Class Struggle 117 Winter

7/25/2019 Class Struggle 117 Winter

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/class-struggle-117-winter 1/16



Class Struggle 117 Winter 2016

2

RCEP with China and India

The RCEP is the Regional Comprehensive EconomicPartnership sponsored by China to create an Asiansphere of interest separate from the US dominatedTPPA. We can view it as an enlarged BRICS for

Southern Asia but which includes Japan the otherregional imperialist power.(see graph above) Is it aninstrument of Chinese imperialism? Yes, but Japanand South Korea are trying to act as stalking horsesfor the US in inserting corporate rule into the RCEP.

NZ has already capitulated to the TPPA as a semi-colony of the US. Now the NZ ruling class wants tojoin the RCEP. We need to add the RCEP to the listof imperialist attacks on NZ economic sovereigntyand fight to reject it as a tool of Chinese corporatedominance of the region. We need to take our cue

from India the largest semi-colony that is alreadysubordinated to China in the BRICS

India is holding the line against imperialismrejecting the role of Corporates dominating nationalsovereignty. If the ‘investor protection’ rules areincluded then big pharma will stop India being themain provider of generic drugs. So we have here aninsight into the relative roles of China and India inthe world economy. Obama has just visited India topromote a ‘strategic partnership’ with the US. SoIndia is increasingly subject to rival pressures fromthe two big imperialist blocs.

We can see this reflected in the politics of theruling Modi Government which is using rabidHindutva nationalism to divide and rule the masses.As we argued in our last issue the pressure to solvethe crisis of imperialism at the expense of the semi-colonies is transmitted downwards by the nationalbourgeoisies onto the working people.

One of the main demands of the labor movement inall the countries subjected to TPPA and RCEP type‘partnerships’ must be the rejection of all such

agreements as tools of either US and Chineseimperialism, and a determination to mobilise andcoordinate international strike action to stop them!

Brexit and the EU Marxist economist Michael Roberts has commentedon what is at stake in the British referendum onmembership of the EU; nothing, compared to thedamage to the EU that the coming global crash will

cause. That’s a dose of Marxist realism.

Greek fake Marxist Yanis Veroufakis wants Britain tostay and save EU imperialism from itself! He is onlythe latest of a left social democratic traditionsupporting ‘social Europe’- the figleaf coveringGerman imperialism.

One of Veroufakis’ mates who blogs at The Automatic Earth disagrees and says voting for Brexitis the way out for all states as the EU breaks up.This he says is a symptom of the global economiccrisis. But he does not explain falling profits as theultimate cause of this crisis and why workers shouldtake sides and vote for the profits of one or otherimperialist power.

The EU is certainly breaking up as a result of thestructural crisis of imperialism. The EU was theproject of the US to unite Europe under itshegemony. But this was always a futile plan.German imperialism is screwing the Southernperiphery of the PIIGS and the other largerimperialist members like Britain and France pushingthem towards the exit.

Germany as the dominant imperialist power hasemerged at the expense of both the peripheralsemi-colonies such as Greece and Ireland, and thedeclining imperialist powers, Britain, France, Italy,Spain and Portugal. Increasingly their ruling classesare poised to exit to escape the death grip ofGerman imperialism.

Whether the British bosses (or the bosses of France,Italy, Spain or Portugal etc) exit the EU, it makes nodifference to the working class. Workers have noclass interest in voting for one or other fractions oftheir imperialist bourgeoisies. Backing one fractionof the national bourgeoisie as ‘progressive’ divertsthe working class from taking independent actionagainst their own imperialism. It also diverts it fromsupporting the struggles of workers in the semi-colonies to break away from the EU.

European workers must unite across borders tostruggle against the attacks of workers by all theimperialist powers. Workers must oppose the rulingclass enemy at home, and mobilise to defend thestruggles of the semi-colonies to break withimperialism.

For a United Socialist States of Europe!

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/14/tpp-deal-pressures-rcep-trade-talks-in-busan-china-keen-for-progress.html



http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/06/13/exclusive-china-trying-to-force-their-version-of-tppa-on-us-now/




http://www.msfindia.in/article/rcep-trade-agreement-threatens-access-affordable-medicines-half-world%E2%80%99s-population



http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2016/03/class-struggles-in-india.html



https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/03/24/brexit-stay-or-leave/



http://www.politico.eu/article/yanis-varoufakis-says-britain-should-stay-in-and-reform-the-eu/




http://www.theautomaticearth.com/2016/06/murder-lifeboats-an-iceberg-and-an-orchestra/

















3

Palestine and Anti-SemitismThe Austrian State is attempting to prosecute pro-Palestine activists for their Anti-Zionist views. On 20April 2016, the Federal Bureau for the Protection ofthe Constitution and Counter-Terrorism (the

political police in Austria) summoned MichaelPröbsting, International Secretary of the RCIT, toanswer charges of “sedition” and “inciting criminalaction” (paragraph 282 of the Austrian CriminalCode). If convicted, Pröbsting can face up to oneyear in prison...

The charges against Pröbsting are founded on asentence of a speech he delivered half a year ago ata rally outside of the Viennese headquarter of theUnited Nations. At the close of this speech,Pröbsting said the following: “I send my greetings to

all courageous Palestinians who are fighting fortheir freedom and against the dictatorship ofIsrael. With all our hearts we will stand with theThird Intifada until the State of Israel is abolishedand all people in Palestine can live together peacefully.”

In his interrogation, Pröbsting repeated what he hasstated repeatedly in public in speeches and writingsfor many years: He supports the one-state solutionfor Palestine, which means that all Palestinerefugees will have the right to return to their homes

and that the state of Israel should be replaced by asingle state of Palestinian and Jewish people. Whenthe police asked him if he supports terrorist attacks,he replied that he opposes terrorist attacks againstcivilians, but that he does support the armedresistance of the Palestinian people against theIsrael army...

We strongly protest any such judicial prosecution ofMichael Pröbsting and unequivocally reject thesupposedly illegal nature of his viewpoint onsolidarity with the Palestinian people and against

the State of Israel. It is obvious that these charges,brought up half a year after the incriminatingspeech, are part of a political offensive by pro-Israeli forces. Similarly, these same forces tried tocreate a scandal when another organization invitedthe Palestinian liberation fighter Leila Khaled to apublic meeting in Austria. In Britain Anti-Zionists arecurrently expelled from the Labour Party. In theUnited States supporters of the BDS campaign arefacing numerous pressures.

We reject the slanderous accusation of Anti-Zionismas a “new form of Anti-Semitism.” We are opposedto the State of Israel, not the Jewish people. Quitethe contrary, we share our Anti-Zionist convictions

not only with millions of people around the worldsupporting the Palestinian liberation struggle, butalso with many Jews who oppose Zionism eitherbecause of political or religious arguments – including the Israeli-Jewish members of the RCITsection in Israel / Occupied Palestine.

Abridged from “Stop Judicial Prosecution: Solidaritywith Palestine.”

Syria Burns The bombing of Syria continues unabated. Aleppo isstill under attack. The cries for Westernintervention to create a ‘no fly zone’ against thebombs are not heeded.

The US and NATO imperialists will not act to stopthe war in Syria after five years because theycannot agree to the terms of the revolutionaryopposition to end Assad's regime and bring aboutdemocracy. The revolution will not agree to Assad’sregime staying in power. The EU is also rapidlyabandoning democracy at home as it closes itsborders to immigrants and jails those who attemptto join the revolution.

The US and Russia bury their global differences touse the war against the Islamic State as a pretext tostop the Arab democratic revolution spreading from

Syria to the whole of MENA. This would give powerto the masses and put limits on the imperialistsplunder of the region’s resources.

