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April 9 webinar: ‘Wars on the People’ — Repression and resistance at home and abroad
The UNITED LEFT PLATFORM, an alliance of revolutionary socialist organizations, invites you to an April 9 webinar with an activist panel on confronting and anti-immigrant terror and attacks on democratic rights at home, and U.S. imperial crimes around the world.
This roundtable discussion will represent some of the important experiences of the rising movements resisting the domestic and global rampages of U.S. imperialism under the Trump administration, with perspectives on how these struggles can become powerful, unified, and politically independent. From beating back ICE terror in Minneapolis to opposing the U.S.-Israeli wars on Palestine, Iran, and Lebanon, and the U.S. threats to Cuba and Latin America, we see the critical necessity of bringing the struggles together for the common purpose of collective liberation.
The speakers will discuss how the concrete experiences of May Day organizing can connect domestic resistance to MAGA authoritarianism to opposition to U.S. wars and imperialism as a whole. The panelists will give brief initial responses to focused strategic questions, followed by open discussion. JOIN US!
Thursday, April 9, 8 p.m. Eastern; 5 p.m. Pacific
SPEAKERS:
• Kip Hedges – school bus driver and longtime union activist in Minneapolis
• Avery Wear – Tempest, San Diego Socialists, LSAN
• Omid Rezaian – IMHO
• Dan Piper – Workers’ Voice, CT Civil Liberties Coalition
• Meg C – Speak Out Socialists
• Ashley Smith – VT Tempest Collective
CHAIR: Blanca Missé, Workers’ Voice
REGISTRATION INFORMATION:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_R702vOe8QluM7Mha7LVF5g
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Workers’ Voice newspaper: March-April edition
The U.S.-Israel war on Iran is a major escalation in the Middle East that has dangerous implications for working people everywhere. The brutality of the imperialist assault internationally is paired with the attack on civil liberties by the Trump regime inside the U.S. This includes the continued operations of ICE and Border Patrol, the threats to the 2026 mid-term elections, environmental rollbacks that deeply impact the Black community, and unchecked police brutality.
Our editorial in this issue warns us: “There is a great danger of underestimating the determination of the U.S. corporate elite to drive through this effort. We cannot rely on court rulings or upcoming elections to save us. We must organize now, not only for mass demonstrations and community networks against ICE violence, but to find our way to building a new working-class party through which we can organize our political defense on every plane and on every day.”
In this issue we also have articles on the Epstein files and the ruling class, the San Francisco teachers’ strike, and a review of the new album by U2.
The March–April 2026 edition of our newspaper is available in print and online as a pdf. Read the latest issue of our newspaper today with a free pdf download! As always, we appreciate any donations to help with the cost of printing.
Click on the image to read the paper or message us to get a hard copy:
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Philadelphia refinery permanently shut down but key questions remain
Signs and banners posted on the fence surrounding the PES refinery. (Monica Herndon / The Philadelphia Inquirer) By MICHAEL SCHREIBER
On Feb. 12, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge tentatively approved the sale of the Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) refinery to a corporation that plans to construct a mixed-use industrial park on the 1300-acre site. Hillco Development Partners, which won the winning bid for the shuttered plant, has stated that they will demolish the refinery. Until recently, PES (formerly operated by Sunoco) was the largest oil refinery on the East Coast and the major stationary source of air pollution in the region.
PES declared bankruptcy and shut down the plant after a tremendous explosion and fire took place there on June 21, 2019. The explosion propelled truck-size hunks of metal into the air and released many toxic chemicals, including 5239 pounds of hydrofluoric acid—which can cause fatal lung injuries as well as eating through human tissue and bone. Fortunately, refinery workers were able to divert even more hydrofluoric acid from a tank near the fire before it could spread and create a catastrophe that might have killed thousands.
For many years before the explosion, the PES refinery was responsible for 70 percent of Philadelphia’s particulate air pollution—as well as contributing to climate change. The environmental group Philly Thrive conducted a survey among neighbors of the refinery in May 2019 and found that, among 314 respondents, over half had heart disease, cancer, or a respiratory condition. Almost 34 percent had asthma, compared to 19 percent in the city overall, and 8 percent nationally.
Earlier this month, the Environmental Integrity Project released the results of its study of data reported by refineries around the country in accord with Environmental Protection Agency rules. The study found that levels of the cancer-causing chemical benzene constantly exceeded EPA standards at 10 refineries. And out of all of the polluters, the PES refinery in Philadelphia recorded the highest benzene levels by far—at nearly five times the EPA standard.
Of course, those working people who had to breathe the polluted air for years were not given a seat in the bankruptcy judge’s chambers. Nor was their outrage that restarting the refinery was still on the table given any consideration in the proceedings. But many had repeatedly made their demands known at rallies and in the media.
On Feb. 1, well over 100 people squeezed into a room at a local community center where a group of young environmental activists associated with Philly Thrive described their vision for the property, which included demands that the refinery be permanently shut down, cleaned up, and replaced with facilities that would be beneficial to humanity and the natural environment while providing good-paying jobs and re-education for the workers.
At a teach-in that took place two days later near the main gate of the refinery, participants further etched out a future or the site that would include extensive parkland, development of wetlands along the river, and the use of sustainable energy sources such as solar panels and wind farms. Peter Winslow, an activist affiliated with several organizations including Green Justice Philly, spoke for many at the event when he told The Inquirer (Feb. 12, 2020) that local environmentalists want to see a smooth transition at the refinery site that creates high-paying jobs while still advocating for a more sustainable future, “rather than one where we’re poisoning ourselves.”
When the date for the bankruptcy hearing arrived, the court session was delayed for nearly six hours while contending buyers and creditors jockeyed behind closed doors. Although PES had chosen to sell the property to Hilco at a hearing in January, a rival firm, the Industrial Realty Group, later challenged the decision while teaming up with a group of oil men, headed by former PES exec Philip Rinaldi, who wished to resume refinery operations.
In the meantime, a group of local labor leaders have played a destructive role in the process. Officials from the United Steelworkers Union Local 10-1, which had represented 614 of the 1100 workers at the refinery, agitated strongly for Rinaldi’s plan to restart the refinery, and a strong contingent of labor building trades officials also backed the plan.
It is true that workers at the plant have a just grievance against PES; over 1000 of them were summarily laid off from their jobs and given no prior notice. Soon afterward, eight top PEX executives awarded themselves $4.6 million in bonuses. Yet the labor officials have spurned the residents of the neighborhood around the refinery, rather than seeking to build a common front with them against the oil corporations.
At a union-organized rally outside City Hall on Jan. 30, some labor leaders maligned opponents of the refinery as “rich kids,” “elitists,” and “tree huggers,” ignoring the fact that the city residents who have suffered the most from the refinery’s pollution are largely working class and African American, and that many are living in poverty.
A group of union officials, led by the business manager of the Building and Construction Trades Council and local Democratic Party honcho John J. Dougherty, even visited the White House and met with an official of the Trump administration to make their case for re-opening the refinery. The officials stated that closure of the plant would be counter to the administration’s line advocating U.S. “self-sufficiency” in oil production.
But lawyers for PES fought back, indicating that a return to oil refining would be unprofitable, and thus, such talk was nothing but “a fantasy.”
At the end of the court session on Feb. 12, Hillco won the sale after raising its bid with a “take-it-or-leave-it” offer of $252 million. The unsecured creditors were convinced not to sue for more money after PES said it would send $20 million their way. Even the Steelworkers international union leadership endorsed the plan when they were assured that laid-off workers would be granted a total of $5 million in settlements plus vague promises of future employment opportunities on the property.
Hillco’s plans for the former refinery are murky at this point. Based on similar projects that Hillco is involved in, such as the former Sparrows Point steelworks in Baltimore, it would probably include a mixture of light industrial plants and warehouses, taking advantage of the site’s proximity to highways, rail lines, and port facilities on the Schuylkill River. It is not out of the question that Hillco would retain some facilities for oil storage or manufacturing of petroleum-based products—in which case, the highly dangerous oil trains would continue to roll along the Schuylkill. “They’ll probably still keep the tank farm and some of the energy logistics that are on-site, but they don’t intend to operate the refinery,” city manager Brian Abernathy observed to The Philadelphia Inquirer (Jan. 24, 2019).
A great many questions remain about the future of the site—including who will undertake and pay for remediation of the heavily contaminated soil. The site also sits in a floodplain; estimates by the city foresee a two-feet rise in water level along waterways in the area in the next 30 years, and a four-feet rise by 2080—and that is a very conservative estimate. Although Hillco might be a “lesser evil” in this instance, compared to those who wanted to restart the refinery, it is suicidal to leave the condition of our soil, water, and air in the hands of private corporations, which are interested solely in maximizing profits.
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[Russia] Once Again, Bastion of Reaction
Marx sometimes referred to nineteenth-century tsarist Russia as the bastion of reaction in Europe. Keeping the proper proportions, Russia under Putin again plays this pitiful role.
By POI (Russia)
The situation in Russia deserves the attention of any activist in the world, as its significance goes far beyond the country’s national borders.
Russia is directly involved in some of the sharpest points of the class struggle today, with Putin’s hands stained with the blood of at least four revolutions (Ukrainian, Syrian, Caucasian and Egyptian), plus Russian mercenaries in Libya and the support, including with military “experts,” to Maduro’s repressive measures in Venezuela. Moreover, it is one of the few countries in the world where there has been a stable government for many years. In a context of political crises around the world, including in Europe, this situation requires explanation.
For almost 20 years Russia has been in a reactionary situation, that is, when the government and the bourgeoisie not only retain control, but all political initiative. The correlation of forces in the country is clearly unfavorable to the workers and oppressed peoples. There are virtually no real trade-union organizations, there is a large fragmentation of workers and an absence of organizations of almost any kind. Putin has full political control of the country and its institutions. Not only is Russia lagging behind the dynamics of other countries towards political crises and pre-revolutionary or revolutionary situations, but on the contrary, it remains and reaffirms itself as one of the strongholds of reaction in the world, as well as Saudi Arabia or Israel.
Putin government: the product of a counterrevolutionary war…
It is a government that came to power after massacring the resistance in the Second Chechen War (1999- 2000) and, consequently, throughout the Caucasus region, which fought for its right to self-determination. That is, Putin came to power as a result of a counterrevolutionary war, imposing a regime of directly fascist characteristics in Chechnya. As a counter-revolution limited to the Caucasus, it was not enough to impose such a regime throughout Russia, but a strong Bonapartist regime, whose center is the FSB (former KGB), with important autocratic characteristics. Putin’s victory in the war combined with 15 years of high oil and gas prices, which gave the government a strong basis to ensure social stability across the country. He became, thanks to these elements, the great Bonaparte of all Russia. Putin disciplined and centralized the Russian bourgeoisie and from the different regions of the Federation.
We must add the fatigue of the Russian masses, that experienced many strikes and struggles for more than a decade against the policies of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, suffering the terrible effects of capitalist restoration, all the decadence of those years, the brutal decline of the working class due to factory closures, unemployment, shortages, etc. Compared to the catastrophe of those years, the arrival of Putin, delivering the crumbs from the oil and gas boom, meant a relative improvement in living standards (without reaching the pre-restoration level), while completing the return to capitalism which, consequently, deepened the economy’s dependence on the West. All accompanied by Putin’s “justifications” that the Chechnya massacre was part of the “war on international terrorism” in the style of Bush’s worst lies.
… that comes to power to deepen the colonization of Russia and other former Soviet republics
Putin’s most strategic policy, despite the neo-stalinist legends that paint him as an anti-American patriot, is to attract imperialist investments, especially to the oil and gas sectors, to continue to transform the country, an once-great industrial power, increasingly into a supplier of fuels and raw materials to the imperialist and Chinese factories. Indeed, at Putin’s hands, Russia’s economy is primitivizing, making it increasingly a semi-colony that relies on capital and technology from the imperialist powers, including and especially in the oil and gas sector. Today, all sectors of the Russian economy are deeply dependent on imperialist capitals. Even the major state owned companies (Gazprom, Rosneft, Sberbank) are totally indebted to the banks of the imperialist countries.
