CS101 July-August 2012

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Class Struggle 101 July-August 2012

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Afghanistan:

Troops out now!The Labour Government sent NZ SAS troops to

Afghanistan in 2001 on the basis that a UN resolutionjustified the war on terror in that country. This was

never anything more than a pretext to invade and

occupy a strategic pivot in the big game Al Qaeda

was always a label attached to any militant opposition

to US interests in the struggle for control of central Asia

to plunder its oil and gas. NZ became the US deputies

dog snapping at the heels of the

Taliban for the price of some

trade concessions. Back then we

said Defend Afghanistan in what

was an imperialist war against apoor semi-colony. There could be

no defence of Afghanistan without

the defeat of the invading army;

the NZ troops included.

The outrage that met Sumner-

Burstyns comments on the recent

deaths of 5 NZ soldiers, shows

how mindlessly jingoistic the NZ

authoritarian populist rump has

become in a global crisis wheremany retreat into racial national

chauvinism. As we have said before, crisis and recession

brings out the underlying racism, sexism and

reactionary attitudes towards liberal values. Classic is

Matthew Hooten on Radio NZ rubbishing opposition to

the war in Afghanistan by Grey Lynn liberals. In a

period of social crisis those with a need for authority

feel threatened by breakdown of social order and lash

out at any scapegoat group they can blame for their

fear. The NACTs and their attack dogs like Michael Laws

exploit that fear in their baiting of easy targetsincluding paedophiles and welfare frauds. Women who

speak out like Sumner-Burstyn are easy targets for rape

or death threats.

The logic of this reactionary scapegoating is to exploit

fear and build public hysteria to justify a drive to war

and for NZs involvement in more invasions and wars so

that the NZ ruling class gets its share of the imperialist

spoils. And as this causes resistance, it justifies more

anti-terror legislation and against free speech and

assembly, and for more spying and restrictions on legal

rights as we have seen in the aftermath of Operation 8.

This is a slide towards fascism where all those who are

perceived as a threat to the social order of capitalism

became the targets of reactionary groups in society ith

the complicity of the state.

In the decade since the last Afghan war began, the

invaders have met with the same fate of as all previous

imperialist invasions, a long retreat before defeat. The

US has no major strategic gains and apart from heavilyfortified garrisons like Bagram, has shifted the moving

front on the war on terror to hit and run Drone

warfare. Iran is next and China is not far behind with

NZ now roped back as a junior partner in RIMPAC and

the US plan to isolate its new global rival China

politically and militarily.

Workers have to stand up against

the revival of militaristic

nationalism (jingoism) and wars of

conquest wherever they are; get

the troops out of Afghanistan;

withdraw from all NATO and UN

military forces in the Middle East,

and from all RIMPAC and ANZAC

agreements in the Asia Pacific.

These are all designed to suck NZ

into new intelligence sharing,

surveillance, wars and invasions in

the interests of the US and its

allies, against its newly emerging

imperialist rivals, China and Russia.

Stopping Asset SalesThe mass marches against asset sales may be getting

smaller, but the militant opposition is on the rise. The

NACTs are speeding up their rip, shit, bust plan to re-

colonise NZ. The TPPA signals this logic as it signs away

almost all sovereign control over NZ assets. This means

that the opposition to that barbaric future will onlygrow stronger and draw more and more into activity.

The NACTs have no choice but to go for broke and they

are breaking down everywhere.

For example, Operation 8 was a total failure to divide

the nation against Maori terror. The big plans to

reform education have been temporarily shelved.

Welfare reform is kept it the headlines, with

numerous incendiary statements from Paula Benefit,

such as drug testing beneficiaries, as a diversion from

the real fight over asset sales where the NACTs face agrowing popular resistance.

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The Waitangi Tribunal and Iwi corporate challenges to

water sales have put the Power Co sales on hold. Yes,

the iwi leaderships will be bought off by shares or

compensation to grab a share in the privatised profits

of public assets.

They are openly

admitting that to get

anything from thedeals they will have

to capitalise their

spiritual values and

their traditional view

of ownership into

money-value. Te

Whiti would be

calling them 21st

century kupapa.

Then, another sort of

capitalist corporate,

Rio Tinto, has seized the time to cut its power costs. It

takes 20% of the total NZ electricity output so can

effectively force the working class to subsidize its

power costs.

These are challenges arising from disagreements

among the bosses who are squabbling over the size of

their cut from privatization at our expense. They all

stand to profit from privatisation. They are not the

allies of the masses whose only experience of trickle

down from asset sales is price rises to pay for theprivatised profits.

The growing popular opposition to asset sales has

already forced the NACTs to repackage its sales pitch

several times and its now coming up against a

worsening global depression, falling prices and

devaluation of capital assets and living standards a

classic crisis of overproduction!

What makes the current resistance bound to increase

and strengthen is the courage and political

inventiveness of a growing youth movement who

understand that their generation must lead the

austerity the fightback against the attacks of the

international banksters. When the capitalist system

begins to eat its young, its days are numbered.

The Labour Party has a contradictory position on asset

sales. It will not come out and state that it will re-

nationalise all asset sales, let alone not pay

compensation. It doesnt want to be identified as part

of a movement lead by anti-capitalists. The Green and

Labour MPs who speak at asset sales rallies are careful

not to steer the fightback outside parliament. They are

on a losing streak. Because to stop the asset sales the

movement has to go way beyond referenda and legal

challenges to militant direct action which must come

into conflict with

parliament.

Mana is shaping up tolead that resistance

and can do if and when

it overcomes its

historic tension

between Maori

Nationalism and the

Pakeha left and unites

the majority of the NZ

working class. At the

moment Mana is

subordinating itself to

the Waitangi Tribunal

that is the capitalist parliamentary system. It will only

break from this when Maori workers realise that there is

no parliamentary solution and that the iwi corporate

leaders are Maori capitalists who want to exploit Maori

workers to make a profit.

We look forward to the demos and direct actions

when we see Mana banners and flags declaiming

Renationalisation without Compensation and

calling for occupations of lands and dams to unite

the various left currents and campaigns.

The reason that NZ politics is being realigned is that

Aotearoa/NZs economic sovereignty in the Pacific is

being permanently sold-off under the NACTs to US

imperialism. This political realignment will see a huge

polarisation between the NACT rightwing and a growing

left around Mana, a left Labour Party split, and a Green

split along class lines that unites the left fragments like

the new left Syriza in Greece. Its agenda will be

contested but open to those who want to defeat the

right drift towards NZ as a locked down US neo-colonyand fight for Aotearoa/NZ as a sovereign, socialist

republic. That would be a good start.

Occupy the Dams!

Take back the power! Dump Rio Tinto!

Socialise all strategic assets under

workers control!

For a Workers Government!

For a Socialist Republic of Aotearoa in a

Socialist Federation of the Pacific!

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Housing NZ: Not for sale!Housing NZs own press release admits cutting state housing: The northern Glen Innesredevelopment project proposes the redevelopment of 156 properties to create at least 260new homes, including: 78 that Housing New Zealand will own; at least 39 other affordablehomes (possibly owned or managed through other social or community housing providers); theremainder for private sale.Redevelopment in Glen Innes means selling off most of the landand halving the number of existing state houses!

