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 No. 55, Winter 2019 Table
of Contents Click on image to left for pdf version of complete issue. |
Trump Picks Puppet, Calls for Military Revolt, Threatens Invasion …
and Democrats Applaud
For Revolutionary Workers Action to Smash U.S. Coup in Venezuela!
Defend Venezuela Against Yankee Imperialism!
On January 23, the international media suddenly announced that a certain Juan Guaidó, the head of the National Assembly legislature in Venezuela, had declared himself president of the country, claiming that the actual elected head of state Nicolás Maduro, was illegitimate. Within minutes, Donald Trump recognized the pretend-president, and right-wing governments in Latin America and Canada soon followed suit. This is not your usual U.S.-backed coup d’état as has occurred so often in Latin America. What is going on now is a straight-out U.S. operation, to install a puppet ruler and turn Venezuela into a direct U.S. colony in all but name. Now Trump is trying to provoke a massacre with a cynical attempt to bring in “humanitarian aid” into Venezuela by force: if there are casualties, U.S. imperialism bears the entire responsibility. The local oligarchy and the Yankee imperialists have unrelentingly sought to bring down the populist “Bolivarian Revolution” for 20 years. Although Venezuela is a capitalist country led by bourgeois nationalists, its alliance with Cuba in particular has put it on Washington's hit list. While giving no political confidence to Maduro, whose capitalist economic policies have helped prepare the way for the reactionary putsch, the Internationalist Group and League call for workers mobilization to smash the coup, and warn that only revolutionary struggle can defeat the imperialist takeover. For Revolutionary Workers Action to Smash U.S. Coup in Venezuela! (22 February 2019)
Women’s Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!
Democratic Party Feminism and the “#MeToo Movement”
On January 19, there were two “women’s marches” in New York City, amid much acrimony. In a transparently Zionist-orchestrated campaign, the Women’s March Alliance accused Women’s March Inc. of anti-Semitism. Behind the squabble among the feminists was a dispute between two wings of the Democratic Party, the former being supporters of Hillary Clinton’s “New Democrats” while the latter were in the Bernie Sanders camp. But who did these more “intersectional,” radical-posturing feminists have as their keynote speaker? None other than Gloria Steinem, who for years was a CIA “asset,” finking on leftists for U.S. imperialism. And if the women’s marches were smaller this year, that’s partly because they had achieved their aim of electing more female capitalist Democratic politicians. The same day, the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth held an educational and organizing conference, which emphasized that the Democratic Party is an enemy of women’s liberation, which is rooted in the structure of capitalism. Taking on the “sexual paranoia” of Title IX prosecutions, the #MeToo slogan “believe women” and campus codes of “affirmative consent,” the RIY speaker emphasized that feminism cannot liberate women. That requires freeing women from the bourgeois nuclear family, socializing its functions, and establishing a classless society, through a common struggle by working men and women and all oppressed sectors of society. Democratic Party Feminism and the “#MeToo Movement” (January 2019)
Chanting “U.S.A., U.S.A.” to Woman-Hater Trump’s Praise
Imperialist Feminism and the Democrats
So Donald Trump finally got his State of the Union speech to Congress on February 5. What we were treated to was a bipartisan spectacle of imperialist politicians chanting “U.S.A., U.S.A.” True to form, Trump used the event to demonize immigrants. Republicans cheered Trump’s xenophobic fear-mongering while the Democrats just sat there. In fact, the Dems are just as committed to militarizing the border. Trump's annoucement of the U.S. coup attempt in Venezuela received bipartisan applause. And when Trump bragged about creating millions of new jobs, mostly filled by women, Democratic congresswomen (all wearing white in honor of the suffragettes) gave a standing ovation to the misogynist president! Then when Trump cynically hailed the record number of women in Congress, the women in white broke into cheers and joined in chanting, “U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.” Among the chanters were the supposed "democratic socialists" Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, both of whom had earlier voted $20 million to fund the right-wing opposition in Venezuela. These “progressive” and even “socialist”-posturing Democrats have acted exactly like the capitalist politicians that they are, loyal to the U.S.-dominated imperialist world order. Imperialist Feminism and the Democrats (10 February 2019)
Powerful L.A. Teachers Strike Was Betrayed in Settlement
Draw the Lessons: Class Struggle Leadership Needed
Leadership Rammed Through a Sellout – UTLA Membership Should
Demand the Right to Debate and Vote on the Final Agreement
By Class Struggle Education Workers
On the sixth day of the powerful teachers strike that electrified working people across the U.S., the president of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), stood with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) superintendent and the L.A. mayor at a City Hall press conference to announce that a strike settlement had been reached. Far from being a “historic agreement,” the deal maintains the intolerable conditions which UTLA tops have agreed to for years. Barely a couple of hours after the terms were announced, a “streamlined voting process” was held at school sites during rush hour; a half an hour after it ended the UTLA leader declared that a “supermajority” had voted “yes.” The whole business made a mockery of union democracy. The UTLA Facebook page exploded with thousands of angry comments complaining about the terms of the deal and the rushed vote before teachers and parents could even figure out what all the legalese meant. In line with its policy of class collaboration, the leadership never had a strategy to win the strike: what they sought was to pressure the Democrats. The opportunist left, for its part, dutifully proclaimed the betrayal a major victory. Union militants need to oust the bureaucrats, break with the Democrats and forge a class-struggle leadership. Powerful L.A. Teachers Strike Was Betrayed in Settlement (23 January 2019)
Teachers, Students, Parents, Workers – All Out to Defeat the Privatizers and Union-Busters!