While Putin applies this proimperialist policy there are contradictions between Russia and imperialism. After all, it is not usual for a dependent country to have so much military power and so much influence in neighboring countries. Imperialism does not like this, it would rather colonize Russia, Ukraine and other countries without having to go through the “middleman” Putin, who charges dearly for his services. Nor does it like a semicolonial country competing in the arms market, selling weapons even to NATO countries such as Turkey. Hence the recurring friction and mutual blackmail. That is, they have a general agreement to implement a policy of colonization of what was once the former USSR, but there are differences in how to do it “concretely”, that is, in relation to Putin’s and the Russian bourgeoisie’s weight in this big business, as “colonization administrators” throughout the region.
A model in crisis
The world crisis has challenged this model based on high gas and oil prices and the attraction of imperialist investments. Especially since 2011, Russia has entered into economic crisis. Fewer inflows from oil and gas exports and, consequently, less crumbs, forced the government to pursue a policy of attacks on the achievements of the working class and the people in general, that had hitherto been attacked, but not so crudely, particularly education and healthcare, pensions and wages.
In this context, a democratic movement, especially of Moscow’s young and middle classes, broke out in 2011/12 against the most suffocating aspects of Putin’s Bonapartism, peaking at about 100,000 people on the streets of Moscow. A coalition of the reformist left and liberals, under the total hegemony of the latter, was formed to lead the protests. To prevent the working class and the most exploited sectors from joining the movement, its whole policy was not to incorporate social demands. It was a progressive movement, but in fact limited centrally to Moscow and the middle sectors. The working class stayed away from the movement.
The Ukrainian Revolution and the Arab Spring threatened Putin’s Bonapartist regime, but it reacted
At that time, the Ukrainian Revolution (2013/2014) broke out, marking the highest point of the European class struggle. And the so-called Arab Spring continued to develop. Both processes posed a great danger to the Putin regime, already hit by the economic crisis and pro-democracy demonstrations. The former President Yanukovych’s fall in Ukraine by direct mass action against all leadership’s will was the first real political defeat of Putin’s career. There were a number of elements to push Putin’s government to a crisis, and that is why he decided to strike back. He sent mercenaries to eastern Ukraine, wrenched territories (Donetsk and Lugansk) from Kiev control, occupied and annexed the Crimean Peninsula, entered the war in Syria in support of the mass-cornered dictator Assad. The counterrevolutionary virulence of Putin’s response stems from the deadly risk to him that the Ukrainian Revolution reaches Moscow and the Arab Spring the Caucasus, as well as the fear of his role as “administrator of the colonization” of Ukraine, or at least of the east of the country, been disputed.
Putin’s new counterrevolutionary offensive in Ukraine and Syria, coupled with a massive chauvinist campaign by the mainstream media and a relative recovery in gas and oil prices, allowed Putin to overcome the 2012 unfavorable conjuncture and strengthen his government. The different “opposition” forces played their role in the political field, from the totally putinist PCFR (Communist Party of the Russian Federation)[1] to the liberal “antisystem”[2] opposition, where everyone, without exception, actively or by omission, supported the chauvinist and counterrevolutionary policy against Ukraine and Syria.
Putin’s aggressive counterrevolutionary policy allowed him, as we said, to overcome the previous situation, but at the same time generated contradictions and new friction with imperialism, leading to sanctions against his regime, further aggravating Russia’s economic situation. This is explained by an important difference between imperialism and Putin on their policy to deal with revolutionary processes. Since the defeat of the Bush offensive in Iraq and Afghanistan, imperialism has been forced to maneuver in revolutionary processes, having difficulty to repress them directly, manu militari, due to an unfavorable correlation of forces, as in the US and European Union as in the world plan. That is why it prefers to bet on negotiations, elections and demagogic democratic speeches to divert the struggles. It is a policy we call “democratic reaction.”[3] Eventually it resorts to pure and simple repression, but it cannot always do so.
Putin, on the other hand, acts according to Russia’s favorable internal correlation of forces. This gives him some advantages on the ground, as is clear in Syria, for example, where he has been occupying positions on imperialism. But his policy is in contradiction with the world correlation of forces and with the imperialism’s policy in some regions. And the nature of his deeply Bonapartist regime, born of a counterrevolutionary war, prevents him from playing with democratic cards. So he is forced to suppress harshly any fighting process that threatens him. He is, so to speak, less “flexible.” Hence the friction between US and European Union policies, on the one hand, and Russia’s, on the other, in Ukraine and Syria. Even after Trump’s subsequent win and the declarations of mutual sympathy between him and Putin (increasingly less frequent), they have strong contradictions in the international arena. Although this confrontation is not absolute, nor it is excluded that they reach agreements; there are movements by imperialism to approach Putin.
Putin relies on Russian chauvinism
The passivity of the working class, that did not participate in the 2012 movement, also took its toll. With the annexation of Crimea, the incipient social movement of 2012 was completely orphaned and isolated. The absence of antibodies of the Russian people against chauvinism once again demonstrated the correction of Marx’s maxim that the people who oppress other people cannot be free. Many of the 2012 activists supported Putin’s chauvinistic policy against Ukraine. The 2012 economic situation thus ended, the Putin regime was strengthened and even its Bonapartist character deepened. Putin relies on this Russian chauvinism to carry on his oppressed anti-worker and anti-nationality policy. All Putin’s attacks on Russia’s population deepened after the annexation of Crimea, especially the reform of the retirement system, building on the euphoria of the “Crimea is ours!” Campaign. It is the justification in the name of which everything can be endured…
That is why a victory against Putin in the internal arena that is not accompanied by a major crisis of his policy in Ukraine and the Caucasus is not foreseeable, just as it is not possible to expel Russian troops from these regions without this being combined with a large political crisis within Russia. That is, with his policy, Putin has hindered the struggle of the Ukrainians, but at the same time welded the Ukrainian process with the destinies of Russia and all its peoples, including the Caucasus. In addition, Ukraine is the bridge for the workers of Europe, as well as the Caucasus for the Muslim world. That is why the support and solidarity of the workers and peoples of Europe with the Ukrainian revolution, as well as of the Muslim peoples with their brothers in the Caucasus, is essential. The crushing of the rebellion in Chechnya and the Caucasus, as we have seen, was the cornerstone of the Putin regime. And aggression against Ukraine allowed him to strengthen his regime. But Ukraine and the Caucasus are also the Achilles heel of the Putin regime. Putin’s defeat in Ukraine would be the beginning of the end of his rule. The same in the Caucasus.
Unite the workers and peoples of Russia and Ukraine against Putin
A new victory of the Ukrainian revolution could, for these reasons, boost the struggle of the Russian workers and other oppressed peoples against Putin. Together, Ukrainian and Russian workers are capable of defeating the executioner of the Ukrainian revolution, the main responsible for the imperialist recolonization of Russia, defender of the most hated regimes on the planet, aggressor of peoples and nations and an ally of imperialism, who still has under his control the second army (and nuclear arsenal) in the world. Defeating Putin would have repercussions not only on Russia and Ukraine, but around the world because of his international counterrevolutionary role. It would also mean the end of Assad’s rule in Syria and the weakening of the Egyptian dictatorship, which could set in motion a new wave of the Arab spring. It would have a profound impact among the peoples of the Caucasus in their struggle for independence. Defeating Putin is an international task of the working class. At the same time, his defeat would also be the defeat of the last rotten remains of world Stalinism and its satellites, that cover Putin’s crimes.
The contradictions accumulate
The illusions in Putin are shrinking in Russia, and today there is great discontent about the economy, inflation, social services and especially the deeply unpopular reform of the pension scheme. The Russian workers and the oppressed peoples are getting poorer each day. Support for Putin’s international politics is still going on, but no longer enthusiastically. People are less and less willing to accept sacrifices on behalf of “Crimea is ours!”. Isolated but important struggles occasionally occur, such as in Ingushetia (a Caucasus republic bordering Chechnya), or against the building of another church in Ekaterinburg, or against the fraudulent accusations and arrest of a journalist, or the recent marches in Moscow against repression with a turnout of 20,000 people, sometimes with partial victories. Today much of the working class in Russia is made up of immigrant workers from the former republics of the former USSR, many of them Muslims. They are no longer dominated by chauvinistic ideology, as they are their direct victims. There are elements of youth dissatisfaction, showed by their typical expressions against police, bureaucracy, or church action. The weight of chauvinism is also less there. Perhaps the most decisive struggles will arise from these sectors.
Despite these important elements, however, the reactionary situation remains which still provides Putin the possibility of applying his counterrevolutionary policy in the regional and international arenas. The recent rise in oil prices is also on his side. And despite the serious signs of economic crisis, in fact, so far, there is no “bankruptcy” of the country. The crisis is moving so far slowly.
A right policy for Russia today should aim to unify workers with other exploited people in the country, including the middle class and especially the youth, by unifying economic and democratic demands, against anti-popular reforms and against any repression, against the deterioration of living conditions and rights and in defense of national minorities and oppressed peoples within and outside the borders of the Russian Federation. It is essential to expose and unmask Putin’s regime as administrator of Russia’s colonization in the service of the great imperialist powers, while denouncing its oppressive role against the smaller nations and oppressed peoples of Russia, its counterrevolutionary role in Ukraine, the Caucasus or Syria, and also to expose it as the main responsible for the deterioration of the living conditions of the Russian population.
[1] It is important to remember that the RFCP is not a traitor opposition Labor party according to the classic Stalinist mold. It is a bourgeois party, pro-Russian oligarchs, chauvinist, clerical, an integral part of the Putin regime, with important links with the more reactionary institutions of Putinism how the security services, the armed forces and the Orthodox Church.
[2] He liberals are deeply pro-imperialist, totally favorable to the Russia colonization process and of submission to international capital, as well as totally in favor of the reforms, such as the pension system.
[3] In fact, a policy that already came from the American defeat in Vietnam, but that Bush tried to change, without success, to a more aggressive policy. -
Chuck Africa freed from prison
By JOHN LESLIE
Chuck Africa, the last of the remaining MOVE 9 political prisoners, was released on parole from prison on Feb. 7, 2020, after almost 42 years behind bars. Chuck Africa’s release follows Delbert Africa’s parole in January. Chuck is now recovering from cancer and the debilitating effects of chemotherapy.
Chuck Africa and his eight co-defendants spent more than 40 years in prison for a crime they did not commit. They were arrested following the police attack on the home of the MOVE organization in Philadelphia’s Powelton Village neighborhood in 1978. The MOVE 9 members were convicted of third-degree murder and sentenced for the killing of a cop, James Ramp, during the raid. Evidence points to Ramp’s death being the result of police gunfire.
Chuck Africa was the youngest of the MOVE members who were incarcerated for the killing—only 18 at the time of his arrest. He had been inspired by the Black Panther Party while still a child, and in his early teens met people from the MOVE organization. MOVE, a group that advocates living in harmony with nature and expresses opposition to the racism and oppression inherent in the current system, was founded by John Africa in 1972.
“I met MOVE in 1973,” Chuck said in a statement on the ona-move.com website. “It was a cold winter night. Me and a few of my gang stepped in my mother’s house and in the middle of the floor sat numerous men and women with long un-combed hair. The things that I heard stayed with me for the rest of my life.
“No one had ever explained the school system and its purpose before I met MOVE. There were things being told to me that I knew were true instinctively but I could never put them into words myself. I was always told all my life to go to school, obey the laws, etc., but never what was the purpose, whose education I was learning or why damn near every cop I saw in my neighborhood was white and hostile to us blacks. My introduction to JOHN AFRICA’s Guidelines opened my mind up to actually use it and question the norm, the constraints of every day life, the lies, the hidden truths in a world of constant dishonesty.”
All of the MOVE 9 were repeatedly denied parole since they refused to admit “guilt” for the killing they had been falsely charged with and refused to renounce their beliefs. But the demand for their release never subsided. Finally, over the last couple of years, the state released surviving members of the group. In 2018, the state paroled Mike Africa Sr. in October and Debbie Sims Africa (Chuck’s sister) in June of that year. In June 2019, Eddie Goodman Africa was released along with Janet Holloway Africa and Janine Phillips Africa. Two MOVE 9 members, Phil and Merle Africa, died in prison.
At a news conference in Philadelphia on Jan. 21, shortly after his release, Delbert Africa said that despite the frame-up murder charges that sent him to prison for decades, he felt even stronger and more resolved today, and he would not stop challenging the so-called “justice” system. “I want to keep on pushing the whole front of fighting this unjust system,” he said. “I want to keep on pushing it and do as much as I can, as dictated by the teachings of John Africa. Keep on working, stay on the move.”
