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 No. 53, September-October 2018 Table
of Contents Click on image to left for pdf version of complete issue. |
Mobilize Workers Power to Stop Fascist Terror!
All summer long, there was a stream of violent provocations by ultra-rightist and outright fascist groups across the United States, and then in the run-up to the November 6 voting, a series of violent rightist and deadly racist attacks. While Republican president Donald Trump whips up deadly violence and race hatred, liberal Democrats want to use the explosion of fascist terror attacks call to step up state control, with government censorship of hate speech on social media and more stringent gun control – measures that will be used against the left and workers movement. Revolutionary Marxists instead seek to organize mass mobilizations of workers power to crush the fascists. The main enemy is not just the fringe of “alt-rightists” and assorted white supremacists and fascists who have proliferated in Trump’s America, but the capitalist state which protects the fascists, and which the liberals want to strengthen. Overwhelmingly, in one incident after another, in one city after another, the police defend the fascists against leftists. We seek to organize workers defense guards to defend all those threatened by the modern-day brown- and black-shirt thugs, whether they wear Perry Ellis polo shirts or olive drab fatigues. What is ultimately needed is a mass mobilization of the social power that can defeat both the fascists and their uniformed protectors. Mobilize Workers Power to Stop Fascist Terror! (28 October 2018)
Let Them In! Asylum for Refugees!
Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!
The Caravan of the Dispossessed
As the U.S. midterm elections entered the home stretch, xenophobic president Donald Trump hit on a new tactic for his standard campaign of fear and falsification: whip up hysteria about an imminent invasion by a caravan of immigrants from Honduras. The migrants who have decided to risk all to undertake the onerous trek of almost 3,000 miles are fleeing from deadly violence and extreme poverty made in U.S.A. The economy of Honduras has been devastated by “free trade” agreements while the gangs terrorizing its cities got their start in Los Angeles. The right-wing Honduran government which acts as Republican Trump’s toady is the result of a 2009 coup engineered by the Democratic Obama administration. The League for the Fourth International and its sections in the U.S. and Mexico have called to welcome the caravan, demanding asylum for refugees and full citizenship rights for all immigrants. And, as always, we seek to carry out actions in furtherance of our call. The Grupo Internacionalista/Mexico sent an activist-correspondent to accompany the caravan on its arrival in Mexico, while the Oaxaca local of the GI held a solidarity demonstration together with the militant teachers union. The Caravan of the Dispossessed (28 October 2018)
Cast a Blank Ballot and Take to the Streets to Mobilize a Class-Struggle Response to the Bourgeoisie
Brazil Elections: For Workers Action Against the Election Fraud and the Militarist Danger
The elections taking place in Brazil are the most explosive since the birth of the “New Republic” in 1988 following over two decades of military dictatorship. The blatantly anti-democratic characte3r of the vote begins with the veto by the judiciary of the candidate who, by all indications, would have won the presidency: former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, historic leader of the Workers Party (PT). At the same time, calls are mounting for intervention by the army, supposedly to fight against corruption. Military intervention in Rio de Janeiro has already led to the murder of councilwoman Marielle Franco, due to her criticism of the escalating massacres by the police. We warn that the bonapartist danger – of an authoritarian regime based on the repressive forces of the capitalist state – is very real, but it will not be banished through the ballot box. We also caution that the danger does not come solely from supporters of the military candidate, Bolsonaro. The entire Brazilian bourgeoisie is determined to impose by force its policy of “austerity,” and the bourgeois popular-front alliance around the PT will also be obliged to apply these anti-worker “reforms,” in one way or another. In the face of these fraudulent elections, manipulated by the judges and under military tutelage, the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brazil calls to mobilize the working class and all the oppressed in powerful workers actions. Brazil Elections: For Workers Action Against the Election Fraud and the Militarist Danger (5 October 2018)
Why Big-Business Press Joined Reformist Left in Hailing Primary “Earthquake”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the Rescue
of the Democratic Party
