imperialist war. In the event of such a war both the HRS and the CWG would call for the military defense of China and the military defeat of the USA, Japan or proxy power which may be used by the major power in their stead.

 

12. The HRS and CWG are aware that Obama mania is continuing the anti-China chauvinism and xenophobia which has been building in the imperialist centers for years to mobilize workers against the perception of a rising power in China. To a large extent the anti-communist hysteria which has been used against China since 1949 in the west never let up as the transition to capitalism brought an unending stream of products, produced in China by the trans-nationals, to the West where some workers are opposed to buying the products they no longer produce for chauvinist reasons, others are angered by the knowledge that an enslaved population has been forced by threat of starvation to produce these products only westerners can afford to buy but can no longer afford to produce.

 

13. This is the material foundation for the anti-Chinese hysteria western capitalists (in particular the media in the USA) try to whip up, all the time hiding the fact that it is the US trans-nationals who have deserted the American worker to drive down the cost of production and maximize profit leading to the immiseration of both the Chinese and American worker.

 

14. The HRS and the CWG in their economic theses and propaganda show the working class their real enemy is the barons of Wall Street who perpetuate this process and are driving the world toward, wars and counterrevolution an who must be militarily defeated in any confrontation and who must be overthrown by force of proletarian revolution to prevent the coming catastrophe.

 

15. It is with this understanding that the CWG the HRS and the FLTI enter into an open debate before the public in our press and before the workers of the world clearly stating that we stand shoulder to shoulder against military threat against China by the other imperialist powers or their proxies.

 

The Foundation Congress of the International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction.

1) Principled agreements that allowed starting the Foundational Congress of ILTF

a) After a careful analysis of the points of agreement exposed in the sub-points “a” to “j” of the 1^st point of the “Proposal of Agenda”, the congress stated that effectively there are more than enough programmatic, strategic and principled agreements to constitute a common congress among internationalist revolutionaries.

b) These key agreements are expressed in the written considerations elaborated by the conveners before the Congress:

1) The agreement on the character of the world economic crisis and the offensive of the imperialist and native bourgeoisies of the colonies and semi-colonies against the workers and the masses; the tasks posed before the internationalist revolutionaries to prepare the counteroffensive, fighting against the reformists, based on the 23 points of the LTF.

2) The agreements mentioned before have move forward with the Act of constitution of the Paritary Committee of the ILTF between the WIVL and the FLT, to which adhered the NRI of Argentina and the revolutionaries of Sao Pablo, Brazil; this is a programmatic conquer for a common intervention before the first counterrevolutionary hits, and also before the first counteroffensive answers of the masses expressed in Greece, Madagascar, Guadalupe and France, that concentrated the strategy and the program for the setting up and the development of the soviets and the question of the insurrection and the struggle for power; together with South Africa, Bolivia and Zimbabwe, where the struggle against the popular front and the treacherous leaderships is posed, as well as against the native semi colonial bourgeoisie, both Bolivarian and Islamic.

3) A few weeks before the realization of the Congress we received the contribution from the comrades of the HRS that converged with the conveners, what expresses that the North American Trotskyists, in the heart of the dominant imperialist power, began to make this revolutionary program as their own.

4) This Congress is constituted by those who have recognized each other as internationalist revolutionaries in the struggle against the social democracy, Stalinism and the renegades of Trotskyism, against the labor aristocracy and union bureaucracy- all grouped in the WSF supporting the Bolivarian bourgeoisies and “democratic imperialism”, all of them supporting Obama-, looking for the path to build up an International Revolutionary Party based on the Theory of the Permanent Revolution and the Transitional Program that have passed the test of history,.

5) The congress is constituted by those who fight against the “bobby traps” that organize conferences to distract and disperse the forces of the revolutionaries. Thus, the Congress adopts the combats of the SCAI of the FLT against Socialist Fight who called to vote for the British Labor Party in the elections for the European Parliament and that have a policy of two states for Palestine; and also de combat of NRI against Philippe Couthon of the GB, who defends the institutions of 5^th French Imperialist Republic before the uprising of the youth of the French cites and of the masses in the French colonies. The congress adopts as its own the struggle against the pseudo-conferences of national groups who need “international prestige”, as the one organized by the Brazilian POM.

