Internationalist Group -- Reforge the Fourth International!

Women’s Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!
Democratic Party Feminism and the “#MeToo Movement”
On January 19, there were two “women’s marches” in New York City, amid much acrimony. In a transparently Zionist-orchestrated campaign, the Women’s March Alliance accused Women’s March Inc. of anti-Semitism. Behind the squabble among the feminists was a dispute between two wings of the Democratic Party, the former being supporters of Hillary Clinton’s “New Democrats” while the latter were in the Bernie Sanders camp. But who did these more “intersectional,” radical-posturing feminists have as their keynote speaker? None other than Gloria Steinem, who for years was a CIA “asset,” finking on leftists for U.S. imperialism. And if the women’s marches were smaller this year, that’s partly because they had achieved their aim of electing more female capitalist Democratic politicians. The same day, the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth held an educational and organizing conference, which emphasized that the Democratic Party is an enemy of women’s liberation from oppression, which is rooted in the structure of capitalism. Taking on the “sexual paranoia” of Title IX prosecutions, the #MeToo slogan “believe women” and campus codes of “affirmative consent,” the RIY speaker emphasized that feminism cannot liberate women. That requires freeing women from the bourgeois nuclear family, socializing its functions, and establishing a classless society, through a common struggle by working men and women and all oppressed sectors of society. Democratic Party Feminism and the “#MeToo Movement” (January 2019)

From the Current Issue

The Internationalist No. 55
(Winter 2019)
click above or on image
for full list of articles

Trump Picks Puppet, Calls for Military Revolt, Threatens Invasion … and Democrats Applaud
For Revolutionary Workers Action to Smash U.S. Coup in Venezuela!
Defend Venezuela Against Yankee Imperialism!
On January 23, the international media suddenly announced that a certain Juan Guaidó, the head of the National Assembly legislature in Venezuela, had declared himself president of the country, claiming that the actual elected head of state Nicolás Maduro, was illegitimate. Within minutes, Donald Trump recognized the pretend-president, and right-wing governments in Latin America and Canada soon followed suit. This is not your usual U.S.-backed coup d’état as has occurred so often in Latin America. What is going on now is a straight-out U.S. operation, to install a puppet ruler and turn Venezuela into a direct U.S. colony in all but name. Now Trump is trying to provoke a massacre with a cynical attempt to bring in “humanitarian aid” into Venezuela by force: if there are casualties, U.S. imperialism bears the entire responsibility. The local oligarchy and the Yankee imperialists have unrelentingly sought to bring down the populist “Bolivarian Revolution” for 20 years. Although Venezuela is a capitalist country led by bourgeois nationalists, its alliance with Cuba in particular has put it on Washington's hit list. While giving no political confidence to Maduro, whose capitalist economic policies have helped prepare the way for the reactionary putsch, the Internationalist Group and League call for workers mobilization to smash the coup, and warn that only revolutionary struggle can defeat the imperialist takeover. For Revolutionary Workers Action to Smash U.S. Coup in Venezuela! (22 February 2019)

Chanting “U.S.A., U.S.A.” to Woman-Hater Trump’s Praise
Imperialist Feminism and the Democrats
So Donald Trump finally got his State of the Union speech to Congress on February 5. What we were treated to was a bipartisan spectacle of imperialist politicians chanting “U.S.A., U.S.A.” True to form, Trump used the event to demonize immigrants. Republicans cheered Trump’s xenophobic fear-mongering while the Democrats just sat there. In fact, the Dems are just as committed to militarizing the border. Trump's annoucement of the U.S. coup attempt in Venezuela received bipartisan applause. And when Trump bragged about creating millions of new jobs, mostly filled by women, Democratic congresswomen (all wearing white in honor of the suffragettes) gave a standing ovation to the misogynist president! Then when Trump cynically hailed the record number of women in Congress, the women in white broke into cheers and joined in chanting, “U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.” Among the chanters were the supposed "democratic socialists" Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, both of whom had earlier voted $20 million to fund the right-wing opposition in Venezuela. These “progressive” and even “socialist”-posturing Democrats have acted exactly like the capitalist politicians that they are, loyal to the U.S.-dominated imperialist world order. Imperialist Feminism and the Democrats (10 February 2019)