1978 Powelton Village confrontation
MOVE was targeted from the beginning by Philadelphia’s violent and racist police under the control of the police commissioner, and later mayor, Frank Rizzo. PPD engaged in a reign of terror against Black radical organizations, like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party, and the Black community at large.
The 1978 attack on MOVE in Philadelphia’s Powelton Village neighborhood was a precursor to the murderous May 13, 1985, police bombing on Osage Avenue that killed 11 MOVE members including five children, and destroyed 65 homes. Police harassment of MOVE in Powelton Village led to a siege that lasted for almost a year, as cops surrounded MOVE’s house at 311 N. 33rd Street. For a 50-day period, no one was allowed in or out of the house, while cops attempted to starve MOVE out.
On Aug. 8, 1978, at 4 a.m., 600 cops surrounded the house: “The police made the first move. O’Neill ordered a bulldozer, which had a Lexan plastic shield to protect the operator from gunfire, to mow down the barricade. A long-armed ram tore the windows out of the upper floors. With the windows gone, fire hoses threw streams of water into the house” (S.A. Paolantonio: “Frank Rizzo, The last big man in big city America”).
Just after 8 a.m., shooting started, and police officer James Ramp was struck and killed by so-called friendly fire. Police fired bullets, tear gas, and water cannons into the house. MOVE members surrendered, and cops savagely beat Delbert Africa in full view of news cameras. Cops claimed to find weapons in the MOVE house. However, the police leveled the house and any forensic evidence related to the standoff with heavy equipment later that day.
Three cops who participated in the beating of Delbert Africa were later acquitted. Speaking at a support rally for the three cops, the head of the cop union said, “They should have killed them all.”
In 1982, MOVE members took up residence at 6221 Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia and began to fortify the house against police raids. Given the history of police harassment and violence against MOVE, and the deadly assault on the building three years later, these defensive steps were sensible. In the 1985 attack, cops fired more than 10,000 rounds and threw plastic explosive bombs, while fire trucks sprayed more than 450,000 gallon of water into the house. Later in the day, a bomb was dropped from a police helicopter starting a conflagration that city officials decided to let burn.
Continue the fight! Free them all!
The Philadelphia police continue to commit acts of violence against oppressed nationalities and the poor. While the MOVE 9 have been released, the struggle to free imprisoned Black liberation fighters and other political prisoners continues. The struggle to free, Mumia Abu-Jamal—who defended MOVE as a young Philadelphia journalist—and other political prisoners must be intensified. Mumia’s health problems make his situation urgent.
Black Panther political prisoners and Black Liberation Army (BLA) prisoners of war remain behind bars. In Pennsylvania, this includes Russell “Maroon” Shoatz, who has spent almost 50 years in prison, including 22 in solitary.
Native American fighter Leonard Peltier also remains in prison after his conviction in 1977 for the murder of two FBI agents. Peltier became eligible for parole in 1993 but remains in lockup. Obama denied him clemency at the end of his presidency. Currently, Peltier is the vice presidential candidate of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
Free Maroon! Free Mumia, Leonard Peltier, and all political prisoners!
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Panel discussion: ‘Lessons of the French General Strike’ Watch the video!
Lessons of the French General Strike:
An online webinar
Sponsored by Socialist Resurgence
SATURDAY, FEB. 22
WATCH THE VIDEO NOW!
In the course of two months, hundreds of thousands of French workers and students have refused to go to work and school, and taken to the streets in giant mobilizations over and over. This effort to stop the so-called “reform” of the pension system is currently the longest strike in French history. The combativeness and class consciousness of the ranks of labor have been demonstrated in a thousand ways. The ruling-class effort to gut the pension plan has been slowed but not defeated.
What explains the ferocity of the fight to defend the standard of living of working people? What explains the intransigence of the Macron regime? What lessons have been learned, and how might they apply to the U.S. movements for social change?
Hear a panel of Parisian strike leaders from the postal workers’ union, the teachers’ unions, and the student movement discuss these issues and the way forward for working people in Europe and the U.S.
All the speakers are also active in Anticapitalisme & Révolution, a tendency in the New Anti-Capitalist Party.
For more information, email us:
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The European Union Crisis
THE European Union (EU) has suffered the worst crisis since its foundation. Far from being temporary, it is its foundations that tremble.
By Felipe Alegría – International Courier 22 (special edition on Europe)
A mid the depressive wave that began in 2007/08 that is intertwined with the climate emergency, the EU is being shaken by the conflict between the US and China and displaced in the world division of labour. This affects Germany first, but after it, the whole of the European economy.
Official propaganda introduces us to the EU as the refuge of “European values”: peace, human rights, democracy and welfare state. However, all these years have clearly shown the true face of the EU: a social war machine, rigidly hierarchized, with German capitalism at the command post, in alliance with the French.
The EU has been the main protagonist of the worst plans of adjustment and labour and social counter-reforms since World War II. The devastation and looting of Greece is its most sinister feat. The EU supports the repression of the Spanish State against the Catalan people for wanting to exercise their legitimate right to selfdetermination. The EU maintains a xenophobic and racist policy towards refugees and immigrants, outsourcing dirty work to the governments of Turkey and Morocco and the Libyan mafias and turning the Mediterranean into a huge mass grave. The EU is the instrument of the foreign policy of the central European powers to conclude trade agreements, cover the sale of weapons to bloodthirsty and corrupt regimes such as the Saudi or legitimize military interventions such as those of French imperialism in Africa.
The EU in crisis
The plans that Germany and France launched in 2015 to “refound” the EU, reinforcing their powers and subjecting rigid control to the other states (mainly peripherals) remained in the refrigerator. Meanwhile, “Euroscepticism” has spread throughout the continent. Britain leaves the ship, with Trump pushing Brexit, the Scottish government fighting for a new independence referendum and the revived Irish problem.
The whole of the European institutional system set up after World War II is broken, and political instability is the norm in Europe. The great parties of the right and social democracy, which for decades sustained capitalist domination on the continent are in open decline. In some countries they hold on and in another, like France, they have become marginal forces. Meanwhile, Macron and the green parties emerge, and the extreme right arises, exploiting xenophobia and racism and relying on the popular rejection of the EU, with which, at the same time, they refuse to break.
European powers feel that the ground moves under their feet
The European imperialist powers many decades ago ceased to be the masters of the world. World War II marked its final decline and sealed its dependence on the US, the new great hegemonic power. The European reconstruction was carried out under the impulse and leadership of US imperialism, which promoted the creation of the institutions that would later lead to the EU. The US-Western Europe alliance was for decades the axis of the world division of labour. The US pact with the reborn German bourgeoisie was a centrepiece in the balance of the state system.
This pact cracked with the arrival of Donald Trump to the presidency. One of the first things Trump did was to abort the TTIP, the free trade and investment treaty that had been laboriously drafted by the EU and the Obama Administration. Trump openly favours the breakdown of the EU (starting with Brexit). He prefers to treat country by country, asserting with full force the weight of American superiority, and not with a block led by Germany. But Trump’s turn is not a simple whim of the character but responds to the deep disruptions caused in the world order by the crisis of the so-called globalization.
The “globalization” took off in the 80s, giving rise to an upward wave of capitalism that lasted for more than 20 years, until the outbreak of the financial crisis of 2007/08. Its main point of support was the restoration of capitalism in China, promoted by the Communist Party. The US-China partnership was the focus of “globalization.” That included the general liberalization of capital movement, incorporation of the Internet and new technologies (ICT) into production and distribution. And a reconfiguration of global production chains pivoting on the millions of Chinese workers who were incorporated, under conditions of semislavery, into the capitalist world market.
“Globalization” and the EU
The great European powers enthusiastically joined the “globalization”. In 1986 they launched the “Single Act” to create the “single European market”, establishing full freedom of movement of capital and accompanying it with a first neoliberal rush against the social conquests achieved since the post-war period. The next step that intended to implement the single European currency, was the Maastricht Treaty (1991), which was associated with a strong offensive of cuts and counterreforms, by social democratic governments.
“Globalization” in Europe was linked to the restoration of capitalism that led the Stalinist parties in the USSR and Eastern Europe. The great beneficiary was German capitalism, which culminated a process of semicolonization of Eastern countries serving their multinationals, particularly automobile companies. This process took place at the same time as the integration of East Germany and the imposition of the Hartz reforms (2003-2005) by the social democrat Schröeder, which led almost a quarter of the German working class to the extreme precariousness of the “minijobs”. On this basis, the German economy, which was already the leading European economic power, strengthened its hegemony in the continent. It is a powerful exporting machine, making its suppliers a good part of EU industry[i].
In this process, the single currency (with the ECB) was a basic instrument to consolidate German power.
When the financial crisis broke out in 2007/08, the main European powers, supported by the EU, avoided collapse by rescuing their banks with public money. They plundered the periphery (Greece, Portugal, Eastern countries, Ireland, Spanish State) and lashed out in general against public services, wages and pensions, with special intensity in places like Britain. At this time, Germany reinforced its hegemony while Greece and Portugal were downgraded to the level of semi-colonies in which went was placed under foreign dictates.
Through austerity plans the working class of a good number of the EU countries aresubject to a new exploitation pattern whose feature is a widespread precariousness of employment, wages and living conditions and the impoverishment of broad sectors of the middle classes.
None of this was an inevitable process. It happened because of the complicity of the big union bureaucracies and the betrayal of a ‘left’ who, like Syriza, won the support of Greek people as they saw them as a champion of the fight against austerity but then they became the successor of the PASOK and the new hitman from the Troika.
But even so, despite its antisocial offensive, European capitalism has failed to get out of the depressive wave that began in 2007/08. Not only have they not reversed the decline, they have only managed to endure by appealing to the European Central Bank, which has bought public and private debt massively and has given unlimited funds to the banks at 0% interest. A remedy that they now recognize is no longer enough. Meanwhile, German industry is currently in recession, economic stagnation exists throughout Europe and the threat of a new global recession emerges.
The crisis of European capitalism, part of the general crisis of “globalization”
The European crisis is an integral part of the general crisis of “globalization.” World capitalism entered 2007/08 in a period of stagnation without at the moment seeing a way out. No general wave of investments, associated with the increase in the rate of profit, which may lead to a new boom period is on the agenda. The general economic course, on the other hand, is marked by an increasingly monstrous parasitism and by the course of the American imperialist battle to subdue Chinese capitalism, which aspires to dispute the super-profits in key economic branches (5G etc.) and the regional control of Asia.
This global struggle alters the location of the regions and countries of the world, causing the displacement of Germany and the EU, sandwiched between two much more powerful capitalisms. Germany’s place in the world division of labour is associated with its export power, now in decline (which could be seriously aggravated if Trump carries through his threat of raising tariffs on German cars). The crisis of the great German bank (Deutsche Bank) relegates it from the first line of world financial capital. At the same time, Germany (and the EU) has lagged behind in big global technology companies that parasitize and monopolize the global profits. These globalized companies are concentrated in North American hands (followed by China).
The decline of the German economy is accompanied by the decline of French capitalism and drags all EU countries in the same direction. This process undermines German leadership, hits the German-French alliance and questions the “cohesion” of the EU.
Social and political consequences of the decline of European capitalism
European capitalisms and the EU have entered a period of decline. A decline that brings with it a new impulse to industrial relocation and generalization of garbage jobs in the service sector but also in industry, with low or very low wages, attacks on public pensions and deterioration of health and education systems. The reference of the capitalists is labour and social conditions in the countries of the East looking towards Asia. This continued capitalist offensive affects the European periphery, which is increasingly dependent, as are the central countries, as we see in the British social degradation or the current Macron offensive against the public pension system.
The other side of social degradation is the growing use of EU states for increasingly authoritarian and bonapartist measures against democratic rights, including the right of workers to collective bargaining. This is the case of the “democratic” governments of Macron, the PSOE or the new Italian cabinet formed by the Democratic Party and the M5S.