The international working class cannot allow theSyrian Revolution to fail. The solution must comefrom workers everywhere providing material supportand send fighters to support the revolution.

For material aid to the Syrian Revolution!For the self-determination of the Kurds!For victorious Arab Revolution!

For a Federation of Socialist Republics of Mena!

http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=1578





http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/11/europe-syria-peril-burning-act









4

Orlando and the Right to Bear ArmsThe mass killing of 50 gay people in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, has once again thrownthe question or the right to bear arms into the limelight. The reaction to this crime is to blame iton homophobia, Islamic ‘terrorism’ and freely accessible guns. This builds support for the rulingclass agenda to disarm the working class or anyone profiled as a potential “terrorist”. We disagree.

The right to bear arms is a fundamental democratic right that we must defend as the capitalistruling classes everywhere resort to armed repression to force the working masses to pay for theterminal crisis of capitalism with their livelihoods and their lives.

Two examples of reactions to the Orlando shootingcalling for gun control:

“It's that outmoded part of the constitutionallowing the citizenry to bear arms that's the bigstumbling block.” And: “Our constitution isantiquated and obsolete. The constitution should

have been altered several times...now it's more ofa slave to the wealthy and powerful to use againstthe very people it was intended to protect.”

We reject this argument. The US constitutionempowered property owners which included slaveowners to own and bear arms in popular militias todefend a ‘free state’. It represented the bourgeoisconstitution that legitimates the ruling class toshoot the property-less when they rise up. Now thatbourgeois democracy extends to all citizens asproperty owners including workers who own their'labor' to sell, all can bear arms.

To suppress that right for all will not take it awayfrom the state which is now routinely executingunarmed people on the streets. The response fromblack activists is to bear arms in public to assertthat right which communists support. This is theembryo of a workers militia and workers defencecommittees against the police attempts to executeblacks and the bosses’ attempts to hire thugs toshoot militants to smash strikes and occupations.

The fact is that the US has created conditions at

home and abroad in which 'lone wolves' (individualsacting alone motivated by ‘terrorists’ or not) killscores of people. These killings cannot be stoppedby banning guns. Nor will a ban stop deaths fromgun crime which kills more people a year in, forexample, Chicago than in Libya. Gun crimes areoverwhelmingly the result of ‘crimes againstproperty’ which are endemic in capitalist classsociety where the proletariat is driven into poverty.

This is not about individual 'psychology' but classpower. As the crisis of US imperialism develops the

state will arm more paramilitaries to wipe outpopular resistance as 'crime' or 'terrorism'. Do wegive up the right to arms and surrender, or organise

armed resistance? We don't deny that right to thoseoppressed by the US abroad, why in the US itselfwhere the US working class has the potential powerto change the system?

The solution is to defend the right to bear arms sothat the exploited and oppressed working majority

can overthrow the militarised state and impose aworkers' state which can be defended from armedcounter-revolution!

Against those who have little faith in workers notshooting one another or executing non-workersarbitrarily, this wilfully ignores the reality. Thecapitalist state employs police and the military toexecute scores of worker every day. Workers needto be armed to defend their class despite beingdivided and driven by capitalism to kill one another.With capitalism in terminal crisis attacks on workerscan only get worse so that they need armed militiasto defend themselves.

If we take historical examples, the Russianrevolution would not have succeeded without thearming of the proletariat. The Tsar in 1905 provedthat when he shot down the unarmed masses.Kornilov who tried to smash the revolution in 1917failed because the workers were armed and his ownranks mutinied and joined the revolution. The coupagainst Allende in 1973 drives home the fact thatunless armed, workers united will always bedefeated.

Of course being armed is not sufficient as therevolution in Germany 1919 proved. The armedmasses who mutinied were fooled by the abdicationof the emperor and by the treacherous SocialDemocratic Party into disarming and voting for anew republic. The proletariat needs to be organisedand led by revolutionaries to build workers militias.Meanwhile those who are fighting for basicdemocratic rights as in Syria are forced to take uparms to defend themselves from imperialism and itsreactionary agents. That is the principle at stake:

the right to bear arms in self-defence from thearmed force of the capitalist state!




5

The UBI and the Transitional ProgramNot until bosses give back their profits to the generations of workers they stole them from will anyredistribution of income be more than a subsidy to the bosses. Notice how all the discussion aroundthe fashionable Universal Basic Income (UBI) is limited to what the bosses can afford to pay. This ismagical thinking. No way will capitalist corporations and banks agree to pay for full employment

and a living wage. Both have to be sacrificed in the impending global crash to restore the rate ofprofit.

This magical thinking has always been the fatal flaw ofsocial democracy – the illusion that there is a peaceful, gradual road to socialism by means of bosses agreeing to'fair shares' in the distribution of income. To questionthis assumption is to risk exposing the real truth ofcapitalism; that all income originates from the labour power of productive workers.

If that truth was our starting point the question wouldbe: why does capital have the right to exist and definethe terms of debate around how wages are determinedwhen it lives off the expropriation of surplus-value?

In this light it’s easy to see that the UBI is another bigcon to divert the class struggle away from fighting forcontrol of jobs and a living wage in the workplace andinto the dead end of parliament. If unions are too weakto win a living wage now they won’t be able to force aliving UBI out of the parliamentary talkshop.Parliamentary reforms that benefit workers areconcessions won from the bosses only when they fearbeing over-run by militant labour.

The reason the UBI has been dragged off the top shelf asa ‘reasonable’ demand by academic liberals, socialdemocrats and union bosses is because the bosses arescared a global economic crash will spark rising workeropposition to paying for the bosses crisis and threatenthe fragile hold the ruling class has over the ‘dangerous’class – the international proletariat.

The parties of the ‘left’ (Labour, Greens and Mana) areall run by a clique of pro-capitalist bureaucrats whosepay rests on the legal fiction that they represent theinterests of the working class. This means that theseparties are internally divided between a worker base andthe bureaucratic leadership. This internal class divisionwidens as these parties are torn between two classprograms – to serve the top 10% and their lackeys, or thebottom 90% expected to pay for the crisis with their livesand livelihoods.

A new mass workers party is needed arising out of a splitbetween the working class supporters of these partiesand their union affiliates and the rotten labourbureaucracy that act to tie their worker organisations tothe bosses state machine. Strong fighting, democraticunions that throw out their pro-capitalist leaders are theonly way to claw back the surplus expropriated fromworkers and build a power base capable of taking on the

ruling class and implementing a Transitional Program(TP) that takes workers all the way to socialism.

The Transitional Program

The Transitional Program (TP) puts up immediateeconomic demands that all workers need and are willingand able to fight for such as Jobs for all! A living wage! Solve unemployment by sharing work hours without lossof pay! These are immediate demands but they are also‘transitional’ because they cannot be won withoutworkers control of work.

So rather than waiting passively for a Government cargocult that will drop a living UBI from the sky even while aneconomic crash looms and global warming escalatesexponentially, fighting democratic unions will defendevery job with strikes and occupations against theiremployers. Because such struggles threaten the bosses’control of work they will be met with inevitable staterepression which will in turn force workers to developnew organisations and tactics to advance the defence oftheir class.

Inevitably employers backed by the state will try to denyworkers defence of economic rights to work and a livingwage by using the state forces to close down on freedomof expression, assembly, strike etc. When bosses use thelabor laws to call in the cops the workers response is tobreak the law with occupations defended by picket lines.

Furthermore, strike action to win in any worksite has tobe generalised to involve all militant workers in strugglein every sector of the economy. In that way workplacecommittees, strike committees and workers defenceguards, become coordinated locally, nationally andinternationally.