6) Therefore, this Congress considers that there are conditions to move forward in the struggle for building up an International Revolutionary Centre, without creating a centrist alchemy, because the groups converging in this Congress were in the same barricade before the blows of revolution and counterrevolution.

7) It is established that this Congress is not convened to get the FLT fatter, but a superior stage from the confluence of revolutionary wings and personalities, to move forward in building up an organization in order that the Trotskyist program find a path to the masses after decades of capitulations and betrayals of those who speak in its name.

8) We consider that Trotskyism and Bolshevism were separated from the masses by the counterrevolutionary violence of fascism, by the action of Stalinism and Social Democracy; and by the capitulations of Pabloism at the end of the Second World War, who have adapted to the “democratic” imperialist front. That is why we affirm that the IVth International will not be able to go back to the masses to provide them with the leadership and the program for the triumph in an international level, but fighting against the treacherous leaderships that are at the head of the organizations of the workers and the masses, and who have already started their maneuvers to fight against the revolutionaries.

9) It is resolved to conform the Honorary Chair of the Congress with the worker fighters of our current and of the class around the world who have given their lives for the revolution: Comrade Luz, of the LOI-CI of Argentina and Comrade Roger Fox, of the CWG of New Zealand, who were victims of the labor and life conditions imposed by the super exploitation of the bosses; Comrade Mzwandile Matjikiza of South Africa, burnt alive in the 80’s by the Stalinist SACP, are part of the African National Congress; The miners of Huanuni, vanguard of the Bolivian proletariat in the struggle against the repressor and murderer government of Evo Morales; The Greek working class and masses, who set up the spark of the revolution in the Imperialist Europe; The French working class and working youth, that from the Cites and the occupied factories search for a fighting path to confront their own imperialist bourgeoisie; The massacred peasants and working masses of Bagua, Peru, who took executed 26 hunting dogs of the bourgeoisie.

10) The effective chair of this Congress is constituted.

c) After having confirmed the agreements, and consistent with the revolutionary method we vindicate, in ten days of discussion the different groups discussed fraternally and without diplomacy the differences and shades, being prepared to convince and to be convinced. This allow us to give a leap forward in the political homogenization and to move forward the discussion to adjust the program that allows us to intervene with a revolutionary policy in the international class struggle.

The main differences discussed were:

1) The Chinese question, since a minority of the Congress, constituted by the HRS and the CWG, states that China is a country with a dual character, with elements of a semi colonial country and elements of an imperialist country; meanwhile, the majority states that in the imperialist epoch and under the current conditions new imperialist countries cannot emerge without splitting wars, and more than that, that there are too many imperialist powers.

2) The question of the slogan of a Workers and Peasants’ Black Republic and the national question -which is a labyrinthic expression of the class struggle at a worldwide level-, in South Africa and the whole African continent; and on the Palestinian, Honduran and Iranian questions, as a key aspect for the use of the theory-program of the Permanent Revolution.

3) The question of revolutionary use of the democratic demands. We have achieved a wide agreement about the duty of the revolutionaries to incorporate in their program the minimal and democratic demands -which are transitory, that is to say, that they are used if they allow to move forward the combat of the masses-, as part of the program that must be a bridge from the immediate needs of the masses and the need to prepare an insurrection to seize the power, as it is expressed in the resolution “On the principled questions of the democratic demands used by the revolutionaries” in particular, and in the resolutions on Honduras, Iran, etc... 