Powerful L.A. Teachers Strike Was Betrayed in Settlement
Draw the Lessons: Class Struggle Leadership Needed
Leadership Rammed Through a Sellout – UTLA Membership Should
Demand the Right to Debate and Vote on the Final Agreement
By Class Struggle Education Workers
On the sixth day of the powerful teachers strike that electrified working people across the U.S., the president of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), stood with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) superintendent and the L.A. mayor at a City Hall press conference to announce that a strike settlement had been reached. Far from being a “historic agreement,” the deal maintains the intolerable conditions which UTLA tops have agreed to for years. Barely a couple of hours after the terms were announced, a “streamlined voting process” was held at school sites during rush hour; a half an hour after it ended the UTLA leader declared that a “supermajority” had voted “yes.” The whole business made a mockery of union democracy. The UTLA Facebook page exploded with thousands of angry comments complaining about the terms of the deal and the rushed vote before teachers and parents could even figure out what all the legalese meant. In line with its policy of class collaboration, the leadership never had a strategy to win the strike: what they sought was to pressure the Democrats. The opportunist left, for its part, dutifully proclaimed the betrayal a major victory. Union militants need to oust the bureaucrats, break with the Democrats and forge a class-struggle leadership. Powerful L.A. Teachers Strike Was Betrayed in Settlement (23 January 2019)

Teachers, Students, Parents, Workers – All Out to Defeat the Privatizers and Union-Busters!
Victory to Los Angeles Teachers Strike!
Picket Lines Mean Don’t Cross!
Break with the Democrats – Build a Class-Struggle Workers Party
By Class Struggle Education Workers
Some 34,000 educators in the second-largest school district in the country are poised go on strike in Los Angeles on January 14 for the first time since 1989. This is more than just a contract fight. It is a battle between capitalist union-busters hell-bent on privatizing schools, and the unions defending public education. The supporters of privately managed “charter schools” who run the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) are hard-lining it, to the point of forcing a walkout. But the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) has the massive support of its membership, and from students, parents and unionists throughout L.A. It is necessary to shut the schools down. To build massive picket lines that no one crosses, the active support of the entire L.A.-area labor movement is needed. Supporters of Class Struggle Education Workers and the Internationalist Group have fought for concrete unon action in solidarity with the UTLA strike. The teacher revolt which swept across the United States last spring has reached L.A – but with a key difference. Those strikes and walkouts were in Republican-governed states. UTLA, in contrast, is fighting the assault on public education where all major officials are Democrats. Calling to break with all the capitalist parties, the CSEW calls to build a class-struggle workers party. Victory to Los Angeles Teachers Strike! (8 January 2019)

DSA Members of Congress Vote to Fund “Homeland Security” Cops
Together with the rest of the Democratic Party caucus, the two Democratic Socialists of America members in the House of Representatives, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, voted last Thursday, January 3, to maintain the funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which, of course, includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) police and the Border Patrol. How much teargas, how many ice-cold detention cells, how much anti-immigrant brutality and imperialist depradation will it pay for? The DSA as an organization, as a whole and in all of its constituent parts, is responsible for the actions of its representatives in Congress, whose election its National Political Committee called the “rebirth of the American socialist movement” (sic). Only a few months ago, they were calling to “abolish I.C.E.” Now, as the capitalist Democratic Party politicians that they are, DSAers in Congress vote to fund the hated immigration cops (la migra) as well the DHS police (the Federal Protection Service) who with their heavy firepower are the front-line defenders of fascists, from Portland, Oregon to Washington, D.C. DSA Members of Congress Vote to Fund “Homeland Security” Cops (10 January 2019)

Nancy Pelosi, Icon of Female Capitalist Power
The New York Times (3 January) today ran a puff piece on “Nancy Pelosi, Icon of Female Power.” She is, actually – a symbol of female capitalist power. If you push for feminism in bourgeois politics, Pelosi is what you will get, or Hillary Clinton. Together with Chuck Schumer, the “Senator from Wall Street,” Pelosi claimed she had brokered a deal for the Dreamers with racist Donald Trump by throwing their undocumented immigrant parents under the bus. Now she claims to oppose Trump’s border wall while offering billions for increased “border security.” In her previous stint as House Speaker, Pelosi “delivered the votes” for the 2007-08 multi-trillion-dollar bailout of the banks for Republican George W. Bush, Democrat Barack Obama and the billionaire investment bankers and hedge-fund operators who financed both of them. Race, gender and national oppression are all rooted in class domination. The all-sided social oppression of this racist, xenophobic, misogynist, homophobic society will not end until an international socialist revolution throws the rotting capitalist system into the dumpster of history. Nancy Pelosi, Icon of Female Capitalist Power (3 January 2019)

