-
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
-
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:
-
2019: A year on fire
“The development of culture and of industry in general has evinced itself in such energetic destruction of forest that everything done by it conversely for their preservation and restoration appears infinitesimal.” — Karl Marx, Capital Volume 2
As the decade comes to an end, the earth itself is making dramatic statements about the extreme destruction workers have to fight in the coming years. Over 300 years have passed since the first bourgeois revolution in England introduced the world to the rule of capital over land, labor, and all forms of life. Class exploitation, deforestation, pollution, and racism grew up alongside each other as the logic of capitalist accumulation and crisis became the motive forces of social decision-making. In 1938, the great revolutionary Leon Trotsky described the current epoch as capitalism’s death agony, and this year has given us a decisive, visceral verification of that classification.
Morbid symptoms
The world is literally on fire. In Australia, capital’s destruction is being felt on an intercontinental scale. The year’s bushfires, still ongoing, are so extreme that they have created their own local weather patterns and turned glaciers all the way in New Zealand black. Climate change, drought, and the hottest days on record have created a situation that is referred to by New South Wales Fire Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons as “catastrophic … [a] level … ‘off the conventional scale’ [where] even houses that were designed and built to withstand bushfires would not survive … ’ Catastrophic conditions are where people die.’”
Conditions have been so extreme that every news source is filled to the brim with stories of thousands of people being evacuated from cities and terrifying pictures of orange, smoke-filled landscapes. Farm vets are reporting that the level of injury to livestock has become so high that farmers are running out of bullets and have to resort to slitting their throats. The Daily Mail reports that 480 million animals have died from the bushfires. The normal fire season in Australia is December to February. In 2019 the burning began in September.
California has seen the largest fires since the 1910s, when the United States Forest Service first began its ill-fated policy of total fire suppression in the West, largely driven by the needs of timber capitalists to maximize the profitable use of the country’s forests. The years 2017 and 2018 brought with them fires covering hundreds of thousands of hectares of land. In comparison, 2019’s 81,000 hectares sounds mild, but the reality is that the year’s fires were a reprieve that is not likely to be repeated. Despite being a wetter year, especially high-speed winds meant that the lower number of hectares burned was due to truly extreme measures taken by the cartoonishly negligent private energy company PG&E as well as what the fire-fighting authorities describe as “pure luck.”
In the Amazon, especially the Brazilian section, the world was horrified as fires ate up the earth’s “lungs,” where a large amount of CO2 is sequestered and 10% of all species live. Unlike California, the Amazon does not see large fires as a “natural” occurrence, due to its wet and cool environment. Here the fires represent unquestionably the vicious reality of the capitalists’ blind drive for profits.
What sets the Amazon fires apart from those in California and Australia is that they were set largely intentionally in an effort by agribusinesses to clear land for large monocrop fields of products like soybeans for the global market. Destroying one of the most beautiful, dynamic, and ecologically necessary places in the world for the sake of profit is in line with President Jair Bolsonaro’s embodiment of the desires of the anti-environment and anti-Indigenous comprador capitalists in Brazil.
Although receiving less coverage and being generally less destructive due to a greater distance from more ecologically sensitive areas, fires blazed through sub-Saharan Africa in what could be a precursor to a much greater threat to come. Although to a lesser extent than the Amazonian fires, despite being much larger, the fires throughout Africa are part of a process of deforestation that is absolutely devastating by any measure. While parts of the Savannah ecosystem are dependent on an annual fire-cycle, the continent is being affected by the same external drivers as are destroying the Amazon.
Mozambique and Madagascar have been especially affected by slash and burn farming, annually losing 285,000 and 120,000 hectares respectively. Already at only 10% of its original forest coverage, Madagascar stands to be completely without forests within 40 years.
Another degradation of essential ecosystems has led to a multi-country area including Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore dealing with plane-downing smoke and haze on a regular basis. The fires, also direct products of illegal but officially sanctioned slash-and-burn farming practices, not only degrade air quality regionally but also have been part of the destruction of peat fields, which are an incredibly important means of carbon sequestration. Historically, flame resistant peat fields, naturally a wet environment, are set on fire to clear the way for palm oil, rubber trees, and other mono-crop fields. CO2 emissions from the peat fires this year were almost double that from the burning in the Amazon.
In 2015, the worst year of forest fires in Indonesia’s recent history, daily CO2 emissions from the peat fires were greater than those produced by the entire US economy. The fires of September 2019 were of the same scale as those in September of 2015.
Alongside the peat destruction, logging for timber and paper pulp products has cleared a vast amount of rainforest and drastically threatened treasured species like the orangutan with extinction. Over 70 million hectares of an original 170 hectares of forest have been destroyed. While the rate of deforestation has dropped somewhat, it is still near that of a 2008 joint study by the Centre for International Forestry Research and the Centre for Chinese Agricultural Policy that suggested Indonesia’s natural forests would be completely wiped out within 10 years.
The time of monsters
Geographically distant, all of the above instances of wildfires are tied together by the global force of capitalism, which is in the first place an economic system and in the second a political system—or as Vladimir Lenin pithily put it, “politics is a concentrated expression of economics.” The politics of forest fires is first and foremost a question of the ruling class’s uncontested decision-making power over the natural world. The experience of our recently concluded decade proves that the specific representation of capital matters much less for the future of our planet than the fact that capital governs.
The personal predilections of capitalist politicians may be more or less friendly to the environment, but the undying pressure of capital to break into new markets and fully exploit all current investments always proves stronger than the individual will of its “green” representatives. Bolsonaro and Australia’s climate change-denying “leaders” are simply among the most brazen representatives of the self-destruction inherent in capitalism’s anarchy of production.
While widely considered a leading force for the global climate justice movement, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, driven out of office by an imperialist anti-worker and anti-Indigenous right-wing coup in November, also fell prey to the structural mandates of capitalist production. In order to gain the support of agribusiness and the cattle industry, Morales implemented a program of deforestation and support for slash and burn clearing which led to fires in the Bolivian Amazon alongside those in Brazil.
Some people, especially in university, government, or other institutional settings, recognize that these issues are both structural and international in nature; however, they are constrained from really finding a way out of the crisis by their class outlook. The only international solution they can see are through the already-existing modes of governance such as the United Nations, International Trade Organizations, and the cooperation of capitalist states. The call for ending the fires in the Amazon coming from this section of the population, which echoed throughout all the bourgeois and progressive press, was for “international fire fighters” when what is really necessary is a full program that can only be carried out by a government led by the working class.
Such a program could include nationalizing the land in order to divide up the big corporate estates and giving the land to the peasants through the leadership of councils of workers, small farmers and agricultural workers, and Indigenous communities that can restore the forest and natural lands. The minimal actions against deforestation by Brazil’s Workers Party, also ousted through a political maneuver by the right wing that some groups consider an “institutional coup,” meant that both fires and deforestation in the Brazilian section of the Amazon decreased dramatically before Bolsonaro stole power.