Victory to Los Angeles Teachers Strike!
Picket Lines Mean Don’t Cross!
Break with the Democrats – Build a Class-Struggle Workers Party
By Class Struggle Education Workers
Some 34,000 educators in the second-largest school district in the country are poised go on strike in Los Angeles on January 14 for the first time since 1989. This is more than just a contract fight. It is a battle between capitalist union-busters hell-bent on privatizing schools, and the unions defending public education. The supporters of privately managed “charter schools” who run the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) are hard-lining it, to the point of forcing a walkout. But the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) has the massive support of its membership, and from students, parents and unionists throughout L.A. It is necessary to shut the schools down. To build massive picket lines that no one crosses, the active support of the entire L.A.-area labor movement is needed. Supporters of Class Struggle Education Workers and the Internationalist Group have fought for concrete unon action in solidarity with the UTLA strike. The teacher revolt which swept across the United States last spring has reached L.A – but with a key difference. Those strikes and walkouts were in Republican-governed states. UTLA, in contrast, is fighting the assault on public education where all major officials are Democrats. Calling to break with all the capitalist parties, the CSEW calls to build a class-struggle workers party. Victory to Los Angeles Teachers Strike! (8 January 2019)
Massive Work Stoppages Impose Workers’ Demands On Corporatist “Unions,” Employers Respond with Layoffs
Matamoros, Mexico: Workers in the Maquiladoras
Battle Against Corporatism
Break the Shackles of State Control and Build Genuine Workers Unions!
Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party!
In recent weeks, Mexico has experienced an explosive wave of worker insurgency in the maquiladora (free trade zone) factories of the northeast border as has not been seen in decades. The epicenter of the workers’ mobilizations has been the city of Matamoros, where in January, more than 40,000 workers staged walkouts (paros) and launched a strike to demand – and win – a 20% wage increase and an annual bonus equivalent to half a year’s wages. Our reporter-activists traveled to Matamoros to join the strike picket lines and talk with the workers in struggle. It was a rebellion against the pseudo-unions of the CTM, corporatist labor outfits integrated into the capitalist state apparatus, whgo serve the bosses as labor cops to prevent the rise of genuine workers unions. This legacy of thge 70-year rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) outlived the demise of the PRI regime because of the need of the bossen and their government, as lackeys of imperialism, to maintain iron-fisted control over the vibrant Mexican working class, especially in the border region. Today we are in the initial stages of what could be the biggest workers struggle to shatter the remains of the corporatist regime that has enslaved the Mexican proletariat for three-quarters of a century. In Mexico there are more than 2.5 workers in the maquiladoras, mostly women, a key sector of the proletariat which is deeply intertwined with the U.S. economy. The key is to forge revolutionary leaderships of the working class, based on the Bolshevik program of Lenin and Trotsky, to struggle for international socialist revolution. Matamoros, Mexico: Workers in the Maquiladoras Battle Against Corporatism (February 2019)
DSA Members of Congress Vote to Fund “Homeland Security” Cops
Together with the rest of the Democratic Party caucus, the two Democratic Socialists of America members in the House of Representatives, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, voted last Thursday, January 3, to maintain the funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which, of course, includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) police and the Border Patrol. How much teargas, how many ice-cold detention cells, how much anti-immigrant brutality and imperialist depradation will it pay for? The DSA as an organization, as a whole and in all of its constituent parts, is responsible for the actions of its representatives in Congress, whose election its National Political Committee called the “rebirth of the American socialist movement” (sic). Only a few months ago, they were calling to “abolish I.C.E.” Now, as the capitalist Democratic Party politicians that they are, DSAers in Congress vote to fund the hated immigration cops (la migra) as well the DHS police (the Federal Protection Service) who with their heavy firepower are the front-line defenders of fascists, from Portland, Oregon to Washington, D.C. DSA Members of Congress Vote to Fund “Homeland Security” Cops (10 January 2019)
Nancy Pelosi, Icon of Female Capitalist Power