Aiding and Abetting the Capitalist Democratic Party
“Socialists” Chase After Anti-Gun Movement
The cynical exploitation of traumatized youth by the Democratic Party to further its agenda of gun control has provided an X-ray into the politics of a panoply of left groups. When key sectors of the most powerful ruling class in world want to disarm the populace, slashing a key democratic right in order to leave the oppressed defenseless, how do socialists respond? In the last few weeks, as liberals, police chiefs and Democratic mayors (“the bosses of the racist killer cops”) push for gun control, almost the entire U.S. left has marched in lockstep with them. Why? Because they are chasing after the young marchers who have been enrolled in this campaign to bolster the capitalist state. The bourgeoisie’s rule is made possible in large part by its ability to perpetrate violence against those it rules over. Gun control has historically been used to disarm black people and intensify racist repression. While some opportunist leftists voice qualms or reservations about some gun control measures, they all end up supporting them. A “left” that plays into the hands of the Democratic Party can only lead to defeat. A struggle for revolution is counterposed to this “movement” for gun control and for the Democratic Party of imperialist war, mass deportations and racist police terror. “Socialists” Chase After Anti-Gun Movement (April 2018)

From the Previous Issue

The Internationalist No. 54
(November-December 2018)
click above or on image
for full list of articles

For Workers Action to Defend the Caravan:
Border Flashpoint in the Racist War on Immigrants
We Say: Let Them In – Free Them All – Let Them Stay!
The war on immigrants reached a flashpoint on the border between the United States and Mexico on November 25. In two dozen cities around the U.S. there were demonstrations of solidarity with the caravan of migrants from Central America, mainly from Honduras, that has arrived at the border city of Tijuana. Meanwhile, hundreds of members of the caravan tried to enter the U.S., only to be repelled by joint action of the Mexican and U.S. immigration police. The U.S. Border Patrol fired scores of tear gas grenades into Mexico. But instead of protesting this blatant act of imperialist aggression, the servile Mexican government arbitrarily arrested several dozen migrants who sought to get around the police barricade. In the U.S., Internationalist contingents participated in caravan solidarity demonstrations in San Ysidro south of San Diego, California, as well as Portland, Oregon and New York City. While demonstration organizers focused protest exclusively on Republican Trump, the Internationalists denounced the “deportation machine of Democrats and Republicans. ” Border Flashpoint in the Racist War on Immigrants (November 2018)

Video of Internationalist contingent in November 25 NYC caravan solidarity demo

Break with All the Bosses’ Parties and Politicians!
Midterm Elections: No Win for Working People
So the Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, while the Republicans held onto the Senate. A “blue wave”? Hardly. And it’s no gain for poor and working people. The capitalist party that has presided over most of U.S. imperialism’s wars for the last century, the party that under Barack Obama shoveled out $16 trillion dollars (that’s $16,000,000,000,000) to bail out banks and corporations following the 2008 Wall Street crash while millions were being evicted from their homes, managed to update its image by putting more “diverse new faces in (some) high places.” This is a “victory”? That’s what the liberals and various “moderate” left groups are proclaiming. Not in our book. Meanwhile, Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi has called for bipartisanship and finding “common ground” with the Republican Party of reactionary bigot Donald Trump. With the capitalist government divided between the Republican-controlled White House and a split Congress, the likely outcome is more Washington deadlock … and frustration all around. In this perilous period, it is key to unchain the power of the workers and oppressed from the bosses’ Democratic Party. Midterm Elections: No Win for Working People (17 December 2018)

For International Workers Solidarity! Let Them In!
Central American Caravan: The Left Caught Between Chauvinism and Liberal Utopianism
Today, thousands of Central American caravan members are stranded at the border in Tijuana, Mexico, blocked from entering the U.S. and vilified by Republican president Trump who issued a lethal force (shoot-to-kill) order to U.S. troops stationed there (along with thousands more Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection police) to keep them out. They are facing an already existing wall built by Democrat Clinton. As an elementary act of international workers solidarity, the Internationalist Group/League for the Fourth International call to let them in and for full citizenship rights for all immigrants. Various opportunist left groups have embraced the call for “open borders,” which like the call to “abolish I.C.E.” – is an empty slogan intended to give a radical-sounding cover to the opportunists’ tailing after “progressive” Democrats who are for secure borders. Then there is the Spartacist League, which even after stating that the Hondurans and other Central American migrants in the caravan were “desperately fleeing” the “devastation made in USA” refuses to call for asylum or just to let them in. Against the liberal delusions of “open borders” under capitalism spread by social-democratic reformists and the chauvinist “no asylum for refugees” policy of the centrist ex-Trotskyists, a genuine struggle for immigrants’ rights can only be based on a program of international socialist revolution. Central American Caravan: The Left Caught Between Chauvinism and Liberal Utopianism (17 December 2018)