The social dimensions behind a decade of wildfires intertwine almost indistinguishably with the general movement of capital. In California, real estate speculation and fossil fuel production have come together to create the deadliest conditions in over 100 years. Wildfires are a natural and necessary part of the Californian ecosystem, and even if the promises PG&E is making to update and maintain its infrastructure were carried out, something that is in itself very unlikely, the fact is that the electrical companies are just one source that sparks the flames. As the world warms and dries and development continues into California’s fire-prone zones, including Las Angeles and Malibu, the human impact of wildfires will continue.
There is no single forest policy that can end the crisis. The rich have the ability to quickly evacuate, hire private fire-fighting teams, and construct homes out of fire retardant materials. While none of these measures will necessarily save either them or their property, they do point to the inequalities within our world on fire. As acclaimed Marxist author and environmental historian Mike Davis said in an interview with New York magazine, “even fires gentrify.”
The struggle to be born
There is only one human force that can properly situate society within a world of climate change and a “new normal” of extreme weather conditions—the international working class. An endless number of examples prove that the technical conditions for people to live in industrialized society with a healthy relationship to nature exist. We have the ability to produce everything that we need, including many so-called luxury items, in a sustainable way. The question is not one of how to implement the means to do so but what the political group is that can actually implement them.
Who is capable of minimizing the damage caused by capitalist modernity and safely continuing the existence of the human race is answered by the other fire set in this last decade—the global upsurge of working-class-led mass movements. Beginning in December 2010 with the start of the Arab Spring uprising and closing out the decade with general strikes and national days, weeks, and months of protest in Chile, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Columbia, and France, etc., the world’s laborers are once again starting to understand and use their own power. There are always ebbs and flows in the class struggle, but the lessons learned this decade, especially in 2018 and 2019, are essential for re-founding the international class struggle as well as the international party that can bring them all together.
We have seen concretely the betrayals of the popular front strategy by the Stalinists and Social Democrats in their compromises and conciliations with Piñera in Chile. The thesis that the decisive ingredient is not who governs but what class governs was confirmed for the umpteenth time with the continued hyper-exploitation of Puerto Rico, Sudan, and Algeria even after the fall of their decrepit governments. Likewise, reliance on national capitalists in semi-colonial countries has meant being led totally astray for those who see the anti-worker Iranian government as a progressive force in world history.
The class line is being drawn in flames. Every day, we are forced to decide which side to stand on. In a short amount of time, there will be no turning back.
Photo of Australian fires: Instagram / via @GretaThunberg
-
No racist harassment of Iranian Americans!
No Racist Harassment of Iranian Americans!
By SOCIALIST RESURGENCE
News reports say that more than 60 Iranian Americans were detained and questioned at the U.S.-Canadian border by Border Patrol agents this past Saturday (Jan. 3). According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Iranian Americans were “detained at length and questioned” about their political views and allegiances at the Peace Arch Border Crossing in Blaine, Wash. Those detained were returning from an Iranian pop concert in Vancouver, B.C.
It is no coincidence that Iranian Americans were singled out by a racist government so soon after the U.S. assassination of the Iranian General, Qassem Soleimani, in a dangerous and reckless Trump administration move towards war with Iran. In a period in which hate crimes against Muslims and Middle Eastern people in the U.S. are rising, this sort of targeting is calculated to create fear in Iranian American communities.
Socialist Resurgence condemns this sort of racist profiling and demands that ICE and the Border Patrol keep their hands off immigrant communities! We call on the labor movement, civil liberties organizations, and the socialist movement to raise their voices against this sort of racist intimidation.
No War with Iran!
Hands Off the Iranian American Community!
Stop Hate Crimes and Profiling Against Muslims!
Abolish ICE!
Stop All Detentions and Family Separation at the US-Mexico Border!
Full Amnesty for All Immigrants!
-
Jan. 11 web event: A discussion on reproductive freedom
In this capitalist patriarchy, women have suffered relentless and oppressive control over their reproductive rights. In the past few decades alone, we have seen increasingly restrictive abortion regulations, protests at health clinics, the gutting of health-care providers’ funding, the prosecution of individual women, cuts to welfare benefits, and the setting of a legal framework to bestow “personhood” on fetuses. This is only scratching the surface of the aggressive offense by the patriarchy to restrict and command our reproductive rights. These attacks are a class war on the most vulnerable.
On Saturday, Jan. 11, from 2-5 p.m. EST / 11-2pm PST, the first national webinar hosted by the Mass Strike for Reproductive Freedom campaign will take place, with the intention of building a broad front for the next round of struggle in defense of reproductive justice.
This webinar will be a space to discuss the current state of reproductive rights nationally and in our communities, to draw from global movements, and to strategize about where to go from here.
The current agenda is as follows: A Q&A session with Tithi Bhattacharya (“Feminism for the 99%”), Jenny Brown (“Without Apology”), Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi (Physicians for Reproductive Health), and Rockie Gonzalez (National Network of Abortion Funds). Afterward, the watch parties will break out into discussions to discuss opportunities for local organizing and how that can inform a national strategy.
The following locations have confirmed their watch parties: San Francisco Bay Area, Calif., Capital District, N.Y., Centre County, Pa., Chicago, Cincinnati, Colorado Springs, Col., DSA in Seattle, DSA in Silicon Valley, Calif., Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Quiet Corner IWS, Conn., Rochester, N.Y., Salt Lake City.
The International Women’s Strike (IWS), Connecticut Chapter will host a watch party at Trinity College, 300 Summit St, Hartford, CT 06106, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. EST. (The room number will be announced.)
This is an incredible opportunity for all of us to come together to develop a strong, pro-active defense against the attacks on our reproductive rights.
If you would like to sign up for a watch party of your own, please RSVP with the Mass Strike for Reproductive Freedom.
If you would more information about the local event in Hartford, Conn., then please contact our IWSCT Chapter via Facebook or email at IWSConnecticut@gmail.com
Photo: Molly Riley / Reuters
-
Marxism Alive – 2019 Retrospective
The year 2019 was remarkable due to the great revolutionary uprisings across the world. Check out our retrospective!
A new video of our international organization’s (LIT/IWL) weekly video news series is out!
-
NO U.S. WAR ON IRAN!
Thousands of Iranians take to the streets to condemn the killing of Iranian military leader Qassim Suleimani. The demonstration took place after Friday prayers in Tehran on Jan. 3. (Abedin Taherkenareth / EPA-EFE) By SOCIALIST RESURGENCE
The new decade has just begun and United States imperialism is already threatening to bring the world into a brutal war. In the early hours of Jan. 3, an airstrike in Iraq authorized by U.S. President Donald Trump killed Iran’s top military leader, Qassim Suleimani. The assassination took place when a U.S. drone fired missiles into a convoy that was leaving the airport in Baghdad. Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes, deputy commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of militias that are backed by Iran, also lost his life in the attack.
The Iranian regime has vowed to retaliate against the United States following three days of public mourning. Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, called the assassination an act of “international terrorism” and warned that “the U.S. bears responsibility for all consequences.”
Suleimani led the Quds Force within Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps and also coordinated Shiite militias in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. He was the chief military leader behind Iran’s intervention into the war in Syria on behalf of the Bashar Assad regime. According to one report (Zaman al-Wasl), two days before he was killed, Suleimani visited a military base in Aleppo province, where Iranian-backed militias have worked with the Assad regime to defeat the last holdout of rebel forces in northern Syria.