Building unity around these demands and the

organisations they throw up empowers workers to takeanother big step and organise a political general strikeaimed at defeating the employers and their statemachine and imposing workers ownership and control ofthe means of production.

Thus the Transitional Program begins with immediateeconomic and political demands and leads necessarily toworkers empowering themselves to the point where theycan overthrow of the capitalist state and create aWorkers’ Government able to implement a plannedsocialist economy - where the myth of the capitalist UBIis a dim memory for those whose social equity is based onthe principle: "From each according to their ability, to

each according to their need".




6

Karl Marx and the myth of “fair shares” The Panama Papers have caught the 'global rich' with their blind trusts exposed and this issupposed to tell us something, but what? Are the tax cheats just greedy parasites wanting to shirktheir social responsibility of paying their 'fair share' of taxes? After all are not all citizens obliged to

pay their 'fair share' to pay for the state and all its services to keep the system going?

If you think 'greed' is the problem you haven'tbeen paying attention for the last 150 yearsduring the rise and fall of capitalism.

Taxation is based on the myth that under capitalismeveryone is equal. But some bourgeois citizens areinherently more equal than others. Most work for aliving while those who own the means of productionlive off that work.

So inequality under capitalism has nothing to dowith greed and everything to do with class. Oneclass creates the wealth another expropriates partof it as profit. How can that be "fair?”

Marx prescribes a steep "progressive income tax" inthe Communist Manifesto but does not mean thattaxation has anything to do with "fairness". At bestit makes the capitalist forfeit some small part of hisprofits in order to preserve the profit system.

That is because Marx sees taxation as part of thedistribution of income that results from the

"unfair" class relations where one class producesand the other expropriates the wealth.

So while Marx definitely calls for "Taxing the Rich"in today's language, this is part of a program toprove to workers that it is futile to expect thatcapitalist exploitation can be remedied byprogressive taxes.

Exposing "blind trusts" to the daylight can onlyhelp erode the blind trust that workers have inthe "fairness" of capitalism.

But for that to happen workers have to fight for'progressive' taxes and not submit to the deliberatestrategy of capitalists to increase the rate ofexploitation in part by paying no, or token, taxes.Technically, this means that while all taxationcomes out of the value productive workers produce,the burden of taxation can influence how much goesto wages and how much goes to profits.

That is why the bosses always use their stateapparatus to shift the burden of taxation fromprofits to wages, increasing their share of the totalvalue produced by labour.

By resisting this strategy, workers learn that taxevasion is not about bosses’ greed but about

survival of the system itself. The bosses fear taxesas the harbinger of their own class expropriation.They are driven to hide their incomes as the rateof profit falls and risks a meltdown in the worldeconomy.

Here is the proof that tax evasion is not about greedbut about survival. When surplus capital that cannotbe invested productively to create more value,capitalists have to resort to gambling on existingcommodities. Such gambling becomes more andmore risky and ends up in global busts.

Stock markets plunge as profits fall and dividendsevaporate. Desperate attempts to prop them up byfirms and states buying up their own shares justcreates more debt with no prospect of being paidoff.

Money is hoarded rather than invested wheninterest rates are negative, and bond yields are nil.So if you are going to hoard money where betterthan secret offshore tax havens where the value of

you money erodes less rapidly because you pay notax?

Capitalism is collapsing as the hoarded profitscreated by generations of workers are now underthreat of going 'poof' like a bonfire of paper. Thisis not going to be pretty.

So when we cheer at the exposure of tax cheatingbosses we should reflect that this is only a smallstep in exposing the rotten, corrupt, destructivesociety that is capitalism today.

That is why we should take Dr Marx's prescription,that the solution to capitalist inequality cannot bethe mythical "fair shares" of the tax burden but theexpropriation of all the past surplus value ofworkers hoarded by the capitalist 'elite' thatsecretes its piles of wealth in offshore havens andmakes ready to flee the inevitable rise of a workersrevolution bent on expropriating their wealth

Expropriation of capital will allow a socialistsociety to produce and distribute wealthaccording to the only "fair share" principle: "Fromeach according to their ability, to each accordingto their need".




7

No Future for Capitalist WorkMain themes from the liberal Labour Party Fabian project on the Future of Work. Automation willreplace living labour and leave a mass of unemployed and casualised underemployed. Solutionsfocus on the UBI to ensure that income equity is not dependent on employment. I have addressed

the UBI as utopian in another blog. But what of the assumption that automation will displace work?

The impact of automation was predicted by KarlMarx around the time Aotearoa was being invadedby people with horses and carts. He argued thatmachines would never do away with human labourpower because it is necessary to invent, apply anduse machines to increase labour productivity inorder to maintain the rate of exploitation(appropriation of surplus labour) to extract profits.

However, a long time before the mass of workers

were displaced by machines, they would rise up andoverthrow the owners of machines and use them tobuild socialism.

Marx arrived at this prediction because he explainedthat capitalism was forced by its own laws ofdevelopment to go do down the road of destroyingits sources of wealth, both social labour and humanecology.

This proves that capitalism must ultimately exhaustits historic use-by date and be replaced by socialism

before it could destroy the pre-conditions forsocialism. Not the "state socialism" andStalinist/Maoist "communism" hate memes pushedby corporate media and post-modern discourse fordecades, but the real thing where labour is directlysocial and the social surplus is allocated collectivelyon the basis of need.

Under capitalism, the exploitation of wage labourmeans that the division of labour becomes polarisedbetween those highly exploited "technical" workers,underpaid "service" workers and a large and growingreserve army of unemployed. There is no way thatcapitalism can reverse this destructive trend. Nosignificant reforms are possible because they raisecosts when capital is facing a structural crisis offalling profits. Growing inequality is but a surfacesymptom of capitalism's historic impending demise.

As capitalism goes further into decline with all ofits destructive symptoms, it will be necessary tomobilise mass opposition to these symptoms byattacking the basic cause - capital's drive forprofits by making wage labour slave labour.

For example we know that corporates evade tax.They do this by hiding their profits. Our demand

must be to open the books. If they refuse then wedon't merely boycott them but strike for a livingwage and secure work. Refusal must be met byoccupations, workers control of production, and thecoordination of cooperatives locally, nationally andinternationally.

Corporate states spend trillions of workers' taxes onwars and military occupations of poor countries.They also militarise their "homelands" against

political opposition. We must not merely protestspending on arms and demand taxes fund socialwelfare, we have also to strike to stop foreign wars,build international brigades as in Spain in the 1930s,and form defence squads that protect strikes andoccupations.

The bosses want to turn us all into individual zerohour slaves. OK there is a positive side to this. Wereject employment on such terms with strikes andoccupations of all firms that attack labour's livingstandards. We defend occupations and build

collectives. When the banks ban cash or inflationmakes it worthless we go back to barter. All of thisserves to bring us closer to workers control over ourworking lives and living standards. Ourpowerlessness and alienation under capitalism istransformed into workers collective control over theconditions of production.

So while it is true that capitalism displaces livinglabour with machines, socialism uses those sameadvanced machines to reduce the sociallynecessary labour time we have to work by sharingall work with those who want to work: "from eachaccording to their ability, to each according totheir need".

The solution to the destruction of capitalist workmust be to expropriate capital (as accumulatedstolen labour time of generations of workers) and todistribute the productive output on the basis ofdemocratic planning.

Factored into the equations in determining theeconomic, social and political priorities will be theimpact of climate change which threatens any form

of social organisation, capitalist or socialist withhuman extinction.