Against Officially Sponsored Xenophobic Attacks:
Mexico: For Workers Action to Defend Immigrants!
AMLO Offers to Act as Trump's Border Patrol
Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants – Asylum for the Refugees!
After traveling 3,000 miles from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, to Tijuana, thousands of members of the Central American caravan are now stuck at the U.S. border. There they are up against a border wall fortified with concertina wire, the Border Patrol and U.S. military forces with “shoot-to-kill” orders. On the Mexican side, they face the threat of attacks by xenophobic mobs egged on by Tijuana authorities, and raids by municipal police and agents of the Mexican migra. Now, a week before the Mexican president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador is to take office, AMLO’s interior secretary says the new government has agreed with the Trump administration for Mexico to be a holding pen for refugees requesting asylum in the U.S., a process that could take years. The Grupo Internacionalista in Mexico and the Internationalist Group in the United States call, as an elementary act of international workers solidarity, to let the migrants in, for full citizenship rights for all immigrants (both in Mexico and the U.S.), and for workers mobilization to protect the migrants against racist attack and official repression. Mexico: For Workers Action to Defend Immigrants! (24 November 2018)

Let Them In! Asylum for Refugees! Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!
For Workers Mobilization to Defend Migrants Against Racist Attacks!
With the Caravan of International Workers
By Ulises Méndez
Honduras is battered by sky-high levels of poverty, disappearances and murders by the police, and one of the highest homicide rates in the world. It’s the aftermath of the coup d’état of 2009, carried out with Washington’s blessing. Today its fruits are being harvested, causing fear, and sowing rage. Accompanying the thousands of young people and whole families in the Central American caravan as it passed through southern Mexico, we spoke with the marchers, offering internationalist solidarity. They spoke of the nightmare they were fleeing, of their dreams of a better life, about how the caravan formed, and much more. The caravan, which started out as one among many, ended up as an exodus of young Hondurans which all the bourgeois forces are seeking to use for their own purposes: Trump, in order to whip up his electorate; the outgoing Mexican president Peña Nieto and the incoming López Obrador seeking to confine the immigrants in Mexico; and the puppet president of Honduras, in order to attack the opposition. The Grupo Internacionalista calls for full citizenship rights for all immigrants and for workers defense against racist attacks, egged on by xenophobic commentaries on social media. What’s needed is to turn the fear into wrath that spurs on the struggle for socialist revolution that transcends all the borders of capital. With the Caravan of International Workers (November 2018)

Chicago’s First-Ever Charter School Strike
Could Rekindle Teacher Revolt Nationwide
By Class Struggle Education Workers/UFT
On Tuesday, December 4, some 500 teachers of the Acero charter network in Chicago walked out. This is the first strike by charter school teachers in the U.S. While nationwide barely one in ten charters are unionized, if that, in Chicago one quarter of these publicly funded but privately managed schools are unionized. In the wake of the explosive teachers strikes from West Virginia to Arizona last spring, this walkout by the Chicago Teachers Union could potentially set off a movement to organize charters nationwide. It is vital that the striking Acero charter teachers receive the support of class-conscious union supporters everywhere. But remember the lessons of the 2012 CTU strike, when militant pickets shook the city, but Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel hard-lined it and the union’s “progressive” leadership rammed a giveback contract down the throats of the striking educators. Chicago’s First-Ever Charter School Strike Could Rekindle Teacher Revolt Nationwide (5 December 2018)

The Tragic Death of Byron Jacobs, Hero of the EGT Longshore Struggle
By Jack Heyman
Byron Jacobs, a fifth-generation longshoreman, was killed on the job in the Columbia River port of Longview, Washington this summer. At the age of 34, Byron was a courageous young union leader and former secretary-treasurer of Local 21 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). He will be remembered for the exemplary leading role he played in the struggle in 2011-12 against union-busting at the Export Grain Terminal (EGT) facility being built in Longview. That battle reverberated across the country as longshore workers, men and women, fought tooth and nail with mass actions in a class war like those in the 1930s that built the union movement. This is the story of that monumental struggle that faced a hard-nosed employers’ cartel, the bosses’ state and a top union leadership that when the going got tough lined up against the militant union ranks, negotiating a concessionary contract when a decisive victory was possible. The entire ILWU paid the price for that. Byron’s example must be an inspiration to fighters for the cause of the working class everywhere. The Tragic Death of Byron Jacobs, Hero of the EGT Longshore Struggle (28 November 2018)