The airstrike culminated a series of confrontations that took place last month after a U.S. military contractor had been killed in a rocket attack that the U.S. blamed on the Iraqi Kataib Hezbollah militia, which is allied with Iran. The U.S. retaliated for the strike with an air attack on Kataib Hezbollah facilities; from 25 to 31 people reportedly died in the assault. That prompted a two-day militant protest outside the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, which ended on Jan. 1.
A series of war moves by the U.S.
Since the U.S. government re-imposed economic sanctions on Iran, the threat of outright warfare has been bubbling under the surface. Following its unilateral exit from the “Iran Deal” in 2018, the United States attempted to force a wedge between the Iranian and world economies in an effort to drive Iranian capitalism into a crisis it hoped to exploit to gain back influence lost after the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the creation of the Islamic Republic.
Sanctions have forced working people, farmers, and the unemployed to go without medicines, food, and other essentials as prices for basic goods skyrocketed last summer. The United States has maintained and tightened the sanctions regime, as well as taking other escalatory diplomatic measures like classifying the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.
The U.S. maneuvers against Iran have spilled over from economic measures to outright military action several times since the beginning of last year. In June, Trump claimed to have called off a military strike onto Iranian territory just 10 minutes before its planned execution—when warplanes were already in the air. Then, instead of attempting to reach any sort of diplomatic agreement with Tehran to de-escalate the crisis he had created, the United States launched a cyber-attack against Iranian intelligence facilities. Either of these actions could be considered an act of war in themselves.
Alongside these attacks, at least 14,000 U.S. troops and a large amount of heavy artillery have been moved into countries bordering Iran, including Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The Pentagon sent 750 rapid-strike troops to Kuwait following the confrontation at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and has said that some 3000 more could be sent in coming days.
Why Iran? Why now?
Many analysts of Middle Eastern and global geopolitics recognize that the forces of U.S. capitalism are no longer unquestionably dominant in the region. Despite spending over $5 trillion on military occupations and activities in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan since 2001, the ability of U.S. companies to decide how the region’s resources are used has declined. Stark examples include the bilateral Russian-Turkish agreement to patrol northern Syrian territory and China’s $600 billion trade deal with Iran that was struck amidst rabid U.S. sanctions.
During this scramble for influence between imperialist and regional powers, there has been a general upsurge in class struggle throughout the Middle East. The United States is surely seeing the weakness of Iranian influence in shaping the protests as a determining factor in why it is choosing now to escalate to the maximum tensions with Iran.
Backed into a corner of its own construction, Trump’s administration is trying to force Iran to either retaliate and be drawn into a never-ending conflict or to fold and agree to the U.S. terms of economic policy. Either situation threatens to open up new conflicts not only between Iran and the United States; it could also bring in the European Union, Russia, China, and all of the regional players.
A lifeline for Iraqi and Iranian rulers?
In the short term, the Jan. 3 attack has sent shockwaves across the region. Many thousands mourned Suleimani in Iran. Polls indicate that the general was a popular figure, even a celebrity, among the Iranian public; now he has become a martyr.
Meanwhile, in Baghdad, a few demonstrators who have protested Iranian intervention into Iraq celebrated Suleimani’s death. But others called for restraint, while a group of students gathered in Tahrir Square to renounce any foreign intervention in Iraq. One anti-government protester told Al Jazeera, “We condemn the spilling of Iraqi blood regardless of who is behind this attack, but we equally reject the struggle between Iran and U.S. from taking place on Iraqi soil. … We will remain steadfast in the face of any challenges and continue to call for the change we want, away from these proxy wars.”
Nevertheless, the assassination could give a timely lifeline to the regimes in Iran and Iraq, which, like much of the Middle East and northern Africa, have been challenged by huge protests in recent months. Workers and poor farmers in both countries have risen against their national capitalists and U.S. imperialism’s continuing attempt to strangle them into submission.
Iran saw protest demonstrations in over 50 cities in 2019, ignited by plans to raise fuel prices against the background of falling living standards that have been exacerbated by U.S. sanctions. The government responded with brutal repression, as troops cut down protesters with machine guns, sometimes shooting from helicopters. Over 1500 people were killed, according to Reuters, and many more were wounded and arrested.
In Iraq, beginning in October 2019, working people built mass demonstrations that called for an overturn of the government and an end to the sectarian-based governmental system. The protests were sparked by the evidence of governmental corruption as well as by deteriorating living conditions and widespread unemployment. Demands were raised that both the U.S. and Iran withdrew their military forces from the country. Iranian consulates in Najaf and Karbala were set on fire. The protesters showed the world that there is light in the darkness of capitalism’s death agony with their persistent fight against U.S. and Iranian influence in the midst of almost two decades of almost apocalyptic imperialist occupation.
Iranian-affiliated militias in Iraq were accused of joining the government security forces in suppressing the protesters with extreme violence. Suleimani made two trips to Baghdad in October, soon after the eruption of protests in Iraq, and it is widely thought that he helped to coordinate the assaults on the demonstrations.
Now, as a consequence of the U.S. attack on Jan. 3, the Iraqi and Iranian rulers have been handed a new weapon to deflect the anger of working people away from the regimes. Perhaps as a sign of this shift, Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr has issued a statement condemning the assassinations and ordering his Mahdi army to mobilize “to protect Iraq.” Al-Sadr’s forces clashed with pro-Iranian groups in the past, and although he has been growing much closer to Iran in the recent period, he backed the Iraqi anti-government protests not long ago.
We say no to U.S. attacks on Iran! End the sanctions! U.S. and all occupying troops out of Iraq!
-
Watch the video! An international forum: ‘New wave of class struggle in Latin America’
A streaming webinar: Watch the video! This event took place on Jan. 18, 2020
In the last several months, the streets of Chile, Bolivia, and Colombia have been filled with militant and confident protesters challenging their nations’ neoliberal austerity regimes. In a number of cases, they have formed independent working-class assemblies to better conduct their struggle. There are strong indications that their actions, along with those who have launched similar protests in the Middle East, Northern Africa, and Asia, along with the unprecedented mobilizations of feminists, have opened a new era of working-class fightback and advances.
A panel of activists discussed its meaning for working people in the U.S., Latin America, and around the world:
- Blanca Missé teaches at San Francisco State University and is part of La Voz/ Workers’ Voice and the International Workers League
- Juan Valenzuela is a leader of the PTR, the Revolutionary Workers Party of Chile and the Trotskyist Fraction, Fourth International
- Simón Porras Rodríguez is a coauthor of “Why Did Chavismo Fail?” Venezuelan activist, an editor at Venezuelanvoices.org, and a member of International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International
- Jaime González, Liga de Unidad Socialista (México)
- William I. Robinson, Professor of Sociology and Global and International Studies, University of California-Santa Barbara
- Ernie Gotta, Union Activist, Socialist Resurgence National Committee and the Tendency for a Revolutionary International, Fourth International
Initiated by Socialist Resurgence US. For more information, email us.