Government attacks

The NACT Govt has announced its knives are out formore attacks on the social wage of the working class.Housing NZ has the accommodation supplement toincome-related rents for beneficiaries and low-paidworkers. The governmentspropaganda line is to bring staterents into a level playing field

with community trusts. Yet theHousing Minister has also said thestate can no longer afford to meetthe need for social and affordablehousing by itself, and wants toencourage "third-sector" non-profittrusts. We expect more cuts giventhe presence of welfare workinggroup members on the latestgovernment committee.

After the Tamaki transformationdevelopment, Housing NZ will only own and manage30% (78/260) of the housing. Of course the prime landvalues will be go into private pockets as Housing NZproperties not sold off will be on the cheaper land(bottom of the hill less sun, no views). HNZ is alreadyin bed with private capitalists Fletchers and McConnellDowell have directors on the Housing NZ board.

Now Housing NZ and Auckland city council have sub-contracted the whole transformation to the TamakiRedevelopment Company. Government has put $5million in (and is 59% owner) the council has put in $3.5million (for 49% ownership). The company wants the

private sector to invest funds and make a profit.Instead of providing social housing the state will becollaborating in the profiteering of propertydevelopers. This is proof that Mayor Len Brownselection promise: I wont privatise was a lie.

Charity dumping

The NACT Govt is dumping housing responsibilities andcutting the contribution to the social wage made bystate housing. They have contracted out more socialhousing through a social housing unit. An allocation of$8.81 million has also gone to Accessible Properties NZ,

a wholly owned subsidiary of IHC, to provideaccommodation for people with intellectual disabilities.

A grant of $1.3m, went to the Comcare Charitable Trustfor building 20 single person units around Christchurch This is peanuts when you look at shortage of housingand the failure to replace and repair state housing thatis red stickered. But is enough to buy out Comcare soAnnette Sutherland (their housing manager) is now

working for the government onhow to get out of social housingby part-privatising to more

charities.

Local churches and charities mayalso be bought off by agovernment lolly scramble for$104 million available for socialhousing funds. Social housingwas what State housing (HousingNZ) was all about, now thegovernment is contracting thisout to the private sector andtrusts. The Ponsonby Rd Baptist

Church has its hand out. Their Community of Refuge

Trust, will receive $3.89m to build clusters of 31 one-and two-bedroom units. This is a payout to the trust toecho the NACTs own bullshit. Trust chief executivePeter Jeffries thinks, government is prioritising socialhousing. The 30% public/ 70% private sell-off in GlenInnes/Tamaki exposes that as an outright lie.

Charity is no long-term solution for meeting workingclass needs. Charities are under control of the state asthey are dependent on state funding to expand andcharities that criticise or challenge the government arefrozen out of existence by a freeze in state funding while those that cosy up and spout the governments liesreceive funding. The government can pick winners whorepeat their lies, and try to meet the needs of thedeserving poor. The losers will be charities that dareto question the government version of reality and thegovernments continuing attack on the undeservingpoor and benefit bludgers. Charities shift thedebate from income based rents with plans to charge70%-80% of market rents: cold charity.

Rents attacked

The Auckland housing need is growing at approx 250+

new houses per month according to the City Councilestimate. Yet only 50 per month are being built

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currently. The market will push up rents. Housing NZrents are fixed at 25% of the tenants' incomes. But theGovernment is gearing up to attack income based rents.NACT complains about giving Housing NZ just over$600 million a year as the difference between marketrents and rents limited to 25% of income. Through WINZNACT pays $1.2 billion a year in accommodationsupplements for 312,000 people, more that 50% of totalprivate rentals; charity for private landlords and theircapitalist bankers.

How about meeting needs?

Capitalist developers are proven failures buildingshoddy or leaky homes for a quick profit; going bust,leaving unfinished buildings and developments, andleaving people in sub-standard housing. Capitalism hasfailed to provide affordable housing!

It was a National government in the 1990s that

destroyed housing standards and set the scene for theleaky building problems. Allowing free-market cowboysto run the whole building and property developmentindustry for profit, and not even able to meet basichousing needs. This government will not fix the housingshortage. Housing NZ has no plan to contribute to meetthis need instead they are privatising. Elderlyapplicants are told that they will die before they getinto a HNZ house! We know that there are threefamilies packed into 3-bedroom houses in Auckland,while others live in one bedroom boarding houses. Thehealth system is burdened with diseases of poverty,including illnesses created by overcrowded and

substandard housing.

No parliamentary solutions

Anyone who has any faith in a so-called Labour Party ofthe Mana Party needs to demand that their Party callsthe asset sales theft and demand that they take theassets back without compensation on winning the nextelection!

We have no confidence that those left parties willfight these assets sales. They are in the job of usingParliament to manage capitalism. Capitalism is facing a

global depression and is desperate to restore profits.The only way out for them is to make the working classpay for their crisis: stealing our assets; attacking thesocial wage (health, education and housing) and drivingdown wages and conditions.

The government is failing to meet peoples needs. Theydo not listen to the needs for housing instead all theylisten to is the capitalists desire to take profits and sothey will sell, sell and sell. The asset sales are theft ofstate property paid for by the working class over thegenerations. Housing represents part of the socialwage defined as state provision of services paid for bytaxation. While the capitalist claim the right to buy up

public assets that are part of our social wage, we claimthe right to expropriate their private wealth made onthe backs of the working class! When the governmentdoesnt listen and doesnt meet our needs we have tofight back and we have to fight back in ways that theycannot ignore.

Take back all stolen assets/ no compensation!

For strikes and occupations block the ruling classfrom their profit taking then the State will know thepower of the organised working class. Build strikes thatshutdown production that do not let scab labour in.Occupy factories and assets to show workers cancontrol production.

For workers control of housing developments

Construction workers and HNZ tenants unite to plan andbuild new housing! The working class built those houses

and will build the new houses to meet our needs onlyworkers control! State housing began under a LabourGovernment when the working class was well organisedand strong enough to win a good living standard. TheKarl Marx Hof in Vienna (Austria) is another example ofa state housing project provided by a labour socialdemocratic government in the early 1930s.

While a fightback is on in Glen Innes, Mangere, MtRoskill, New Lynn and Royal Oak are also in for aHousing NZ selloff. The outer suburbs will also be underthe hammer. This is an attack on the social wage of thewhole working class.

For a workers council of Glen Innes! Andwhen we say workers we mean the wholeworking class, including beneficiaries andstate house tenants.

Smash market rents for workers councils toset affordable rents in the area, andmaximum of 25% of income.

Occupations and pickets to stop houseremovals! No house removals unless they areunder tenants and workers control to meetthe needs of the community!

For community self-defense squads! Prepare,be ready to defend pickets and occupationsagainst police brutality.

Smash the monopoly of Fletchers buildingand/or nationalise building companies underworkers control with no compensation to thecapitalist-share holders. Stop the financecapitalist profiteering from housing, forworkers control of the banks!

Socialise the building industry under workerscontrol to build enough high standardaffordable housing for all those that needhousing!