When the Lumbee Indians Ran Off the KKK (28 November 2018)

The Electoralist Campaigns of the Brazilian Left
In this panorama full of dangers for working people and the oppressed, what has been the response of groups that place themselves to the left of the PT? We can simply dismiss the PSTU (United Socialist Workers Party), which is once again a plaything in the hands of the right, applauding the arbitrary jailing of ex-president Lula, a move intended to prevent him from running for president in these elections. The PCO (Workers Cause Party), on the other hand, calls to “Go with Lula Until the End,” even after he passed the PT candidacy on to Fernando Haddad. The PSOL (Party of Socialism and Freedom) has from its birth functioned as a satellite of the PT. In the current election campaign, it is part of a bloc with the PT and other reformist and capitalist parties in a new popular front that subordinates the workers movement and the left to the bourgeoisie. The MRT (Revolutionary Movement of Workers) criticizes the PSOL for participating in “a front like that,” but is running its own candidates on the PSOL slate, and called to vote for its presidential candidate, Boulos. Genuine Trotskyists refuse to call for votes to any party in a class-collaborationist front. The Electoralist Campaigns of the Brazilian Left (5 October 2018)

“American Apartheid” by Design
A Review of Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
By Charles Brover, Class Struggle Education Workers
After more than a decade of hard struggle and the passage of laws in the mid-1960s against official Jim Crow segregation, the civil rights movement suddenly stopped. What was termed de facto segregation was deemed off-limits, or at least had to be left for another day. Rothstein’s book conclusively proves that rigid residential segregation and discrimination against African American, Latino and Asian minorities was always de jure, officially sanctioned. This has had a devastating effect on everything from school integration to murderous police repression. But while laying out key elements of the structural foundation of black oppression in the U.S., The Color of Law fails to go to their root in the system of racist American capitalism. In the United States in 2016 there were 2.3 million evictions: 6,300 a day, four every minute. And with over 3.5 million homeless people in the country, there are 19 million unoccupied dwellings. This powerful essay from Class Struggle Education Workers demonstrates that it will take nothing short of a socialist revolution to solve the housing question. “American Apartheid” by Design (21 November 2018)

While “Democratic Socialist” Ocasio-Cortez Chimes In
Bipartisan War Criminals Celebrate War Hawk John McCain
U.S. imperialism lost one of its most vocal and active warmongers on August 25 – Arizona Republican senator John McCain. Universally praised by ruling-class politicians as a “war hero” and “maverick,” McCain’s funeral at the National Cathedral was attended by some of the most infamous mass murderers of this and the last century, from Henry Kissinger to former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Far from being a “war hero,” a “man of honor” or paragon of “human decency,” Senator John McCain was a war criminal who bombed civilians. He was shot down over North Vietnam on a bombing run against a civilian factory. But McCain’s most valuable service to U.S. imperialism was as an inveterate war hawk in Congress. From Afghanistan to Iraq to Ukraine, Libya and Syria, he beat the drums for murderous imperialist intervention. What’s striking about McCain’s war crimes and endless warmongering is that in virtually all cases, he was joined or supported by Democratic politicians. And, notably, among those praising McCain was Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) superstar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Her eulogy was consciously paying the price of admission to the bipartisan imperialist club of the U.S. Congress. Bipartisan War Criminals Celebrate War Hawk John McCain (September 2018)

As The Boss, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Blames Black Community for Violence
Chicago: Democrat-Led Cops Continue Racist Killing Spree
For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution
On July 14, Chicago police gunned down yet another black person, Harith Augustus, a barber. “Snoop” Augustus, known as a peaceful man, was stopped on the pretext of exhibiting the “characteristics of an armed person,” and was shot dead even though he had a valid gun license. For the police in this rigidly segregated city, and throughout this country founded on the bedrock of slavery, it is always open season on black people. And on Latinos, immigrants, Native Americans … the list goes on. Moreover, in Chicago and almost every other big city, Democrats are the bosses of the racist killer cops. This is all coming to a head in the upcoming trial of killer cop Jason Van Dyke for the murder of Laquan McDonald in October 2014. And Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel, running for a third term, is stoking racist reaction by blaming lax “morals” in the black community for the violence engendered by rampant poverty, unemployment and brutal police occupation. Yet some of the same themes are echoed in protests, where instead of denouncing racist police repression the focus is on opposition to “gun violence” in general. Talk of “reforming” the police or controlling guns only serves to divert protest away from a revolutionary perspective and to strengthen the repressive agencies of the capitalist state, while leading protesters into the dead-end of bourgeois pressure politics. The stark fact is that there is no solution to war, poverty and racist repression under capitalism. Chicago: Democrat-Led Cops Continue Racist Killing Spree (August 2018)

