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"All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet 'ripened' for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception. The objective prerequisites for proletarian revolution have not only 'ripened,' they have begun to get somewhat rotten.... The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership." -Leon Trotsky, The Transitional Program
W elcome! The Internationalist Group, section of the League for the Fourth International, fights for international socialist revolution, the conquest of power by the working class, led by its Leninist party, championing the cause of all the oppressed. At a time when the capitalist rulers trumpet the supposed “death of communism,” we say that communism lives in the struggles of the working class and the program of its vanguard. Following the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Union, what has emerged is not a New World Order dominated by a single “superpower,” but a mounting disorder of imperialist rivalries and nationalist bloodletting. As decaying capitalism rips up social programs and workers' gains worldwide, it unleashes all-sided social reaction, including racist terror, attacks on immigrants and a rollback of women's rights. At the same time, there have been repeated outbreaks of sharp class struggle, from Korea to France to South America.
What is dead is not communism, but Stalinism. Stalin's anti-Marxist dogma of “socialism in one country” was the ideology of a conservative nationalist bureaucracy that grew out of the isolation of the Soviet workers state. Stalinism betrayed the October Revolution, undermining its historic achievements and ultimately preparing the way for capitalist counterrevolution under the relentless pressure of imperialism. We stand on the fight of the Russian and International Left Opposition leading to the founding of the Fourth International in 1938. Trotsky's theory and program of permanent revolution summed up the experience of the three Russian revolutions and constitutes the program for new Octobers in the countries of belated capitalist development.
The Internationalist Group/Grupo Internacionalista was founded by longtime leading cadres of the Spartacist League/U.S. and the Grupo Espartaquista de México, sections of the International Communist League, who were expelled in mid-1996. Our July 1996 bulletin on the ICL expulsions, From a Drift Toward Abstentionism to Desertion from the Class Struggle (July 1996), notes that the present period is “marked by a bourgeois offensive against the working class, but is also a period of turbulent proletarian struggles that can pass from the defensive to the offensive. The key, as always, is the fight to forge a revolutionary leadership.” The founding statement of the Internationalist Group appears on this site.
Following the ICL's break of fraternal relations with the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil, and fleeing from a key class battle led by supporters of the LQB to oust the police from the unions, the IG and the LQB signed a “Joint Statement of Commitment to Reforge the Fourth International.” In early 1998, the ICL expelled the Permanent Revolution Faction from the Ligue Trotskyste de France and at the same time declared the key statement of the founding program of the Fourth International had been superseded.
Joining together our modest forces, in April 1998 the IG, LQB and PRF formed the League for the Fourth International, whose founding statement, Reforge the Fourth International (6 April 1998), appears here.
Not Another Popular-Front “Peace Movement,”
Mobilize the Working Class to Fight for Power!
On June 28-29, an “Open National Antiwar Conference” was held in Cleveland, called by a newly minted National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation. Over objections from the conference organizers, centrally Socialist Action, the assembly voted to change the name to include reference to the war on Afghanistan, and to emphasize the connection with U.S. backing for the Zionist occupation of Palestine. (The sponsors of the confab were so right-wing that they feared losing “unity” with Democratic Party supporters of Israel and the Afghanistan war!) What did not change at all was the popular-front character of the new outfit, tying it to the bourgeois parties despite the fig leaf of electoral “independence.” Making this utterly clear, it was decided not to call a national antiwar mobilization prior to the November elections explicitly in order to court those forces who wish to aid the Democrats (and therefore want to avoid making problems for the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama). Here is the leaflet issued by the Internationalist Group at the conference. What Will It Take to Defeat the War? (28 June 2008)
The Internationalist No. 27
(May-June 2008)
click above or on image
for full list of articles
Historic ILWU Dock Workers’ Action Points the Way
May Day Strike Against the War Shuts Down All U.S. West Coast Ports