2) On the democratic Leninist character of the Congress

a) The delegates verify that all the documents elaborated by the different organizations that converged in this Foundation Congress of the LLTF, as well as the central articles of the IWO Nº 12 (part I and II), the International Correspondence-New Epoch  # 1 and its Appendix, as well as the documents written while the congress was in session, have all been published in English and in Spanish.

b) All the delegates of the congress had guaranteed the possibility of being in permanent contact with their organizations by phone and by the Internet, to adjust the interventions collectively.

c) From that exposed in the previous points, it is verified that the leaderships and the rank and file of all the organizations participating in the Congress had the widest democratic guarantees to know all the positions developed before and during the Congress.

Therefore, it is considered that the Organization Committee of the Foundational Congress of the ILTF, integrated by the SCAI of the FLT, the NRI and the CC of the LOI-CI (host organization of the Congress), with a big militant effort of the comrades involved in the tasks of organization and translation, have guaranteed the democratic development of this Congress. This allowed to move forward in building an International Revolutionary Centre, that cannot be just the result of agreements between leaderships, but of the political homogenization of the rank and file and the cadres of the groups, from a wide debate.

3-On the Agenda. Development of the debates. Conclusions

After confirming the character of the Congress, the deliberations begin.

a) On the world situation and a new moment in the international conjuncture: the Congress discussed on the written materials published in the International Workers Organizer # 12, Part I and II, and on the document of the HRS on the economic crisis and China.

b) When undertaking this question, a difference on China has been stated. The HRS and the CWG -with shades between them- characterize China as a country with a dual character: with elements of a semi colony and elements of an imperialist power.

c) On this question, a document with the key axes resulting from the discussion during two days of debate of the Congress is attached bellow; we summarize them as follows:

1) The minority composed by HRS y el CWG consider China as a country with a dual character, with semi colonial features and imperialist country features. (See document attached)

2) On the contrary, for the majority of the Congress, in the imperialist epoch of capitalism in decay, when imperialism is reaction all along the line, China cannot become an imperialist power but also it is in question its relatively independent character.

The majority considers as a result of the counterrevolution, which has been expressed in the Tiananmen Square and that imposed the restoration of capitalism, China has been transformed into a great scale maquila by the imperialist powers.  The key of the imperialist epoch is the parasitism of the financial capital of the imperialist powers and the buying of the labor aristocracy and bureaucracy, which are material forces for the split of socialism, expressed in the split between the Menshevik Party and the Bolshevik Party in 1902 in Russia.

3) The majority of the Congress, composed by the WIVL, the former SCAI of the FLT, the NRI, the LOI-CI, the POI-CI, the FT, the LTI (Bolivia), the LTI (Peru) and MT from Brazil, affirms the current crisis of the world capitalist economy shows that there is an overabundance of imperialist powers and that China is far away from developing an economy that allows it to accumulate capital going beyond its national frontiers, as finance capital; and more than that, that China is incapable of solving the question of land.

Following the Marxist method of Lenin, the majority affirms that an imperialist power cannot be defined from its foreign investments of just 50.000.000 dollars (when the investments abroad of  New Zealand are close to 10.000.000 dollars, or 25.000.000 dollars of Brazil), but that we must define imperialism from the point of view of Lenin who defined it according to the merging of the bank capital with the industrial capital becoming financial capital, which goes beyond the frontiers and constitute itself into monopolies, concentrating the domination of entire branches of the economy at a worldwide level trough cartels and trusts.

The majority affirms that, on the contrary, on one hand, in China the surplus of its commercial trade is concentrated in bonds of the US treasury and that with them it finances the deficit of the dominant imperialist power; and with its reserves in dollars it becomes an insurance of exchange for the imperialist powers, USA in particular, becoming more and more dependant. Thus, the foreign investments of China are not a source of super profits for the Chinese bourgeoisie but they are bounded to guarantee the infrastructure and raw material, being in charge of obtaining them in those places where imperialism is unable to reach them, as in the Iranian Kurdistan or the African countries bled to death by fratricide wars, in order to guarantee the best conditions for the multinationals (as it is done by Japan for which China is a site for its assembling plants for the production of the Japanese companies in Asia). Therefore, China becomes a republiqueta whose native bourgeoisie is in dispute with Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, etc…. for the slice of surplus value taken from its own working class. And the new world conjuncture poses a new world division of labor in which imperialism is seeking for transforming the entire planet in its own domestic market and where China will play the role of importer of US goods for its high middle class of 300 millions people, at the same time than producing goods for the third world, on the account of US imperialism, trough joint ventures and buying patents.