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The Marikana Massacre

Down with the ANC! For a Workers and

Poor Farmers Government!The cold blooded killing of 34 miners by SAP (SouthAfrican Police) at Marikana [Maretlwana in Lesotholanguage] on Thursday is a deliberate warning by theANC (African National Congress) that a militantbreakaway of rank and file unions from COSATU(Congress of South African Trade Unions) will not betolerated.The evidenceis there thatthe ANC andits SACP(SouthAfricanCommunistParty)leadershipinstructed thepolice toshoot tokill. Theglobal crisis

has putpressure onANC to makeSouth Africanworkers payfor the crisis. The militant miners are the vanguard ofthe proletariat and have begun to break from theTripartite regime (ANC/SACP/COSATU).

The militant miners were members of the AMCU(African Miners and Construction Union) a breakawayunion that split from NUM (National Union of Miners)when its founding leader was disciplined by the NUM for

leading a 2 week mine occupation for his reinstatementby the company. As the NUM has become morebureaucratised and oriented towards the better paidworkers the AMCU has grown to represent the poorestand most militant workers.

This poses a problem for the ANC as imperialismdemands that it uses COSATU to discipline the workersbut workers are breaking from COSATU to formindependent unions to resist paying for the imperialistscrisis. The ANC has no choice but to try to blame thestriking workers and turn other workers against them,and when that fails, to shoot to kill. Thus South

Africa is entering a revolutionary situation of open class

war to decide which class will control and benefit fromits vast labour and mineral resources.

Imperialists Mine Southern Africa for super-profits

This clearlyexposes the roleof the ANC as acapitalist partythat runs the SAsemi-colonialcapitalisteconomy onbehalf ofinternationalfinance capital.SAs historic rolein the imperialistdivision of labourwas to serve

British and USmining capitalsuch as Anglo-American andLonhro - now

Lonmin that owns the Marikana platinum mine. Theowners make huge super-profits at the cost of workerspoverty and lives. Apartheid slavery was the methodused in SA until 94. Equally or more barbaric conditionsstill exist all over Southern Africa. Africa was divided upby the imperialist powers into many artificial statesthat cut across whole peoples and nations as well as therich mineral belts of gold, copper, diamonds, platinum,

etc., all plundered by imperialism. Masses of workersmigrate across Southern Africa to work for imperialistcorporations or traders. In the DRC warlords fromRwanda and Uganda control mining in the North-Eastwhile the Chinese mines flout labour laws in Katanga.In Zimbabwe the army and ZANU-PF control diamonds.In Zambia and Tanzania Chinese and other mines have apoor safety record. As the global crisis worsens, we seethe conditions of miners deteriorate across the wholeof Southern and Central Africa as the rival imperialistpowers compete to pump surplus profits out of themines. This means that to defeat imperialism and theirclient regimes and warlords in Africa, workers have to

unite across the colonial borders to create a SocialistFederation of Southern Africa!

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Popular Front

The brutality of apartheid gave way in 94 to thepower sharing government with the ANC as the partyrepresenting the black majority. But the black majoritynever got to rule. The ANC formed a close alliance withthe Stalinist SACP in the 1950s as a vehicle for nationalliberation and the end of white racist capitalist rule.

But it could never fulfil this task. Even before it sharedpower in government with the white bourgeoisie, theANC was a popular front party in which the blackworking masses were subordinated to a black pettybourgeoisie who aspired to become black capitalistsserving imperialist finance capital.

The fake Trotskyist left betrayed the socialistrevolution and became apologists for the Stalinist ANCpopular front. The Cliffite, Mandelite, Barnesite andMilitant tendencies voted for ANC as if it would bringabout the Freedom Charter. A few Trotskyist currents

such as the British Workers Power called for a votefor workers candidates and a break from the ANC. Asthe Trotskyists predicted, the ANC victory turnednational liberation into a new form of imperialistdomination and over the last 18 years the ANC haspresided over the super-exploitation andimpoverishment of the masses while pocketing its shareof the spoils of imperialist plunder.

Today the Trotskyist program demands a breakfrom ANC popular front regime. Against theStalinist lie of bourgeois democracy for themasses we can see that to survive the ANC mustuse the guns of bourgeois dictatorship to kill themasses.

We reject the call by Julius Malema for strikes tochange the corrupt ANC leadership. He is trying tokeep the workers in the popular front to be betrayedagain and again. What we call for is a political generalstrike to bring down the ANC regime to expose it fullyas the agent of imperialism. A general strike will forcea show down. The regime is fragile and it will try to usethe army to stay in power.

We have to spell out that the strike committees anddefence guards of today must become workerscouncils and workers militias, and that the ranks ofthe army must be won over to defend workers from amilitary clampdown. This is eminently possible as therank and file of the military has unionized despitethe attempt by the ANC to crush the organizing drive.The unionization of the military drove a wedgebetween the most militant youth and the leadershipof the Tripartite regime.

Workers councils and militias will become the basisof workers power and a Workers and Poor FarmersGovernment that will empower the working massesto fully participate in the permanent revolution forsocialism.

A Trotskyist program:

Permanent Revolution the order of the day!

We support the immediate demands of the WorkersInternational Vanguard Party [WIVP] for workers inall unions and all sectors to go out on strike againstthis massacre and to form self-defence squads againstfurther repression. We also support the WIVP call tobuild for a general strike, and to break with the ANCand SACP!

General Strike to break with the ANC,Smash the Popular Front!

Down with SACP Stalinist traitors! Rank and file take control of COSATU,

throw out the corrupt leadership!

But a call for a general strike to break with the ANCmust show what will replace this regime. We needsocialist demands for workers councils, workersmilitias, for the ranks of the army to refuse to shootworkers and form soldiers councils.

For a general strike to bring down thecapitalist Government and form aWorkers Government!

Build Workers and Soldiers councils,and Workers militias!

For a Workers and Poor FarmersGovernment!

For a Socialist South Africa in aSocialist Federation of SouthernAfrica!

Liaison Committee of Communists.

For a New World Party of Socialist Revolution.20 August 2012

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The Egyptian Revolution

The Electoral road to imperialist

stabilisation vs the road to workers power!We were delighted to see footage telecast Sunday(7/15/12) of Hillary Clintons Cairo motorcade beingpelted with tomatoes and shoes. We were told sheshook hands with the elected President, the MuslimBrotherhood candidate M. Morsi, but this was notshown. Today we did see a photo of her shaking handswith Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi, head of theSupreme Council of the Armed forces (hereafter theSCAF.) We watch what each of these sorry figures dobecause we are focused on the two questions of power:

who has it now and how does the working class goabout seizing and keeping it (?) We have somealtogether different answers to those two questionsthan what thoughtful workers have come to expectfrom various erstwhile revolutionary socialists.