On May 1, every port on the West Coast of the United States was shut down to demand an end to the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The historic May Day walkout by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) is the first time ever that an American union has struck against a U.S. war. The union ranks defied the rulings of an arbitrator, who twice ordered them to go to work. They overcame the capitulations of the ILWU leadership, which didn’t want the work stoppage in the first place, tried to water it down and cowered before the threats of legal action while waving the flag. The employers’ Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) declared the May 1 port shutdown an “illegal strike.” But after all the huffing and puffing from the bosses’ mouthpieces, the dock workers pointed the way to defeating the imperialist war by mobilizing working-class power. In the end, it was more than a work stoppage. The dock workers’ May Day strike against the war was a first step, a show of what it will take to bring down the warmongers in Washington. Their “symbolic” action was felt all the way to Iraq, where dock workers in two ports stopped work in solidarity with the ILWU. But it was only a beginning. What is needed is not only industrial action but a political offensive against the Democrats and Republicans, the partner parties of American imperialism, to build a class-struggle workers party. May Day Strike Against the War Shuts Down All U.S. West Coast Ports (3 May 2008)
Mumia Abu-Jamal, ILWU Strikes for Peace (1 May 2008)
Iraqi Dock Workers, Unions Salute ILWU May Day Port Shutdown (5 May 2008)
NYC May Day in Solidarity with the ILWU (7 May 2008)
“Workers Vanguard” Brings Up the Rear
The Opportunist Left and the Port Strike Against the War: The Sound of One Hand Clapping
On May Day, ports up and down the Pacific Coast were shut down by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) to demand an end to “this bloody war and occupation for imperial domination.” It is the first time ever that an American union has taken industrial action against a U.S. war. News of the ILWU’s strike against the war has reverberated among labor militants internationally. While the maritime employers threatened legal action and trade papers denounce reds under the beds, most of the left was notably silent. The reason: they are part and parcel of the popular-front antiwar movement, whose purpose is to pressure the Democrats, and militant labor action gets in the way. The Spartacist League for many years called for workers strikes against the war, as well as “hot-cargoing” war materiel. However, as part of its turn from revolutionary Trotskyism to centrist opportunism, the SL abandoned these key programmatic positions, along with its prior calls to defeat U.S. imperialism. Meanwhile, it smears the Internationalist Group for upholding the Trotskyist program of workers action against imperialist war. The Opportunist Left and the Port Strike Against the War: The Sound of One Hand Clapping (15 May 2008)
For Revolutionary Defense of Cuba!
Free the Cuban Five!
On June 5, a federal appeals court upheld the convictions of the “Cuban Five”: René González, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labaniño, Fernando González and Antonio Guerrero. The Five heroically risked their lives to defend the Cuban Revolution against terror attacks launched from the U.S. Prosecutors presented evidence that the five had infiltrated counterrevolutionary terror groups in Miami. The government outrageously charged the defendants with “conspiracy” to commit espionage and murder, since there is not a shred of evidence that they commited any crime whatsoever. Several thousand Cubans have been killed in nearly five decades of invasions, bombings and assassinations by the U.S. and its gusano mercenaries. The authors of the notorious 1976 bombing of a Cubana Airlines passenger plane that killed all 73 aboard, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, walk around Miami freely while the Cuban Five have been locked up for nearly a decade. We demand the Cuban Five be freed now, and return the U.S. naval base and torture center at Guantánamo to Cuba! Free the Cuban Five! (14 June 2008)
Strike Challenged Slave Labor Law,
Despite Setbacks They’re Still Ready to Fight
Puerto Rican Teachers: Unbought and Unbowed
The two-week strike by Puerto Rican teachers was a historic event, in open defiance of Law 45, a ruthless piece of anti-union legislation that outlaws strikes, work stoppages or even voting for such labor action. From the beginning of the walkout on February 20 to the decision to return to the classrooms, approved by a giant assembly on March 5, the action by the Federation of Puerto Rican Teachers (FMPR) threw the island into turmoil. In daring to break the prohibition decreed by the colonial capitalist rulers, the FMPR blazed the way for all Puerto Rican workers. The strikers confronted an unholy alliance of enemies which extended from a governor under investigation for corruption and his arrogant secretary of education to the “dues-sucking” union leaders of the SEIU, who shamefully took the side of the employer. The return to work was not a debilitating defeat, yet the outcome of the strike was a setback. Many teachers were not prepared for a lengthy strike, and while defying Law 45, overall the FMPR continued to play by the bosses’ rules. Above all, the teachers had to face state repression alone, while FMPR leaders’ comrades in the Movimiento Socialista de Trabajadores failed to bring out other key unions. The fact that the strike could not prevail confirms Trotsky’s declaration that reformist unionism is no longer possible, that unions can either be instruments of imperialist capitalism, or instruments of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. Puerto Rican Teachers: Unbought and Unbowed (25 June 2008)
Solidarity in New York with Puerto Rican Strikers (25 June 2008)
Hard Class Battle Coming
Puerto Rico: All Out to Defend the Teachers’ Struggle!