Macron’s presidency has distinguished itself by attacking labour rights, by brutal police and judicial repression against the Yellow Vests and by the adoption of new laws against the right to protest and assembly. The new Italian government maintains the “Salvini decrees” that cruelly punish those who help refugees and emigrants and allow those who occupy an empty house or block a road during a strike with long prison sentences and massive fines. In the Spanish State, we suffer the brutal condemnation of the Catalan independence leaders for promoting a referendum and the savage police repression against protest demonstrations opposing the convictions. The doctrine of the Spanish Supreme Court could be used to charge with sedition those who prevent the execution of the police. In the same way, the crime of terrorism can help prosecutors indiscriminately accuse those who face the monarchical regime. We want to underline that we are not simply talking about the reactionary “illiberal” governments of Kaczynski (Poland) and Orbán (Hungary), reviled by the “liberal” press, but about the three most important states in the euro zone after Germany.
EU defenders from the left
The European capitalist powers, with Germany in front, need to sustain the machinery of the EU to try to maintain their power in the current world confrontation as well as to continue counting on this great common weapon against the working class and the peoples of Europe. But, at the same time, its decline weakens the EU and reinforces centrifugal tendencies, fuelled by Brexit and supported by a growing social rejection that not only covers the working class of the various countries but also the vast sectors of the petty bourgeoisie impoverished and even middle sectors of the bourgeoisie mistreated by financial capital. In any case, beyond the concrete path taken by the course of European capitalism decline two things are clear: the first is that the cost, which is enormous, will fall on the backs of the working masses and the second, that the role of the EU will be central in the offensive of capital.
However, the British trade union bureaucracy and the submissive left to Labour, who are unable to confront Brexit tory with a socialist Brexit, want to make British workers and youth believe that the EU will protect workers’ and social rights. They should ask the Greek, Portuguese or Spanish workers, the yellow vests or the Catalan independence workers. Although, in reality, the arguments of the supporters of “Remain and Reform” (“Stay and Reform”) are the same as those used by Pablo Iglesias (Podemos), the leaders of the Portuguese Bloc or Melénchon (la France Insoumise). The chorus of former admirers of Tsipras.
There is in the extreme European left who, like Lutte Ouvrière in France, argues that fighting the EU makes no sense because “the fight is against capitalism.” With this, in the name of an abstraction, they emptied the concrete struggle against capitalism. Because there is no French capitalism separate from the EU. French capitalism vitally needs the EU to attack its own workers and to continue playing a role of an imperialist power in Europe and in the world. There is no fight against French capitalism other than the fight against the EU and for a socialist Europe of workers and peoples. There is also, within the so-called European extreme left, who oppose the fight for the break with the EU and the Euro, claiming that it is a “nationalist” exit that “takes the game to the extreme right.” In reality, it is a false argument that amalgamates the popular rejection of the EU with chauvinism and the xenophobia of the extreme right, grossly misrepresenting reality and giving left-wing coverage to the defenders of the EU and the Euro.
There is finally a group, formed by leaders of the “Unified Secretariat – Fourth International” (USFI), which are the last trench, the most sophisticated, in the defence of the EU. Six years ago (with the European periphery in the midst of the debt crisis) they defended a “bold refoundation of Europe” and vehemently opposed any break with the Euro and the EU. They defended “anti-austerity governments” with a “viable strategy”, to negotiate “debt restructuring”. Tsipras and his government were, also for them, the great model. That is why they supported him until a second before he committed the infamous betrayal of the July 2015 referendum.
Now, after the Greek experience, they can no longer support Tsipras and say that the EU can be “radically reformed from within.” However, in a recent manifesto[ii] They continue the desperate search for a third way to avoid calling for a break with the EU and the Euro. The manifesto, dedicated to explaining the measures of a “popular left government” in its first year, proposes an “immediate” Keynesian program of disobedience of the Treaties but remaining in the EU and the Euro, and without affecting property of the large means of production and banks. In the same way, in its medium-term scenarios it contemplates the implantation of a new currency that would, however, be complementary to the euro, in whose framework they would remain. A really elaborate and bizarre project.
There is no way out without true European unification, that is, without ending the EU and building the Socialist United States of Europe.
The EU reflects the very high degree of integration of the European economy and, at the same time, is the main obstacle to its true unification. Economic integration has not led to the formation of a European state that promotes convergence between different countries. On the contrary, the different bourgeoisies have maintained and reinforced their own state to defend the interests of their financial capital and face their working class. Formal borders have been largely diluted, but the economic and social boundaries between countries have been strongly reinforced, deepening economic and social inequality between them. This trend, far from dimming, has deepened during the past crisis and will be further accentuated in the future.
Under capitalism it is not possible to rescue Europe from decay, nor the working masses of social regression, nor to face the climate emergency. It is not possible to do it without unifying Europe under the power of the workers. The struggle to take power and expropriate capital begins with individual countries but can only culminate successfully by extending it to other countries and building the Socialist United States of Europe, understood, in turn, as part of the struggle for a socialist Federation world.
The struggle of the Catalonian people for their national rights faces not only the monarchist regime but the EU, the great support of the Spanish State. The movement against climate change not only clashes with the hypocrisy of governments but with that of the EU, which promotes and legitimizes a policy at the service of “green capitalism”, which neither wants nor can tackle climate change or environmental degradation. The solidarity movement with the Kurdish people clashes with the EU’s complacent policy towards the Turkish regime, subcontracted to close the passage to Europe of the Syrian displaced, which it maintains without rights and in destitution.
The French Yellow Vests not only face Macron, but also the EU. Macron’s plans against the public pension system are not only a requirement of French capitalism but of the EU.
There is no individual “national” salvation without unifying Europe under the power of the workers. Only in this way can we achieve true economic unification, putting all forces at the service of human progress; ending the division between first, second and third category Europeans; converting industry and commerce to face the social and climatic emergency; turning the continent into a bulwark of the struggle for world socialism.
This means, first of all, ending the EU. There is no revolutionary policy in any EU country that does not start from there and the struggle for a Socialist Europe of workers and peoples. This is the unifying axis of every revolutionary program in Europe.
Finally, we are going to quote a few words that Leon Trotsky made in the IV Congress of the Communist International almost 100 years ago, which fully retain their validity: “the slogan of the Socialist States of Europe is on the same historical level as that of ‘ workers ‘and peasants’ government; it is a transitional slogan, it indicates a way out, a perspective of salvation and it provides, at the same time, a revolutionary impulse to the labouring masses.” This is the way.
[i] The German economy represented in 2018, 28% of the EU GDP and 39% of its industrial added value. It is the third exporting country in the world and its sales abroad represent 40% of its GDP. The US and China are its main clients outside the EU (8.71% and 7.13% of the total). Its main exports are luxury vehicles and advanced machinery.
[ii] The “Manifesto for a new internationalism of the peoples in Europe” (March 2019) is headed by Eric Toussaint and signed by leaders of the SU-CI (including the historical leadership of the French NPA), together with leaders of reformist forces (France Insoumise , Attac, Spanish United Left, PCF …) and some prestigious intellectuals. -
The Imperialist Tragedy of African Migration
EUROPEAN RIGHT-WING AND FAR-RIGHT SECTORS denounce that migration to the European continent is the reason for all ills of Europe.
By Asdrubal Barbosa for International Courier 22 Special Edition on Europe
The article “Dismantling the myths about immigration”[1] shows how the imperialist bourgeoisie uses existing misinformation about migrants to lay on them the responsibility for “stealing work”, “withdrawing social assistance” or “collapsing public healthcare”.
On the other hand, representatives from the EU, the African Union and the UN are delivering outraged pronouncements opposing the existence of slave markets in Africa. But the existence of these markets is intrinsically linked to their policies against migration. Policies that, as in the case of the EU, include outsourcing work to governments and mafias, as in Libya, the country where these complaints are concentrated and where the alarming number of African migrants is huge[2].
French President Macron has called for an emergency meeting of the Security Council, calling the slave trade as a “crime against humanity.” EU High Representative Federica Mogherini said that slavery and human trafficking are unacceptable.
But the direct and indirect responsibility for slavery and human trafficking rests with the EU and its governments.
Migrants flee their countries due to terrible living conditions, hunger and poverty caused by corrupt governments following economic plans imposed by the IMF and imperialist governments. On top of poverty there are in many cases political and religious persecution. Great capitalists from France, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Spain or England, along with their governments, continue to plunder the African continent after massacring and firing it for centuries.
On the way to Europe, whenever migrants are arrested, they are enslaved and forced to work on megaprojects and agribusiness. It is for these migrants that European governments prevent access in joint operations with African governments and mafias. They are the same “democratic” governments that vote in their parliaments xenophobic laws that condemn aid to migrants and even their own rescue, as the Italian one.
They turned the Mediterranean into a huge mass graveyard. The number of victims drowned in these five years exceeds 19,000. A human catastrophe that is a faithful reflection of the extreme decomposition of the world capitalist system.
Joint Operations
The EU has commissioned the Turkish government led by Erdogan to block Syrian refugees from entering Europe. At the same time, in 2015, during the migration boom to Europe, EU governments met in Valletta (Malta) and created the “Africa Fund” with a one-billion dollars budget.
With this fund, they developed “Operation Sofia,” for which they financed the corrupt Libyan government of Tripoli, so that their mafia-associated Coast Guard, trained and supervised by the Italian navy, with NATO aerial support and intelligence to find out the location of migrants to intercept them and return them to Libya. Since 2017, at least 38,230 migrants have been returned.
Libya is considered by the UN to be an “unsafe port” with detention centers where torture and rape have been identified. The initial agreement with the Libyan government was signed by Democratic Party (PD) Gentiloni, then ratified by Salvini and has now been confirmed by the coalition government M5S-PD with the EU’s blessing.
In 2016, EU countries also developed the “Operation Ivy” promoted by the European Border Agency (Frontex). Through this operation, the Spanish state and the EU funded, trained and provided equipment to Senegal and Mauritania coastguards to detain migrants in their territories. The Spanish government also finances Morocco to curb the departure of migrants and, when they fail, intercept them and return them to Morocco.
Criminalization of Migration: The Example of Niger
From the “Africa Fund”, 30 million are destined to “fight poverty in Niger”. This country is an EU priority to curb migration routes to northern Africa and Europe. In 2016, more than 400,000 migrants passed through Libya and Algeria, most of them through the Agadez region. The government has militarized and cut off the country’s traditional routes, not just those of irregular migration, but all, although migration is not a small part of the scarce economy of several African countries.
The EU set up EUCAP Sahel, with a budget of 63.4 million, to “advise and train the Nigerien authorities … in developing techniques and procedures to better control and combat irregular migration”.
The Nigerian government will amend the legislation in order to criminalize migrants as well as passersby and transporters, who are not necessarily mafias in human trafficking, but ordinary people who live on bringing people to the northern African borders and return goods to Niger. The bill 36/2015 resulted in the confiscation of vehicles and the arrest of carriers, leaving about 7,000 families, who are not criminals but small traditional traders, with no means of subsistence.
The Fund remaining, camouflaged by justifications such as the fight against terrorism and security, is devoted to border surveillance and control policies. Everything is conditioned and depends on the safeguard of “Fortress Europe”.
In Africa, the migrant population is becoming clandestine, persecuted by the authorities. Police and the military control the routes, have taken the wells of drinking water along the route, and it is increasingly risky to cross the Sahel desert. The EU military advises authorities and security forces, finances the purchase of equipment and vehicles, and facilitates biometric border control records.
“Fortress Europe” builds a large moat in the Mediterranean and creates another in the Sahara so that there are no witnesses and “democratic” EU governments ensure that no one sees the dead in the desert. With a “humanitarian” façade, the EU commits crimes against humanity on the African continent.
Hunger, Poverty and Slavery in Libya
In Libya, they have not only favored the corrupt Tripoli government, which builds its crackdown on EU “humanitarian aid”, but also the mafias and traffickers, in a lucrative trade in migrants largely operated by the centers of detention, officially administered by the government, but actually in the hands of paramilitary militias attached to it.
In April 2019, in a riot in one of these detention centers, Qasr bin Ghashir in Tripoli, these militias fired indiscriminately at refugees. The refugees were transferred to a detention center run by the Az-Zāwiyah militia, where they were tortured and extorted. This protest was the continuation of the December 2018 hunger strike, in which migrants and refugees from Khoms Suq al-Khamis tried to prevent their sale as slaves. In June 2019, they fired on another group of refugees while protesting food deprivation at a center run by the Al-Nasr Brigade, whose leader Mohammed Kachlaf, accused of human trafficking in international courts. Many pay to enter the best-regarded centers run by UNHCR and LibAid in Tripoli. The price is around € 430 per migrant.
