No. 40, Summer 2015  Table of Contents Selected articles linked Click on image to left for pdf version of complete issue.

It Will Take Workers Revolution to End It Killer Cops, Vigilantes: Racist Terror Stalks Black America For Labor / Black / Immigrant Mobilization Against Police Killings Through the summer and fall of 2014 there were explosive protests against racist murder of black men by the police, and then over the refusal by the authorities to charge the killer cops with any crime at all. Then suddenly the mass marches stopped after two New York cops were shot by an enraged man. With their rhyming reformist chants, organizers blinded demonstrators to the fact that the enemy was not just some racist cops but the capitalist system and its apparatus of racist repression. Understanding the class nature of the state, and the inherent impunity of its enforcers, is key. Attempts to build a mass reform movement are stymied by the fact that virtually every every conceivable measure, from body cameras to civilian review boards, has already been tried, yet the killing goes relentlessly on. Calls for “community control of the police” are a dangerous illusion, for the ruling class will never let the exploited and oppressed have a say over the forces that that enforce their oppression. Well over 1,000 people are killed by the police across the U.S. every year. Racist vigilantes act as auxiliaries to this murder machine. Revolutionary Marxists call to mobilize the power of labor, of black, Latino and immigrant and all working people against racist terror. But ultimately, nothing short of socialist revolution can put a stop to the racist terror that is inherent in American capitalism. Killer Cops, Vigilantes: Racist Terror Stalks Black America (30 June 2015) Police bonapartism (30 June 2015)

Horrendous Murder of Nine African Americans by White Supremacist Charleston Massacre and Cop Terror: It’s Racist American Capitalism Finish the Civil War with Workers Revolution! After the lynching of Trayvon Martin, after the cop murders of Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Akai Gurley, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray and so many others – and after the mass protests coast-to-coast unleashed by those racist murders – now comes the horrific massacre of nine African Americans in a church in Charleston, South Carolina. It doesn’t stop, and for a reason: ever since slavery, violent racist suppression, repression and oppression of black people is part of the DNA of American capitalism. That heritage and that reality is what was shown in Charleston. The authorities and official manufacturers of public opinion try as they might to portray this gruesome slaughter as the work of a lone, deranged gunman. But the fact is that this massacre was no aberration, it was an integral part of a rising line of murderous racist reaction, and a bloody history going back to the slave South. Charleston was not only the center of the slave trade, it was the site of the planned slave revolt led by Denmark Vesey, a founder of the Emanuel AME Church where the June 17 massacre took place. It is also where the first black unions were formed after the Civil War. Today, the power of labor must be brought to bear in the fight against racist terror, whether by the police or vigilantes as in Charleston. Charleston Massacre and Cop Terror: It’s Racist American Capitalism (22 June 2015)

Down with the Racist Dominican Nationality Law – For Haitian-Dominican Workers Solidarity Stop Expulsion of Haitians from the Dominican Republic In the U.S. and D.R.: Full Citizenship Rights for All! For Workers Mobilization Against Deportations and Racist Attacks Beginning this week, the government of the Dominican Republic intends to start mass expulsion of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent. Based on a racist nationality law, hundreds of thousands of Dominicans have been deprived of their citizenship and are at risk of being seized on the street, at their workplace or in their homes in desperately poor bateyes (shantytowns), and dumped across the border in Haiti. An emergency protest was held on June 15 outside the Dominican Consulate in New York City where Internationalists called for workers action against the deportations, and for full citizenship rights for all living in the Dominican Republic ... and the United States. Dominican-Haitian tensions are fueled by U.S. imperialism, which set up the system of importing Haitian workers to toil on sugar plantations with no rights. Washington also set up the Dominican border police as part of militarization of U.S. borders. The struggle for Haitian-Dominican workers unity can begin in New York City where hundreds of thousands of Dominicans and Haitians are also subject to racist immigration laws. Stop Expulsion of Haitians from the Dominican Republic (16 June 2015)

From Election Boycott to Nationwide Strike Mexico: Down With Elections Under the Military Boot! For Workers Action to Defend the Teachers of the CNTE and CETEG! Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party! The crisis in Mexican politics that erupted with the police massacre of the normalista (rural teachers college) students in Iguala, Guerrero last year has deepened on the eve of Mexico’s midterm elections. Parents of the 43 kidnapped and murdered students from the Escuela Normal of Ayotzinapa have called for an active boycott of the polls in defiance of the murderous government. Dissident teachers organized in the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers (CNTE) have joined the mobilizations to stop the electoral farce with the demand to annul the infamous education “reform” that would persecute teachers and undermine public education. In this worst crisis of bourgeois “governability” that Mexico has seen in the last half century, the Grupo Internacionalista (GI) stands with the struggle of the teachers and parents of the disappeared students against the fraudulent elections, at the same time as we warn that an electoral boycott, justified as it is, cannot put an end to the bloodbath and the assault on teachers. what’s needed is a working-class mobilization throughout the country, a nationwide strike drawing in key sectors of the Mexican proletariat, on the road to a socialist revolution to bring down the capitalist regime that has turned Mexico into a giant cemetery. Mexico: Down With Elections Under the Military Boot! (5 June 2015)