We are on the threshold of a major class battle in Puerto Rico. Every day new preparations are announced for the coming strike of the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation (FMPR). With 42,000 members, a majority of them women, the FMPR represents almost all of Puerto Rico’s teachers and is by far the largest union on the island. The Shock Force of the Puerto Rican Police and National Guard are being readied to go after the strikers. The struggle of the Puerto Rican teachers affects everybody. The working class as a whole, students and parents, teachers and defenders of workers’ rights around the world must come out in defense of the FMPR! If there are mass arrests, the response must be massive blockades and spreading the struggle to the point of shutting the island down. In order to win this strike, it is necessary to prepare for a struggle not only of the teachers but within the whole workers movement against the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy that sabotages the workers’ struggle. Above all, it is necessary to fight against illusions in and ties with bourgeois parties and politicians. It’s high time to begin building a revolutionary internationalist workers party. Puerto Rico: All Out to Defend the Teachers’ Struggle! (14 February 2008)
En español: Puerto Rico: ¡Todos a la calle en defensa del magisterio en lucha
Report from San Juan
Tens of Thousands March in Puerto Rico on Eve of Teachers Strike
“La huelga va, la huelga va” (the strike is on the way), sang thousands of teachers as they marched through the streets of Puerto Rico’s capital today in preparation for the massive strike that is shaping up as a major class battle. Victory to the Puerto Rican teachers! Tens of Thousands March in Puerto Rico on Eve of Teachers Strike (18 February 2008)
En español: Decenas de miles marchan en Puerto Rico en vísperas de la huelga magisterial
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now!
Click here for selected articles from The Internationalist and other
statements from the League for the Fourth International.
Federal Court Reaffirms Frame-Up Conviction, Orders Life Behind Bars or Racist Legal Lynching
Ruling Against Mumia Shows:
No Justice in the Capitalist Courts
Mobilize the Working Class to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!
Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!
On March 27, the U.S. appeals court in Philadelphia reaffirmed the frame-up conviction of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther Party spokesman and world-renowned radical journalist who has been locked up on Pennsylvania’s death row for more than a quarter century. After previously rejecting Mumia’s request to present evidence of his innocence, as well as a host of issues showing that he was railroaded by a racist court, the Court turned down Mumia’s request for a new trial. It upheld the 2001 ruling by a federal district judge that ordered a new hearing on the sentence, but limited the “choice” to the living hell of life imprisonment without parole ... or execution. Mumia is innocent. He was declared guilty and sentenced to die because of his revolutionary politics and because for years he had been a thorn in the side of the racist rulers of the misnamed “city of brotherly love.” Around the world, millions have come out in defense of Jamal. This latest ruling, like all those that preceded it, shows that the exploited and oppressed must have no faith in the racist injustice system. We call on the workers movement to mobilize its power to free Mumia now! Mobilize the Working Class to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! (28 March 2008)
Police Takeover Fails – Miners Resist
Mexico: Cananea Must Not Stand Alone! For a Nationwide Miners Strike!
Down with the PRI, PAN and PRD, Parties of the Bourgeoisie!
Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party!