UNHCR and the EU consider it acceptable to work with the Az-Zāwiyah Al-Nasr Brigade, which acts in conjunction with the Libyan Coast Guard. However, UNHCR officials say the centers are not safe for refugees and cannot prevent torture and stupidity against refugees.
Native or Foreign, the Same Working Class
Governments, employers and parties spread prejudice against migrant workers to divide the working class. They use racism, xenophobia (hatred for foreigners) and Islamophobia although they are the ones responsible for unemployment, poverty and lack of resources that worsen the living conditions of the European working masses. Racist discourse aims to encourage and increase capitalist exploitation.
Treacherous trade unionists, in their turn, make it difficult for unions to organize migrants and say that jobs should be reserved for native workers, weakening the working class as a whole. Only the unity of both national and foreign workers can stop the backlash on living conditions. That is why organizing native and migrant workers to fight back exploitation and oppression together is a fundamental task.
We have to stand for the African peoples’ struggle to free themselves from the plunder to which they are subjected by European multinationals and to offer massive support for their development to compensate for the historical plunder they have suffered. Furthermore, we stand for policies that provide safe migration, meeting human needs.
We fight for the provision of work and residence permits for migrants, without any restrictions on access to public services, on union wages and working conditions, the right to organize, including undocumented ones. We demand the end of detention centers, deportations and slave labor.
Only a Socialist Workers’ Europe can be supportive and fraternal with the African peoples and their migrants.
[1] https://litci.org/es/menu/mundo/europa/estado-espanol/desmontando-los-mitos-lainmigracion/ by Daniel Aurel Neamtu and Mai Madhun.
[2] https://litci.org/es/menu/mundo/africa/libia/la-verdadera-cara-del-imperialismo-frentela-esclavitud-libia/ by Hertz Dias and Américo Gomes. -
The Mass Movement Against Climate Change
THE INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE has begun to take root on a world level and also in Italy (although how solid it will become remains to be seen).
By Matteo Bavassano (PdAC) for International Currier 22 – Special Edition on Europe
The change is not surprising in itself. The last great international mass movements occurred in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, and to a lesser extent also the United States – those are the years of the “Arab Spring”, the European Indignados movements and the United States Occupy Wall Street. But there were no significant developments in Italy, for contingent and purely national reasons. It was certainly predictable that it would be different with the movement against climate change.
What was perhaps difficult to predict is the extent that, at least in the three global climate strikes organized by Fridays for Future, the Italian movement had the largest mobilizations in Europe. Some factors could indicate a development of this type; we will try to enumerate some of them (without trying to exhaust them all) and analyze them.
The importance of a non-superficial analysis
Analyzing the causes and scope of a movement that is not a working-class one such as this one against climate change, which has had mass weights in different countries, is a complex task. To do it properly it is necessary to make a series of simplifications, which unfortunately are often presented as a “class orientation” and is a common currency on the left. These simplifications can be divided primarily into two groups of opposite sign: sectarian and opportunistic – although they also go hand in hand[1].
Sectarian simplifications are based on the “absoluteness” of the inter-class character of the movement against climate change. They include positions ranging from conspiracy theories, according to the which the whole movement has been developed due to the interests of sectors of the world bourgeoisie because of the interimperialist confrontation between the “polluter” Trump and Chinese “green capitalism”. Therefore the protesters are like puppets that are manipulated by this inter-bourgeois clash. Another position is apparently based on class, they do not openly deny the problem of climate change but maintain that this is secondary to the primary contradiction, the capital-labour conflict.
These “positions” underestimate the importance of intervention in the movement, and ignore the battle for concrete demands against climate change that leave in practice the movement under the hegemony of bourgeois and reformist positions. In the theoretical field, they deny that the contradictory nature of capitalism is inseparable from that of capital-labour conflicts, but the fight against the destruction of nature must be an integral part of the struggle for socialism.
This can only happen if the political vanguard of the working class manage to interact constructively with the movement against climate change. Organizational measures need to be proposing togther with demands for the movement as a whole to gain the trust of the activists, demonstrating that the interests of the revolutionaries are that the movement develops and grows. It needs to be explained why the solution cannot only consist in the fight against climate change, but must necessarily be extended to a fight against the economic system in order to replace it with a socialist society.
The dialectic of the development of the movement against climate change
Beyond what the thinking of supporters of the conspiracy theories, the real reason why activists are mobilizing is because capitalism is destroying the planet. If we do not start from this fact, it is impossible to correctly frame the analysis of the development of the movement. Therefore it is impossible to understand how to intervene.
Bourgeois science has for years talked about climate change, and even before that, following the ideas of Marx and Engels, Marxists began to talk about this. They extended the field not only to global warming but include all environmental damage caused by capitalism, which the great bourgeois press is careful to avoid unless forced to do so and, above all, never links it to the economic system but only to its mismanagement.
One might wonder why the movement has developed at this time. It is very clear that the bourgeois press, at the request of the great bourgeoisie, decided to give greater importance to the climate problem. Previously relegated to the background of the 27 JANUARY, 2020 ITALY political debate the bourgeios press exploited the media image of a Swedish sixteen-year-old young activist, Greta Thunberg, to create a broad movement of opinion: Friday for Future. Especially in Europe, this responded to specific political demands due to the failure of the traditional parties of the European establishment. The Social Democratic parties, and more recently the neo-reformist parties (which since the last crisis has been the pillar of the states whose regimes had the most significant difficulty: Greece, Spain and Portugal), in order to curb the growth of the institutional right (Northern League, National Front, Ukip, etc.) parties and in order to revive governments that could have the support of the popular masses, eventually also through the growth of the green parties, as happened in the European elections last May.
For Marxists, however, these are not reasons to move away from the movement, but rather represent the objective image of the contradictions that indicate how to intervene in the movement: the bourgeoisie tries to exploit a real problem to create massive support for the reformist forces (as are the green parties), but to do so, it must really mobilize the popular masses against climate change.
However, the bourgeoisie does not control such mobilizations and, in fact, did not stop after the second climate strike, held a few weeks before the European elections: it is not possible to end a mobilization of this magnitude easily.
They need to be be seen building pressure on governments to take action against climate change. The more credible this perspective is, the more activists will be deceived that it is possible to find a solution without fighting the capitalist system. This is the reason why the United Nations welcomes Greta Thunberg and lets her speak to the General Assembly and before the masses of the world, so that it seems that the powerful of the Earth address the problem. And yet, contradictorily, the masses continued to mobilize, as evidenced by the oceanic demonstrations of the third climate strike.
Precisely, this dynamic of mass mobilization, which at the moment shows no signs of stopping, opens up important possibilities for revolutionaries. If the reformist forces propose, as is typical of their nature and their usefulness for capital, solutions to global warming compatible with the current economic system (although the contradiction between capitalism and nature is insurmountable) this allows intervention and propaganda of revolutionaries, who can exploit all the contradictions to try to give a class leadership to a movement that is born inter-class: in fact, only the socialist program can solve the environmental problem at its root. The main difficulty of revolutionaries to intervene in the movement today is due to their weakness in relation to the breadth of the movement itself.
The state of the movement in Italy
To the international framework explained here, it is necessary to add the national peculiarities, which show, at least at the time we wrote, Italy is among the broadest European movements against climate change.
Given that the mobilizations so far involve mainly students, it is important to keep in mind that there have not been large student demonstrations since spring 2015 against the “Good School”[2] of Renzi: this means that student forces have accumulated adding, to the forces of those who had already mobilized, the force of new generations of students (who are massively present in the demonstrations), and they have been able to give life to large demonstrations that also open up great possibilities for radicalization.
Secondly, it is good to take into account the more general political situation: the movement against climate change began to develop at the mass level in 2018, and even since September 2017. The “left” bourgeois press initiated a broad media campaign against the government, especially against the then Minister of the Interior, Matteo Salvini (Northern League), and his xenophobic and repressive measures. The campaign led to a series of initiatives organized by the Democratic Party and the parliamentary oppositions “of the left”, which mobilized tens of thousands of people across the country.
In this situation, the first two climatic strikes had an important mass participation, but the third strike, which occurred on September 27, represented a qualitative leap, bringing to the streets more than one million people. A participation that had not been seen for almost twenty years (for our part, we witnessed a march of about 150,000 people in Milan).
The magnitude of this third day of mobilizations surprised even those who had focused on the growth of the movement. In some situations anticapitalist slogans (a minority for now with respect to the movement itself) have begun to spread. It undermined those who wanted to make the movement apolitical, masking themselves behind the heterogenous nature of the demonstrations, but in fact trying to prevent the workers’ parties from participating in the demonstrations with their symbols.
This “selective” character certainly did not affect the administrators of the PD (such as the mayor of Milan, Sala), who quietly protected themselves behind their “institutional” role in making their political propaganda. The prejudice against the workers’ parties must be fought by personally participating in the movement, and although the red flags remain a taboo in virtually all demonstrations. Some are still not convinced that revolutionary parties can make propaganda of their positions during the demonstrations, despite all this, hundreds of young and very young people enthusiastically read every leaflet distributed in the various demonstrations that expressed anticapitalist positions.
Under this obvious predisposition of the young protesters towards radicalization, together with the magnitude of the movement, the reformist forces have an imperative need to control and slow its development.
The leaderships of the movement and their aims
The movement, by its very nature is not homogeneous, there has not been a precise structuring and it has different compositions and political leaderships in different cities. This, on the one hand prevents the development and radicalization of the movement at the national level, and on the other hand prevents control by bourgeois and reformist political forces increasing, because it allows the movement to continue to be controlled by the Social Centers[3] at the local level, especially in large cities.
The latter, behind a facade of anti- capitalist phraseology, actually condemns the movement not only to localism, in fact separating the struggles of the different cities, but also leads to subordination to the PD, which cannot make concrete political opposition in the movement, and due to the links that it has with the communal [municipal] administrations (destined to keep the spaces occupied).
The bourgeois and reformist forces, on the other hand, look to a vertical nationalist structure, bureaucratically imposed, that can normalize the movement by purifying it of everything that is embryonically revolutionary. The national assembly that took place in Naples on October 4 and 5, a week after the mobilizations, without the activists knowing about it until a few days before, represented a moment of confrontation between these two souls who dispute the leadership of the movement, and ended in a substantial organizational stagnation, despite the small steps forward at the general political level, at least in relation to the very confusing premises of the movement.
To achieve some results, the movement cannot be trapped in various locations, there are years of examples of failed student struggles because of the various social centers that led them. And here we return to the problem, just stated above, of the understanding that afflicts several organizations that call themselves “working class” that, because of opportunism, do not oppose the organizational models of the Social Centers, contenting themselves with the right to “give their opinion” in assemblies. They do not count for anything and are controlled by the Social Centres themselves that they put before the general interest of the movement, condemning it to impotence.
The necessary organization for the movement is national in nature, but it should not allow bureaucratic normalization by the reformists. For us, this organization must be based on the organization of the Friday for future movement (which, in regard to Italy is currently the prevailing structure), in local periodic assemblies, that democratically choose representatives for a national coordination that want to direct the movement and transform it from a movement of opinions into a movement of struggle. It needs to identify a series of national anticapitalist demands, and develop various territorial assemblies with local demands that will be carried out in the territory, so that a dynamic is created that expands the movement and makes it radical and increases its anticapitalist consciousness.
To do this it is necessary to take full advantage of the contradictions opened by a mass movement such as Friday for Future, despite its current confusion and political heterogeneity. Acting outside of that means condemning ourselves to be left out of mobilizations. With the development of the influence of slogans of the revolutionaries, the movement will gradually lose its inter-class character, and also the petty-bourgeois sectors, which will continue to mobilize and will join the program of revolutionary socialism.
[1] “Codista/codismo” refers to groups that follow a current of their own interests and accommodation, without possessing a specific political project, being regarded as harmful and opportunists.
[2] “Buona Scola” (Good School) is the name given to educational reform implemented by the Renzi, administration amending and degrading labor conditions.
[3] Centers of autonomous and anarchist activists. -
Black liberation and the early Communist movement
Black community members in Chicago speak with National Guard troops during the racist anti-Black riots in the summer of 1919. By JULIA WALLACE and JIMENA VERGARA
The following article is reprinted from the on-line socialist journal Left Voice: http://www.leftvoice.org.