4) The majority of the Congress considers that the comrades of the HRS and the CWG yield to the pressure propelled by the imperialist powers that want to influence the world working class and above all the one of USA with a false ideology on the “Chinese danger” to confuse the  proletariat and, along side the collaboration of the social imperialists, the Stalinists and the renegades of Trotskyism, persuade it to support new military adventures in the dispute for that huge maquila which is China today, this time “democratic”, dressed as Obama.

5) From the documents posed by the HRS, the majority affirm that the capitalist restoration in the former workers states has not been peaceful, and that the alternative forecast of the Fourth International that stated that without the victory of the political revolution that put the workers state in the service of the victory of the world socialist revolution, the bureaucracy would become into a direct agent of restoration has been confirmed. As Trotsky said, the restoration would come either by the hand of the imperialist tanks -that is to say a direct military intervention against the USSR- or by the Ford tractor -that is to say flooding with cheap goodds- creating the conditions for the destruction of the bases of the workers’ state and for the re-emerging of a bourgeoisie and a petty bourgeoisie hostile to the proletariat.

The majority affirm that the comrades of the HRS mix the fact that the capitalist restoration in 1989 did not come from a direct imperialist military invasion –carried on by the German imperialism in the Second World War, and which was defeated by the heroic soviet masses that smashed the fascist invasion costing 27 millions of death- with a “peaceful” character of restoration.

The majority affirm that the capitalist restoration was prepared in the 80s and came by the hand of the “Ford tractor”.  That is to say, it came through the cheap goods from the West; in this case goods in the shape of money, used by the IMF to deeply indebt the former bureaucratized workers’ states, originating an openly restorationist bureaucracy who wanted to become bourgeois, and a social basis closely linked with the imperialist financial capital, taking those states into a deep decomposition.

But the capitalist restoration wasn’t peaceful at all. It was imposed in 1989 on the bases of the smash of the political revolutions of 1953 in Eastern Germany, 1956 in Hungary, 1968 in Czechoslovakia, Georgia and Ukraine, in 1981-82 in Poland. The restoration was imposed because, from the betrayal of Stalinism and Social Democracy, the world revolutionary upheaval of 68-74 was defeated. It was imposed with the massacre in the Tiananmen Square in China; fratricide wars such as the one between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and with 3 wars in the Balkans (Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo) and with the military attack of NATO against Serbia in 1999. The restoration was imposed and consolidated in 1991-93, with the 21 countries coalition, lead by USA, UK that destroyed Iraq.

On the Basis of these wars, massacres and counterrevolutionary blows, the Bonapartist bourgeoisie regime of Yeltsin first and Putin later in Russia and of the “red mandarins” in China were imposed.

That is to say, that, against the Kautskyst conception of “peaceful path towards socialism” and its opposed twin, the conception of the pacific road towards the capitalist restoration (what Trotsky called the “the movie of reformism in reverse” in its polemic against Craipeau) that infected the leadership of the Fourth International at the end of the war,  the majority of the ILTF affirm that the forecast and the program of the Fourth International passed the test of history, but not the Trotskyists who spoke in their name and capitulated before Stalinism, rejecting to build up the sections in the former workers’ states after the Second World War. For that reason, the Fourth International was absent when the political revolution started in Germany, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovak, Armenia, China, USSR, etc….