-
[Spain] Crisis and Reorganization among Labor and Political Parties
The 2008 economic crisis shook with tectonic force the old social stability in the Spanish State.
By Juan Ramos
The real estate speculative bubble ruptured, and the Spanish economy that relied on it (greatly indebted to European banks), begun collapsing, combined with the global economic recession. More than two million jobs were lost between 2011 and 2013, poverty soared and families had to greatly adjust their expenses. There have been 400,000 evictions since that date.
The working population felt the lash of the crisis, while those responsible amassed more wealth. Some cases have been recorded in the collective memory: 86 Bankia executives pocketed 15.5 million Euros from the entity, as income (untouched by the Treasury) added to their already bulky salaries (the “normal” compensation of Miguel Blesa, the President of Bankia, had been 20 million Euros in 8 years).
While the population was suffering, King Juan Carlos went to Africa on safari to hunt elephants, something that was only known because the monarch broke his hip. Or, reaching the height of nonsense, the regional and local governments had promoted large , absolutely useless infrastructure, for the benefit of their friends from large construction companies; like the famous Castellon airport without planes .
The governments that succeeded each other, the PSOE with the “social democrat” Zapatero and the PP with Rajoy applied the same neoliberal recipes to “get out of the crisis.” 100,000 million Euros were dedicated to rescuing the banks that had caused the “crack”, while cutting 20,000 million to public health and education. Both one and the other carried out labor reforms that have led today to a precarious employment previously unknown. Both attacked public pensions. And they reformed by “express way” the Constitution, untouchable since 1978, to establish as first in order, the payment of the debt to the creditors (mainly the big Spanish, French and German banks) over any social right. Again, financial capital won.
The impact of the economic crisis on people’s confidence towards institutions
This situation led to a deep questioning of the political institutions that governed us, and with which the rich had become richer at the expense of the working class and the impoverishment of the middle classes. Political parties and the electoral system were specially questioned.
On the one hand, the electoral system established in 1978 had left everything “tied and well tied” without even respecting the old bourgeois-democratic principle of “one person one vote” [1]. On the contrary, it privileges the rural districts (more conservative), over the urban ones (of greater working class concentration). And within each constituency, large parties are privileged over smaller ones. Thus, for example, in the general elections of 2015, each of the Popular-Left Unity deputy candidates lost 461,553 votes, while the PP, Popular Party of Rajoy lost only 58,663 votes.
Above all, the discredit came by light of numerous cases of corruption. Since the year 2000, there have been more than 2,000 cases of corruption throughout the State. The PP has been especially involved, being convicted as a political party for its illegal financing. From the time of former Franco minister Manuel Fraga to Rajoy, all party treasurers have been charged. Four presidents of the Community of Madrid are also involved in corruption cases.
Corruption cases, in general, have been related to real estate or banking business … precisely the sectors that benefited most economically and contributed especially to the crisis.
Apart from illegal corruption, there is another legal one, which is present in the light of day, which shows the relationship between governments and big banking or brick capitalists . The so-called “revolving doors”, for which politicians, as a reward for their good services, end up systematically placed on the boards of directors of large companies. In order not to make an eternal list, we will mention only that former President Felipe González (PSOE) ended up as advisor to Natural Gas and former President Aznar (PP) in Endesa.
With all this, its no surprise that according to polls, “politicians” are (also currently) the second biggest concern of the population, only behind unemployment. In the numerous mobilizations, the most chanted songs were systematically “they don’t represent us”, “PSOE, PP, the same shit ” or treat the rulers as “chorizos” (thieves).
It is important to mention two other great expressions of the institutional crisis. The first would be the Monarchy. In addition to the famous “African hunt”, the royal family was involved in corruption cases, the King’s son-in-law currently in prison. The discredit was so great that in an unprecedented move, King Juan Carlos was forced to abdicate to his son in order to clean the image of the institution.
But we find the greatest institutional crisis around Catalonia. Spain has historically been built around the Castilian nationality, but never managed to integrate other peoples such as Catalonia, Euskal Herria or Galicia. In a different way, other territories are also considered “nationalities” such as Andalusia or the Valencia Country.
The Franco regime tried to solve this “problem” by violently denying national diversity. Spain was “one, great and free.” In addition to workers’ organizations, nationalist parties and trade unions were literally exterminated, any cultural expression proper to the territories was harshly persecuted, including the use of their own languages. Even names were to become more Spanish …
The decline of the Franco dictatorship was marked by a strong rise of the labor movement, but also by the social explosion of oppressed nationalities. The transition tried a new course, allowing a certain degree of autonomy in the legal framework of the “Autonomous Communities”, yet, diluting nationalities among other territories without any national reality of their own.
For many years, with more or less tension, depending on time and place , that form remained. But the crisis blew up Catalonian stability . Over the years, especially since 2012, the situation has been heating up, continuously mobilizing millions of Catalans. As a culmination of the sovereignty process, a self-determination referendum was held on October 1, 2017, in spite of the fact that thousands of policemen were brought from across the State to repress voters, there were more than two million votes for independence, with greater participation than in many other legal referendums.
As a result, and despite the fact that the Catalan government betrayed the popular will by proclaiming independence, only to suspend it exactly 8 seconds later, the State imprisoned the Catalan Government and unexpectedly intervened Catalan autonomy . Repression is since then an everyday occurrence, with episodes such as the recent imprisonment of several social activists under the accusation of “terrorism.”
Rise and fall of Podemos
About PSOE, we have already explained that it is a central structural part of the monarchical regime. In the early years of the crisis, to their left we found the United Left coalition (based on the old PCE), also integrated. Podemos famous propaganda group , when studying the inability of the United Left to carry the indignation wave , decided to launch the new purple party. For its launch they obtained vital help from the Anticapitalist Left ; the Spanish State’s “Mandelist” party .
Podemos managed to connect with the wave of social outrage that was running through the country at that time and that originated from 15M (the indignados movement) and the waves in defense of public services that followed. With a speech that proclaimed ‘’they call it democracy, but it isn’t “, Podemos labeled all bourgeois parties as part of the “caste” and raised a list of radical proposals. However, it was an openly electoralist bet limited to the institutional. The fever lasted only until it reached the limits set by the Regime.
They went from denouncing the “caste”, to mark as their main political objective to enter as ministers in a PSOE government . Iglesias went from showing off “living like people” in working-class neighborhoods, to moving to an exclusive € 600,000 villa. They went from being Republicans to asking the King to intercede for them. They went from defending a Catalonia referendum to calling for the imprisonment of the independence leaders.
Along the way Podemos broke apart, although always to the right. The haughty and arrogant character of the intellectuals of the leadership nucleus has turned the story of Podemos into a constant internal upheaval, a constant gush of resignations and fights resolved by decree . Internal fights rarely marked by substantive political debates, but rather what is popularly known as “armchair fighting”. Virtually no progressive trend came out of the process, except for small groups.
The “Anticapitalists”, the Mandelist group that dissolved their party to become an internal trend, despite the brutal turn of Podemos, remains placidly established within its bosom, playing its role of “stopper on the left” to the ruptures, in return of fitting into the party apparatus. Little by little, the purple formation has been losing electoral support, while PSOE recovers ; to whom they have systematically campaigned for, as the “big brother” necessary to form a “progressive government”.