The struggle for Black liberation was an integral part of the U.S. Communist Party’s practice in the years after its foundation. The party’s work was particularly influenced by the Bolshevik Party and Black radicalism in America.
“This independent Negro movement is able to intervene with terrific force upon the general social and political life of the nation, despite the fact that it is waged under the banner of democratic rights … We say that it is is able to exercise a powerful influence upon the revolutionary proletariat, that it has got a great contribution to make to the development of the proletariat in the United States, and that it is in itself a constituent part of the struggle for socialism. — C. L. R. James, “The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in the United States,” speech at Socialist Workers Party conference, 1948.
The history of class struggle in America is inherently connected to the struggle for Black liberation. The rebellions in Baltimore, Maryland and Ferguson, Missouri after the murders of Freddie Gray and Michael Brown by police officers revealed that, although the United States elected its first Black president in 2008, the majority of Black people continue to suffer the exploitation and oppression inflicted by the imperialist state. The spirit of Black liberation set the country ablaze with the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The idea that African Americans would gradually achieve their full freedom under the current system proved to be nothing more than an illusion. The American state has amply demonstrated that racial oppression is inscribed in its DNA. The abolition of slavery and the abrogation of segregationist laws were not gained by the grace of the white ruling class in America, but by the struggle of many generations of Black people.
An anti-capitalist perspective is necessary for the success of the struggle for Black liberation. There are wings of the Black liberation movement that consider Black affluence to be a challenge to white supremacy. Some sectors consider this a form of “representation,” since it allows a few Black people to be admitted into the capitalist class.
However, capitalism serves only a small class of individuals, and although it now includes some Black capitalists, the vast majority of Black people are languishing under this economic system. Historically there has been support for “Black capitalism” because the state has fought tooth and nail throughout history to prevent its progress. But as the Obama presidency showed, neither Black capitalism nor Black representatives in the capitalist state will lead to Black liberation.
The only way to end systemic racism is to end capitalism, and the only way to lead a powerful movement against capitalism is to root out the racism that still prevails in large sections of the working class. This was understood by broad sectors of the Black communities influenced by socialist and communist ideas from the 1920s onward.
Unfortunately, after the 1960s and 1970s and with the acceleration of the neoliberal offensive, the struggles for Black liberation and socialist revolution began to grow apart. It is imperative to reestablish the unity between Black and anticapitalist struggles and reconstruct the history of the relationship. While some left organizations downplay racism as if it is not a primary issue, we believe that Black liberation is at the heart of class struggle in America, and that the fight against racism should be at the center of a left organization’s practice.
In this article, we focus on the period of the 1920s and early 1930s, when Black struggle gained great importance in the national arena and socialist ideas flourished within it. The experience of the Communist Party during this period offers valuable insights for socialists today.
The First Great Migration and the Nationalization of the Black Question
At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, U.S. capitalism was undergoing its transformation into an imperialist power.
Although the global hegemony of the United States did not materialize until the end of the Second World War, the U.S. economy was already entrenched in the bustling race for mass production and rapid urbanization by the early 1900s. The Black community, mostly concentrated in the southern United States until the 1920s, also suffered the consequences of this industrialization process:
“When the century started, blacks were still a peasantry with about 83% of the population working on farms. This radically changed over the next 50 years. By midcentury, African Americans were now an urban people, with over 60% of the population living in cities. The community was dominated by an industrial proletariat and a small cadre of white-collar and professional service workers. The city was the black people’s land.”(1)
The Great Migration involved the exodus of six million Black people from the South to the North of the United States from 1916 to 1970.
From 1916 to 1940, at least 1.5 million Black people migrated from the South to the nascent northern cities. Migration made the emergence of a new Black proletariat possible on the one hand and an emerging urban petty bourgeoisie of artists and professionals on the other. With migration, the Black struggle began to take on a national character. Black America was proliferating, and writers like W. E. B. DuBois pointed out that the “Black question” was at the heart of U.S.’s great problems:
“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. . . What shall be done with Negroes? Peremptory military commands this way and that, could not answer the query; the Emancipation Proclamation seemed but to broaden and intensify the difficulties; and the War Amendments made the Negro problems of to-day.”(2)
These were the years of the Great Depression, the struggle against the Ku Klux Klan in the South, and an unprecedented process of organization and politicization in the Black liberation movement. For the next twenty years, with the emergence of the new Black intelligentsia and urbanization came dozens of Black organizations fighting segregation laws, such as the Niagara Movement (1903), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909), and the Urban League (1910).
In this context and against the backdrop of the Great War, an international event changed the configuration of the Black movement—the Russian Revolution of 1917.
The Russian Revolution and Black Liberation
The Russian Revolution inspired the exploited and oppressed all over the world, and Black people in America were no exception. In November 1917, John Reed sent a cable to the socialist publication New York Call from Petrograd: “This is the revolution, the class struggle, with the proletariat, the workmen, the soldiers and peasants lined up against the bourgeoisie.”3
The 1917 Russian Revolution showed the working class and the most oppressed the inspiring glimmer of a future beyond the limits of capitalist oppression. Internationally, the Russian Revolution had a major impact on class struggle and demonstrated that, even in backward capitalist countries like Russia and the countries of the African continent, the masses could lead a revolution. One of the aspects of the early imperialist era
“Was the division and rule of the African continent by 15 European countries at the Berlin Conference of 1885. The expansion of the Russian Revolution, the defeat of the European bourgeoisies, and the victory of the working class in these imperialist countries—which included France, Germany and England—would have been a fatal blow to their colonial project in the African continent. At the same time, the weakening of the European bourgeoisie would have increased the chances of African workers and the oppressed of overthrowing imperialist rule in their regions.”(4)
The Early Communist Party and the Black Question
In 1919, the inspiration of the recent revolution in Russia led to the emergence of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) in the midst of the break-up of the left wing of the Socialist Party5 and other radical organizations. The rank and file of the Socialist Party (SPUSA), inspired by the Russian example, quickly turned to the left. The same year, American communists suffered virulent government repression6 in the form of the “Palmer raids,” resulting in the apprehension of more than six thousand US-born and immigrant communists; over five hundred were deported.
From 1920 to 1950 the CPUSA was one of the most influential organizations of the working class and Black population in the country. The orientation of the party toward the Black liberation movement arose from (1) an intense internationalist collaboration and debate between the American communist militants and the Communist International (CI) and (2) the influence that the party received from Black radicalism in America, which, inspired by the Russian revolution, began to turn left.
The communist militants came from the ranks and tradition of the Socialist Party; Black liberation was not at the center of their political practice. The American socialists had of course been trained in anti-racism, but even for Eugene Debs, one of its founders and most prominent figures, racial oppression did not deserve special attention:
There is no Negro question outside of the labor question. The real issue … is not social equality but economic freedom. The class struggle is colorless. The capitalists, white, black, and other shades, are on one side and the workers, white, black and all other colors, on the other side.7
It was therefore not surprising that the nascent Communist Party would still be blind to the importance of the Black question in the United States. The Bolsheviks, while not experts on the Black question, recognized in the early stages of their organization that the issue of racial oppression was deeply linked to revolutionary politics in the U.S. The nascent Soviet Union granted the right of self-determination to nationalities and minorities—such as Muslims—who were oppressed under czarism. These national minorities flourished socially and culturally after the revolution.8
As Jacob Zumoff points out in his book, The Communist International and U.S. Communism, “As early as 1913, Lenin had noted the importance of the Negro question when he wrote: “Everyone knows that the position of the Negroes in America in general is one unworthy of a civilised country—capitalism cannot give either complete emancipation or even complete equality.”9
Beyond the fact that some communists had experienced or witnessed the oppression of Black people in America first-hand,10 the Bolshevik Party was especially sensitive to national, ethnic, and gender oppression. Zumoff writes,
Generalising from the Russian experience, the Bolsheviks emphasised anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism. Since special oppression often was integral to capitalism, struggling against it could spark broader social struggles. This understanding compelled the Bolsheviks to sense the importance of the “Negro question.”11
Thus, Lenin insisted that John Reed present a special report on the Black question in America for the Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920. The resolutions passed at the Second Congress were then ratified in the Fourth Congress of the CI (1922) and ultimately guided the party’s orientation toward the Black question until 1934. That is, despite the growth of Stalinism within the Communist International through the “Third Period,” the Soviet bureaucracy was only able to discipline Black American communists after 1934.
John Reed’s report to the Second Congress stated that “The Communists must not stand aloof from the Negro [sic] movement which demands their social and political equality and at the moment, at a time of the rapid growth of racial consciousness, is spreading rapidly among Negroes. The Communists must use this movement to expose the lie of bourgeois equality and emphasize the necessity of the social revolution which will not only liberate all workers from servitude but is also the only way to free the enslaved Negro people.”12
Reed insisted that any revolutionary policy for the period must include the fight against racism and support for the struggles of Black people on an international scale. After stating that “the enemy of [the Black] race and of the white worker is identical: Capitalism and imperialism,” the resolutions affirmed that “The Communist International should struggle for the equality of the white and black races, and for equal wages and equal political and social rights. The Communist International will use every means at its disposal to force the trade unions to admit black workers, or, where this right already exists on paper, to conduct special propaganda for their entry into unions. If this should prove impossible, the Communist International will organize black people into their own unions and then use the united front tactic to compel the general unions to admit them.”13
The attention that the Communist International gave to the Black question at its first four congresses converged with the development of Black radicalism in America. The Russian Revolution resonated among the Black liberation movement, building a socialist left wing. This radicalization stemmed from growing discontentment with the policies of influential organizations such as the NAACP. As a by-product of this discontent, organizations like the African Blood Brotherhood formed, with young Black leaders like Cyril Valentine Briggs at the head, who saw the struggle for Black liberation as an anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle. Once the Communist Party was founded, these two organizations merged in 1921. This fusion was an expression of the strong relationship between communism and Black liberation.
The Third Period
In 1923 the German revolution was defeated. This defeat paved the way for the demoralization of the European proletariat and a period of capitalist stabilization. Although the German revolution failed, the majority of the Communist International concluded that a global stage of the radicalization of the masses was developing.
This incorrect characterization and the refusal of the CI majority’s to draw objective conclusions about the significant errors in Germany led the International to adopt a policy known as the “Third Period.” This orientation was based on the idea that socialist revolution was inevitable. This characterization had its correlate in an ultra-left and sectarian position of the CPUSA from 1929 to 1934.
During the years of the Third Period, the CP created the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL) to build “red unions” or “revolutionary unions” in opposition to the existing unions in the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The red unions required workers to agree to the CPUSA’s program in order to obtain membership. Charles Post describes this tactic:
“The CP’s trade union sectarianism had particularly tragic effects in the steel industry. There the sizeable CP fraction refused to participate towards the growing rank-and-file movement in the Amalgamated Iron and Steel Workers (AFL) agitating for a general strike to win union recognition during 1933 and the first half of 1934. Instead, the CP maintained its relatively small “red union”—the Steel and Metal Workers Industrial Union—rather than entering and giving organizational and political direction to the insurgent Amalgamated ‘lodges’ (locals).”14
Despite this ill-fated direction, it was precisely during the Third Period that the CPUSA made its most important inroads in the Black movement. This was a result of the Communist International’s preservation of revolutionary elements. In relation to the Black question, its policy upheld the resolutions approved at its 1928 congress. These established that the Black struggle could be characterized as the struggle for self-determination in the Black Belt of the South, and the fight for equal rights and integration in the North.
In the North, the communists organized democratically-functioning interracial councils of the unemployed; fought segregation in education, housing, and health; and built solidarity committees against lynching in the South.
In a sectarian way and as a result of the Third Period line, the CPUSA rejected any kind of common action with the Socialist Party in the South, but it managed to organize rural salaried workers and sharecroppers’ unions.
In industrialized cities like Birmingham, Alabama, unions organized by the communists were at the forefront of the militant labor movement. They also agitated against segregation and for voting rights for Black people, and in many cases they became part of the armed self-defense against the lynchings perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan. In Alabama in 1930, the communists organized millions of people (Black and white) in defense of the “Scottsboro Boys,” young Black men who were falsely accused of raping two white women.