The New York Times (3 January) today ran a puff piece on “Nancy Pelosi, Icon of Female Power.” She is, actually – a symbol of female capitalist power. If you push for feminism in bourgeois politics, Pelosi is what you will get, or Hillary Clinton. Together with Chuck Schumer, the “Senator from Wall Street,” Pelosi claimed she had brokered a deal for the Dreamers with racist Donald Trump by throwing their undocumented immigrant parents under the bus. Now she claims to oppose Trump’s border wall while offering billions for increased “border security.” In her previous stint as House Speaker, Pelosi “delivered the votes” for the 2007-08 multi-trillion-dollar bailout of the banks for Republican George W. Bush, Democrat Barack Obama and the billionaire investment bankers and hedge-fund operators who financed both of them. Race, gender and national oppression are all rooted in class domination. The all-sided social oppression of this racist, xenophobic, misogynist, homophobic society will not end until an international socialist revolution throws the rotting capitalist system into the dumpster of history. Nancy Pelosi, Icon of Female Capitalist Power (3 January 2019)
Aiding and Abetting the Capitalist Democratic Party
“Socialists” Chase After Anti-Gun Movement
The cynical exploitation of traumatized youth by the Democratic Party to further its agenda of gun control has provided an X-ray into the politics of a panoply of left groups. When key sectors of the most powerful ruling class in world want to disarm the populace, slashing a key democratic right in order to leave the oppressed defenseless, how do socialists respond? In the last few weeks, as liberals, police chiefs and Democratic mayors (“the bosses of the racist killer cops”) push for gun control, almost the entire U.S. left has marched in lockstep with them. Why? Because they are chasing after the young marchers who have been enrolled in this campaign to bolster the capitalist state. The bourgeoisie’s rule is made possible in large part by its ability to perpetrate violence against those it rules over. Gun control has historically been used to disarm black people and intensify racist repression. While some opportunist leftists voice qualms or reservations about some gun control measures, they all end up supporting them. A “left” that plays into the hands of the Democratic Party can only lead to defeat. A struggle for revolution is counterposed to this “movement” for gun control and for the Democratic Party of imperialist war, mass deportations and racist police terror. “Socialists” Chase After Anti-Gun Movement (April 2018)
The Left Front in Argentina: A Reformist Electoral Cartel
The Trotskyist Faction and its Brazilian affiliate, the MRT (Revolutionary Movement of Workers), put forward the Left and Workers Front (FIT) in Argentina as the road to follow. This is a reformist and opportunist electoral alliance, a coalition based on a lowest-common-denominator program, in which centrist parties who claim to be revolutionary abandon in practice the Marxist principles they claim to uphold. It is precisely the kind of propaganda bloc that Trotsky warned against in the 1930s. The parties involved themselves characterize the front as “opportunist” and admit that its slogan of a “government of the working people” could be a government of the capitalist state. The sharp internal differences were revealed when a police mutiny broke out in Córdoba and the components of the FIT found themselves on opposite sides of the barricades, some openly supporting the action of the cops. The League for the Fourth International, in contrast, says that police are the armed fist of capital, and consistent with that acts to expell them from the workers movement. The Left Front in Argentina: A Reformist Electoral Cartel (5 October 2018)
Fake Trotskyists Can't Tell the Difference Between a Workers Union and a Death Squad
SL on Corporatism in Mexico: Games Centrists Play
The Internationalist has reported on the militant struggles of Mexican teachers against the government and against the corporatist pseudo union (the SNTE), which for decades has acted as labor cops, integrated into the state apparatus, to prevent the rise of independent workers unions. The Spartacist League and its local affiliate have come to the defense of the SNTE even as combative teachers stone its offices. A recent polemic by the SL's Workers Vanguard against the Internationalist Group shows that the latter-day SL can't tell the difference between a workers union and a death squad, and is supporting the main agency for union-busting in Mexico. A detailed exposé of WV's lies underscores how the SL has renounced their own Trotskyist heritage on the struggle for union independence from the state. SL on Corporatism in Mexico: Games Centrists Play (July 2013)
Corporatism in Action in Chiapas (30 June 2013)
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