The Democratic primary victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York over ten-term congressman Joseph Crowley, one of the pillars of the Democratic Party, sent shock waves through the bourgeois political milieu. The reformist left was ecstatic over the success of Ocasio-Cortez, a member of Democratic Socialists of America, while Republican right-wingers sought vainly to whip up a red scare. Yet the liberal Democratic establishment, far from seeing “AOC” as a threat, was nearly unanimous in hailing her victory. They realize that in order to win the mid-term elections, the Democrats need to expand the electorate by attracting young voters, and that the actual program put forward by Ocasio-Cortez is standard “progressive” Democratic fare. Tacking on the label “democratic socialism” might help to overcome disenchantment with the Democrats and increase market appeal among “millenial” youth. Plus it can serve to channel any potentially radical protest back into the safe confines of electoral politics. Faced with the electoral successes of the DSA, the rest of the social-democratic milieu is debating how far can it go in the Democratic Party. For revolutionary Marxists, in contrast, trying to put a more “left” face on the imperialist Democrats only serves to bolster the image and credibility of this party of the class enemy. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the Rescue of the Democratic Party (August 2018)
DSA Endorses de Blasio Democrat Cynthia Nixon (August 2018)What “Social-Imperialism” Looks Like
Republican senator John McCain was an imperialist war criminal notorious for bombing civilians in Vietnam; war-mongering from Indochina to Afghanistan, Gaza, Iraq and Syria; and being an all-purpose racist reactionary. When McCain died on August 25, Democratic congressional candidate and DSA member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez placed a statement on her Twitter account praising McCain as “an unparalleled example of human decency and American service....” This is what Lenin called social-imperialism: socialism in words, imperialism in reality. What “Social-Imperialism” Looks Like (August 2018)SAlt’s Sawant Backs Seattle’s Top Cop
A “socialist” voting to support the chief of police? Yes, it happened in Seattle, Washington, when city council member Kshama Sawant of Socialist Alternative (SAlt) “stunned” observers by voting on August 13 to confirm the city’s new chief of police. As capitalism’s guardians in blue murder black and Latino people every day, this shows how low fake-socialist groups are willing to go as they immerse themselves in bourgeois politics. SAlt’s Sawant Backs Seattle’s Top Cop (August 2018)Supreme Court Seeks to Gut Unions
Life After Janus
Bust the Union-Busters With Hard Class Struggle!
Not Democrats or Republicans But a Workers Party
to Fight for a Workers Government!
On June 27, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its long-awaited ruling in the case of Janus v. AFSCME et al. Organized labor and public sector unions in particular have been dreading this moment for several years. The decision threatens to seriously weaken unions financially by cutting off “agency fees” paid by those who refuse to join the union but still benefit from union-negotiated wage agreements, legal representation against employers and other services. Across the country, would-be union-busters celebrated. Nevertheless, unionized workers have the power to make them choke on their cheers. Janus may be a turning point in the class struggle in the United States, but it is far from the death sentence that the present labor leadership fears … and did nothing to stop. Decades of bureaucratic deal-making, capitulations, building illusions in “labor-management cooperation” and support for the Democratic Party have led to this sorry state of affairs. The Janus decision sharply poses the need for a leadership with a program to play hardball, as the bosses are doing – to fight to win. Class-struggle unionists would call for union dues to be collected by the union itself. They would fight to break all ties to the Democrats, Republicans or any capitalist party, and instead to fight to build a class-struggle workers party. Life After Janus: Bust the Union-Busters With Hard Class Struggle! (14 July 2018)
U.S. Immigration Policies Always Have Been Racist
and Always Will Be Until Capitalism Is Overthrown
Smash the I.C.E. Gestapo with Workers Revolution!
On June 30, hundreds of thousands of protesters joined rallies and marches across the U.S. to demand an end to the Trump administration’s grotesque policy of tearing apart immigrant families as they arrive at the border. Rage against the monstrous government child-snatching operation is heartfelt and deep, yet the June 30 marches and rallies were organized under the “Families Belong Together” logo by a plethora of Democratic Party front groups pushing for a big vote for Democratic candidates in the November elections. A prominent demand at the protests was “abolish I.C.E.,” raised both by left groups and mainstream Democrats. The Internationalist Group calls to smash I.C.E. as part of a workers revolution that will topple the entire repressive apparatus – the core of the capitalist state – that defends the brutal rule of capital over the working people and oppressed. But socialist revolution is hardly the aim of the liberal and reformist political forces today calling to abolish I.C.E. This slogan is being pushed by various “progressive” Democrats precisely in order to pin the blame for the anti-immigrant offensive on Trump alone … and to obscure the fact that Obama deported far more immigrants than any Republican. Smash the I.C.E. Gestapo with Workers Revolution! (14 July 2018)
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