The communist militants in the South developed all sorts of initiatives to organize the Black working class. As Robin D.G. Kelley explains in Hammer and Hoe, the interweaving of classes in the racialized capitalism of the South posed unprecedented challenges for communists:
“The relations between industrial labor and capital, and landlords and tenants, were clouded by divisions based on skin color. On the surface, at least, it seemed that there existed two separate racial communities in the segregated South that only intersected in the world of work or at the marketplace. Sharp class distinctions endured within both black and white communities, but racism tended to veil, and at times arrest, intraracial class conflict as well as interracial working-class unity. Alabama Party leaders could not escape the prevalence of race, despite their unambiguous emphasis on class-based politics. Indeed, during its first five years in Alabama, the CP inevitably evolved into a ‘race’ organization, a working-class alternative to the NAACP. As Nell Painter observed, the rank-and-file folk ‘made the Party their own. In Alabama in the 1930s, the CP was a southern, working-class black organization.’”15
The initiatives promoted by CPUSA members in Alabama combined patient work in the unions that recognized the importance of the fight against racism, and also spearheaded the organization of democratic bodies in Black communities that would take up pressing problems in cities like Birmingham.
Kelley also describes the adverse conditions under which Black and white communists organized Alabama’s Black working class and the degree of influence they achieved over large sections of the Black community.
However, the state’s fierce repression, combined with the political course followed by the leadership of the Communist Party, eventually liquidated the heroic experience of Alabama.
The Shift to the Right
The Communist International’s growing bureaucratization and shift to the right had a great impact in the United States. Starting in 1934 under the control of Stalin, the Comintern shifted again, this time to the right. Leaving behind the ultra-left period, the communist organizations embraced the “popular front.” In the United States, this implied subordinating the party to the government under the Roosevelt administration, which had a direct impact on the CPUSA’s relationship with the Black liberation movement. As C.L.R. James says,
“The CP has lost 1,579 or 79% of its Negro membership during the last year in New York State alone. Since that time, there has taken place the split of the Workers Alliance, and New York is slated to be always symptomatic of developments in the Party as a whole… The chief reason for this is, of course, the new Popular Front turn of the CP. The CP cannot gain the allies it wants if it fights the difficult fight for Negro rights. The CP is now an American party, and the petty bourgeois supporters of democracy who are coming into it have nothing in common with the Negro, who, finding himself an outsider, has simply left the Party.”16
In Moscow, the Stalinist bureaucracy—in complicity with the US leadership—forced the CPUSA members to stop organizing within the Black liberation movement under the argument that, by appearing before the masses as a Black organization, the party was alienating white workers. The CPUSA’s abandonment of a decisive orientation toward the Black liberation movement correlated with its support for the New Deal and its subordination to the emerging labor bureaucracy.
The immediate consequence of the popular-front turn of the Communist Party was to ally with liberal Democrats in the South and reformist organizations in the labor movement. Even though the Communist Party continued to push for interracial organization of the unions, it did so by abandoning the principle of class independence and thus abandoning the revolutionary roots of the early years.
Right before the third period and the subsequent right turn, three communist leaders were accused of “Trotskyism” and expelled from the CPUSA: James P. Cannon, Martin Abern, and Max Shachtman. From the heart of the CPUSA emerged what would later become the American section of the Fourth International founded by Leon Trotsky. This nascent organization drew lessons from the experience of the Communist Party toward the Black liberation movement and from it emerged one of the most prominent Black revolutionary leaders and thinkers: C.L.R. James.
The importance of early Trotskyism in the U.S. is that, among other things, it preserved the Bolshevik tradition of a revolutionary policy for Black emancipation, which had been articulated in the CPUSA’s early years.
Moving Forward
The importance of reconstructing the relationship between Black struggle and socialist revolution is not merely a historical exercise. The influence of the Bolshevik Party in the 1920s and 1930s helped forge a revolutionary faction within the Black liberation movement. This faction developed thanks to the lessons of the Russian Revolution. An entire generation of communists was inspired by the early years of the Russian workers’ state. The centrality of the self-determination of oppressed nationalities and the struggle against racial and gender oppression was key to winning them over.
These experiences demonstrate that Marxism is not a “white ideology,” but rather, has served as a guide for the revolutionary emancipation of the oppressed majority.
Probably the most important workers’ upsurge in U.S. history took place in the 1930s, and the Black struggle was an essential component. Tens of thousands of Black workers joined far-left organizations, and the Communist International was devoted to the formation of a Marxist interpretation of the Black question in America.
This strength, dynamism and activity stands in stark contrast to the misrepresentations and class reductionism recreated by both the new U.S. social democrats who deny that racial oppression requires special attention, and the liberals who try to trick us into believing that the struggle for Black liberation is separate from the struggle against capitalism.
The marriage of capitalism and racism in the United Estates can be destroyed only by an enormous social force that smashes the foundations of the American imperialist state and the white supremacist ideology that sustains it. To that end, we must use the legacy of socialists in the Black struggle to rebuild the relationship between Black liberation and Marxism as a new political and social force.
Notes
1. ↑ H. L. Taylor Jr., The Long Struggle for Black Liberation (Buffalo, NY: Center of Urban Studies, University at Buffalo, 2015). 2. ↑ W.E B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1903). 3. ↑ Quoted by John Reed, “In Defense of October,” International Socialism 52 (London) (Autumn 1991). 4. ↑ Marcello Pablito, “Revolution and Black Struggle,” Left Voice, no. 3 (2016). 5. ↑ In reality, two communist parties initially emerged from within the socialist movement, but on the advice and policy of the Bolsheviks, they quickly unified. 6. ↑ The repression visited on the communists led to a short but important period of disorganization and disorientation. The communists at the time raised the need to act clandestinely. However, also on the advice of the Bolsheviks and because the political and social conditions did not warrant taking the party underground, the U.S. Communists emerged from their clandestine state. 7. ↑ Quoted by Jacob Zumoff, The Communist International and U.S. Communism, 1919–1929 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 289. 8. ↑ Robert Belano, “What Can We Learn from the Bolsheviks’ Policy toward Muslims?,” Left Voice, no. 3 (2016). 9. ↑ Zumoff, Communist International, 291. 10. ↑ As David Reynolds documented in his book Mightier Than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Battle for America (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011), communists Alexandria Kollontai and Sen Katayama were exposed to the living conditions of African Americans and played a role in convincing the Comintern to address them. 11. ↑ Zumoff, Communist International, 293. 12. ↑ John Reed, “America and the Negro Question: Report to the Second Congress of the Communist International,” Publishing House of the Communist International (1921). 13. ↑ John Riddell, Toward the United Front: Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 1922 (Chicago: Haymarket, 2017), 948. 14. ↑ Charles Post, “The Popular Front: Rethinking CPUSA History,” Against the Current, no. 63, July-August 1996. 15. ↑ Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990). 16. ↑ C.L.R. James, “The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in the United States,” speech at Socialist Workers Party conference, Fourth International, December 1948. -
[Portugal] The Geringonça Administration
In 2010, during the peak of the economic crisis in Europe, Portugal requested international financial assistance, whose agreement was known as the Troika Memorandum (European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund).
By Maria Silva (Em Luta) – International Courier 22 (Special Edition on Europe)
The Troika policy only brought more recession, destruction of public services and a brutal decline in the living conditions of workers (in 2014, the population in poverty reached a maximum of 27.5%), and led to emigrate between 2011 and 2014 about 500,000 people, in a country that has 10 million.
The request for intervention was made by the Socialist Party (PS) government of José Sócrates (who had António Costa, now Prime Minister as the number two in the government), but the contingency plan imposed by the Troika was essentially applied by the government that followed, a rightwing coalition (PSD-CDS), which faced great response and resistance. Even so, the union leaderships never wanted to unify the struggles of the various sectors to defeat the government. The PCP (Portuguese Communist Party), leading the trade union movement, and the BE (Left Block), relying on social movements, bet on letting the ascent weaken and convincing the workers that it was necessary to wait for the 2015 elections.
The Contraption government
In 2015, elections were won by the same right-wing coalition (PSD-CDS). They weren’t able to form a government, since the majority were composed of PS-PCP-BE deputies. Therefore, the President of the Republic called the second most voted party – the PS of António Costa – to form a government. The PS was a minority, it wouldn’t manage to govern alone; it made an agreement with the PCP and the BE to govern.
This government, product of written agreements between PS-BE-PCP, became known as Geringonça. BE and PCP did not have ministers in the government, but were a responsible part of that government: in a parliamentary system like the Portuguese, for the government to function, the budget must be approved by parliament every year, or it won’t be able to govern. Without this governance agreement with the left, Costa would not have been able to maintain the government for four years.
Austerity did not end
Geringonça was highly praised by the reformist left around the world, as a positive example of unity of the left and improvements for the country. But the reality of the working class is very different from those speeches. The international context in which Costa comes to power is that of a more favorable economic situation in the European Union, with a direct impact on the Portuguese economy.
But economic growth only served the bosses and multinationals: it did not change the lives of those who work. The austerity policies did not end with Geringonça. Costa essentially maintains the measures of the previous government and of the Troika (which had imposed a new level of exploitation in the country), to sustain growth at the service of the bourgeoisie. An example of this is that even the small increase in the minimum wage during this term does not recover the standard of living prior to the intervention of the Troika, in addition to the fact that the cost of living in the country increased brutally due to the growth of tourism and real estate speculation. The government even made alterations to the Labor Code that deepened job insecurity, showing that it was there to defend the bosses.
An EU and IMF government
On the other hand, the government paid debt in advance, saved more than two banks with public money, maintained budget cuts that continue to suffocate health and education. It was with this policy of austerity and reduction of public investment to historically low levels, that the government achieved the lowest deficits of bourgeois democracy (one of the central impositions of the euro zone is that countries do not have deficits greater than 3% ).
Between Geringonça and the previous right-wing government, the points are more of continuity than of rupture. That explains why this government is vindicated by the IMF and the European Commission.
Geringonça governed for the bosses and repressed workers and the youth
Geringonça, by bringing together one of the parties that several years ago governs for the bosses (PS) with the two reformist parties (PCP and BE), was a class conciliation government.
Four years later, it is clear that this conciliation did not serve the workers but only the bosses and the multinationals. The government faced several workers struggles : for the right to rest on weekends (VolkswagenAutoeuropa), for living wages ( Hazardous Materials Drivers), for evolution and accounting for career time (nurses and teachers), against precariousness ( Port of Setúbal dockworkers), etc.
Nor has the life of the most oppressed sectors changed, be it blacks, who fought for the right to nationality and against police brutality, be it women, who continue to die victims of domestic violence. These continue to be the most precarious and badly paid sectors of the country, and for whom these laws mean dead letter in their lives.
Faced with the struggles of striking workers and young blacks who took to the streets against racism, the response was repression and authoritarianism. In truth, the government made one of the toughest attacks against the right to strike since April 25: it used the courts to decree minimum services that prevented the strike, used the police and army as scabs to replace the strikers, and applied widely the civil requisition law (which allows workers to be arrested, in case they are urged to work and do not do so).
BE and PCP are responsible
BE and PCP say that Costa’s good measures are due to their presence and that bad measures are a problem of the PS. But there are no two different governments: there is only one government of the PS, supported by the PCP and the BE, which guaranteed the approval of four austerity budgets, at the service of the bosses. The continuity of budget cuts, precariousness, of degradation of public services, of the payment of bank financial holes , etc., therefore, they also share responsibility with the BE and the PCP.
Four years later, for Portugal and the rest of the world, the result of the unity of the left to rule in capitalism is visible: to abdicate defending the workers to obtain crumbs from the bosses.
Gerigonça saved the PS and disarmed the workers
On October 6, new legislative elections were held: the great winner was the PS, with 36.65% of the votes; the BE kept the same number of deputies, but lowered its vote; The PCP had an important electoral defeat. It is clear that Geringonça only strengthened the PS. In fact, BE and PCP, by holding the government for four years, saved the PS from having a fate similar to that of the Greek PASOK or from a historical defeat, as happened with the Spanish PSOE during the crisis period.
The defense of the benefits of Geringonça gave a left-wing makeup to a bourgeois government, which disarmed the workers, youth and the most oppressed sectors in the struggles, creating expectations in the pacts and negotiations with those who rob us bread and dignity every day!