To the right, and as culmination of the internal crisis of Podemos, “Más País” has appeared, the party of Íñigo Errejón, former number two of Pablo Iglesias. “Más País” appears with the leitmotif du aupar to PSOE to the government for free, presenting itself as the “responsible” left, opposed to the “intransigence” of Iglesias. That is, putting aside the last objections that Podemos still raises against the Socialist Party. Errejón’s bet is a direct missile to Podemos, trying to liquidate it and reintegrate it into the PSOE, and with it, in the “complete respectability” of the Regime.
Whether or not this is its last chapter, Podemos, which was born proclaiming itself as political heir of 15M, was actually its gravedigger. Its fundamental balance has been to help in the channeling of social outrage back to the institutions. Those institutions that suffered a serious crisis of legitimacy, and that Podemos managed to revive . It went from mobilization, to the ballot box. From “surround the Congress” to applaud it.
As his parliamentary spokesman insightfully wrote then, surprised by the visceral reaction of sectors of the right before his entrance to the Congress of Deputies: “ what hurt the institution was not that they had entered, rather that ,there were so many disappointed people outside”.
The “radical left”
What we could qualify as a “radical left” in the Spanish State has been composed since the Transition period by small groups. One might think that after 11 years of economic crisis and institutional instability, there would have been a leap in its extension. But the truth is the opposite ; what has advanced, in general, has been its institutional integration.
The Basque and Catalan Abertzale left, although we could not describe them as extreme left, at least they were anti-regime organizations. However, in the moments of greatest difficulty, they have responded by lining up behind it. In the Basque Country (Euskal Herria), after definitively closing the armed conflict that marked reality for 40 years, Bildu has become an efficient manager of local or regional institutions and has redefined its strategy around the search for an alliance with the Basque Nationalist Party , submissive representative of the Basque bourgeoisie.
In Catalonia, the CUP with different currents within it and, unlike Bildu, without government responsibilities beyond some minor town halls, has been unable to break politically with the official independence leadership, of which it appears as its left wing. They have not denounced that JxCAT and ERC, the parties in the government of the Generalitat, betrayed the referendum because their objective was none other than to force a negotiation with the regime. And they have never made it clear that self-determination will be impossible as long as the current independence leadership is in the lead, since it does not want a popular insurrection or anything that distances it from the EU governments.
As we have already mentioned, the Anti-Capitalist Left, the Spanish members of the Unified Secretariat-Fourth International ; heirs of the historic CSF, are a structural part of Podemos, in the form of an internal “Anti-capitalists” tendency . They dissolved their party, and with that, they definitively liquidated their revolutionary project. They govern the Andalusian City of Cádiz, where they are not distinguished from the management carried out by other municipalities linked to Podemos. Some other minor groups were dissolved in Anticapitalists or the CUP, or strategically subordinated to them.
Corriente Roja successfully managed to overcome the tsunami that represented the Podemos phenomenon, but we continue to be an organization of very modest size, although we have taken steps forward in our insertion into the working class. In the European elections of 2019 we obtained 9,812 votes. We have made progress, but our ability to politically influence the working class and youth is still very small.
“Alternative trade unionism”
The peak years of mobilization of this period were known internationally because of the 15M explosion, but there was also another series of mobilizations of great relevance. General strikes, where grassroots pressure and alternative unionism played a fundamental role.
From the mining strike and the Black March, which received intense solidarity while the miners strongly defended themselves against the repressive violence of the riot units. Of the Dignity Marches, which with a program headed by non-payment of debt and the repeal of labor reforms brought together tens of thousands of people in Madrid. From “Surround the Congress”, which pointed to the heart of the regime’s parliamentary system . Of white and green tides, in defense of health or education.
In the heat of these mobilizations, and the thousands of fights against dismissals, privatizations, etc … the role of CCOO and UGT was uncovered. As part of the Regime apparatus today, they were swept away by discredit, losing thousands of union delegates. Thus, today they do not have a union majority either in Galicia or in Euskal Herria, areas where nationalist unions have better numbers . Nor in important sectors such as transport. The CGT union, of an already remote anarchist matrix, also benefited from the discredit of CCOO-UGT.
There was a wide union dispersion made up of territorial, sector or even company unions. In general, those ruptures went to the left, seeking positions more committed to the struggle. In that context, after an anti-democratic breakdown of CCOO, Comisiones de Base (Co.bas) was developed, which, unlike the other minor unions, did not proclaim itself but instead raised a strategic orientation of union regrouping towards a combative and democratic Unified Workers Central.
In Corriente Roja we are actively involved in the impulse of Co.bas, respecting its autonomy and plurality, precisely because of the role it can play in the reorganization of the working class and its mobilization. Co.bas is also a humble union that, due to a combative and democratic union proposal, has achieved a significant implementation in the labor sectors of Madrid, Catalonia, the Canary Islands ,Andalusia and now in Aragon, after its recent merger with Intersindical, a union implanted in important metallurgical companies of the region.
We know there is an interconnection between the political and trade union, but they are not the same thing. We also know that the mobilization and organization of the working class is the main ingredient of the Revolution. In the Spanish State there is a rich process, still molecular, of reorganization of the working class. Helping to rebuild a combative, democratic and unitary unionism, while standing up against union bureaucracy, can play a decisive role. Especially, in a context in which signs of a new economic recession preannounce new convulsions, with the regime shaken by the Catalan conflict and increasing its cracks, while Podemos, due to its decline, will not be able to play the brake belt role played In the recent past.
[1] “Tied up and well tied” was the phrase used by dictator Franco to describe the conditions, before approving his succession to King Juan Carlos.
Translated by Blas (Corriente obrera Litci ) -
Why Labour lost. What next for the working class?
December 24, 2019
International Socialist League (IWL-FI UK) Statement
A shock wave went through the Labour Party, the Corbynistas, many political commentators and even the Tories on 12 December as Boris Johnson led the Tories to a landslide victory with 365 MPs (43.6%) against Labour’s 203 (32.32%) and have won the largest majority since Margaret Thatcher’s 1987 election.
The election results reveal the depth of anger against Labour. One Labour activist said, “In the Black Country we were smashed by the decision to move in the direction of a 2nd referendum losing all of West Bromwich, nearly all of Wolverhampton, and of course Dudley North.” Corbyn was very unpopular in many working class areas as they no longer trusted him to fight for their interests because of his record as leader of the Labour Party and the long years of Labour’s austerity betrayals.
Outside of the big cities workers in Labour’s heartlands, the so-called red wall in the North, Midlands and Wales voted for Brexit because they had given up on Labour. That is in the old industrial areas of mining, mills, manufacturing, engineering, steel and shipyards. Labour lost because the overwhelming majority of the working class in these areas voted against remaining in Europe and on 12 December 2019, voted for the only viable Party that was going to take Britain out of the EU.