8

NZ: The Fudget fiddles while Capitalism burns

The NACTS budget is really a fudget for trying to hide the growing weakness of NZ's neo-colonialeconomy behind a veil of spin. The Key regime hopes to promote business confidence in a climateof falling profits by 'tax cuts' made possible by cuts to public spending on the 'social wage' and by

'dividends' created by privatising state assets and plundering public resources such as water andfisheries. The NACTS cannot even pretend that NZ's GDP growth is based on a return to profits inthe private sector when the basis for growth is $30 billion in handouts to rebuild Christchurch andbillions more to farmers to intensify dairying. Moreover the coming crash of the world economyresulting from the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall (TRPF) must bring about a massivedestruction of value in fixed assets and commodities as well as workers living standards beforeprofits can recover.

So the coming crash has nothing to do with 'wrong'policies that have shifted wealth from production ofvalue to unproductive consumption (wrongly

labelled 'financialisation' today) for the benefit ofthe 'banksters' and rentiers. These are the necessaryeffects of a deeper underlying cause of crisis whichhas to do with the failure of capitalist production toproduce sufficient profits to justify investment innew production. The failure of profits drives moneyaway from productive investment to speculation inalready existing assets - land, gold, or any bet onfinancial ‘derivatives’ which looks like holding theirvalue'.

Do not mistake the current panicked rush to buycompany 'bonds' that earn more than negativeinterest rates or betting on commodity 'futures' asthe causes of the current economic stagnation.These are mere symptoms of hot money speculatingon the latest bubble. While neoclassical economistsincluding Keynesians share the assumption that themarket can return to equilibrium (i.e. stability)Marxists see all these signs as a vindication of Marx'stheory of crisis which predicts growing chaos anddisequilibrium until the capitalist system breaksdown and is replaced by a socialist system.

Marx on Classical Political Economy

Marx developed his theory of crisis out of a critiqueof classical political economy of Smith and Ricardo.Capitalist growth resulted from the three 'factors' ofthe economy, land, labour and capital, each earninga 'reward' (rent, wages, profits) for its economiccontribution. Each was seen as productive, becausewhile labour was productive of value, both land andcapital was necessary for its production.

Crises which interrupted the 'equilibrium' of thesethree ‘factors’ combining to ensure 'fair shares'

resulted from 'interference' of one or more at theexpense of the other(s). Since classical economicsreflected the interests of capital, it was land and

labour demanding excessive 'shares' that putpressure on the share of capital causing fallingprofits. Therefore, the classical explanation that

crises of falling profits could be overcome bycutting the share of land (rent) and labour (wages)was no self-righting market solution, but actually aclass struggle between the three classes over theshare of value produced by wage labour.

Marx critiqued this theory as bourgeois ideologymasking the actual social relations that determinedthe shares of these "revenue classes" based on theexploitation of wage labour. Wage labour could onlybe exploited because it was dispossessed of theownership of land and capital allowing capitalists totreat labour-power as a commodity. The wage wasthe exchange value of the labour time necessary forlabour-power to reproduce itself. But its use-valueto the capitalist was that without land and capital,labour could be forced to work longer hours thannecessary to create surplus-value out of which rentand profits could be expropriated. As proof he gavethe example of Mr Peel who migrated to the SwanRiver (Western Australia) with money, machines andmen. The men ‘shot through’ to the bush to carveout their own land as ‘independent’ owner-occupiers working for themselves, leaving him with

two factors, land and capital, but not the vital one – labour-power. The result: Mr Peel could not becomea capitalist and instead became a land agent andproperty speculator.

Marx continually warned that if the working classfailed to break with bourgeois ideology it wouldcontinue to wage it's "revenue class war" for 'fairshares' rather than overthrowing the 'wage-system'itself and with it the inherent inequality ofcapitalist production relations. (See Critique of theGotha Program) But revolutionary consciousness did

not fall from the sky. The rise of trades unions putlimits on profits so that capitalists could not forceup the rate of exploitation to overcome the TRPF

https://t.co/Oh6rn0qpa5


https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/










9

caused by a relative rise in investment in machinesthat did not produce value. As a result surpluscapital that could not be invested in production wasexported from the imperialist countries to thecolonial world to find cheap raw materials andlabour as ‘counter-tendencies’ (CTs) to the TRPR.

By the early 20th century the failure of the marketto prevent crises and restore equilibrium sawcapitalism enter its full-on imperialist stage wherecapitalism relied increasingly on state backed globalmonopolies fusing productive and banking capital as‘finance’ capital. This led to the rise of Labour andSocial Democratic parties advocating that workersas the majority take control of the state to regulatethe market and ensure 'equal shares' without theneed to overthrow capitalism.

It was no accident that these reformist parties

emerging in the imperialist countries where a layerof privileged workers could benefit from the super-exploitation of colonial empires as reformistgovernments legislated for 'fair shares' in thecolonial plunder. Lenin called these parties "socialimperialist" because they paid for their 'socialism' ahome by supporting imperialist super-exploitationabroad.

Enter Keynes

While accepting that capitalist social relations werehere to stay, Keynes and his followers adapted neo-

liberal economics to take advantage of themonopoly capitalist state. Keynes was responding tothe capitalist transition from 'competitive' to'monopoly state' capitalism. Far from interferingwith market equilibrium and causing crises,capitalist states were now necessary to overcomecrises. The market no longer determined pricesbased on market competition (or class struggle atthe level of 'revenue classes') but monopolies basedon giant global cartels backed by powerfulimperialist states. By over-riding the market the

state could theoretically prevent future crises andeven turn war spending into public works!

Lenin as the leading Marxist of the day extrapolatedMarx's theory of crisis to explain that imperialismwas necessary to overcome the limits of thenational economy in countering the TRPF. Theexport of capital enabled firms to locate newsources of cheap resources and cheap labour toprocess them. As a result new sources of value fromthe colonies acted to counter the TRPF andpostponing the demise of the capitalist system.

However imperialism could not overcome theinherent limits to capitalist growth. The‘underdevelopment’ of the forces of production in

the colonial and semi-colonial world based on theextraction of ‘absolute’ surplus value from cheaplabour-power could not stop the decline incapitalism's growth potential and re-emergence ofthe TRPF that would manifest itself in anincreasingly destructive struggle between the

imperialist powers to plunder the earth's diminishingresources.

The destructive decline of global capitalism intoworld war and depression posed the need forsocialist revolution for Lenin and Co. But Keynes andthe social democrats (Fabians, Labourites andStalinist economists like W.B. Sutch in NZ) regardedBolshevism was a greater evil than unregulatedcapitalism. They proposed that the state reform themarket by intervening to prevent crises and thusrestore 'fair shares' along with capitalist stability.

Yet the recent history of the global economy sincethe Great Depression of the 1930s proves that it isnot Keynesian policies of state intervention thatovercame crisis but depression and world war. Thisis why Marxists refer to the ‘welfare’ state as the‘warfare’ state. The post war boom was madepossible by the massive destruction of oldtechnology and workers living standards allowingthe introduction of new technology increasinglabour productivity (rate of exploitation) andrestoring the conditions for profitable production,albeit temporarily. Thus the post-war boom was nomore than a relatively brief period of real GDPgrowth before it once again faced the TRPF. By thelate 1960s the boom gave way to stagflation as priceinflation and wage inflation undermined realprofits. Once more boosting consumption failed torestore investment in unprofitable production.

The proof that Keynesianism failed was recognisedby the collapse of social democracy into neo-liberaleconomics marked by the destruction andrestructuring of capital as the state attempted torestore the conditions for profitable production. In

Aotearoa this was the basis of the “Rogernomic”counter-revolution by supply side monetarists whotook over the Labour Party. In the US and Britain itwas a similar counter-revolution the drove socialdemocracy to the right opening the road toReaganomics and Thatcherism then echoed by theClinton and Blairite “third way” camp.