However, if the support and exaltation of the government prevailed in the media and on the institutional left, below, a fighting movement confronted the bosses and the government, deepening a reorganization process that came from the economic crisis, although still atomized. It is in this sense that these elections, being a distorted reflection of the reality of the working class, also express a crisis of bipartisanship and lead three new parties to parliament, particularly a far-right party.
The working class seeks new alternatives, on the left and on the right, because Geringonça does not respond to their needs and has not changed their lives. Costa is already the new prime minister and forms a minority PS government, without written agreements to the left, but with the votes of the latter to allow his budget to pass.
Four years of a more unstable government are coming, at an international juncture where the recession is an increasingly palpable possibility in the European Union. The workers, the most oppressed sectors and youth are fed up with the lesser evil policy, the institutional policy and the negotiations in the halls. The left was unable to give voice to their needs.
The workers who went on strike or took to the streets in these four years show another way: the change will only come from the independent, democratic and combative struggle of the working class and the most oppressed sectors. With or without Geringonça, the fight against class reconciliation policy will continue to be a present necessity. And the only way to fight the extreme right is to fight the new PS government and the class conciliation policy of the left, which disarms workers. The need for unification of struggles, on the one hand, but also for the construction of a revolutionary alternative for workers, which responds to the process of reorganization and the search for an anti-system alternative, is of utmost importance. -
[France] In the Footsteps of the Yellow Vests
THE GILETS JAUNES (Yellow Vests) (GJ) movement will soon be one year old. They failed to get rid of Macron, he is weakened, although he continues to drive through his counter-reforms.
By Phillip and Serge (The ARC Tendency inside the NPA) – International Courier 22 on Europe
It is true that the GJ did not manage to stop Macron and the capitalists, but their power, although still on the offensive against the working masses, was weakened. Macron relented at limited points when the GJ movement was more powerful Following the events of December 1, in particular with the popular attack against the mayor of Puy-en-Velay (Auvergne), and the GJs pushing back the police and taking the Arc de Triomphe.
Macron cancelled the fuel tax increase (which had lit the fuse) Then, in a ‘mea culpa’ speech on December 10, he announced the abolition of the CSG ( tax grab to finance social security ) on pensions below 2,000 euros and announced an increase of 100 euros in the minimum wage. However, this was a deceptive measure in that it does not cover all the workers involved.
The images of thousands of GJ occupying the Champs Elysees – for a while – scared the bourgeoisie to death. During the weekends of the mobilisations, many Parisians departed the city for spa stays, perhaps marking the fear of seeing social rage knock on the door. At the same time, many phone calls were made to the government to ‘let it go’.
At the beginning of 2019, the GJs still showed their strength and radicalisation, but Macron resumed the initiative, particularly with the “Great Debate”, a mask of dialogue aimed mainly at electing elected officials and institutional forces “to drown the fish” [ French expression that means “to avoid a cumbersome subject”].
Since then, despite their tenacity, vigour and democratic selforganisation, with enthusiastic Assemblies of the Assemblies in Commercy (Lorraine), St Nazaire (Pays de la Loire) and Montceau-les-Mines (Burgundy) – the GJ movement lost its power but is still alive. Since November 17 2018, there has been no single Saturday without GJ demonstrations in Paris and elsewhere. This summer on July 14, the movement managed to shake Macron on the Champs-Elysées and also successfully make the motorways toll free.
Between repression and betrayal
Why didn’t the GJ stop Macron? There are several elements for the answer. First of all, we must mention the government’s response of very violent police and judicial repression with hundreds of wounded (25 torn eyes, ripped hands and feet, etc.). On December 1, in Marseille, an 80-yearold woman, Zineb Redouane, was killed near his window by police fire, under very suspicious circumstances. Thousands of detentions and hundreds of sentences, either reasonless or disproportionally harsh.
At the movement’s peak, up to 90,000 police and gendarmes were mobilized throughout the country (10,000 in Paris). During the demonstration on September 21, when the GJs converged in Paris with forces fighting global warming, the capital was even isolated by 7,500 policemen, and the robots [riot police] threw gases and charged against peaceful protesters. The government now sends its police not only against the GJ or youth of the popular neighbourhoods but also against trade unionists and environmentalists. Worse, on June 21, during the Fête de la Musique [Music Festival], a young man drowned in the Loire de Nantes, after a police accusation that was not justified.
There has been a slow hardening of the state apparatus, this is a symptom of a desperate bourgeoisie, which no can longer simply contain the ideological battle using the media.
Macron can also count on the valuable help of the majority of union leaders. At the base, more and more trade unionists joined the GJ and found themselves in action with them, but the leaderships affirmed their role as defenders of the bourgeois state, preferring instead enter into ‘social dialogue’ with the ‘elected’ political power.
While the union leaders paid lip service to the fighting actions of the GJ they, except for Solidaires federation, condemned the violence of the demonstrators – despite the bloody role of the police and asked the GJs to extend their hand to the authorities. The despicable policy of most union leaders continued with the refusal to converge with the GJs by strike action when the bosses were at their greatest weakness, and when it was necessary to push for the mass strike, the economic blockade, and the struggle on the streets for Macron to yield.
A movement with a promising future that has made history
Macron is still there and continues to be as harmful as ever to the working class. But the GJs leave their mark on the collective imagination, whether we think of schoolchildren playing “yellow vests and police” in the courtyards; whether you think of the 2019 graduates who illustrated their philosophical essays with examples of the struggle of the GJs.
The audacity and radicalization of a new style of proletarian struggle is also a source of inspiration for the battles in the current period. Among the undocumented black vests appeared demanding papers and unequivocally condemning French colonialism and imperialism. In national education, in the face of anti-social reforms, there was a rebellion outside the traditional trade union framework, with the “red pens”. In June-July, the baccalaureate was interrupted by striking supervisors and assessors, which was certainly a minority, but highly publicized and unprecedented (disturbing the “bac” is so taboo). Also, in the health domain, many emergency services are engaged in a sustainable struggle against austerity.
The fight for the climate is growing and becoming partially more radical. On October 5, struggles converged again with several hundred GJs, radical environmental activists, and the Adama commission – named in honour of a black youth killed by gendarmes. Adama is a commission, based in a shopping centre in the middle of Paris, that fights police and racist violence, and the impunity that they enjoy. They attack socially unfair and destructive capitalist consumerism practically and symbolically for the environment.
A political power weakened but still on the offensive
Macron and his government continue to repress. Political scandals are multiplying and also weakening the regime. The injustice is flagrant and shocks more and more people.
On the one hand, ruthless repression against the GJ and the social movement. On the other hand, impunity for violent police officers and worse, the Minister of the Interior, C. Castaner, awards uniformed bandits. They are guilty of illegal acts: A. Benalla, former Macron’s bodyguard, committed many cases of abuse (against protesters disguised as a private police officer) and even escaped from prison. Castaner is still there, despite his violence, his lies and his machinations; F. Castaner, is one of the most violent of the violent world; de Rugy, former Minister of Ecology and a great lobster lover was forced to resign; R. Ferrand, president of the National Assembly, was accused of “illegal interests.” But whatever their problems they continue to rampantly attack the status of the civil service, the unemployment benefit and the pension system.
A crumbling and aimless left
Popular combativity revealed by the GJ does not translate into an electoral impulse to the left. The big winners of the June European elections, marked by a 50% abstention, were the National Rally of Marine Le Pen (whose list was skilful but fraudulently titled “Take the Power” with 23.31%; and Macron, whose list came in second with 22.41%.
In what is still ‘left’, it was a disaster: in addition to European ecology, bearer of a green-tinted neoliberalism (13.47%), France Insumisa (FI) fell (6.31% against 19.2% of Mélenchon in the 2017 presidential election); the PCF obtained only 2.49% and the opposing pieces of the former PS collected 6.19% (PSbobo lis[1], by R. Glucksmann) and 3.27% (most traditionally social democratic list of B. Hamon). On the ‘extreme left’, Lutte Ouvrière obtained 0.78%, and the NPA (New Anticapitalist Party, former LCR) did not participate.
A part of the reformist left, on the return of Clementine Autain and Elsa Faucillon, immediately took advantage of Mélenchon’s debilitating appeal to overcome the divisions of the left, pompously claiming a “big bang” from it. The NPA, divided but mainly opposed to this project, nevertheless saw its best-known spokesman, O. Besancenot, calling for “permanent coordination of the left in the struggle”, supposedly to support the struggles and seek a political alternative with the reformists, that is, at its base. A united front in and for struggles is not a problem, and it is certainly necessary to “walk apart but attack together” with them. We have, then, to engage in certain battles with the traitors and with the people who, by their agenda, will inevitably turn their backs, at any given time, on workers’ interests, particularly for their concern in respecting laws and institutions.
But to confuse the united front with the formation of a block that has programmatic ambitions is the squirrel in which the historical current falls again behind the NPA. It is wrong to want to produce a program with reformists because a common program can only be theirs, even if it is artificially distorted at this or that point.
The reformists such as the FPC, the left-wing parties of the former SP and the FI do not want to end the dictatorship of capital. They aim, in the best case scenario, to overcome neoliberalism, but without confronting the ruling class. They aim to meet the challenge of retaking the system from within, without ending paternal power and the bourgeois state.
In the coming months, we will see what happens with those attempts to resuscitate the left, but the success of these appeals seems increasingly unlikely. And this is logical, considering the key parameters s political situation. The period demanded a lot of radicalism, and that can be seen from several indications: for several years, the main marches, such as those of the Black Blocks and the autonomous ones, were the forces that captured the radicalization, and not the traditional extreme left; and mobilization and evolution of the GJ also demanded daring, radicalism and democracy, and they have little incentive to pursue a political system that aims above all to recover their votes in elections. Finally, it is not difficult to notice that some of the components of this left – we take the example of Generation, of B. Hamon – they do not fight radically, because they do not act mainly in the streets, but instead in the institutions. We wonder what such currents could bring to the struggles. However, in the coming months, we will see other forces that we will have to try to converge with to win the battle of the pensions.
The battle of reform
Macron wants to abolish the current pensions schemes and legislate for a budget adjustment where pensions would never exceed 14% of GDP. Therefore, a massive reduction in pensions is expected, with the impossibility of knowing their amount in advance, since that will depend on an annual political decision. Some sectors will suffer more than others, but the decline will affect all workers, faced with that, discontent is on the rise.
The union leaders, as ever, organised a series of separate strikes and demonstrations in September. However, it was the strike of the RATP transport workers in Paris of September 13, which marked the period. This day was organised to defend their pension scheme and was a huge success, with more than 90% of workers stopping work. Driven by a furious rank and file, RATP unions called for an unlimited strike from December 5.
Since then, the SUD [Solidarity Unity Democratic] Rail, FO federation [Force Ouvrière – Workers Force] of transport and road and the FO confederation (in terms less clear), appealed for wider participation to go beyond sectoralism.
That can make December 5, the possible starting point for an interprofessional renovation strike. The result will depend a lot on what happens in the CGT, and also on the phenomena of self-organisation in the future. A sharp conflict has started between those who really want the fight against the manoeuvres of the bureaucrats who will try to avoid it. Throughout the labour movement, appeals to adherence to this unlimited general strike and the demand that trade union leaders call it is clearly on the order of the day – this is a central task of the period for revolutionary militants.
Achieving a qualitatively different situation, with an unlimited general strike, depends in part on the policy that the revolutionary left will follow in the next two months.
In our opinion, a good policy is based on the articulation of the following elements: build a meeting point for all trade union structures, associations and the people, who want to direct the struggle until the end and expel Macron; publicly demand and through the trade union structures that the trade union leaders put the trade union structures at the service of the struggle; stop arguing with the government and request an unlimited general strike from December 5; do not hesitate to publicly criticise the past catastrophic policies and all the vacillations and betrayals of those bureaucracies and in the next period; build self-organisation in the struggle, so that the workers themselves control their strike; invest in all the struggles between now and then – workers, feminists, climate activists, etc. -; finally, in addition to the agitation for the fall of Macron, to offer the prospect of a collapse of capitalism and workers power, for a free and self-generated socialism, in the perspective of a world revolution. In the scope of the NPA, discussions have already begun, and the new ARC trend[2] includes these general guidelines.
[1] Bobo: acronym for “bourgeois bohemian”.
[2] Born at the end of June 2019, from the merger of the Tendance Claire (the Y platform at the last congress) and comrades not linked to organised currents.