So lets look at the Egypt of Mid-July, 2012 in theaftermath of the two rounds of bourgeoisparliamentarism thathave the Anglo-Americanimperialists soaking theirshirt fronts for joy. These

now believe their localpartners/dependentshave put over thestabilization of bourgeoisrule. No supposition isinvolved on their part.Morsi has said it has

been done, both to theEgyptian press and to theSaudi government. Morsiand Clinton particularlyfeel that what remains tobe done to consolidate their triumph over the masses is

to foist a more opaque, constitutional civilian ruleupon them. This will require that the Army(specifically Tantawi and the SCAF) appear to cedemore power to an elected parliament that has so far(7/15) met in defiance of the Supreme Court (armycontrolled) exactly once and for five minutes. Clintonsays the U.S.A. is not in Egypt to pick the winners. Notmuch it isnt!

In Washingtons preferred scheme, the Army and theMuslim Brotherhood will have to compete with favorsfor the parliamentarians votes. Ms. Clinton is nowexplaining the details. This is a plan for a weak regimeof a very usual Middle East type. This plan is for aregime that will interfere very little with penetrations

of the Egyptian market by international capital, willinterfere with Israel not at all in practice, and will notexport the February, 2011 revolution to any of itsneighbors, no matter how much Morsi also swears touphold the ideals of Tahrir Square.

With the grins of a comic opera buffoon, Morsi hasspent two weeks promising all of this. For theinternational press the big question is how much theSCAF will permit him to do beyond the theatrical inwhat the policy wonks see as a done deal.

The Various Erstwhile Revolutionary Socialists: ThreeExcuses

For different reasons, each of our main Trotskyistopponents take elements and even most of the above

description as the finishedoutcome, as contemporaryEgypt A to Z. We willendeavor here to putpotlights on their errors and

the theory behind them.Theory in these quotes

because the ultimate sourcesof these errors is therejection of dialectics andthe mentality of theradicalized petty bourgeoisiein the metropolises, posingas working class politicalconsciousness. A reactionaryreformism in the service ofimperialism and two

varieties of aberrant Cannonism[1] figure here. Eachhas nothing to offer or worse to the Egyptian andMiddle Eastern working class.

First lets look at the role and the historical modusoperandi of the Cliffite international current. For ourpurposes here we are looking at the mothershipS.W.P. (U.K.,) the sometimes slightly estrangedInternational Socialist Organization (I.S.O.) in the U.S.,and the Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists (R.S.) ofEgypt. Each is an example of the Tony Cliff world viewof the former U.S.S.R. and each of the degenerateworkers states as state capitalist. This was the view

of their ultimate progenitor, Max Schachtman, whoseWorkers Party Leon Trotsky described as a

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reactionary reformist tendency (also as acounterrevolutionary reformist tendency.) Theysport Trotskys picture while serving imperialism,mostly without the understanding of the membership.They have done this uninterruptedly since 1940, whenthey supported the Mannerheim dictatorship of Finlandagainst the U.S.S.R. Sometimes the inevitable advanceof workers consciousness wrecks this scheme andresults in healthy splits. In recent times the wonderfulsplit of the majority of the I.S.O. Zimbabwe fromCliffism and its plan to bury the comrades in thepopular front, and the resulting new RevolutionaryWorkers Group is an example to the revolutionary classthe world over.

Reactionary reformism is the form to which the RS andtheir American co-thinkers, the ISO hew to be true,with their call to Defeat The Right! with a vote forthe Muslim Brotherhood, (M.B.) as instructed fromthe S.W.P. (U.K.) mother ship. They motivated the

vote for M. Morsi much in the same way as Clintondoes, i.e., that the outcome would be democracy.For Clinton thats obviously bourgeois democracy. Our3rd Campers dont mention whose democracy theythink it is. Illusions in classless democracy and whospreads them could be the subject for a book lengthtreatment. Defeat the Right! they call and back theMuslim Brotherhood a stark and unambiguous call forclass collaboration and betrayal of the working class.

The Muslim Brotherhoods original class base was theSuez Canal Company (i.e., U.K. capital,) and later thelandlord class of the rural villages; villages little

changed since the middle ages. The M.B. was foundedin 1928 by Hassan al-Bannah and was instantlyrecognized by the Suez Canal Company as the antidoteand political counterforce to Arab nationalism. Thecompany built al-Bannah his first mosque! Naturallyenough, as often as the M.B. sought over the years topick the winning side, and while also building their ownsecret paramilitary force, it frequently became thefocus of Nasserite repressions. This makes them ex-political prisoners, and ipso facto leftists ofconvenience for the Cliffite world view.

For Cliffism the socialist revolution is never the taskfacing the working class in the near term and advanceson the revolutionary road are also to be eschewed.Even their blockade (really just a picket) of the

Portuguese parliament in November, 1975 gave justenough of a whiff of a putsch to cause German SocialDemocracy to send their Portuguese Socialist Party co-thinkers a planeload of cash to buy some troops with,finally ending the crisis of the bourgeois state. TheCliffite game works like this: workers are taken in bytheir economist practice; where the trade unionbureaucrats ARE challenged, it is over uniondemocracy, otherwise they are never really fought

except over an occasional opportune pie card post. Thepro-imperialist politics of the bureaucracy are also

never fought, and during the anticommunist witch huntin the U.S. the Schachtman/Cliffites were in thebusiness of building anticommunist unions.

No surprise, then, when on the second day of the TahrirSquare uprising the new, mass, Independent TradeUnion Federation (EFITU) came out and declared its

existence after years of underground illegality, theEnglish-speaking representatives of the RS appeared allover the left blogosphere and said what were needednow were unions (!!!) All alone, or maybe it justseemed so, we of the Liaison Committee of Communistshowled that what were needed were WORKERSCOUNCILS, WORKERS MILITIA AND A REVOLUTIONARYPARTY to build an indefinite duration general strike toconfound and overthrow the capitalist regime. Askyourself why these workers councils have not come tobe. Then ask yourself what revolutionary workersshould call for in their absence, after all that hashappened (to exclude you from power!) Well give you

our answer further down.

The #2 Excuse for Revolutionary Socialism: theInternational Spartacist Tendency (I.S.T.)

For the I.S.T. and their mothership, the SpartacistLeague U.S.A., there was no revolution, they tellyou with emphasis, but only the nationalistcelebration of February 2011 that resulted in thedownfall of Mubarak. For them the Arab Spring doesnot exist and didnt last year. Whatever it was did notexist as an Arab phenomenon either, let alone signal aresumption of the Arab revolution, national-democraticor otherwise. For the Spartacists the main point isnteven that as yet the working class has not entered thecontest for power in its own name. Rather, for themthe main conclusion has to be that without a vote bythe worker masses for the official Communist Partyblessed by Stalin, no road out of the social impasse is tobe found. And without this vote, making roommiraculously for the rise of their own politics crafted inthe supremely developed U.S.A., the stabilization ofthe rule of the bourgeoisie will have been completed bythe electoral theatrical of June, 2012, and the uprisingthey call the nationalist celebration. IS OVER.

(T)here was no revolution, and the nationalistcelebration is over. What hand writes like thiswhen witnessing events such as we have all seen? Notthe heavy hand of history, certainly, with itsenlightening economics. This writing resembles thebegrudging hand of dead bourgeois historians whoconcealed their racism successfully but did not live solong that they would also have to deny it. So it is toone of the leaderships devoted to one of the visions ofcold war Cannonist American exceptionalist,monolithic party-building that the Egyptian workersleaders must turn if they are ever to discover what

their programmatic needs are. Without this gift from

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New York (IST HQ) the Egyptian revolutionaries will gono place. This is the taste they leave.