Once again the Mexican government of Felipe Calderón has run aground on the resistance of the battle-hardened miners of Cananea. On January 11, as the federal Labor Board declared their six-month-old strike “non-existent” and ordered miners back to work, an army of 1,000 state and federal police invaded the mining town in the northern state of Sonora. The miners did not surrender and instead put up a stubborn resistance. As a result, a federal court issued an injunction blocking the government back-to-work order. Despite a government vendetta against it, the leadership of the corporatist mineworkers organization has followed the dictates of Mexico’s corporatist labor legislation, copied from Mussolini’s fascist Italy. The Grupo Internacionalista has called for a nationwide miners strike in solidarity with the strikers, and for a national strike against the anti-worker policies of the Calderón government. In Oaxaca, Atenco, Lázaro Cárdenas in 2006, and now again in Cananea, the workers have put up a tenacious resistance against the deadly ruling-class attack. However, they are stuck in a cycle of endless resistance when there should be a struggle for power. For that, a revolutionary workers party is needed. Mexico: Cananea Must Not Stand Alone! (1 February 2008)
See also: New York Picket Protests Repression Against Mexican Miners (12 January 2008)
En español: Piquete en Nueva York repudia represión contra mineros mexicanos (12 de enero de 2008)
Strike in Cananea, Sombrerete, and Taxco in Fifth Month
Mexican Miners Strike for Safety, Against Anti-Worker Attacks
Copper miners in Cananea, in the northern Mexican state of Sonora, have been on strike since the end of July over the deadly dangerous working conditions and anti-worker attacks by the management and government. Cananea, the largest open-pit copper mine in the world, has been owned by the billionaire Germán Larrea and his Grupo México since it was privatized in 1990. The criminally negligent safety conditions at the mine and smelter have been documented by an international commission of medical and industrial safety experts. The miners are facing the full force of Mexico's corporatist system of state control of labor, including the national miners’ “union” which in the past has repeatedly sided with the government and the bosses against its own members. The “independent” unions which politically support the opposition PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) have notably failed to back the striking miners. Class-conscious workers in Mexico must defend the striking miners, while fighting to break the corporatist stranglehold, build workers unions free of all ties to the bourgeois state and capitalist parties, and forge a revolutionary workers party. Mexican Miners Strike for Safety (15 December 2007)
From the Great Miners’ Strike of 1906 to Today: Revolutionary Leadership Is Key
Cananea: A Century of Internationalist Class Struggle
June 1, 2006 marked the centenary of the copper mine strike at Cananea. The conglomerate that now operates the mines, Grupo México, tried to prevent the commemoration; the militant miners of of Latin America’s largest copper mine responded by going on strike. Now they have gone on strike again, as they have almost every year since 1999. This history of militancy goes back to the 1906 Cananea miners strike, one of the key events leading up to the Mexican Revolution of 1910-17. Much has been written about the 1906 strike from the standpoint of Mexican nationalism. But contrary to nationalist myths, that proletarian revolt was a joint effort by anarcho-syndicalist and revolutionary minded Mexican and American workers, who carried red flags at the head of their marches. In the recent strikes as well as one hundred years ago, the key factor is the need for a class-struggle leadership, a revolutionary internationalist party. Cananea: A Century of Internationalist Class Struggle (December 2007)
“Civic” Revolution or Workers Revolution?
Ecuador Needs a Workers, Peasants
and Indian Government
Forge a Leninist-Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers Party!
For an Andean Federation of Workers Republics!
For the last two decades, Ecuador has found itself in an almost constant state of upheaval and revolt. Yet practically nothing has changed in the direction the country is headed: it is still subject to the dictates of Yankee imperialism, the dollarization of the economy, the U.S. Southern Command’s occupation of the Manta Air Base... By all accounts, Ecuador needs a revolution. But the question is posed, what kind of revolution? President Rafael Correa, a bourgeois populist, calls for a “civic revolution.” However, he ferociously opposes any class actions, particularly the struggle for a workers revolution to bring down the capitalist system. He called a Constituent Assembly in order to “refound” the couintry. Yet on the very day the Assembly was inaugurated, he unleashed a brutal repression against peasants of the Amazonian parish of Dayuma for shutting down production at an oil well. The Ecuadorian working masses need a struggle for a workers, peasants and Indian government, which launches international socialist revolution. Ecuador Needs a Workers, Peasants and Indian Government (25 December 2007)
Craft Divisions Endanger Labor: Build a Single Media Union
Don’t Let Writers Stand Alone – All Media Workers Should Join the WGA on Strike!
As the strike by film and television writers nears its two-month mark, the 12,000 members of the affiliated East and West Coast Writers Guild of America have shown determination and kept up morale at picket lines and mass rallies in Los Angeles and New York. Late-night TV viewership is down, networks have to return millions of dollars to advertisers. Yet even as the WGA strike begins to bite economically, the media moguls are refusing to negotiate. The Hollywood bosses figure they can play one craft union off against another. By themselves, writers are at a great disadvantage. To win this important labor battle, it is necessary to extend the strike to include all media industry workers, particularly blue-collar workers without whom the studios would go dark. Ultimately there should be one union of all media workers. Instead of looking to millionaire Democrats like John Edwards, strikers can make a start by aggressively picketing scab talk show and “reality” TV programs. All Media Workers Should Join the WGA on Strike! (22 December 2007)
The World Socialist Web Site, a/k/a Socialist Equality Party, is trying to attract WGA writers. What the WSWS/SEP doesn’t mention is that they oppose unions, even telling auto workers to vote to keep unions out. Far from being some kind of ultra-leftists, these scab “socialists” are doing the bosses’ work.