6) Based on the essential foundations summarized here, according to the point of view of the majority, the position of the comrades of the HRS and the CWG could put in question the character of the imperialist epoch since it could allow the development of an imperialist power within the narrow limits of a single country.

a) The minority of the Congress is stating a theoretical difference, not a programmatic one before the workers’ revolutionary vanguard.

b) The HRS clarify that in the case of a military confrontation between EEUU and China, they would be for the military defeat of the EEUU, despite the fact that in its written materials posed before the Congress this matter has not been programmatically posed.

c) The CWG considers that it was a hasty action to publish the anti-defensist position towards China and Russia in the article on Iran in the last issue of “Class Struggle”

d) The Congress resolves to drive a public discussion on the theoretical differences about the definition of the imperialist epoch and the Chinese question before the workers’ revolutionary vanguard.

e) The Congress resolves to intervene programmatically in a centralized way for the defense of China before any political, economic, or military attack from the imperialist powers that dispute the domain over China.

f) The Congress resolves to organize a section of theoretical public debates in the press of the FLTI; as well as an internal bulletin to discuss the programmatic differences. At the same time, despite the differences on the program for the intervention before the acute events of the class struggle at worldwide level, all the groups that compose the ILTF will intervene in a centralized way with the position of the majority. 

g) The Congress resolves to convene a Congress in an estimated period of 6 months to allow that all the discussions and conclusions of these days of elaboration and homogenization can be discussed and voted by the rank and file of the organizations that compose the ILTF.

4) On the World situation

a) After three days of debate, the Congress resolves to adopt as foundational documents of the ILTF the editorial articles of the International Workers Organizer # 12, part I and II: “On the world situation: facing historical convulsions”; “The regime of world domination imposed by imperialism since 1989 is in crisis”; “ The crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletariat is becoming more acute”; and the elaborations on the question of China, Cuba, the historical balance of the Fourth International and the programmatic and political consequences for the revolutionary vanguard of the world proletariat.

b) After a deep discussion on the remaining differences and shades; after very rich debates with the contribution from the delegates of the different groups that allow us to solve our differences and get common positions, the congress resolved to adopt as foundational documents of the ILTF: the statements elaborated on the acid tests of the class struggle based on the agreements achieved previously and during the congress: Greece, France, Madagascar, Guadalupe, Palestine (documents that were points of agreement to call for this congress), and the documents elaborated before the acid events of the class struggle like Peru, Iran, and Honduras, voted in the current congress.

c) The Congress resolves to reaffirm the need of redoubling the struggle against the treacherous leaderships, that is to say, against social democrats, Stalinists, anarchists and renegades of Trotskyism, that today are also disguised as anti-capitalists, all of them grouped in the World Social Forum and who, through the ELAC, for example, try to put the world working class at the feet of the “democratic” Obama, of the natives Bolivarian or Islamic bourgeoisies and of the Castroist restorationist bureaucracy. 

d) The congress resolves to adopt as foundational documents the published materials on the struggle against the popular front in Bolivia, South Africa and Zimbabwe; as well as those on the combat against Bolivarian governments and the Bonapartist regimes as the Colombian one.

e) The congress of the FLTI adopt as its own the anti-imperialist published by the HRS, “Stop Obama’s Wars”; and the document “Alan Benjamin is a class traitor”, in fight against the renegades of Trotskyism that, in the USA defend the interests of the workers’ bureaucracy and aristocracy.

f) The congress of the FLTI adopts as a foundational document the article published in Democracia Obrera # 32, (November 2008) “The murderous imperialist disguised as Obama”.

g) In the debates on Palestine, Iran, Honduras and Madagascar, the congress deeply went over the question of using the revolutionary democratic demands and the national question, achieving important advances in the political homogenization as it is expressed in the resolutions on Peru, Iran and Honduras voted by this Congress.

All resolutions will be placed on the ILTF website;  World Situation; Palestine; Bolivia, South Africa, Zimbabwe; United States; Greece, Madagascar, Guadeloupe; Honduras, Peru.

 

 

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 labor of the productive classes to make its profits. To survive, capitalism became increasingly destructive of "nature" and humanity. In the early 20th 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.

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.

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.

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 program, 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.

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.

 

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