We (revolutionary workers) say no thanks. We havewatched the democratic aspirations of the masses runheadlong into the fortified political positions of thelocal and imperialist bourgeoisies and their two main

reactionary political vehicles. Right this minute theclass struggle is seething and bubbling in all the maincities, even as the leading workers are in disarraybefore the configurations of these fortified positions,such as the privatizing laws dating from the Nazif yearsso beloved of the I.M.F., the Law 96 that reversed theNasser-era land reforms and the usury of the statebanks which make the life of sharecropper agriculturenearly a modern slavery, properly so called. These arestill with us among many, many institutionalizedinjustices.

These are the regulation features of the epoch of

imperialist decay, even in an Egypt that can design andbuild its own jet engines and ballistic missiles.Response to oppression in the form of a transitional

program is not an unfathomable unknown for those inthe lesser-developed world; rather it is the legacy of allpreceding generations of the modern internationalworking class.

No more than the Tunisian, the Bahraini, the Libyan, orthe Egyptian working class is not now and will notbecome the playthings of the C.I.A., either. Worsethan official Spartacism, many in their orbit and otherRevolutionary Tendency-derived sectarians arenowadays attributing such great world manipulativepowers to Anglo-Saxon white men of the Arlington,Virginia spy bureaucracy as to read like Kipling ingrotesque! Right now these third-worldists, the manytrue Robertsonians and factions of Healyites, aremaking a Marxist saint of anti-imperialism out of Assad,much as they found workers state credentials all of asudden for the Libya of Qadaffis green book last year.Even Occupy anarchists, no ace theoreticians of

internationalism, are onto what they describe askneejerk anti-imperialism. The official Spartacismheld that the international working class had no side to

choose in Libya, i.e., in something else that didnthappen or is in any case over.

Well we will tell some and right here too that this is notthe 1950s, either of C.I.A. coups or of CannonsSpeeches to the Party. The Permanent Revolution,never entirely off the historical agenda in the MiddleEast and North Africa (MENA) is staring, unblinking atthe most advanced workers, in Egypt and across theregion. Since the 50s the Nasserite bourgeoisie hasbuilt large scale industry and a military-industrialcomplex where before there was mostly sand. There isnow an Egyptian industrial working class of a size and

social weight to dwarf the one existing in 1905-17Russia. Where have they suffered a historic defeat?

Wherefore, except in the Bolivarian logic of somelatterday Monad Press[2] book, is this cynicism aboutthe possibilities of our revolutionary social class?

In the next historical conjuncture bourgeoisparliamentarianism in the MENA will disappoint andbetray and fail to deliver for all but the imperialists and

their Zionist muscle. Only the socialist revolution candeliver democracy. Only socialist revolution can refuteforever the false ideas that history is over and thatpoverty is the unique product of nature. To do thisrequires delivering democracy and surpassing it throughthe power and acts of the workers state, where themasses, led by the workers, live the Occupy slogan andvote every day.

The Socialist Workers Party (Barnes): Dead WoodStanding

The S.W.P. (Barnes) of the United States offers the

other aberrant Cannonism application to the Egypt ofJuly, 2012. They simply note that struggles of theworkers and peasants are continuing after the Morsielection and list some of them. This journalism isrelatively new, but it does correspond to the old-timeSWP platonic internationalism. The more the BarnesCliques uncritical trajectory toward Castroism andBolivarianism require a diminishing of Trotsky, the morethese Trotskyists (in the minds of some) pump upCannon, particularly the Cannon of the 1950s and early60s.

Actual internationalism was never the SWPs strongestsuit. Under Cannons leadership the InternationalCentre of the Fourth International was closed downalmost before Trotskys body was cool. But soonenough in a few years bigger trouble loomed,ultimately resulting in a revisionist, stagist theory ofsocialist revolution, albeit disguised. Cannon first putup a fight against the platonic internationalism ofPablo and then surrendered to it once his Cochraniteantagonists were gone and the Vern-Ryan critics weredisciplined into silence. A Workers and FarmersGovernment document by Bob Chester was adopted toexplain (in 1954!) how the social overturn in China had

come about. The logic of the miseducation containedin this document is responsible for the undialecticalworld views of groups as diverse as the many spin offsof the IST and Socialist Action, and explains how theyhad no idea what was happening when capitalistrestorations caught them unawares and unprepared.This document will doubtless serve the Barnes clique

well in the coming years as they have to make excusesfor the 21st Century Socialism of those they run withinternationally.

In the case of the Arab revolution, the SWP (Barnes) gotburnt once before, in the late 60s when they were first

crowding out the generation who had selected them for

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leadership. Their big Victory to the Arab Revolution!posters were a hit on college campuses, but subjectedthe party to a great deal of COINTELPRO (FBI)surveillance and snooping, not to mention attentions ofother intelligence agents, including illegal but

Rockefeller sponsored activities of the Shah of Iranssecret police, the SAVAK. Not just momentarily, either,but over the course of at least fifteen years. Thepacifistic Barnes leadership group had had it with theArab revolution by the time they were in headlongretreat from the theory of Permanent Revolution.

We think the SWP will forget the Arab Revolution thistime, or any reference to a prospective socialistrevolution in Egypt.Their internationalism

will consist of newsonly until or unless anew tack is required bythe regimes they

cheerlead for. Toplease therestorationists of the21st CenturySocialism bloc (nowincluding Chineseimperialism,) anyprogram they offerthe Egyptian workingclass will have to be asreactionary reformistas any offering of the Cliffites.

The Revolutionary Road Ahead

Call as we will for the workers to establish theircouncils, to proclaim their class independence, to formup their own self defense guards and prepare theindefinite general strike against the SCAF, theimperialist overlords and the bourgeois forces of theMB, the masses move at their own pace. Crying louderor even putting our program in bold print will do littleto nothing to help the masses overcome their illusionsin parliamentarism.

The R.S. in their capitulation to the backwardness ofthe masses (by NO MEANS everyone![3]) joined forceswith the MB in elections the revolutionary workerswould have done best to boycott. The RS rejected theLeninist-Trotskyist method of applying the tactic ofcritical support to workers and bourgeois-workersparties. Supporting the MB, an open theocraticcapitalist party, puts the Cliffites in the camp of theclass enemy. Critical support was originated by theBolsheviks as a tactic to allow the communist workersto approach the left moving rank and file of thereformist and centrist socialists. The support for thecandidates of the reformists was explained like this;

like a rope supports a hanging man. (Lenin) Yes thecommunists offer critical support of just enough rope

for the reformists to hang themselves. That rope isoffered in the form of the action program of theproletariat. But the RS abandons the proletarianprogram and offers up the Egyptian working class to theimperialists stooges in the same way that the AmericanCP has for decades, skewering the working class androasting us over the paralyzing flames of pragmaticcapitalist lesser-evilism. The SWP (UK) like the CP (USA)promotes the popular front between classes against theso-called greater enemy. Yet in so doing they bindthe workers to a wing of the ruling class whose classprogram always dominates the popular front orelectoral bloc.