Workers have felt increasingly abandoned since the days of Thatcher. Pit closures in the 80s and 90s, Labour councils poll tax implementation including imprisonment of non-payers, privatisations and PFI of health and schools by Blair’s Labour, the Iraq invasion, the rise of precarious work, families having to choose between feeding their children or heating their houses, pension age 67 years of age, Tory austerity and Labour’s implementation and endemic poverty that is the legacy. All these things were driving the break with Labour because they never built a mass struggle on the streets against Tory policies.
Labour say they are an anti-austerity party and Corbynistas accept that label without criticism. They should say anti-austerity in words but not in practice. Over many years and at many times they could have built a national mass movement on the streets to fight austerity and to bring the Tories down, but they didn’t and they won’t.
John McDonnell, shadow chancellor, apologised for losing the general election. What he meant was in 2019 he pushed the Labour Party to support the 2nd referendum. The reason? He thought Labour would lose members if they did not support a 2nd referendum. During the election, he said he would support remain while Corbyn said he would be ‘neutral’ during a referendum. So, the two foremost left leaders were publicly divided, almost no one wants to discuss that.
What a way to give leadership to the working class! In 2016 many workers had broken from Labour’s influence to vote for Brexit. In 2017 Corbyn said Labour would respect the referendum result, in 2019 he changed. Brexit and Labour’s contradictory backsliding, history of betrayal and its anti-democratic position was the decisive factors in this election. The disgust over EU membership fuelled hostility to what is happening to the working class and Labour’s lack of fight.
So, these leaders acted to defend the bureaucratic apparatus of the Labour Party. Their watchword became “say what you think will win, not what you think is right”! These leaders follow the old Fabian ways that Socialism is to introduced through Parliament – the leaders know best. But without mass class struggle nothing will change.
When Jeremy Corbyn was elected, millions of workers felt there was a new possibility to overturn Blair’s support for neo-liberalism. Corbyn’s words were different, and many youth trade unionists and neighbourhood activists felt that – but the practice did not match the words. McDonnell’s insisted on being business-friendly, maintaining the banks and all commanding heights of the economy on a capitalist basis. No wonder millions of workers thought Labour could not implement their promises.
Labour MPs in remain areas such as Merseyside, Greater Manchester, London and many big cities retained their seats. The hatred of the Tories and the relative differences with the conditions of workers’ lives in small cities and towns was decisive.
By refusing to fight for a workers and socialist Brexit and by suggesting that a Labour government could implement their manifesto promises without challenging the banks, multi-nationals and financial institutions and without mass struggle Corbyn allowed Johnson to appear more credible on Brexit.
The electoral promises of the Corbyn manifesto could only be credible if linked to the defence of a socialist Brexit. Which would also mean raising concretely and permanently solidarity and common struggle with European workers. Only in this way could Tory Brexit be defeated. Without these conditions, Johnson’s central slogan “get Brexit done” won millions of workers.
Get Brexit done and EU crisis
The Brexit Tory project is a nationalist project for decadent imperialism and more subject to US influence and pressure. The project is based on parasitism, deindustrialisation, ultraliberalism, more extreme precarity, greater inequality, and a great increase in Xenophobia and racism.
Johnson has no intention of dealing with all the pressing problems workers’ areas face except to make them worse, and he is aiming for a minimal EU exit agreement.
Brexit will affect the future of the EU, which is already experiencing a structural economic crisis, caught in the middle of the confrontation between the US and China. It will cause a realignment of forces in the EU, one of whose consequences is the current friction between France and Germany, which is the centre of the EU.
Macron’s frontal attack on workers’ historic gains such as pensions shows the social war is deepening across Europe – that is the project of the EU.
A rising struggle in Europe led by French workers highlights the necessity and increased possibility of common struggles between European workers: south, west, east and north against Europe’s neoliberal governments and the EU. Such efforts must aim for the socialist united states of Europe, which is incompatible with the existence of the EU. At the same time, the British working class will have to fight for its independence against the US, EU and Chinese influence and control on an anti-racist, working class international programme.
Labour only anti-austerity in words
On 29 October 2019, the ISL wrote that Corbyn, “…is not trying to unite workers in mass struggle on the streets. In fact, with his policy Labour will not even win the next election.”[i]
The complete acceptance by the right and the vast majority of Left in the Labour party for a 2nd referendum on Brexit sealed their fate.
We never thought Corbyn would win but the size of Johnson’s majority shows the class fury against austerity is growing and will become a force on the streets if the rank and file in the unions and communities deepen and widen their fights against the attacks they suffer from the Tory government.
However, local struggles will not begin under the leadership of Labour or the TUC. Corbyn always claimed to be against austerity, but he instructed councils to make the cuts in councils by setting a legal budget. Union chiefs in such areas, at best, only gave very weak challenges. In practice, Labour expelled any councillor who voted against cuts such as the four who did four years ago, and they are the last who voted like that. Since then all Corbynista councillors voted to implement Tory austerity. There was no criticism of Corbyn’s social democratic programme, and the vast majority of the Left imposed self-censorship and only praised Corbyn.
The Socialist Workers Party wrote an article after the result published by the UCULeft union tendency which gives their general outlook, We dared to dream. “Boris Johnson’s victory at the general election has sent a shiver of fear down the spine of all those who dared dream that this election would bring about a government led by Jeremy Corbyn. A government that was caring and progressive.” Sean Vernell, the main SWP leader in the UCU.
So even after Corbyn’s defeat, they try to continue the illusions.
The Socialist Party still call for the impossible task of transforming the Labour Party, while now making criticisms of Corbyn (repeating some of the points the ISL has made for years). They forget they said the “Corbyn revolution” could open a workers and socialist road. Even now they call for the Labour Party to become a Workers Party, in which of course they would be admitted.
This pie-in-sky approach of the SWP and SP just reveals how close and even merged politically they are with the left bureaucracy of Labour and the unions.
Corbyn did stand on picket lines during the election, but he never called to deepen strike action or build a front of strike action. Labour candidates spoke at strike rallies in December, but that was more to win votes and not to build the mass movement. A general call for mass struggle to end austerity was never made during the election by Labour or by the leadership of the TUC unions. But national and local strike actions did take place.
The ISL said, when Corbyn became leader, that his only way to build a real combative workers movement was to leave the Labour Party and build a new and democratic party of workers. The question came up again when the right-wing imposed the position of Remain and a 2nd referendum. Corbyn could only have answered that attack by leading a campaign for a workers and socialist Brexit fighting against the right-wing and breaking with the Labour Party while overturning the acceptance of council austerity.
It is not only Corbyn and McDonnell who are responsible. The vast majority of Corbynistas stopped their struggles against austerity when Corbyn got elected, while all Corbynista councillors continued voting for cuts. They went along with PFIs and gave hero-worship of Corbyn heard through their “Oh Jeremy Corbyn” chant. For many the Labour party was more important than the working class.
Labour is not a socialist party
Thinking inside a bubble developed over many years in the Labour Party and the trade unions. Every attack over the last 40 years also gave new possibilities to organise the class but generally, that was never done or was cut short. For the ISL, the struggle for the independence of the working class is paramount but time and again community struggles were held back and taken into the ‘safe’ waters of Labour. Time and again, unions abandoned workers. When the mines, mills and factories closed unions such the National Union of Mineworkers could have organised to face the problems of unemployment and low wage work, but in general the leadership abandoned workers and their communities.