Vindicating Marx

The recent history of capitalism has proven thatMarx was right. The capitalist state cannot stopcrises because it cannot control investment. Thestate is not class neutral sitting above the classstruggle but the instrument of capitalist class rule.




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The flaw in Keynes is that no matter how muchmoney the state prints, it will not be invested inproduction unless the rate of profit is restored. Butthe capitalist class will not forego its control overcapital and the working class will not to accept amassive attack on wages, conditions and rights.

The end of the post-war boom and onset of neo-liberal counter-revolution proved that onlydepression and war works to restore capitalistproduction. The neo-liberal counter-revolution didactivate CTs to the TRPF. Massive accumulatedsocial wealth in state assets were devalued andprivatised. Unions were smashed and wages andconditions driven down. The privatisation of stateassets and cuts in social spending reduced taxationon profits. The restoration of capitalism in Russiaand China returned these former bureaucraticworkers states to the world economy and creatednew sources of surplus-value that allowed the restof the world to survive the 2008 crisis.

But none of these CTs was sufficient to overcomethe general law of the imperialist epoch - thatcapitalism can no longer develop the forces ofproduction in general and must become increasinglydestructive to survive. The crisis of overproductionof capital due to the TRPF that began in the 1980shas yet to be resolved. The excess capital thatcould not be profitably reinvested despite thevarious CTs mentioned, were diverted into financialspeculation in existing assets. The Asian Crisis of’98, the Dotcom crisis of 2000 and the GFC of 2008all demonstrate that once created commodities that

are bought and sold may increase many times inprice but never in value. Money invested inspeculation on existing values does not producevalue or profits only asset bubbles. To restoreprofits all these bubbles must be burst.

If we look at China today we see a virtual laboratory

test of Marx vs Keynes. China kept the worldeconomy afloat since 2008 as the world’s mostefficient producer of commodities. But it is nowfacing its own TRPF and rather than restructure ordestroy non-performing firms and driving downwages and conditions, the state is using Keynesianspending to boost consumption. But all this has doneis to create a debt mountain in China well in excessof the global subprime debt of 2008. The massiveaccumulated global debt of multi trillions has yet tobe destroyed and continues to mount. That is whywe are facing a cataclysmic terminal crisis thatcombines a new global depression with world war,exacerbated by climate catastrophe. Eithercapitalism must die, or we, as workers, and ashumans, face extinction.

Never before has the need for the world’s workersto unite behind a program for socialist revolutionbeen more urgent. Never before has the need toread and understand, and then act on Marx been sourgent. Never before has the need for a new worldparty of socialist revolution based on the methodand program of the 1938 Transitional Programbecome so urgent. The cry of revolutionaries of“Socialism or death!” now becomes common sense.

Brazil: Popular Front and Counter-Revolution

against Socialist RevolutionThe international crisis of capitalism hit Brazil late but with savage blows. The country isexperiencing the worst recession in decades. Workers suffer delayed wages, inflation and

unemployment. The bourgeoisie and their media resorted to the campaign for impeachmentcreating the illusion that if the Workers Party (Partido de Trabalhadores–PT) was forced toleave government the situation would improve and that the end of corruption would beguaranteed by “Justice” applied in the course of the operation “Car Wash” investigation.

The fallacy of the popular front and its inability towithstand even a parliamentary attack from the right wasbuilt into the Dilma Rousseff 21st century Brazilian case.As in so many others, this Popular Front was a

transparent cross class alliance of guaranteed fragility,attempting the impossible, i.e. serving two class masters.

The agreement to abide a popular front means the rulingclass has to accept some appearance of accommodatingthe wishes of the working class. But the program of the

popular front is to defend capitalist power and propertyfor the duration of its periodic crisis. In the Brazilian casethe crisis has taken so sharp a turn that the bourgeoisieneeds to find a culprit even more than it needed thepopular electoral confirmation of 2014. With no way outfrom the late but inexorable effects of the global crisis of

capitalism, making Dilma Rousseff ‘walk- the-plank’ wasthe method chosen to hide the adoption of the entire




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neo-liberal austerity program required by the pro-western-bloc of the comprador bourgeoisie.

For the PT to retain power and be re-elected in 2014, ithad to bloc with the PMDB (Party of the DemocraticMovement of Brazil-a neo-liberal party of the capitalistclass.) A deal was made to run Michel Temer of the PMDBfor vice president, and it is he who has been installed inher place. This has brought no social peace and themasses remain on the streets in protests of Temer’severy political move, while there is neither social peaceamong the right, for whom his elevation has proved to beno panacea. Where Dilma’s piecemeal adoption ofneoliberal economic measures was as ineffective as itwas unpopular, Temer’s wholesale application finds nomass support what-so-ever.

The Past Catches Up

The election of the popular front in 2014 garnered 54million votes for Dilma/Temer against the 51 million cast

for the conservative PSDB (Brazilian Social DemocracyParty.) Which is to say inside thepopular front bloc the PT onlyreceived a plurality; Dilma was onlythe first choice of some of the 54million. In less than two years shewas removed from office by thevotes of 55 senators on May 12. VicePresident Michel Temer took officeduring the “suspension” and within18 days lost two cabinet ministers,forced to resign due to charges of‘being on the take.’ The masses

can see that the PMDB is just as, ifnot more implicated, than the PTlegislators in the various corruptioncases. Of the 24 ministersappointed by Temer, seven arecited in the complaints.

The Petrobras scandal reaches deepin all directions within the realm ofbourgeois politics. There isn’t evenany evidence of a will to installpersonalities who are not involved.It now seems the ruling class would

be happy enough to install a leadership that has not beenexposed. Recent leaks have exposed a parliamentaryeffort that can be called a conspiracy to use the Dilmaimpeachment as a smokescreen for suspending anyfurther Operation Car Wash investigation. And so theprotests continue as they have from day one. ‘THROWTEMER OUT!’ is the cry in a number of cities, such as inPorto Alegre, a city of 1.5 million where more than 20thousand people protested. Artists protested against theclosure of the Ministry of Culture and managed to reversethe measure and in several states the students haveoccupied the schools protesting the poor conditions ofeducation. On June 8th, the Wall St. Journal reported

that Temer has an approval rating of 11.8%.Ineffective strike action by PT-allied trade unionbureaucrats shows they never had any other strategy

than class collaboration, as represented in the popularfront.[1] Their announced one-day strike at Petrobras onJune 10th, against Temer and for Dilma, was a flop.Instinctively, the workers look for a different, adequateleadership whose call they will answer. Too late anappearance of a revolutionary workers’ leadership withits class-for-itself, internationalist program will only

embolden the anti-parliamentary far right. This far righthas hardly been heard from to date, contrary to thecommentary by Dilma apologists, Stalinists generally andthe liberal and reformist “Bolivarian socialism”cheerleaders. Workers in the main know there has beenno coup d’etat, noting the absence of tanks in thestreets.

The toothless response by the official trade unionleadership attests to the explosion of the project of theBRICS, which was sold to the working masses as analternative to socialist revolution, as a way to insulatethe participant nations from the 2008 economic crisis.

The promise of a ‘Market-Socialism’ in place of arevolutionary dictatorship of theproletariat was presented byLula/Chavez/Morales and theBolivarian Bourgeoisie as a ‘21stcentury socialism’ and the ‘Win-Win’ play which would link semi-colonies to the emergingChina/Russia imperialist bloc.This was supposed to deliver theworkers out from under the thumbof U.S. and EU imperialism. TheBRICS countries and the semi-

colonies who sought protectionunder their umbrella were to beprotected from the crisis affectingall super-exploited workers in thesemi-colonies by switching theirallegiance to the China/Russiabloc.