SEP/WSWS: Scab “Socialists” (22 December 2007)
Cast a Blank Ballot in the Constitutional Referendum,
and Prepare for Class War
Venezuela: Impose Workers Control
on the Road to Socialist Revolution
Smash Counterrevolution with Workers Mobilization!
No Political Support to the Bourgeois Populist Chávez –
Build a Revolutionary Workers Party!
Why We Fight for Workers Strikes
Against the War
(and the Opportunists Don't)
Break with the Democrats – For a Class-Struggle Workers Party!
The U.S.’ colonial occupation of, Iraq and Afghanistan is at a dead end. Despite the vaunted “surge” of U.S. forces in Iraq last spring, attacks by insurgents have not diminished one bit, while the number of Iraqi civilian casualties has sharply increased. In the mid-term U.S. elections last November, the Democrats won control of both houses of Congress mainly due to the perception that they would “do something” to end the war. Yet the war goes on, with their support. The entire activity of the antiwar movement has consisted precisely of seeking to pressure the Democratic Party into opposing the war on Iraq. Forget it. This is a bi-partisan imperialist war. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International call not just for U.S. withdrawal, which would merely lead to the next war as it has repeatedly over the last century, but to drive the imperialist occupiers out of Iraq and Afghanistan and to defeat U.S. imperialism’s wars through international socialist revolution. We seek to mobilize the power of the workers movement in sharp class struggle, including workers strikes against the war and “hot cargoing” war material. Why We Fight for Workers Strikes Against the War (18 October 2007)
Port Shutdown Over Dock Worker Killed in Oakland,
Union Mobilization Over “Anti-Terror” Security Assault
Militant Protest Against Racist Cop Attack on Bay Area Longshore Workers
Dump the TWIC Card – Strike Against the War!
On October 4, upwards of 250 demonstrators rallied outside the Yolo County Courthouse in Woodland, California to protest the vicious police assault last August on two black dock workers from San Francisco who were working in the port of Sacramento. Dock workers came from all over northern California, Portland, Oregon and even Charleston, South Carolina, to protest the racist attack. Twice in the space of a month, longshore workers in California have been victimized amid ruling class hysteria over port “security threats” while actual safety conditions on the docks deteriorate. In late September, a worker in the port of Oakland was killed after being struck by a container. Outraged workers immediately shut down the entire port, one of the U.S.’ busiest. The port shutdown and October 4 rally demonstrate the potential strength of labor. Coming up is an October 20 “Labor Conference to Stop the War” sponsored by the Bay Area ILWU locals. This could help prepare the way for labor strikes against the war, as we have repeatedly called for. But to do so it will have to overcome the obstacle of the labor bureaucracy tied to the Democratic Party, which is now the main capitalist party keeping the war going. Militant Protest Against Racist Cop Attack on Bay Area Longshore Workers (12 October 2007)
The Battle for Public Education,
Stop CUNY's “War Purge,”
The UNAM Strike and Workers Revolution
Recent articles on Education:
Bloomberg/Klein School “Reform” Flunks Out
“Merit Pay,” Witchhunting and Corporatizing Public Education
Close Down the “Rubber Rooms” – Reinstate All “Excessed” Teachers! For Union Control of Hiring!
