| "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.
|
What
Will It Take to Defeat the War?
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) 
From the Current Issue
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) 
“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) 
|
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)
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)
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!
On December 2, Venezuelans
will vote on a
proposal to reform 69 articles of the Constitution of the Bolivarian
Republic, adopted in 1999. Both supporters of President Hugo
Chávez (who are voting “yes”) and rightist reactionaries (who
are voting “no”) portray the measures as opening the door to socialism
in Venezuela. This is in no way the case.
The various changes aim at strengthening presidential power and
instituting a series of social reforms that do not go beyond the limits
of capitalism. Although several of the reforms are positive, the
overall effect would be to grant unlimited powers to the president and
the bourgeois state apparatus, particularly the army, which will
inevitably be used against the workers, as has already occurred.
Class-conscious Venezuelan workers should abstain on the constitutional
referendum, while joining in mobilizations to block any move by
rightist reaction backed by U.S. imperialism to stage a coup during or
after the voting. In particular in order to block capitalist attempts
to create artificial food shortages, workers should seize control of
the entire agricultural/food manufacturing and marketing chain. Venezuela:
Impose Workers Control (1
December 2007)
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)
|
|
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)
|
|
Articles
on
Bolivia from The Internationalist
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)
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.
Revolution
Publication of
the
Internationalist Clubs and the Revolutionary Reconstruction Club at the
City University
of New York
|
Palestine: For Arab-Hebrew Workers
Revolution
Selected
articles
from The Internationalist
and other
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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