If Donkeys Could Fly Bernie Sanders and the Pressure Politics of the Opportunist Left As Barack Obama’s second presidential term limps toward the finish line, the 2016 election campaign has begun. With Republican flat-earthers sparring over who is the most reactionary of all and war-hawk Hillary Clinton dominating the Democratic field, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has thrown his hat in the ring. Sanders calls himself an independent and sometimes a “democratic socialist,” but in reality he is a liberal Democrat who votes with this capitalist party 98 percent of the time. He has repeatedly voted for U.S. imperialist wars, has voted for laws extending and legalizing U.S. domestic spying on the citizenry and rails against immigrant workers. But that hasn’t stopped various self-styled socialists, would-be radicals, former Occupy Wall Street activists and assorted other reformist left groups from jostling each other as they try to climb on the Bernie bandwagon. While the International Socialist Organization poses as more “critical” of Sanders than is Socialist Alternative, both of these social-democratic outfits are trying to sidle up to the Democratic Party. Both take as their model the “independent” capitalist candidacy of Ralph Nader (whom they both supported). Revolutionary Marxists, in contrast, fight for the political independence of the working class from the bourgeoisie, and draw the class line against support to any capitalist politician, party or coalition. Bernie Sanders and the Pressure Politics of the Opportunist Left (29 May 2015)

Cast a Critical Vote for Scottish Independence, and Fight for Socialist Revolution to Bring Down the Monarchy, NATO and the Rule of Capital For a Scottish Workers Republic in a Socialist Federation of the British Isles On September 18, voters in Scotland will go to the polls in a referendum on the question of independence from the “United Kingdom.” All three major parties in Britain’s Westminster parliament complacently figured they would win by warning of dire economic consequences. But the threats have backfired and support for secession has grown in recent weeks to the point where it could win, or come close. The bourgeois Scottish National Party is promising a rosy future in a Scandinavian-style welfare state, but the economic realities of the capitalist world market would soon undo that. Most of the opportunist left is tailing after the  SNP, while some British left groups oppose Scottish independence out of Labour loyalism. For revolutionary Marxists, this is an opportunity to accelerate the breakup of decrepit British imperialism, and to get the national question off the agenda so the class confrontation can come to the fore. While warning against illusions in the prospects of a capitalist Scotland, the League for the Fourth International calls for a critical “yes” vote for independence as part of a fight for workers revolution throughout the British Isles and Europe. For a Scottish Workers Republic in a Socialist Federation of the British Isles (15 September 2014)

For Proletarian Opposition to U.S./E.U./NATO Imperialists Cold War Drive! The Bugbear of “Russian Imperialism” In the global crisis unleashed by the battle over Ukraine, the imperialists are preparing a new Cold War. Meanwhile, quite a few social-democratic groups echo the Western media, railing against “Russian imperialism” for incorporating Crimea and accusing Moscow of fomenting unrest in eastern Ukraine. Many of these outfits have repeatedly backed all sorts of nationalists and ultra-reactionaries sponsored by Western imperialism. Not everyone on the left is repeating the imperialist refrain over Ukraine, but among those who don’t there is little clarity about the nature of the capitalist states that arose out of the counterrevolution that destroyed the multinational Soviet Union. Is Russia imperialist? A detailed analysis of capitalist Russia and the other post-Soviet states shows that the relation of Russia and Ukraine today is not one of imperial overlord and semi-colonial vassal but of two intermediate level capitalist states, despite differences in their relative power. Today, the main threat to working people in the clash over Ukraine is the imperialist-backed junta of ethnic-nationalist fascists and free-market rightists in Kiev, not “Russian imperialism.” While supporting the Crimea’s exercise of the right to self-determination by joining Russia and the right of eastern and southern Ukraine to self-rule, Trotskyists fight for proletarian internationalism against all the capitalist exploiters, and particularly against the imperialists, their Ukrainian bourgeois puppets and fascist attack dogs. The Bugbear of “Russian Imperialism” (May 2014)

Plus, in the print edition...

The Trotskyist Struggle for International Socialist Revolution Document of the First National Conference of the Internationalist Group

International Perspectives of the League for the Fourth International