Drivers of Yellow and Green Cabs, Black Cars, Uber, Lyft and Others:
Taxi Workers Unite Against the Wall Street Attack!
Demand $25 Per Hour Minimum Pay
Only an Alliance of all Taxi Drivers of all Branches in a Single Union Can Give a Class Leadership to Our Struggle
No Confidence in Bosses’ Politicians
On August 8, the New York City Council voted overwhelmingly to approve two measures regulating “app-based” companies such as Uber and Lyft that have flooded NYC in the last three years. This has led to a drastic fall in income for drivers of traditional taxis (yellow cabs) and livery/black cars, as well for Uber/Lyft drivers. These measures have been hailed as the first action in the U.S. to crack down on the largely unregulated Wall Street-backed companies that seek to monopolize the taxi industry. However, with 100,000+ app-based vehicles already clogging the streets, these measures won’t substantially raise drivers’ incomes. On the eve of the City Council vote, Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas/Class Struggle International Workers leafletted rallies called by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance advocating a guaranteed $25 an hour minimum pay for all taxi drivers, in order to cut across divisions being exploited by the taxi bosses to set one group of drivers against another. At the same time, we emphasized that any real fight against the taxi monopolists requires sharp class struggle against the parties of capital who back them. Taxi Workers Unite Against the Wall Street Attack! Demand $25 Per Hour Minimum Pay (August 2018)

DSA: Fronting for the Democrats
An Internationalist Group Pamphlet

(click on image to order)

A 70-page pamphlet analyzing the organizational and political history of the Democratic (Party) Socialists of America. Includes articles on:

The ABCs of the DSA (August 2017)

Imperialist Social Democracy
vs. Black Liberation (December 2017)

The Real Heritage of Michael Harrington's DSA

“Democratic Socialism” in the Service of U.S. Imperialism (February 2018)

DSA Debacle Over Cop “Union” Organizer (September 2017)

DSA Dodges Debate: “Socialism: What It Is (and Isn’t)” (January 2018)

Bernie Sanders and the Pressure Politics of the Opportunist Left (June 2015)

No, Bernie Sanders Is Not a Socialist (March 2016)

Yesterday’s “Obama Socialists,” Today’s Bernie Boosters (December 2015)

James P. Cannon on “Third Parties

Bourgeois Populism and Social-Democratic Reformism: A Dead End
Italy: Anti-Immigrant Election Hysteria
The campaign for the March 4 Italian elections has been dominated by vile xenophobic anti-immigrant chauvinism. All the competing bourgeois parties and coalitions attack the bogeyman of “illegal immigration.” The racist Lega (ex-Nord) rails about the “invasion of aliens, drug pushers, delinquents and illegals,” raising slogans such as “Italians first! Now or never! Stop the invasion!” With the populist Cinque Stelle (Five Star) movement running first in the opinion polls, its historic leader, Beppe Grillo, recently called for immediately deporting all “illegals.” The strategy of the Democratic Party government has been to put itself at the head of the anti-immigrant hysteria by aggressively extending the sway of Italian imperialism in the Mediterranean, Libya and to the south. This imperialist drive to the south is accompanied by a campaign of all-sided racist repression against immigrants and refugee seekers in Italy. What the domesticated left is counterposing to the three main bourgeois coalitions of Forza Italia/Lega, Cinque Stelle and the PD with its various appendages of homeless bourgeois politicians, is a mixture of bourgeois populism and social-democratic reformism. in the present climate of anti-immigrant hysteria and fascist attacks, what is needed are mass mobilizations bringing out the power of the working class to stop the fascists. Above all, we must forge a genuinely Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard. Italy: Anti-Immigrant Election Hysteria (24 February 2018)

(italiano) Elezioni del 4 Marzo: Isteria anti-immigrati (24 febbraio 2018)

Boston: Let Siham Byah Come Home! No Deportations!
By Class Struggle Education League
On January 27, hundreds of defenders of immigrant rights from many leftist organizations, labor unions, churches and sanctuary networks rallied in Boston to protest the deportation of Siham Byah. A prominent Occupy Boston activist and single mother, Byah was grabbed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) police last November 7, torn from her son, beaten in a local jail, driven to Virginia and then deported to Morocco. The Class Struggle Education League, based in Lowell, Mass. and New Hampshire participated in the protest, emphasizing the importance of mobilizing the power of workers action to stop the I.C.E. deportation machine. It also noted the parallel to the struggle against slave-catchers under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, a battle which came to a head in Boston and set the stage for the U.S. Civil War. The CSEL is undertaking joint work with the Internationalist Group. Boston: Let Siham Byah Come Home! No Deportations! (4 February 2018)

