No. 71, June-October 2023  Table of Contents Selected articles linked Click on image to left for pdf version of complete issue.

Zionist Revenge After Hamas Offensive Shakes Israel to the Core Defend the Palestinians Against U.S./Israel Genocidal War on Gaza! On October 7, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Gaza carried out a stunning surprise attack on Israel, the Zionist state that has driven millions of Palestinian Arabs from their homeland and oppresses millions more in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and within Israel. The massive border wall that completely surrounds the Gaza Strip was breached in numerous places and Hamas fighters overran two dozen Israeli communities. Hundreds of Israelis were killed, and now the Israeli military has killed as many or more Palestinians in air strikes, as it gears up for an invasion of densely populated Gaza using U.S. precision weapons. Now Israel has ordered a genocidal siege. Any real blow against the Zionist state by Palestinian forces is in the interests of the workers and oppressed, but indiscriminate terror against random Israelis undermines the defense of the Palestinian people. In the U.S. and other imperialist countries, anti-Palestinian hysteria is being whipped up seeking to suppress all solidarity with the Palestinians. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International call for the right of return for all Palestinians, for defense of the Palestinian people, for workers action against Zionist terror, and for an Arab-Hebrew Palestinian workers state in a socialist federation of the Middle East. Defend the Palestinians Against U.S./Israel Genocidal War on Gaza! (10 October 2023)   The Origins of Hamas (10 October 2023)  (español) ¡Defender a los palestinos contra la guerra genocida de EE.UU. e Israel contra Gaza!  (10 de octubre de 2023)  (Deutsch) Verteidigt die Palästinenser wider den völkermörderischen USA/Israel Krieg gegen Gaza! (10.Oktober 2023) (italiano) Difendere i palestinesi contro la guerra genocida degli U.S.A./Israele su Gaza! (10 ottobre 2023) (português) Defender os palestinos contra a guerra genocida EUA/Israel em Gaza! (10 de outubro de 2023) (Türkçe) Filistinlileri Savunalım! Kahrolsun ABD ve İsrail’in Gazze’ye Yönelik Soykırım Savaşı! (10 Ekim 2023)

Italian Unions Call to Stop Arms to Israel and Ukraine For International Workers Action Against Zionist Genocidal Attack on Gaza On October 16, as Israel ramped up its genocidal attack on Gaza, Palestinian trade unions issued an urgent call on fellow unions and workers worldwide to “End All Complicity, Stop Arming Israel.” It called  in particular to stop building weapons for Israel, to “refuse to transport weapons to Israel,” and to get their unions to pass motions to that effect. The League for the Fourth International urges unions and class-conscious workers to respond to the emergency appeal and to take action against the monstrous slaughter being jointly carried out daily in Gaza by Israel and the U.S. In many Western countries the Palestinian unions’ call has fallen on deaf ears, notably in the United States and Germany. In Italy the situation is notably different, as a militant sector of the labor movement has long called for Palestinian solidarity. On October 21, “rank-and-file” unions carried out strikes and demonstrations outside a military base near Brescia and in Pisa, calling to stop sendng arms to Ukraine and Israel. Blocking shipments of war material has great importance as an example of mobilizing the power of the working class against imperialist (and Zionist) war.  Italian Unions Call to Stop Arms to Israel and Ukraine (29 October 2023)

Defend the Palestinians! Defy the Witch-Hunters! At an October 12 protest outside the City University of New York's Hunter College in defense of the Palestinian people against the U.S./Israel onslaught in Gaza, a supporter of the CUNY Internationalists emphasized the need to defy the McCarthyite witch hunts targeting all those who stand with the besieged and imprisoned people in this modern-day Warsaw Ghetto. Defend the Palestinians! Defy the Witch-Hunters! (24 October 2023)