Just as struggles were moving forward and beginning to win was precisely the time when the bureaucracies and their friends abandoned the battle, and sometimes they never moved into the struggle. Such was the case in the anti-Poll tax struggle, led by the Militant (now the Socialist Party) who dissolved the movement just after the massive demonstration in London, or when the majority of trade unions did not mobilise against the invasion of Iraq. After 2008, when the mass joint union strike arose against public pension attacks (November 2011), and workers wanted more, it lasted one day. Most anti-austerity, anti-cuts groups that appeared from 2012 to 2015 collapsed (with few exceptions such as Old Swan Against the Cuts in Liverpool) because to struggle against austerity in practice meant fighting Corbyn and his supporters.
Corbyn’s support for a Labour broad church, meant giving in to positions such as Remain, Council imposed austerity, surrender to Zionism and refusing to call for mass struggle on the streets while supporting trident, nuclear weapons and NATO.
The promises over the anti-trade union laws were vague but were drawn up by layers of left academics as if the anti-trade union laws can be removed one step at a time. Or the promises about detention centres where two detention centres would be closed. Labour Lefts said Labour would close all detention centres when speaking in meetings that included immigrant workers and asylum seekers, but it actually meant eight detention centres would be kept open. Or the promises to nationalise the railways, which even RMT leaders repeated. But they only promised the takeover of franchises when they ended legally. Such a commitment would have taken 20 years to fulfil.
Many of Labour’s activists and supporters made these exaggerations. After this, for any Labour supporter to blame workers is the height of confusion and arrogance.
What next?
There will undoubtedly be a first period of confusion, with the Tories on the offensive and, at the same time, with certain expectations in the sectors of workers who have voted Tory that the situation will improve. But the Tory government will deepen its social war on workers, the youth and oppressed.
Labour’s election manifesto called for some concrete measures which we support and fight for, such as £10 minimum wage, ending tuition fees and promising to end the brutal Universal Credit.
Boris Johnson’s Tory government has announced that it is planning to introduce minimum service levels in the transport sector during industrial action that outlaws full strikes and supports the private rail companies. It means trade union grassroots and working class communities have to support the RMT opposition and demand that all unions take action against these laws including strike action and build a general strike with all unions to stop this attack!
The retreat of Labour over Zionism gave Johnson a greater opportunity to attack. During the election, he threatened to outlaw any public body (including local authorities) in the UK organising support for the international campaign for Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions against Israel.
Palestinian solidarity struggle in the UK has to build a real struggle to stop Johnson proceeding with the threat.
Corbyn never acted as on opposition on the streets. Such a movement has to emerge to stop Johnson and build unity with workers’ committees and alliances with union rank and files and neighbourhoods. At the same time, it must build international solidarity with French strikers and the mass struggle and revolutionary situations in the world from Chile to Hing Kong.
The United Voice of the World announced a victory on 16 December at outsourcing at St Mary’s hospital in London – only gained by taking repeated strike action. They show that immediate struggle is both possible, necessary and can win.
The conflicts of the working class against the interests of capital inside a deepening economic crisis will increase. The more these conflicts are prepared from below independent of Labour’s and union leadership control, the higher the chance of success. We will support new alliances based on the independence of the working class and its struggles, and we will demand that the union leaders take action, but class action to succeed must be controlled by workers and their democratic decisions.
Tony Blair tried to make Labour a social-Liberal party like other European Social Democratic parties. Corbyn saved Labour by instilling false hopes of Socialism while maintaining Labour’s Broad Church. Now the right-wing will try to finish Blair’s project to remove working class and trade union influence inside the Party.
Whatever happens, the distrust of Labour will continue because of the Labour and TUC’s betrayals since the days of Thatcher and the sectoral and bureaucratic outlook of the union
leaderships. Today some Corbynistas are even blaming the working class rather than the reformist left leadership for the lost election.
What was concretely promised by Labour and did win millions of workers votes must now start to be fought for, not in parliamentary debate but on the streets. In the “red wall” and in Labour voting areas, the hatred of workers against austerity is the same, as it is against the very dysfunctional transport system and collapsing public services.
The ISL support the fight in the street and the workplaces with the battles in Parliament. We want a party that, as Lenin said in 1920 to the British Communists, will push in Parliament for extra-parliamentary struggle, undermine and break down Parliament from the inside in favour of workers’ councils.
Union struggles are planned for January, support for these must be spread far and wide by the grassroots activists. There can and should be an increase in organised action against austerity, privatisation and precarious work.
The possibility of a reformist solution has been shown to be dead. We always said only a mass working class struggle on the streets against precarious jobs, linking the unions with the communities and those fighting oppression could succeed, while any council or parliamentary wins must be used to strengthen these struggles.
During this election while strikes were raging in France for many days Corbyn never mentioned support for the French working class (or any other international workers’ struggle). We have to break that mold. Internationalism means active solidarity, not something to make a holiday speech about or even ignore.
Even the best Labour parliamentarians subordinate all class struggle to Parliament. For them, including Corbyn, Socialism has to be brought by reforming capitalism a step at a time.
Some workers saw Labour as a Socialist Party; but, the loss of a general election is not a blow against Socialism. It is a blow against reformism, a blow against social democracy.
The ISL will fight in all kinds of alliances and workers’ committees, it will do so in a friendly way with other left groups, who genuinely want to build working class alliances in the fight against the government, the employers, councils or anyone who oppresses the working class. But any alliance must be extremely combative and hostile to those who stand in the way of developing the independence of the working class.
After the resounding defeat of Labour and the organic inability of Corbyn and the Labour left to present a real alternative to brutal capitalist decline, conscious workers, the oppressed and struggling youth need to consider building a revolutionary party. The ISL is an instrument to build that Party. We are an internationalist party and a member of the International Workers League-Fourth International.
Workers will come to the fore in this period. We say to all who base themselves on workers’ struggle the way forward is the building of a revolutionary party. For those who see the need for such a party to assist workers’ struggles, we urge you to consider joining the ISL.- Fight for £10-an-hour minimum wage!
- End precarious work!
- Fight benefit Universal Benefit attacks, no sanctions!
- Equality for all, fight to end all oppression!
- For workers and socialist struggle to end austerity!
- Build united strikes from below. For a general strike against the outlawing of full strikes!
- No Xenophobia or racism. Immigrants welcome here!
- Full nationalisation under the control of workers and users of transport, energy and all utilities and the commanding heights of the economy!
- Support the international struggle of workers: France, Chile. Colombia, Lebanon…
- Build the ISL and a revolutionary party to fight the government.
[i] http://internationalsocialistleague.org/break-with-the-eu/
-
Protesters at Baghdad embassy demand U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq
Protesters outside the U.S. embassy in Iraq. (Khalid Mohammed / AP) By ADAM RITSCHER
On Dec. 31, following funerals for the 25 people who were killed in U.S. air strikes in Iraq, thousands of protesters pushed through the Green Zone’s security perimeter in Baghdad and began protesting just outside the U.S. embassy. The protesters, most of whom were supporters of Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah militia, demanded that the U.S. withdraw its troops from the country. The militia is politically aligned with the government of Iran.