Revolution

Publication of the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth and of students from the Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York (click on masthead to go to Revolution index)

Revolution No. 14
(January 2018)
click above or on image
for full list of articles

Beware Trump/Democrat Deal
Defend DACA and All Immigrants!
By CUNY Internationalist Clubs and the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth
On September 5, Donald Trump rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Many of the estimated 800,000 young undocumented immigrants could face deportation as early as March 2018. The CUNY Internationalist Clubs joined protests, raising the call to defend DACA and ALL immigrants, and for mass worker/immigrant action to defeat the racist onslaught. In the Revolution leaflet printed here, we had warned that Trump would try to make precisely such a deal with the Democrats, using the immigrant youth registered under the program as bargaining chips. Sure enough, a few days later, Democratic senators Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi announced that they had made a “deal” with Trump, in which DACA recipients could stay in exchange for Democratic support for increased “border security” and immigration enforcement. Some immigrant activists saw right through the “deal,” and threw it back in Pelosi’s face at an event September 18 promoting the DREAM Act, chanting “we are not a bargaining chip.”As revolutionary Marxists, we warn that the Democrats as well as Republicans are enemies of immigrants, and deporter-in-chief Obama paved the way for Trump. We oppose any deal with Trump to “save” aspects of DACA at the expense of the millions of supposedly “less talented and deserving” immigrants. We demand: full citizenship for all immigrants. Defend DACA and All Immigrants! (7 September 2017, updated 27 December 2017)

Revolutionary Internationalist Youth Founded
This past August, the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth was founded as the youth section of the Internationalist Group, U.S. section of the League for the Fourth International. One hundred years after the 1917 October Revolution, the RIY aims to be a training ground for young revolutionaries, as part of the common movement of the IG/LFI, to carry through to victory the genuine communist program of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky. The formation of the RIY has involved extensive study of the history of Marxist youth groups going back to the Communist Youth International, founded in 1919 on the tradition of Karl Liebknecht and the Leninist principle of combining study with action. It is has been forged through sharp political struggles against the class-collaborationist politics of Maoism and the various brands of social democracy and for the program of revolutionary Trotskyism. We publish here the Founding Declaration of the RIY. Revolutionary Internationalist Youth Founded (August 2017)

For Labor/Black Mobilization Against Racist Cop Terror
Trump’s Racist Vendetta Against Black Athletes
Donald Trump has been on a racist tear this season, engaged in an furious vendetta against protesting black athletes of the National Football League. It started in 2016 when Colin Kaepernick, then quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, refused to stand for the “Star Spangled Banner” in protest against the ongoing racist police murders of black and Latino people. Kaepernick has been blacklisted by the NFL, but the “Kaepernick effect” hasn’t gone away. The protests of 2017 became more widespread in response to Trump’s blatant racism. Last year there were at least 1,188 people killed by cops. Part of the reason for the prominence of protests by black players has been the dearth of mass protests like those in 2014 and the beginning of 2015. Many of the main leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement have channeled support into the Democratic Party and diverted the protests into electoral politics. There should be tens of thousands in the streets mobilized against racist police murder. But to actually have an effect requires much more, above all breaking the political stranglehold of the partner parties of capital. Trump’s Racist Vendetta Against Black Athletes (January 2018)

NFL: Players Are Expendable, Profits Are Not (January 2018)

DSA Dodges Debate
“Socialism: What It Is (and Isn’t)”
Since the election of Donald Trump, the term “socialism” has been a popular topic of discussion among those disillusioned with the status quo. Although the word has gained currency, still fixed in the minds of many are the lies about socialism propagated by the bourgeois class. These lies have also been used by pseudo-socialist groups that want to reform an unreformable system, and by capitalist politicians like Bernie Sanders to funnel disillusioned youth back into the Democratic Party. On September 7, the Hunter College Internationalist Club issued a debate challenge to the Hunter College Young Democratic Socialists of America on the topic “Socialism: What It Is (and Isn’t).” Six weeks later the YDSA responded that they had “no intention of continuing to engage” with us. The Internationalist Club went ahead with the event anyway, holding a forum/“open chair debate” on October 19, leaving a chair on the platform open in case they changed their minds. We took the opportunity to explain our revolutionary communist perspective on socialism and how it differs from the junior social democrats. “Socialism: What It Is (and Isn’t)” (January 2018)