Recent Correspondence Between the International Communist League and the League for the Fourth International In 1996, the Spartacist League/U.S., followed soon thereafter by the Mexican and French sections of the International Communist League (ICL), expelled cadres who went on to form the Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International (LFI). The purge by the ICL reflected widespread demoralization in the left after the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Union. It led to deep disorientation and rightward-moving revisionism in the Spartacist tendency, which had, since the early 1960s, upheld the revolutionary internationalist program of Trotskyism. After what are by now decades of innumerable zigzags, a new leadership of the ICL has emerged, driven centrally by the embrace of bourgeois nationalism, and is junking the old Spartacism on one front after another. At the same time, the ICL has admitted that a wide range of its claims and accusations against the Internationalist Group and LFI have in fact been unprincipled and false, and has vowed to investigate the expulsions and other measures against our founding cadres. Yet, as we of the LFI have noted, the programmatic differences are increasing ever more widely and quickly. In the correspondence reprinted here, the LFI notes that there is no principled basis for the kind of leadership “discussions” the ICL proposed; instead we have challenged them to a debate, a proposal the ICL has, in general terms, accepted. Details remain to be worked out between the two tendencies. Recent Correspondence Between the International Communist League and the League for the Fourth International (16 October 2023)

German Far Left in Crisis: Nationalist “Peace Movement” or Internationalist Class War? Defend Russia and China Against the Imperialist War Drive! Defeat the U.S./NATO Ukraine Proxy War Against Russia! Stop Arms Deliveries to Kiev with Workers Action! The turmoil triggered by the war in Ukraine has led the overwhelming majority of the left in Germany, as elsewhere, to openly or de facto side with Ukraine. The pseudo-Trotskyists, most of whom are floating in or around the Left Party, almost all belong to this camp.  But in the Stalinist milieus, a bitter split is underway. In Germany, the Kommunistische Organisation split down the middle, with one side denouncing “Russian imperialism” while the former leadership has taken a soft pro-Russia stance in the war. Yet both KOs seek to conjure up a new leftist peace movement. Genuinely revolutionary Leninists (Trotskyists), in contrast, look to hard class struggle to smash the US/NATO war drive against Russia and China, on the road to international socialist revolution. German Far Left in Crisis (October 2023)

Revolutionary Trotskyism on the Imperialist War Drive Against Russia and China The war over Ukraine has shaped the course of political, economic and world events during the last year and a half. The constant escalation of military intervention by the United States and NATO imperialists points directly toward a thermonuclear World War III. The war in Eastern Europe is also a major factor in the class struggle in many imperialist countries in the West as capitalist rulers seek to undo historic gains of the workers, calling for “sacrifice,” while attacking protesters with police-state measures. As always, imperialist war puts into question the program and actions of those who profess to be revolutionaries. In the current war over Ukraine it is outrageous that some major currents claiming to be Trotskyist have aligned themselves directly with the U.S.  and the imperialist military alliance (NATO). There is also a range of ostensibly Trotskyist tendencies that seek to take an in-between position in the war, pretending to oppose NATO as well as Russia, but in practice tailing after the “NATO socialists.” In all the left that defines itself as Trotskyist, League for the Fourth International stands virtually alone in defending the countries targeted by the imperialist war, Russia and China. Presentation by a spokesman for the LFI at the Second Leon Trotsky Conference in August. Revolutionary Trotskyism on the Imperialist War Drive Against Russia and China (22 August 2023)

For an All-Out Auto Strike to Shut Down the Big 3 Junk the Tiers – Top Pay Rate for All As the union contracts with the Big 3 auto makers expired on September 14, the United Auto Workers (UAW) declared a (very) partial strike. Rather than shutting down all the major U.S. auto manufacturers, the union tops declared a walkout at only one plant each of Ford, GM and Stellantis/Chrysler. A key issue is the tiered wages system, in which new workers earn half or less the top pay rate of only $32 per hour, which is itself outrageously low, not enough for a family to live on. A UAW strike is a tremendous opportunity for labor to strike back at the head-on assault on the living standards of working people throughout the country. But instead of mobilizing the membership for a knock-down, drag-out battle with the auto bosses, the union tops are using pin-pricks to needle them. In addition, UAW leaders are looking for support from the Democrats, the same strikebreaking government party that banned a rail workers walkout last year. This “strategy” can never win. To abolish the tiers and defeat the mega-corporations, an all-out mobilization of the union ranks is needed, along with a political struggle for a class-struggle workers party to take on the capitalist politicians who do the auto bosses’ bidding. For an All-Out Auto Strike to Shut Down the Big 3 (14 September 2023)

