No. 58, Winter 2020  Table of Contents Selected articles linked Click on image to left for pdf version of complete issue.

For Workers Mobilization to Defend China Hong Kong “Democracy” Riots: Pro-Imperialist, Anti-Communist, Fascist-Infested For the past eight months, the territory of Hong Kong, a former British colony and since 1997 a Special Autonomous Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), has been wracked by demonstrations and riots that have been almost universally hailed in the West. The protests are described as a “pro-democracy” movement, with “radicalized youth” in the lead, just as the Occupy Central or “Umbrella movement” of 2014 was portrayed. In reality, the mass marches led by middle-class professionals are seeking to preserve the special legal status of this capitalist enclave, while the black-clad offspring of Hong Kong’s bourgeois elite have launched violent attacks aimed at the working class (e.g., torching subway stations) and mainland Chinese. Many leaders call for separation from the PRC. Ultimately, they and their imperialist patrons are looking to spark counterrevolution in the Chinese bureaucratically deformed workers state. The opportunist left has desperately sought to cover up the blatantly pro-imperialist politics of this movement, which is a little hard to do when the protesters are waving U.S. and British colonial flags. Genuine Trotskyists call to extend the liberating gains of the Chinese Revolution to Hong Kong, to expropriate the capitalists and drive out the imperialists. Hong Kong “Democracy” Riots: Pro-Imperialist, Anti-Communist, Fascist-Infested (February 2020)

Washington’s Hand Behind Anti-China Riots in Hong Kong The escalating and increasingly violent protests in Hong Kong, a capitalist enclave in southern China, are routinely referred to in Western media as a “democracy movement.” In fact, from the outset, the protests have been instigated, advised and funded by U.S. imperialism, fueled by virulent anti-communism and directed against the People’s Republic of China. In this article, we detail how this “astroturf” (fake grassroots) movement has been remote-controlled from Washington. We show how every one of the leaders have been sponsored by the U.S., through the National Endowment for Democracy, its sub-conduits including the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, Freedom House and others. The purveyors of anti-communist subversion are not only right-wing Republicans but in particular liberal Democrats. Washington’s Hand Behind Anti-China Riots in Hong Kong (February 2020)

On Bolivia, Haiti, Puerto Rico… SL/ICL Flip-flopping Toward Oblivion Recently the Spartacist League and the International Communist League corrected its long-standing position that Bolivia supposedly has had no proletariat, an absurd claim about the South American country whose militant miners have historically been in the forefront of worker-peasant struggle, and continue to be despite rampant privatization. The correction in Workers Vanguard admitted that this position denied the possibility of workers revolution. But this is only the latest of a series of de facto corrections, this time explicit, of positions it has vociferously asserted for a decade (its denial that Haiti has a proletariat) or two decades (its refusal to advocate the independence of the U.S. colony of Puerto Rico). In each case they had reversed the historic positions of the ICL, which the Internationalist Group has upheld throughout. A main motivation for their now-vacated positions was to attack the IG/LFI as supposed apologists for Third World nationalism, but behind it was also a pronounced strain of imperialist arrogance. With its social-colonialist line on Puerto Rico, and its social-imperialist support for the 2010 U.S. invasion of Haiti, the ICL would never have been let into the Communist International. Yet far from representing a return to revolutionary Marxism, it now declares it would support statehood, i.e., annexation, which would destroy the Puerto Rican nation.The ICL is spinning like a top, wobbling ever more wildly on the way to oblivion. The degenerated SL/ICL, a caricature of Trotskyism, can never forge a genuine world party of socialist revolution. That task falls to the League for the Fourth International. SL/ICL Flip-flopping Toward Oblivion (February 2020)

Hail 75th Anniversary of Soviet Army Liberation of Auschwitz Expel Zionist Occupiers from the West Bank – Defend Gaza, the New Warsaw Ghetto No to Trump/Israel West Bank Annexation Plan! On January 28, U.S. president Donald Trump unveiled his phony Middle East “peace” plan in a joint appearance at the White House with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is actually a plan to escalate the imperialist-backed Zionist war on the Palestinians by annexing the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It is a naked Zionist land grab to crush and humiliate the Palestinians. All “two-state” plans that have been floated since the Israeli army’s conquest of the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 war have been frauds to the extent that they made any pretense of fulfilling the rights of the Palestinian Arab population under the boot of Zionist occupation. Trump’s “vision” is the most cynical of all. But while opposition politicians in both countries criticize its timing and ostentatiously one-sided nature, many of these same Democrats and “moderate” Zionists support the basic elements of the “deal.” Zionists of all stripes and their imperialist patrons are for imposing indefinite Israeli control of the West Bank. Against this the League for the Fourth International calls to drive the Zionist occupiers out of the West Bank, and for an Arab/Hebrew Palestinian workers state in a socialist federation of the Near East. No to Trump/Israel West Bank Annexation Plan! (2 February 2020)