The pragmatism of the RStold them they had nochoice but to support thelesser evil. Where is theworkers party, where isthe revolutionary party

for which to vote? Thereis no choice. The blindersthey apply not only tothemselves but to theclass! Instead ofproclaiming the electionsto be a class- biased fraudthat offers the workers norepresentation they joinin the charade.

In contradistinction to all the above describedmisleadership, the historical revolutionary Marxist

program says to the workers:

1) The elections offer only candidates of variouswings of the bourgeoisie. The SCAF have served theimperialists for decades while enriching themselves.The MB has been a tool of Anglo imperialism since itsinception and will make peace with imperialism andZionism, they will keep the peasant masses insharecropping servitude, they will use the militaryagainst the workers movement, they may concedeminor reforms to quiet the masses yet they will allowthe SCAF to maintain its crony capitalist superstructure

and above all the profits/ privilege they rake off forthemselves and the I.M.F.

2) The crisis of capitalism, the agricultural crisis, thelimits on the Arab national revolution, the crisis ofunemployment and poverty can only be addressed by aworkers government created by councils of workersrepresentatives, administering a socialist program onbehalf of the working class.

3) Yet today we do not have workers councils, todaythe workers still hope the elections offer a road out ofthe crisis and are not convinced of the necessity of

socialism. To these workers we say: we too defend

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our democratic right to the franchisehundreds/thousands have died for it! therefore wedemand the right to vote for a program that representsthe poor, the workers and the landless farmers! Todayonly the bosses and landlords political parties sendpoliticians to the parliament and there is no possibilityfor the working class and poor to be represented. Eventhe promised new constitution is being blocked at everyturn by the SCAF. To assure our classes right to afranchise we propose our unions and popularorganizations convene of a revolutionary constituentassembly(RCA) made up of workers representatives,students and youth 16 yrs. and up, sharecroppersrepresentatives, small family farmers and shopkeepers,the representatives of the neighborhood committees ofrevolutionary fighters who defended the revolution.

4) In the RCA we advance the proletarian program toprovide: Jobs, Land, Bread!

5) Reverse the privatization drive of the WashingtonConsensus! Establish massive public works programs toraise the country out of poverty, provide clean water tothe farmers and consumers, provide safe workingconditions, build infrastructure for a sustainable futuresociety.

6) Create Jobs for All by enacting 30 hours workfor 40 hours pay! Enforce a sliding scale of wages andprice controls. Guarantee minimum income. ProvideFree Secular Education for all! Provide Free QualityHealthcare!

7) Open the books of SCAF, the imperialists and allcompanies which claim they can not comply!Nationalize industry, energy, distribution, financecapital and imperialist capital resources withoutindemnification and put the resources under workersplanning and self-management!

8) Revive the agrarian reform! Land to the tiller! Endthe slavery of sharecropping! Seize plantations andimperialist landholdings! Acquire cheap credit to formup successful collective agricultural enterprises to winthe small farmer to collectivism. For clean water

treatment projects! If the banks will not extend creditthey must be nationalized without compensation to thebig shareholders and run by the workers who will assureadequate capital for struggling enterprises, publicworks and the small family and landless farmers.

9) Our freedom cannot be won within the confines ofour national boundaries! Imperialism maintainspowerful regimes across MENA and the entire continentto keep the workers and peasants oppressed while ourmineral, agricultural wealth and our daily sweat areturned into profits on stock markets from New York,

London, Brussels, and Frankfurt, to Hong Kong,Singapore and Beijing. Therefore our liberation isdependent on and interconnected with the victory ofthe working masses internationally over imperialismslackeys & stooges. Our revolution must commit itself tothe victory of the Palestinian revolution, the defeat ofZionism, theocracy and all vestiges of feudalism,monarchy, patriarchy and Sharia law!

10) The revolutionary constituent assemblycanprovide an audience for these ideas but will quicklycome up against the contradictions posed by the drivetowards class independence on the part of the workersand the counter-revolution of the national bourgeoisieand imperialism. The pull toward bourgeois democracygenerally on the part of the middle classes, the liberalintelligentsia and its class base, the petty bourgeois andprofessional managerial layers whose frustration withthe crony capitalism of the SCAF drove them towardthe revolution in the first place, and whose aspirations

are frustrated by the dead end solutions of thecapitalists, will split the toiling petty proprietor layersfrom the privileged with their dreams of couponclipping. As these contradictions become clear in thesessions of the RCA, the struggle for working classpolitical independence, the formation of workerscouncils, the formation of rank and file soldiers unions,the creation of workers militias and a workersgovernment will become concrete, reasonable andcompletely comprehensible tasks. Yet even as theworkers uncover these truths the truth alone will notaccomplish the defeat of imperialism!

The RCA is the most advanced bourgeois democracythat can exist for even a moment in contradiction withan inevitable bourgeois counter-revolution. This posesimmediately going beyond bourgeois democracy toworkers power based on workers, soldiers, farmerscouncils, workers militias and a workers governmentcomposed of their recallable working delegates whowill work and serve for wages only.

11) The task of bringing the program of the workersgovernment to the masses as well as presenting thehistorical pitfalls, and theoretical bases for overcoming

them falls to the organized vanguard. Yet to beestablished, the Egyptian revolutionary workers party,based on the theoretical gains, strategy and tactics ofthe first four congresses of the Third International andthe method of the 1938 Transitional Program of theFourth International is an essential missing componentfor the victory of the Egyptian revolution. Theformation of such a party is the foremost task for allinternationalist workers!

CWG (USA), July 19, 2012

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Syria & anti-imperialismIn the last issue of Class Struggle we reprintedan article from the RWG (Zimbabwe) paperRevolutionary Worker. In it we stated that much of the anti-imperialist left refused to take

the side of the insurrection because they argue it is controlled by the US or by Islamic radicals(usually Al Qaeda). A big debate on the online Trotskyist left has blown up over this question.

Against the knee jerk anti imperialists, there are those who want US imperialist interventionon humanitarian grounds. What was Trotskys position on this question?

It comes down to the difference between strategy andtactics. It is necessary to be anti-imperialist instrategy but able to modify this in concretecircumstances to the tactic of a limited united frontwith imperialism. Both knee jerk anti-imperialists andhumanitarian anti-imperialists have a problembecause they cannot differentiate between strategy

and tactics.

This has come up most clearly in the article by PhamBinh posted to The North Star site titled AssadsBloodhounds. Binh insists that those who use theslogan Hands Off are doing it indiscriminately whichmeans in Syria they wind up on Assads side becausewhether or not the regime is armed by Russianimperialism, the rebels are denied US and EUimperialist aid. Binh on the other hand calls for the USto provide weapons and other assistance to theinsurrection on the grounds that given the concreteconditions this is the most important fight, not anti-

imperialism abstractly conceived.

While Binh is correct to attack the hypocrisy of theanti-imperialists who in effect are backing Assad, (asthey backed Gaddafi before him), he is wrong to saythat all those who call for imperialist Hands Off arebacking Assad. There are those that use the Hands Offslogan to refer to imperialisms overall reactionarycharacter and to signify that no support can be given toimperialism in any circumstances. In particular wecannot defend humanitarian imperialism withoutsowing illusions in imperialism which is reactionary incharacter.