U.S. Imperialism and British Colonialism in the Indian Ocean
The Chagos Archipelago, also known as the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), was excised from Mauritius (then a British colony) in 1965. Its largest island, Diego Garcia, has been home to a U.S. military base since 1971. The base on Diego Garcia is of great geopolitical importance for the British and U.S. imperialists, serving as a staging ground for imperialist attacks in the Middle East, a projection of imperialist power in Africa and South Asia, and a “black site” for their program of “extraordinary rendition,” moving “terror suspects” from country to country for detention and torture. In order to secure this prime location as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier,” the entire population of the archipelago was coerced into leaving the islands or forcibly removed between 1965 and 1971. This is the story of how this colonialist/imperialist crime took place. U.S. Imperialism and British Colonialism in the Indian Ocean (January 2018)

Hurricanes, Colonial Government, Wall Street and Washington
University of Puerto Rico Students, Faculty and Workers Under Siege
For All-Out Worker/Student/Teacher Action to Defeat the Assault on the UPR!
Following hurricanes Irma and Maria this past September, the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) was left in tatters. Meanwhile, several thousand UPR students have abandoned the island altogether. This mass migration of youth is a direct result of Puerto Rico’s economic crisis, exacerbated by the extortionate demands of Wall Street hedge funds and Washington bureaucrats. Today the bankers and U.S. imperialist government completely control the island’s finances through the Junta de Control Fiscal (Financial Control Board) put in place by Congress and then-president Barack Obama. And the University of Puerto Rico is tops on la junta’s hit list. What that means for the UPR is massive budget cuts. Upon hearing of plans for a budget-ax murder of their school, UPR students took swift action. After initial protests, beginning on April 5, students occupied the university for 72 days, blockading the gates. Today, with the mass of the population in desperate straits deprived of the basic necessities of modern life, the immediate struggle is for survival. But if that fight is waged with a political perspective taking aim at the ruling class that has condemned them to misery, this calamity can be a starting point for militant class struggle. The demand for free, quality public education for all, along with other democratic demands (including for the independence of Puerto Rico) will only be assured when those who produce the wealth take power and extend socialist revolution internationally. University of Puerto Rico Students, Faculty and Workers Under Siege (December 2017)

I Am Not Your Negro
James Baldwin in Racist America
I Am Not Your Negro is a documentary film based on two works by the great black gay novelist, playwright and essayist James Baldwin (1924-1987). It is directed by Raoul Peck, the Haitian-born film maker who also directed Lumumba, about the assassination of the Congolese independence leader, and The Young Marx. The film is important for young revolutionaries to see. It powerfully combines dramatic historical footage and Baldwin’s stirring, courageous denunciation of the centrality of racism to U.S. society. Thus, while the movie doesn’t put forward a revolutionary program – nor does it claim to – it vividly dramatizes why the “color-blind” liberalism and tepid reform schemes for a “juster” capitalism under a refurbished Democratic Party put forward by the likes of Bernie Sanders cannot overcome racism. The material reality of black oppression continually generates the racist ideology that America’s rulers use to divide the working people. As opposed to the lilberal integrationism of Martin Luther King, or the dead-end of black nationalism, we fight for revolutionary integrationism, to pull up capitalism’s system of racial oppression by its roots. That requires learning the lessons of history, and this honest film can be a powerful aid in learning those lessons. I Am Not Your Negro, James Baldwin in Racist America (January 2018)

The Bolshevik Revolution, Leon Trotsky and the New York Public Library
Here it was: the 100-year anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and the New York Public Library had organized an exhibition. So when the Library announced a symposium on the Russian Revolution with some academic “experts,” we in the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth decided to attend. All five of the speakers were decidedly against the October Revolution (big surprise). Lenin and Trotsky were demonized, misquoted and slandered. The gains of the October Revolution were not mentioned at all. They even retailed an apocryphal story about Lenin calling to compromise with capitalists to get American financing. For all their made-up stories, it was curious that nobody mentioned a real story about Leon Trotsky and the New York Public Library. The night that Trotsky got off the boat in January 1917, Nikolai Bukharin dragged him and Natalia Sedova up to the 42nd Street library where the lights were blazing and any worker could come and read until almost midnight. No longer. Lenin also admired the NYPL. But in this epoch of decaying capitalism, public services are cut to the bone. The Bolshevik Revolution, Leon Trotsky and the New York Public Library (January 2018)