The PMDB program, “A Bridge tothe Future,” is the platform usedto unite the sectors of thebourgeois opposition and thedefecting PT right to form a new

government to put into practice the demands of theneoliberal austerity program. The interim governmentannounced that it will make pension reform and budgetcuts in health and education. There is little differencebetween these measures and those proposed by thepopular front.

On the surface, the chief difference appears to be theelimination of the bolsa familia, the food stampsprogram. But the cuts go deeper and the main differencebetween the immediate goals of the Temer clique andDilma is in relation to Petrobras. Temer wants to changethe current system of sharing the pre-salt geologicallayer offshore in favor of the private concessionaries.They call this Petrobras’ new deliver system forinternational oil companies. The current operatingregime has Petrobras as the sole operator of the oil and

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gas extraction. Petrobras as the sole extractionoperator has made many deals with internationalcompanies and has received loans from Chinese banks.Temer seeks to sell development leases for parcels of theconcessionaire to international oil companies to do theirown drilling. A leader of the Oil Workers Federationlinked to the Communist Party wrote a proposal which

calls for Petrobras to be the sole operator with a furthercapitalization of the company seeking funds and sellingshares to Chinese banks and companies represented bythe BRICS alliance.[2]

The crisis and the fragility of the interim governmentdemonstrate the difficulty of the bourgeoisie toimplement its program and resolve the political crisis inits favor. Demonstrations against the impeachment andnow against Temer are controlled by organizations linkedto the PT, such as CUT (United Confederation of Labor),UNE (National Union of Students) and the MST (LandlessWorkers Movement). All of the political “fight” staged by

the PT against the impeachment was based onagreements and frustrated maneuvers in parliament andthe judiciary, while within the labor movement theyacted to dismantle the strikes and keep the battleswithin the boundaries of economism, promoting thedepoliticization of the masses. The PT subordinated theinterests of workers to their reformist politics of alliancewith the bourgeoisie and now propose to limit the fightagainst impeachment and the interim government toproposals for agreements with the bourgeoisie thatrestore the popular front regime, enhance their interestsin the municipal elections of October of 2016 and to savethe PT from the Car Wash fallout, threatening especially

to Lula.Workers who have been fighting against impeachmentand the threat of coup, going out, taking to the streetsto kick out Temer, those who go on strike, students whotake over their schools and the many other popularmovements now in action all need to break with thePopular Front and the reformist politics of the PT! Wesee the call by CONLUTAS (National StrugglesCoordination -trade union federation) for a general strikeagainst the Temer government and we support it. Wewould obviously intervene in a very different way thanthe Moreno LIT-CI (Liga Internacional de los Trabajadores

– Cuarta Internacional) because the possibility exists thatthe 180 day suspension will elapse without the senateimpeachment of Dilma. So our comrades in Brazil insistfirst, last and always for class independence and nosupport what-so-ever for any popular front formula.

A government slogan must be popularized thatunmistakably advocates the dictatorship of theproletariat. No confusion on this score is permissible.Where in the U.S.A. today the slogan “For a Workers’Government” cannot be confused with any Kautskyanproject that preserves the rule of the bourgeoisparliament and fails to expropriate the capitalist classmaterially as well as politically. In south America,because of the failure of social democracy and thepopular front to deliver socialism in Nicaragua, ElSalvador, Bolivia, Venezuela and Brazil, these forces have

poisoned the concept of a workers’ government.Therefore it may be necessary to raise an even more

explicit and transparent slogan to rally the workers andfarmers to build their own assemblies, to arm themselvesboth politically and figuratively and to seize all powerinto their own hands and create the government of theworkers and poor farmers’ councils.

Only the class-independent struggle of the self-organizedworkers and the oppressed offers a comprehensive relieffrom the local effects of the world capitalist crisis. Whatis required is the elaboration of a revolutionary workersprogram that links every partial struggle to the conquestof all political power by workers democratic organs ofthe class as a whole. These organs, workers councilsbased on elected factory committees and popularorganizations’ representatives, will build workers’political general strikes defended by workers’ militia tostop Temer’s sociopathic neoliberal program ofimperialism’s dictates and stop the daily assaults on

workers, on the favela, students and the landless.Workers must prepare to face down not only socialcontrol enforced by the Military Police but also thesubsequent attempts by the ruling class to employ thearmed forces and the extra-parliamentary right tomassacre the workers’ revolutionary struggle foremancipation.

Kautskyans defend the popular front: or The Boywho Cried coup!

We watch with a certain amusement the mutualrecriminations of the Internationalist Group (IG) and theSpartacist League (SL) headquartered in the U.S.A. as

they accuse each other of serving as props for the PT. Inthe real world real trouble is made by real defenders ofthe popular front who even have generated a new 21stcentury theory of the United Front to cover for crossclass alliances.

The instability of the Temer government has increasedthe possibility that the impeachment will not pass in theSenate. In early June Dilma was interviewed on TVspeaking of new elections. The main centrist groups, thePSTU (United Socialist Workers Party), PSOL (Socialismand Liberty Party) and PCB (Brazilian Communist Party)say there is no coup and not to fight against the

impeachment. They say DON’T participate in thedemonstrations for fear of being seen as wanting tobring Dilma back and getting their hands dirty from theCar Wash scandal.

In October, 2016 Brazil will have municipal elections. InPorto Alegre, the PSOL, PSTU and PCB are discussing ajoint slate for these elections (where the PSOL candidateappears first in some polls) with the network (MarinaSilva), “Root” (a group calling themselves “new left”,)and PPL (the national developmental program group, aPMDB break-off from 2011.) These groups are creatingtheir own Popular Front cross class alliance; they want to

keep this rotten tradition alive to sell out the socialistrevolution.








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For the better part of two years the Liga Communista ofBrasil (LCT) and the Revolutionary CommunistInternationalist Tendency (RCIT) have been warning themasses of the threat of a coup in Brazil.[3] Then undersome tough questioning in the interview with GlennGreenwald of The Intercept,[4] Lula rendered theconcept more profound pronouncing it to be a ‘soft

coup’. Noam Chomsky added another qualifier bypronouncing the process “an institutional coup” and notto be out-qualified for non-use of class terms themisnamed RCIT pronounced what is going on as “anauthentic coup,” their proof, the fact that it is “soft” alla Lula and “institutional” a la Chomsky! All thesequalifiers are methods of defending the popular front tothe masses.

RCIT is crowing that now the coup is proven because notjust the politicians but the courts and military are behindthe impeachment. Any communist understands that thebosses’ state is a front for the ruling class. But plotting a

coup, or flag waving during an impeachment is not thesame as carrying it out.

The fact that these“astounding revelations”(RCIT is easily astounded itseems) prove that a coupplot is underway (but notmade public except forleaks) says no more than theruling class is preparing acoup that will be activatedonly if the impeachment fails.

We have to fight theimpeachment not to stopthe coup plot, but to havethe forces capable of defeating it when it arrives. If leftto the PT they will try to negotiate their political careers(elect Lula in 2018) and leave the workers exposed to thecoup plotters. Of course it is our task to split the PT frombelow on the basis of a workers United Front against afascist plot.

There are no circumstances where Trotskyists call uponworkers to shed blood for a capitalist state even when

led by a cross class alliance. We tell the workers that theimpeachment is to carry out the wishes of the bosses’international masters and that the time to organizeagainst a fascist coup is right now, before it is hatched.The impeachment is proceeding, but while it is likely it isnot guaranteed.