Yet, this does not stop them from saying that underparticular conditions, workers can enter into specificmilitary bloc, where despite imperialists reactionarycharacter, it may be of tactical assistance to a workingclass or otherwise progressive struggle.

It is important to distinguish here between thereactionary motives of imperialism in any militarybloc, and the progressive use of any imperialist aid.What makes this aid progressive has nothing to dowith imperialism and everything to do with its use bythe revolutionary movement.

Binh is wrong to demand that we cannot continue touse the slogan Hands off because that will mean notactical bloc with imperialism is possible. Trotskywrites clearly about this problem in his article Learnto Think. Here he argues that the overall Hands offstrategy does not prevent tactical alliances overpractical struggles.

Let us assume that rebellion breaks out tomorrow in theFrench colony of Algeria under the banner of nationalindependence and that the Italian government, motivatedby its own imperialist interests, prepares to send weaponsto the rebels. What should the attitude of the Italianworkers be in this case? I have purposely taken anexample of rebellion against a democratic imperialismwith intervention on the side of the rebels from a fascistimperialism. Should the Italian workers prevent theshipping of arms to the Algerians? Let any ultra-leftistsdare answer this question in the affirmative. Everyrevolutionist, together with the Italian workers and therebellious Algerians, would spurn such an answer with

indignation. Even if a general maritime strike broke out infascist Italy at the same time, even in this case thestrikers should make an exception in favor of those shipscarrying aid to the colonial slaves in revolt; otherwisethey would be no more than wretched trade unionists not

proletarian revolutionists.

At the same time, the French maritime workers, eventhough not faced with any strike whatsoever, would becompelled to exert every effort to block the shipment ofammunition intended for use against the rebels. Only sucha policy on the part of the Italian and French workersconstitutes the policy of revolutionary internationalism.

Does this not signify, however, that the Italian workersmoderate their struggle in this case against the fascistregime? Not in the slightest. Fascism renders aid to the

Algerians only in order to weaken its enemy, France, andto lay its rapacious hand on her colonies. Therevolutionary Italian workers do not forget this for asingle moment. They call upon the Algerians not to trusttheir treacherous ally and at the same time continuetheir own irreconcilable struggle against fascism, themain enemy in their own country. Only in this way canthey gain the confidence of the rebels, help the rebellionand strengthen their own revolutionary position.

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In Defence of MarxismThe degeneration of the Fourth International [FI] after the death of Trotsky was alreadyunderway in the late 30s. Trotsky had to fight against the petty bourgeois opposition which

refused to regard a state ruled by Stalin as a degenerated workers state. Underlying this fightwas the capitulation of the opposition to US social chauvinism in the labour aristocracy. Buteven more telling, this capitulation resulted from the abandonment of dialectics or whatTrotsky called the Crisis of Marxism. The FI did not have the social base in the working classnor the leadership cadre capable of sustaining a true internationalism in the face of imperialistwar. Thus, already at the time of Trotskys death, the leading section, the SWP in the heart ofthe leading imperialist country, was set on a course of self-destruction.

Social chauvinism however, was not confined to the USsection. Vietnam showed already during the 30s thatthe FI French section in Vietnam was opportunisttowards the Stalinists after the popular front periodbegan in 1936. Conversely the ICL group in Vietnam wassectarian. Thus even beforethe war and Trotskys deaththe roots of the FI werealready degenerating.

During the war the tiny FIsplit into opportunist andsectarian wings under thepressure of Stalinism. TheUS section buckled in theface of fascism anddefended US democraticimperialism. Trotskyism inEurope and in the coloniessplit along the same lines.This in itself was hardlysurprising as the Stalinistparties had to imposeruthless discipline,including assassinations tokeep its own ranks fromrebelling against its popularfronts propping up theimperialist regimes in

pressing revolutionary uprisings.

During the war the imperialist powers used the Stalinistpopular front to good effect to behead and destroyworking class revolutions in Europe and the colonies.Trotskys prognosis that the war would see workersrally behind the FI so that either the imperialists wouldbe defeated along with Stalinism by the socialistrevolution, or, that imperialism would win and create anew situation of global barbarism not yet foreseen, wasproven wrong. Imperialism survived thanks to theStalinists. This disoriented the FI. Some like Cannon ofthe US SWP believed that the war was continuing, while

others like Pablo believed that Stalinism was ahistorically progressive force in the defeat of fascism.

Of course had Trotsky survived the war he wouldcertainly have recognised reality and rallied the FI tofight its degeneration and liquidation into reformism.

Weakened by the wartime struggles, the FI failed torecognise or correct thematerial causes of theseweaknesses. Trotsky hadmade the exposure of thecauses of these flaws hismain task before his death.At their roots, so Trotskysaid, was the failure of theFI to embed itself in theworking class (including thecolonial and semi-colonialworking class) so that itcould not function as a trulyrevolutionary Marxistinternational party.

A world party of revolutionwould have to draw on theexperience of the strugglesin every part of the world;imperialist, semi-colonialand in the degeneratedworkers states. This wouldallow the experience of

objective reality of these struggles to interact with thesubjective experience of the party so that it couldcorrect any errors in its program. For Trotsky, unlessthe objective and subjective realities were united inthe democratic centralist party there could be noapplication of dialectics. There was no unity of theoryand practice.

Without this global grounding in the proletarian andpeasant struggles the party would be sucked into thepetty bourgeois milieu of the big cities in theimperialist countries. This would result in the over-representation of the petty-bourgeois in the

composition of the party in the imperialist sections and

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huge pressures to capitulate to social chauvinism andStalinism.

This was the twin crisis of leadership and of Marxismthat Trotsky warned of before his death. The crisis ofleadership was the failure to build a healthy worldparty of revolution. The crisis of Marxism naturallyflowed from that as Marxism would cease to be aliving Marxism and become bogged down in dogma.

Thus the key to understanding the significance of thetwin crisis is that any failure of a leadership (and party)to be able to apply the dialectical method in relation toobjective and subjective reality must lead to failureand defeat. No wonder Trotsky called Schachtmansrejection of dialectics a betrayal of Marxism.

But without Trotsky the FI leadership succumbed tonational chauvinism. The majority ultraleft line takenby the US SWP put the US working class, the mostprivileged labor aristocracy in the world, at the head ofthe fight in the ongoing world class war. Trotsky had

called the US working class the most backward in theworld because its class consciousness was held back bythe labour aristocracy living off colonial super-profits.Yet Cannon thought it the most advanced proletariatand the leader of the world revolution.

The majority opportunist line in defeated Europeadapted to not only the survival but victory of Stalinismand liquidated the FI into Stalinism. It called Tito anunconscious Trotskyist and saw the expansion of theSU into Eastern Europe where it smashed workersuprisings as creating deformed workers states thatcould be reformed by bourgeois parliaments.