To Drive Out Macron & Co., Fight for Workers to Power French Strikers Challenge Attack on Pensions Build a Workers Party Based on the Revolutionary Program of Lenin and Trotsky The battle over the French government’s assault on pensions has entered its decisive phase. After a month on strike, French workers have already surpassed the record of the December 1995 strike (22 days) that defeated an earlier pension “reform” and the 1986-87 rail strike (28 days) to be the longest since 1968. As President Emmanuel Macron plays for time, trying to wear down the strikers, it is crucial that the action spread to other sections of the working class, especially the private sector. Above all, it is vital to raise a program, establish forms of organization (mass strike committees and workers councils) and forge a leadership that go beyond defense of the status quo to a fight for workers power. This is not an ordinary union battle – it’s a showdown between labor and capital. At issue is which class shall rule. French Strikers Challenge Attack on Pensions (6 January 2020)

From Obama to Trump: Down with U.S. Murder, Inc. Defeat U.S. Imperialism – Defend Iran! For International Workers Action – Drive the Imperialists Out of the Middle East The January 2 assassination of Qassim Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, by a U.S. drone strike was a blatant “act of war” – but more than that, it was the opening salvo of a U.S. imperialist war on Iran. In ordering the murder of the second most powerful leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, U.S. president Donald Trump left the regime no choice but to retaliate against the marauding superpower that threatens its very existence. In this war, class-conscious workers and revolutionaries everywhere have a side: the Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International call to defeat U.S. imperialism and defend Iran. We call in particular for international workers action against Washington’s war. The Democrats, one and all, hail Obama’s 2015 agreement with Iran (as well the European Union, Russia and China) limiting Iran’s nuclear program. Yet this pact subjects Iran to blackmail by U.S. imperialism and the militarist Zionist regime which has hundreds of nukes, and whose leaders are crazy enough to use them. The LFI defends Tehran’s right to develop nuclear arms for its defense against these kill-crazy warmongers. We stand for defense of Iran against the U.S. attack, while giving no political support to its capitalist government. The LFI calls to bring out the power of the working class to bring down the Islamist, monarchist, militarist and Zionist regimes, drive out the imperialists and establish a socialist federation of the Middle East. Defeat U.S. Imperialism – Defend Iran! (3 January 2020)

Down with Stalinist Exclusion! From Berlin: For Proletarian Opposition to the Coup in Bolivia The League for the Fourth International has mobilized its sections in protests against the November 10 “civic-military-police” coup d’état in Bolivia that put ultra-rightist, virulently racist and even fascistic elements in power. In Berlin, Germany, the Internationalistische Gruppe joined protests with signs calling for “Bolivian Workers: Smash the Coup!” and “For Worker-Peasant-Indigenous Self-Defense Against Racist Rightist Attacks.” However, twice we have been physically excluded by organizers linked to the Stalinist DKP (German Communist Party), who threatened to call the police on our comrades, amid slanderous accusations of being racists because we give no political support to ousted president Evo Morales and his bourgeois populist Movement to Socialism (MAS). The Stalinists  were not calling for unity in action against the coup but rather for political support to the ousted government. The sort of “unity” they seek is a popular front; that is, chaining the working class to the bourgeoisie. The League for the Fourth International stands for revolutionary class struggle against imperialism rather than popular-frontist class collaboration that paves the way for such coups. From Berlin: For Proletarian Opposition to the Coup in Bolivia (20 November 2019)

For Workers Resistance Against Rightist Bolivian Coup On November 10, a coup d’état was carried out in Bolivia, triggered by a sinister mutiny of the police, followed by the declaration of the heads of the armed forces calling on President Evo Morales to step down. The “civic-police-military” coup has a pronounced rightist and racist character, directed against the indigenous population which has been the main political base of Morales’ Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS). All those who seek to defend the basic rights of working people and the oppressed are now in danger in the face of this reactionary onslaught. The League for the Fourth International categorically opposes the rightist coup, fighting for the full political independence of the proletariat from all bourgeois parties and politicians, including the MAS, which has coopted the worker and peasant leaderships and repressed workers who fight back. Against the Bolivian coup, we insist on the need for a revolutionary proletarian policy, fighting for a workers, peasants and Indian government. Above all, we fight to drive the main authors of coups throughout the continent, the Yankee imperialists, out of Bolivia and out of Latin America. For Workers Resistance Against Rightist Bolivian Coup (11 November 2019)

Whitewashing American History The WPA Mural Controversy in San Francisco By Jack Heyman There has a been a controversy percolating the last couple of years over protests against the 13-panel “Life of Washington” murals painted in 1936 by Works Progress Administration (WPA) artist Victor Arnautoff that are on display at George Washington High School in San Francisco. These murals dared to challenge the patriotic stereotype of Washington, instead portraying him as a slaveholder and military commander overseeing the genocide of Native Americans. Yet now the San Francisco Board of Education has voted to obliterate this militantly anti-racist artist’s depiction of history that the racist rulers always sought to deny. The argument justifying this censorship is that the images were “disturbing” to students. The threat to freedom of expression and free speech is real, and its real targets are the left, labor and those who understand that historical truth is a weapon for the oppressed and exploited.  Here it’s being undermined not only by white supremacists and Trump but by “identity politics” Democrats and “progressives.” Whitewashing American History (21 July 2019)