The RCIT believes the Armed Forces leaders have spokenbased upon their assent to what was pronouncedconstitutional by the Supreme Court. This may take inthe credulous on other continents where the militarycoup is an historical anomaly. The Armed Forces have notspoken, the fascists have not paid, fed, uniformed, andset on foot a mass movement and the modernisticpalaces in Brasilia are not filled with troops. Dilma andLula have their freedom of movement and association…

and of course the police are attacking the favelas neitherless nor more than under the popular front.

The Consequences of the Popular Front

The fake socialist Workers Party (PT) of Brazil hasbrought impeachment down upon itself. For decades theleadership of the PT has told the working class that they

do not need to maintain class independence, that they donot need to expropriate the capitalist class and thatsocial justice can be won by gaining electoral victoriesvia the mechanisms of the ‘democracy’ won in theoverthrow of the military junta.

Instead of fighting for socialist revolution, in arevolutionary Marxist sense, by occupying the factories,mines, mills and farms, nationalizing the commandingheights of the economy and putting them under workers’control and self-management, the petty bourgeois ex-guerrillas made common cause with the socialdemocratic leaders of the metal workers union, telling

the workers that social and economic justice is anincremental process of reform that can be won bypolitical wheeling anddealing.

Unable to win politicalpower on its own, theWorkers Party formed thePopular Front government(a.k.a. the People’s Front)for 14 years by makingalliance with “radical” and“progressive” capitalist

parties. In so doing the PTtold the workers that theyhad to surrender classindependence in order to

get BOTH a shot at power and a piece of the pie. Thatpiece of the pie arrived as a “family grant” (bolsa familia) to make a modicum of food available for thepoorest of the poor. The ‘21st century socialism’ offeredby the PT was not unlike President Lyndon Johnson’s‘Great Society’ food stamps program. Not unlikeAristide’s Haiti, Lula’s government lifted the poorest upfrom total destitution to an economic condition bestdescribed as misery. This, the opportunist left in Brazil

and elsewhere, tells workers, was the best we shouldexpect and a great step forward. This chatter wasrepeated ad nausem by the imperialist left, happilycheering on the PT, the Bolivarian “revolution” and therise of the BRICS as the ‘Win-Win’ path toward “21stcentury socialism.”

While the first world plunged into depression in 2008,China’s economy was able to sustain world capitalism fora time by the use of massive governmental investmentsin housing and infrastructural projects, but the “Chineseengine” could not sustain its independence from theglobal crisis of the world economy forever and therespite it provided to the BRICS eventually evaporated.

Many of the “leftist” organizations who are against theimpeachment defend the Popular Front government as












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the “lesser evil” in relation to the right and the Temergovernment. They argue that the right wing governmentis more linked to U.S. imperialism and they defend China,Russia and the BRICS as an anti-imperialist alternative(read Anti-Imperialist United Front.) But China and Russiaare imperialist countries. The current capitalist crisis isshaking the U.S. world hegemony and intensifies the

competition between the U.S./EU imperialist blocs, andthat of China and Russia. The increase of the influence ofChinese capital in Latin America is not an anti-imperialistalternative for the working class. In the face of inter-imperialist struggle the workers must maintain classindependence and fight against both imperialist blocs.

The Bankruptcy of “21st century socialism” has beenexposed for years in Venezuela, Argentina and Cuba. Thelife of workers today in Venezuela is not socialism, but acapitalism in deep crisis, in which a government said tobe “left” manages capitalism without the approval of theU.S. ruling class. This faux socialism offers only

destitution for the workers. The U.S. ruling class hascontinuously connived at toppling the PSUV governmentin Caracas, longing to tighten the screws on theVenezuelan masses. In Argentina, where the governmentof the “left” opened the country for investments fromChina, the masses did not escape the damage caused bythe capitalist crisis and the Peronists eventually lost theelections to the “conservative” right. Today, the Peronistbureaucracy that controls the main organizations of theworkers is a major obstacle to the independent struggleagainst the Macri government. The destruction of theCuban deformed workers state at the hands of theBolivarian “market socialism” backed by Chinese

imperialism is an historic defeat for the working massesof Latin America and the international working class atthe hands of this international class collaborationist Anti-imperialist United Front.

The Revolutionary Path Forward

Unlike the ultra-left and sectarians who run from thefight against impeachment because they do not want tobe associated with the Dilma/Lula cabal leading the PTand their petty corruptions, and in particular their crimesagainst the working class and poor, the LCC (LiaisonCommittee of Communists) internationally and our sisterorganization the RWG (Revolutionary Workers Group) in

Brazil fought against the impeachment and thecontinuing threat of a coup. At all times we warn themasses that the PT-led popular front has been imposingthe austerity, has run a war against the poor in thefavelas and favored the developers in the build up to theworld cup and Olympics. Favored them over the needsthe people and has been allying itself with the risingimperialist bloc of China/Russia and the BRICS.We fight against the impeachment because theimpeachment is not about Dilma, but is the preferredmethod of the ruling class to assert an alliance with theU.S./E.U. imperialist bloc to roll back the social gains themasses won over the last 14 years, such as Bolsa Familia,the Prouni (university for all), and Mi Casa Mi Vida (homeownership program). We defend every social gain wonby the masses and never attribute them to the party

in power but to the pressure the masses exerted forchange. Just like the “Great Society” in the U.S.A. underJohnson, which brought Food Stamps, Head Start, theCivil Rights Act, and “fair housing,” we know the gainswere won by the masses in the streets demandingeconomic and social justice, not by the benevolence ofthe ruling class. The pre-salt oil and gas,[5] which

promised to be a bonanza for the state treasury hassuffered under the falling energy pricing and theimpeachment leaders and big sectors of the bourgeoisiewant to privatize Petrobras and the social resources aspart of the neo-liberal drive. These big capitalists fundedand put their white middle class and techno-manageriallayers into the streets forming massive anti-corruptiondemonstrations which have since faded away as thecorruption exposes the right wing politicians, the chosendarlings of U.S./EU imperialists and the big Braziliancapitalists.

It is not unlikely that the truth of the corruption may

defuse the impeachment and that the Temer governmentwill not be able to sustain itself, again raising the threatof a military coup to enforce and extend theprivatizations, the deconstruction of the social gains anda shift of global alliances. But for communists this doesnot mean we embrace another popular front cross classgovernment.

The popular front and the bloc with China/Russia cannotdeliver and sustain social gains. This can only be done byindependent working class mobilizations that build organsof workers power in every factory and work place, amongthe landless and poor and create popular assemblies thatarm the masses against the coup both programmaticallyand figuratively.

The alternative for the working class in Latin America isclass independence from the bourgeoisie, dual powerorgans such as factory committees and self-defensemilitia and their own internationalist revolutionary partyto fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat. This wouldbe a workers’ government that expropriates thebourgeoisie and the imperialists properties and foreigndirect investments. This is the only way for the workingclass to stop the advance of the right and fascism andfree itself from the crippling yoke of imperialism, bothimperialist blocs and the wage-slavery system.

Down with any future popular front of the

PSTU/CUT/UNE/MST et.al. with the PT and thebourgeoisie!

Build Working class councils and militias to

defend the class from the state forces!

Repudiate the national debt! Repudiate the

Cup and Olympic debt!

For a living wage, free education, health,

housing and social security!

Unite all the workers and peasants in strugglein a national conference to prepare for a

general strike!








15

For the indefinite Political General Strike to

unite the proletariat and to fight for a

Workers and Peasants Government!

For a mass Revolutionary Party and

Revolutionary Program!

For a New World Party of Socialist

Revolution!