The U.S. embassy in Baghdad is the largest in the world and well guarded. Security responded to protesters by firing tear gas at them, which escalated the conflict. Protesters broke windows, set buildings on fire, and threw rocks and Molotov cocktails over the embassy walls. The U.S. reacted by sending in 100 additional Marines, and sending two Apache attack helicopters to the scene. Some 750 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division were also dispatched to the Middle East. Trump tweeted that he blamed Iran for the protest; a military showdown with Iran was threatened.
Protests continued for a second day, on Jan. 1, outside the embassy, with U.S. forces firing more tear gas and rubber bullets at them. After pressure by Washington on the Iraqi government, large numbers of Iraqi security personnel entered the area and pushed the protesters out. Finally, a top official of the Kataib Hezbollah militia arrived and asked the crowd to withdraw. “You have won a victory!” he told them. “You have delivered your message. We will take our fight to expel U.S. troops from our land to parliament, and if we don’t succeed, we will return.”
“We burned them!” protesters chanted as they left, vowing to build another protest camp on the other side of the Tigris River.
The bombing by U.S. aircraft took place on Dec. 29. Five sites connected to Kataib Hezbollah were bombed—three in Iraq and two in Syria. Reports state that 25 to 31 people were killed by the strikes, and over 50 were injured. According to a statement issued by the U.S. military, the targets that they chose consisted of the command center, weapons depots, and bases of the militia.
The reasons the U.S. gave for the attack was that they believed that the militia was behind a series of rocket barrages on U.S. bases in the region, which resulted in the killing of an American military contractor. Kataib Hezbollah denied responsibility for the rocket assaults, however. In any case, the U.S. justification for its bombing ignores the fact that the very creation of the Kataib Hezbollah militia is in large part a response to the illegal and unjust U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Revolutionary socialists do not give political support to Kataib Hezbollah. After all, it is one of the violent, corrupt militias that Iraqis have been staging mass protests against since October. But we do support the right of Iraqis to oppose and fight back against the U.S. occupation of the country. The U.S. still has 5000 troops in the country, despite claims that they are being withdrawn, and continues to bully and blackmail the Iraqi government.
This very attack, for example, was a clear violation of Iraq’s sovereignty. The U.S. government says that they notified the prime minister of Iraq half an hour before the air strikes took place. However, the Iraqi government in no way asked for the strikes or consented to them. The Iraqi prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, made clear their opposition to the planned attacks, but the U.S. went ahead with them anyway—demonstrating that the U.S. presence in Iraq has nothing to do with helping the people of Iraq but is entirely about pursuing the bloody interests of imperialism.
In the media the U.S. is trying to portray itself as a victim—claiming that its airstrikes were a justified retaliation for previous attacks, and that its embassy should be sacred and off limits. But the reality is that the U.S. is the aggressor that has invaded, bombed and upended the lives of the Iraqi people. The U.S. has no right to be there; its interests are those of Wall Street and not the people of the region. We demand that the U.S. stop its bombings, withdraw all of its forces from the Middle East, and respect the peoples’ right to self-determination.
-
Let’s make 2020 a year of unity and struggle!
French postal workers’ leader Gaël Quirante (center) is greeted by supporters in June 2019 after being released from jail. The comrades of Socialist Resurgence would like to wish our readers, friends, and supporters a New Year of struggle, unity, and solidarity. If 2019 was any indicator, the coming year promises to be one of continued resistance to this criminal capitalist system.
The year 2019 was marked by mass explosions in the semi-colonial world—in Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, Iran, Columbia, Chile, Ecuador, and Lebanon. There were mass pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong. The Yellow Vests, and now a strike movement, in France have kept the Macron government off balance with a stunning rejection of neoliberal policies. Worldwide, student and youth stood firm against the looming climate catastrophe in the face of the inaction of bourgeois politicians. Millions of youth mobilized for Student Climate Strikes.
In the International Politics Resolution approved at SR’s convention, we wrote: “We appear to be in the midst of an explosive new phase of the uncompleted colonial revolution. Pent-up rage against the inability or unwillingness of the neo-colonial regimes to free themselves from the ravages that imperialism has imposed upon their countries, and the frequent imposition of corrupt and authoritarian regimes on those countries, has erupted into struggles in both world hemispheres.
“Around the world—from Iraq to Colombia—democratic demands (not only for government accountability but also for land reform, women’s rights, the rights of oppressed nationalities, etc.) have often been at the forefront of the protests. Typically, young people, including students, are the first to leap into the struggles; sections of the trade-union movement only join in later after the demands have been broadened to specifically address basic economic issues. Yet all of the revolts have come about against the background of an increasingly dire economic situation in the semi-colonial world due to imperialism’s tightening stranglehold and the accompanying environmental crisis that the imperialists have largely caused.”
In the U.S., there were strikes of tens of thousands of grocery workers, hotel workers, auto workers, and teachers. In cities and towns across the U.S., there were mobilizations in solidarity with migrants in ICE concentration camps, women’s organizing to preserve abortion rights, and new organizing on campuses.
A time for optimism!
This past year also marked our very optimistic decision to found a new revolutionary socialist organization, Socialist Resurgence. But it’s not just about us. SR proposes the principled unity of revolutionary forces. Those who stand for class independence, build opposition to imperialist wars, and fight against racism and oppression must do what we can to work together to rebuild the revolutionary movement—both here in the U.S. and worldwide.
In our convention document on the U.S. Political Situation, we wrote: “Today, the revolutionary left in the U.S. is emerging from decades of retreat and one-sided class war against working people. We are faced with an existential threat to humanity in the form of the looming climate catastrophe. Building a broad, united-front type movement to meet the climate crisis must be at the center of our political and organizational perspectives. Building a mass international movement to avert climate catastrophe is linked to our efforts to revive the labor movement and sink roots into the working class.
“We know that the working class and its allies are the only social force with the potential power to make the fundamental changes necessary to save the planet. Capitalist ‘solutions’ to the climate crisis will not address the roots of the crisis. As the crisis deepens, causing crop failures, rising sea levels, and population dislocations, the capitalist class may opt for authoritarian methods of social control to save their own hides. This may include calling forth fascist elements.
“Our tasks are not simple or easy. We have before us the work of defeating the far right, fighting police brutality and institutionalized racism, prison abolition, building the LGBTQIA+ movement, building a new independent feminist movement, and the revitalization of the labor movement.
“Fighting for class political independence and class struggle unions is an urgent task. A strong rank-and-file-based union movement is the key to defeating the union busters. Breaking the subordination of workers and their mass organizations to the Democrats is a central political task. Therefore, we fight for the founding of a Labor Party based in the unions and organizations of the oppressed.
“We are a small revolutionary socialist organization. We understand that we alone are not going to be able to achieve all of the tasks put forward here. This is why we strive for the greatest possible unity in action of working people and of the revolutionary movement. We seek to regroup principled revolutionaries into an organization that can lay the basis for a mass revolutionary party—a party that is international as well as national in scope.” We have a world to win!