SAG-AFTRA + WGA + IATSE + Teamsters = Power Hollywood Strike: Stay Out Together to Win No One Goes Back Until Everyone Goes Back! As Hollywood screenwriters are into the fourth month of their strike and it’s been six weeks since the actors walked out, the studio bosses are hard-lining it, seeking to starve the strikers out. At a time when technological change (the dominance of streaming and introduction of artificial intelligence) poses an existential threat to both unions, it is necessary to escalate the struggle, starting with shutting down broadcast TV shows. Spirited picket lines of the two unions have kept up all summer, but this is not enough defeat the cartel of some of the largest corporations in the U.S. who run the entertainment industry. This should be one strike, and there should be a single union of all media workers. As the employers seek to pick off one union after another, it is urgent that the strikers refuse to return to work until the demands of all the unions are met. Hollywood Strike: Stay Out Together to Win (29 August 2023)  Wall Street Puts the Screws to Hollywood (29 August 2023)

Vote “NO” and Strike for $25 – Plus AC – NOW! Next Up: Organize Amazon! Teamster-UPS Deal: No End to Poverty Pay On July 25, a week before a strike deadline for which the union had been preparing with a lot of fanfare for more than a year, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), representing 340,000 United Parcel Service (UPS) drivers and warehouse workers, suddenly announced that it had reached a tentative agreement with the company, averting a strike. Teamsters leaders declared the deal “historic” and a game-changer. But after earlier highlighting that many part-timers (who are the majority of all UPS workers) are paid at or close to the minimum wage, the settlement only raised the starting wage to $21/hr., which is still poverty pay. It is also barely more than that at Amazon, which the IBT has vowed to unionize. Air conditioning in delivery vehicles will only be installed over years. UPS Teamsters should vote “no” on the contract and prepare to strike for $25 and AC now. But an all-out class battle must be waged politically, insisting on independence from the bosses’ state and breaking with all the bosses’ parties. Teamster-UPS Deal: No End to Poverty Pay (6 August 2023)  Courtesy of Democrats, Republicans, Hoffa Jr. and TDU Union-Suers How Feds, Dems and Banks Whacked Teamster Pensions Last December President Biden announced a nearly $36 billion grant to rescue the Teamsters’ Central States Pension Fund. It was clearly intended to counter worker discontent over the Democrats' strikebreaking legislation imposing a contract on rail workers. The fund’s financial troubles go back to its seizure by the feds, who turned management over to investment bank "professionals," who nearly bankrupted it. Teamsters for a Democratic Union bears a good part of the blame for this by appealing to the capitalist government to "clean up" the IBT. How Feds, Dems and Banks Whacked Teamster Pensions (6 August 2023)

February 25: 10,000 Protest in the Port of Genova Against Arms to Ukraine Summer 2023: Mobilize Workers’ Power to Shut Down NATO Bases in Italy! Italy: Workers Action Key to Defeating Imperialist War Drive Against Russia, China Fascist Meloni, Populists, Liberal “Democrats”: Warmongers, Strikebreakers One and All! The imperialist war against Russia, ultimately aiming at restoring capitalist rule in China, continues to intensify. When in May the fascist puppet president of Ukraine Vlodymyr Zelensky visited the fascist prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, she reiterated that her government will continue to guarantee its military support for Kiev. On February 25, port workers in Genova organized a 10,000-strong demonstration calling to oppose “NATO’s war” and to block arms shipments to Ukraine. The Nucleo Internazionalista d’Italia and the League for the Fourth International call for defending Russia and China and defeating US/NATO imperialism. Most Italian left groups have turned “NATO socialists,” but there are others who lead militant rank-and-file unions that together with their allies are calling for a “third choice.” They falsely claim that Russia (a regional capitalist power) and China (a bureaucratically deformed workers state) are both imperialist. This is not the result of a scientific Marxist analysis, rather a blatant excuse for refusing to defend both countries from attack by the real imperialists, including Italy, united in the NATO military alliance! Italy: Workers Action Key to Defeating Imperialist War Drive Against Russia, China (June 27, 2023)  What Is Revolutionary Defeatism? (27 June 2023)  Defend the Chinese Workers State Against Imperialism and Counterrevolution (27 June 2023)  Italian Navy Heading to the Indo-Pacific (27 June 2023)