The mounting attack on New York City teachers by schools chancellor Joel Klein and billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg is only the tip of the iceberg. A full-scale assault on public education being waged by the Republican White House, the Democratic state house and top capitalists like Bill Gates. They are out to reshape the workforce to “compete in a global economy,” and for that they want to put the schools under private control, push most students out by the 10th grade and bust teachers unions. The day before national test results revealed that New York City schools failed to improve math and reading scores, Klein announced that the NYC Department of Education had set up a “Teacher Performance Unit” to drive out teachers they want to get rid of. Yet instead of fighting to defeat the drive to corporatize and privatize public education, United Federation of Teachers leader Randi Weingarten negotiated the introduction of “school-based” merit pay. “Merit” or “performance” pay, however you package it, is a threat to the very existence of the union. “Merit Pay,” Witchhunting and Corporatizing Public Education (26 November 2007)
Recent articles on Bolivia:
“Andean Capitalism” vs. Permanent Revolution
Bolivia: Evo Morales Against the Workers and Oppressed
When Evo Morales won Bolivia’s national elections in December 2005, becoming the first indigenous president in South American history, the international left almost unanimously hailed this as a victory for the oppressed. Yet as the League for the Fourth International warned, political support to Morales’ “Andean capitalism” is counterposed to the most fundamental interests of the workers, peasants and indigenous peoples. In a year and a half in office, Morales has carried out an “agrarian reform” that strengthens the landowners’ power, decreed phony “nationalizations” that leave oil and gas fields in the hands of imperialist corporations, called a “constituent assembly” in which right-wing racists hold the whip hand, and repeatedly attacked the workers movement. The experience of this bourgeois-nationalist regime confirms Leon Trotsky’s program of permanent revolution, that the working class must take power at the head of the poor peasantry and the exploited layers of the urban population, seizing the land and industries in a socialist revolution extending throughout Latin America and into the imperialist heartland. Bolivia: Evo Morales Against the Workers and Oppressed (September 2007)
From the Previous Issue
The Internationalist No. 26
(July 2007)
click above or on image
for full list of articles
Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!
For Militant Workers Action to Stop ICE Raids and Deportations!
Democrats and Republicans, Enemies of Immigrants –
Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party!
Last year’s immigrant-bashing bill, H.R. 4437 died in Congress. But now its key components are back, in immigration “reform” proposals by Republican president George Bush and the Democratic Party majority in Congress. Meanwhile, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cops of the Homeland Security Department have unleashed nationwide raids. On this May Day 2007, we call on the workers movement to come out in defense of immigrants, not just in words, but in militant labor action. Today, union bureaucrats and liberal Democrats will make pro-immigrant noises from the platforms, but their vague calls for “legalization” won’t obtain legal rights and union conditions for more than 13 million undocumented workers. They say “stop the raids and deportations.” But how? The only way to stop the wave of anti-immigrant repression is to mobilize labor’s power against the ICE Gestapo. Labor must demand full citizenship rights for all immigrants, documented or undocumented . When the migra tries to stage its raids in a union town like New York, thousands of workers should pour into the streets to block the immigrant catchers. ¡La lucha obrera no tiene fronteras – Workers’ struggle has no borders! For Militant Workers Action to Stop ICE Raids and Deportations! (1 May 2007)
Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants –
Mobilize Union Power to Block the Raids
New Haven: Break ICE Terror with Militant Class Struggle!
On Monday, June 4, the New Haven Board of Aldermen passed a local ordinance to provide undocumented immigrants a city-issued photo ID card. Barely 36 hours later, the federal government responded by carrying out a first-ever immigration raid in the Connecticut city. The ICE Gestapo barged into homes, grabbing entire families, picked people off the streets without so much as a warrant, and terrorized the entire neighborhood, home to many immigrant workers. The New Haven raids were a brutal reminder from the feds that the issue is power. After years of futile lobbying for “immigration reform” from Democrats in Congress, many liberals and reformists have turned their sights to more modest local initiatives for “sanctuary cities” and the like. “Stop the Raids!” say demonstrators’ signs. Yes, but how? It will take mass mobilization of labor power. New Haven: Break ICE Terror with Militant Class Struggle (16 June 2007)
Workers Strikes Against the War! Hot-Cargo War Materiel!
Defeat US Imperialism With Workers' Revolution!
Boston: How To End The War?