Neither the US or European sections based in thebiggest imperialist powers took any notice of the massTrotskyist sections in the colonies of Asia and semi-colonies of Latin America. In Ceylon, India and Indo-China where were mass Trotskyist sections which hadfought bloody wars against the colonial powers aided bythe Stalinists who eliminated the Trotskyist leaderships.The lessons of this physical liquidation at the hands ofthe Stalinists would have corrected the ideologicalliquidation of imperial-centric Trotskyism.

Nor after the war was there was there any attempt to

draw on the experience of the colonial and semi-colonial Trotskyists to produce an honest balance sheetof the wartime defeats and capitulations. We wont callthese betrayals since it was clear that the FI lackedthe capacity to prevent defeats and capitulations. Butwe can conclude that the history of Trotskyism since1946 was one of almost universal liquidation making thecrisis of leadership and of Marxism extreme.

Conclusion

So Trotsky was absolutely correct to spell out in InDefence of Marxism the real problem underlying the

Russian Question. It was the rejection of dialecticswhich had its material roots in the petty bourgeois

composition of the FI leadership in Europe and the US.Dialectics in relation to the defence of the USSR meantunderstanding that workers property must be defendedfrom capitalist restoration despite the Stalinists.Dialectics explained that the workers states haddegenerated so that a parasitic bureaucracy tookcontrol of workers property in much the same way asthe labor bureaucracy controls the unions in thecapitalist countries. Therefore the bureaucracy was a

caste inside the working class and not a classantagonistic to workers property unless it was able todefeat workers and restore capitalist social relations.Therefore the working class had to make a politicalrevolution to remove the bureaucracy and restoreworkers control over their property.

Trotsky warned that the petty bourgeois leadership wasexposed to the pressure of the social chauvinist laboraristocracy in the lead up to and war and during wars.The FI had to confront and counter this. When Trotskysuggested that the SWP call for a vote for the CPUSA in1939 the SWP leadership refused. Yet when the war

began and the SWP leaders were arrested Cannonpublicly said that fascism and not the US ruling classwas the main enemy of US workers. So the SWPcapitulated to the social chauvinism of the laboraristocracy during the war, but after the war it refusedto recognise it as a backward element in the worldworking class working class. In theAmerican ThesesCannon said that the US labor aristocracy was the mostadvanced in the world and has not prevented the moreoppressed layers of the working class from movingupward into the labor aristocracy.

The split in the FI before and during the war was to

become congealed as a split between those who revisedthe bureaucracy from caste to class exploiting theworkers in the SU and the other Stalinist states, andthose who revised the character of the bureaucracy asparasitic on workers property, to defenders of workersproperty. But in both cases these one-sided apparentlyopposite positions, had a common unity. Thesubjectivity of the working class (the revolutionaryparty) was replaced by an objective process ofrevolution. This subordination of the subjectiveagency of the proletariat to the objective process ofhistory has a name. Its called Menshevism.

Allcurrents in the post-war FI liquidated the party ofthe proletariat into the petty bourgeoisie in the formof one, the social democratic parties of the US andEuropean labor aristocracies; two, the anti-imperialist leaders of the colonies and semi-colonies; and third, the Stalinist leaders in thedegenerate workers states.

Petty bourgeois parties while masquerading as thechampions of the working people, all serve theinterests of the ruling class since they are bought andpaid for by the imperialist bourgeoisies.

In a future issue ofClass Struggle we will look ateach in turn.

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What We Fight ForOverthrow Capitalism

Historically, capitalism expanded world-wide to freemuch of humanity from the bonds of feudal or tribalsociety, and developed the economy, society andculture to a new higher level. But it could only do thisby exploiting the labour of the productive classes tomake its profits. To survive, capitalism becameincreasingly destructive of "nature" and humanity. Inthe early 20th century it entered the epoch ofimperialism in which successive crises unleashed wars,revolutions and counter-revolutions. Today we fight toend capitalisms wars, famine, oppression andinjustice, by mobilising workers to overthrow their ownruling classes and bring to an end the rotten,exploitative and oppressive society that has exceededits use-by date.

Fight for Socialism

By the 20th century, capitalism had created the pre-conditions for socialism a world-wide working class andmodern industry capable of meeting all our basic needs.The potential to eliminate poverty, starvation, diseaseand war has long existed. The October Revolutionproved this to be true, bringing peace, bread and landto millions. But it became the victim of the combined

assault of imperialism and Stalinism. After 1924 theUSSR, along with its deformed offspring in Europe,degenerated back towards capitalism. In the absence ofa workers political revolution, capitalism was restoredbetween 1990 and 1992. Vietnam and China thenfollowed. In the 21sst century only Cuba and NorthKorea survive as degenerate workers states. Weunconditionally defend these states against capitalismand fight for political revolution to overthrow thebureaucracy as part of world socialism.

Defend Marxism

While the economic conditions for socialism existtoday, standing between the working class andsocialism are political, social and cultural barriers.They are the capitalist state and bourgeois ideology andits agents. These agents claim that Marxism is dead andcapitalism need not be exploitative. We say thatMarxism is a living science that explains bothcapitalisms continued exploitation and its attempts tohide class exploitation behind the appearance ofindividual "freedom" and "equality". It reveals how andwhy the reformist, Stalinist and centrist misleaders ofthe working class tie workers to bourgeois ideas of

nationalism, racism, sexism and equality. Such falsebeliefs will be exploded when the struggle against theinequality, injustice, anarchy and barbarism of

capitalism in crisis, led by a revolutionary Marxistparty, produces a revolutionary class-consciousness.

For a Revolutionary Party

The bourgeois and its agents condemn the Marxist partyas totalitarian. We say that without a democratic and acentrally organised party there can be no revolution.We base our beliefs on the revolutionary tradition ofBolshevism and Trotskyism. Such a party, armed with atransitional program, forms a bridge that joins the dailyfight to defend all the past and present gains won fromcapitalism, to the victorious socialist revolution.Defensive struggles for bourgeois rights and freedoms,for decent wages and conditions, will link up thestruggles of workers of all nationalities, genders,ethnicities and sexual orientations, bringing aboutmovements for workers control, political strikes andthe arming of the working class, as necessary steps toworkers' power and the smashing of the bourgeoisstate. Along the way, workers will learn that each newstep is one of many in a long march to revolutioniseevery barrier put in the path to the victoriousrevolution.

Fight for Communism

Communism stands for the creation of a classless,stateless society beyond socialism that is capable ofmeeting all human needs. Against the ruling class liesthat capitalism can be made "fair" for all; that naturecan be "conserved"; that socialism and communism are"dead"; we raise the red flag of communism to keepalive the revolutionary tradition of the' CommunistManifesto of 1848, the Bolshevik-led OctoberRevolution; the Third Communist International until1924, the revolutionary Fourth International up to 1940before its collapse into centrism. We fight to build anew, Fifth, Communist International, as a world partyof socialism capable of leading workers to a victorious

struggle for socialism.

Class Struggle is the bi-Monthly paper of the

Communist Workers Group of NewZealand/Aotearoa, in a Liaison Committee ofCommunists with Communist Workers Group(USA) and Revolutionary Workers Group(Zimbabwe)Online http://redrave.blogspot.comPhone 0064 027280008Email [email protected]

Archive http://communistworker.blogspot.com/

CS101 July-August 2012

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