Expropriate all imperialist and national

capitalist property!

Institute workers control of the means of

production. For a national plan of productionfor need not profit!

For a Workers’ and Peasants’ Government

and a Socialist United States of the Americas!

[1] Upstream, “’No impact’ from 24-hour Brazilstrike”http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/1435248/no-impact-from-24-hour-brazil-strike

[2] Vermelho, “Aldemir Caetano: Petrobras deverenegociar dívida e se capitalizer” www.vermelho.org.br/noticia/275305-2

[3] Remarkably, the RCIT and Liga Communista havevalidated the terminology of Lula (“soft coup”) andChomsky (“institutional coup.”) This gets more renegadeall the time, but as hard as they try to cover up theiradaptations, each attempt is just as transparent! To wit;

“The history of the class struggle is not familiar only withoutright military coups. It also has experienced “soft” or“institutional” coups. Hitler, by the way, came to powerin an “institutional” way, with no formal coup. The samehappened in Honduras in 2009 and in Paraguay in 2012.Those who contend that only a military coup is anauthentic coup are guilty of formalism.” http://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/latin-america/brazil-temer-government/

NZ Housing Crisis is Class WarThe selling off of state houses is an act of class war. But the act of building them by the FirstLabour Government was no less an act of class war. The bosses had to concede welfare reforms toensure the workers were fit for exploitation and to stabilise the economy. These soon gave way toco-opting workers to fight in the Second World War. The selling off of state houses is evidence thatKiwi capitalism is Kaput; that profits are falling so that the NACTS have to sell state houses tobalance the budget for tax cuts, and that workers today have to provide much of their health,education and housing costs out of their shrinking wage packets. That’s why its class war!

Welfare or Warfare State?

Labourite welfarism was not mark the end of classwar since. Depression and world warproved that class war was alive asworkers were forced to kill oneanother to defend their capitalistbosses.

Nor was the postwar boom the end ofclass war as it could not havehappened without the wartimedestruction which restored the

conditions for a return to profits – thereplacement of old inefficient plantand machinery with new technologyand increased workers exploitation.

It follows that the end of the post-war boom in the early 70s was not thereturn of class war, merely its newform. The Keynesians were routed and the neo-liberals set about using the state to redirectwelfare concessions back to profits. Privatisingpublic assets is a part of this.

Capitalism is inherently violent. Depression killsand when workers resist they are killed. Wars todefend capitalism kill. The state is defined as the

repository of ruling class violence. Strikes are metwith strike breakers. Revolution is met withfascism. There can be no class peace while there

is class war. Class war is a zero-sumgame. Only one class can win.

The working class is the greatmajority, it does not need to useviolence other than to resist theviolence used against it. The bestexample of this truth is the periodfrom 1917 to 1921 in Russia whenviolence was initiated by the Tsarist

regime and the imperialist rulingclasses to smash the revolution. Theyall decided that the real class enemywas the Soviet state. The workersstate stopped fighting Germany on theside of Britain and France and signeda peace treaty. It then had to mobilise

the Red Army against an invasion of imperialisttroops and Tsarist forces on 7 separate fronts fromVladivostok to Finland.

It’s easy to see which class retains its power to

exploit by violence and which class must useviolence to defend its resistance to exploitationand oppression.

http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=1640#_ednref1


http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/1435248/no-impact-from-24-hour-brazil-strike






http://www.vermelho.org.br/noticia/275305-2




http://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/latin-america/brazil-temer-government/



http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/05/20/the-housing-crisis-is-a-class-war/#sthash.4n5ayGO9.dpuf














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What We Fight For

Overthrow CapitalismHistorically, capitalism expanded world-wide to freemuch of humanity from the bonds of feudal or tribalsociety, and developed the economy, society andculture to a new higher level. But it could only dothis by exploiting the labour of the productiveclasses to make its profits. To survive, capitalismbecame increasingly destructive of "nature" andhumanity. In the early 20th century it entered theepoch of imperialism in which successive crisesunleashed wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions. Today we fight to end capitalism’swars, famine, oppression and injustice, bymobilising workers to overthrow their own rulingclasses and bring to an end the rotten, exploitative

and oppressive society that has exceeded its use-bydate.

Fight for SocialismBy the 20th century, capitalism had created thepre-conditions for socialism –a world-wide workingclass and modern industry capable of meeting allour basic needs. The potential to eliminate poverty,starvation, disease and war has long existed. TheOctober Revolution proved this to be true, bringingpeace, bread and land to millions. But it becamethe victim of the combined assault of imperialismand Stalinism. After 1924 the USSR, along with itsdeformed offspring in Europe, degenerated backtowards capitalism. In the absence of a workerspolitical revolution, capitalism was restoredbetween 1990 and 1992. Vietnam and China thenfollowed. In the 21sst century only Cuba and NorthKorea survive as degenerate workers states. Weunconditionally defend these states againstcapitalism and fight for political revolution tooverthrow the bureaucracy as part of worldsocialism.

Defend Marxism

While the economic conditions for socialism existtoday, standing between the working class andsocialism are political, social and cultural barriers.They are the capitalist state and bourgeois ideologyand its agents. These agents claim that Marxism isdead and capitalism need not be exploitative. Wesay that Marxism is a living science that explainsboth capitalism’s continued exploitation and itsattempts to hide class exploitation behind the

appearance of individual "freedom" and "equality". Itreveals how and why the reformist, Stalinist andcentrist misleaders of the working class tie workersto bourgeois ideas of nationalism, racism, sexism

and equality. Such false beliefs will be explodedwhen the struggle against the inequality, injustice,anarchy and barbarism of capitalism in crisis, led bya revolutionary Marxist party, produces arevolutionary class-consciousness.

For a Revolutionary PartyThe bourgeois and its agents condemn the Marxistparty as totalitarian. We say that without ademocratic and a centrally organised party therecan be no revolution. We base our beliefs on therevolutionary tradition of Bolshevism and

Trotskyism. Such a party, armed with a transitionalprogram, forms a bridge that joins the daily fight todefend all the past and present gains won fromcapitalism, to the victorious socialist revolution.Defensive struggles for bourgeois rights andfreedoms, for decent wages and conditions, will linkup the struggles of workers of all nationalities,genders, ethnicities and sexual orientations,bringing about movements for workers control,political strikes and the arming of the working class,as necessary steps to workers' power and thesmashing of the bourgeois state. Along the way,

workers will learn that each new step is one ofmany in a long march to revolutionise every barrierput in the path to the victorious revolution.

Fight for CommunismCommunism stands for the creation of a classless,stateless society beyond socialism that is capable ofmeeting all human needs. Against the ruling classlies that capitalism can be made "fair" for all; thatnature can be "conserved"; that socialism andcommunism are "dead"; we raise the red flag ofcommunism to keep alive the revolutionary

tradition of the' Communist Manifesto of 1848, theBolshevik-led October Revolution; the ThirdCommunist International until 1924, therevolutionary Fourth International up to 1940 beforeits collapse into centrism. We fight to build a new,Fifth, Communist International, as a world party ofsocialism capable of leading workers to a victoriousstruggle for socialism.

For a New World Party of Socialism!

Class Struggle is the bi-Monthly paper of the Communist Workers’ Group of New Zealand/Aotearoa, in a

Liaison Committee with Communist Workers’ Group (USA) and Revolutionary Workers’ Group

(Zimbabwe)Class Struggle and most articles are online at http://redrave.blogspot.com Phone [email protected] Archive of publications before 2006 http://communistworker.blogspot.com/

http://redrave.blogspot.com/


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http://communistworker.blogspot.com/



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Documents

Class Struggle 117 Winter