Reformist Movement Leaders Have No Answer
The Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition (STWC) recently held a meeting on “Ending the War: Peace Movement Leaders Ask, ‘Which Way Forward’?” Good question, to which they have no answer. Although the “movement” is divided between a variety of “coalitions,” they all have the same basic political makeup: one or two socialist groups at the core posing as “just us peace folks”; a minimum “democratic” program aimed at attracting support from mainstream liberals; one or another bourgeois politician dragged onto the speakers platform to gain the desired veneer of “respectability.” These popular fronts for peace chain opponents of the war to sections of the bourgeoisie, that is, the “bipartisan” imperialist war party. What they don’t have is a program to mobilize power to stop the warmongers in their tracks: the power of the working class. immigrants is the “home front” of the imperialist war on Iraq. The Internationalist Group says: The only “anti-war movement” that succeeded in stopping an imperialist war was the Russian revolution of 1917, led by the Bolshevik party of Lenin and Trotsky. Boston: How To End The War? (18 May 2007)
Hundreds Protest NYU Republicans’ Racist “Illegal Immigrant” Hunt
On February 22, College Republicans at New York University (NYU) staged a blatant racist provocation – a “game” of “catch the illegal immigrant.” This was only the latest chapter in a nationwide campaign by campus right-wingers. The grotesque stunt unleashed an outpouring of anger among NYU students and many others. More than 400 protesters turned out and kept up a steady din for three hours, chanting, picketing and drowning out the handful of racist vigilantes. The Internationalist Group carried signs calling for “Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants,” “Mobilize NYC Labor to Defend Immigrant Workers” and “Sweep Racist Vigilantes Off the Streets!” Hundreds Protest NYU Republicans’ Racist “Illegal Immigrant” Hunt (23 February 2007)
Button available from
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(Click here to order)
Button available from
Mundial Publications. $1 each
(Click here to order)
Permanent Crisis of the Popular Front
Lula Against the Workers – Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party!
A wave of disgust is spreading across Latin America. The “lost decade” of the 1980s caused by the “foreign debt bomb” was followed by another ten years of regimes which applied the prescriptions of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, deepening hunger and poverty throughout the continent. This gave rise to so-called “center-left” governments in several countries, installed after populist election campaigns denouncing “neo-liberalism.” First among them is the popular front headed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil. Yet these regimes soon turned out to be loyal servants of their imperialist masters in Washington. In Brazil, the Lula government was shaken by a series of scandals of monthly payoffs to legislators in “opposition” parties to get their votes and revelations of large-scale corruption in the Workers Party (PT). Yet far from mounting a revolutionary opposition to Lula’s bourgeois government, the left “opposition” (which overwhelmingly supported Lula, openly or in 2002) fell in behind the right-wing scandal-mongers, while calling for a slightly more left version of today’s PT. Lula Against the Workers – Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party! (May 2006)
Philippines Crackdown: Fight Arroyo with Workers’ Power!
Not Another EDSA "People's Power" Fraud, Fight for Workers Revolution! Build the Nucleus of a Philippine Trotskyist Party!
Once again the Philippine political landscape reverberated from the noise of police banging up their shields and tanks rumbling through the streets, reminiscent of the martial law years of the 1970s. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo proclaimed a state of emergency on February 24, then lifted it a week later. But the crackdown continues as the Philippines is undergoing “creeping martial law.” Most protests called for ousting Arroyo with “people power” – i.e., for mass mobilization behind the civilian/military bourgeois opposition such as brought down the dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. The League for the Fourth International warns that this is a program for defeat of the working people. The LFI calls to drive the U.S. out of Iraq and Palestine, and to sweep away the Arroyo regime with workers power.
(Pilipino) Crackdown sa Pilipinas: Labanan si Arroyo sa Pamamagitan ng Kapangyarihan ng mga Manggagawa! (23 Marso 2006)
Publication of the Internationalist Clubs and the Revolutionary Reconstruction Club at the City University of New York
Palestine: For Arab-Hebrew Workers Revolution
statements from the League for the Fourth International.
U.S. Prepares New Desert Slaughter
Defeat U.S. Imperialism! Defend Iraq!
Pentagon’s “First Strike” Strategy:
Careening Toward World War III
Imperialist war criminals are about to launch an Armageddon on the Tigris and Euphrates. The Pentagon now has a “bipartisan” green light to carry out the wanton slaughter that the White House had long since ordered. After the ritual debate and rubber-stamp approval from Congress, there will be a similar charade in the United Nations. The League for the Fourth International and its U.S. section, the Internationalist Group, call on the international working class to defend Iraq and fight to defeat the imperialist war, “at home” and abroad. As opposed to bourgeois pacifism, we communists call instead for class war against the imperialist war. And we warn that the endless “war on terror” proclaimed by the U.S. will be a prelude to a third imperialist world war. Defeat U.S. Imperialism! Defend Iraq! (17 October 2002)(français) Pour la défaite des impérialistes ! Défense de l'Irak ! (octobre 2002)(español) ¡Derrotar a los imperialistas! ¡Defender a Irak! (octubre de 2002)
(japanese)
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