In June this year President, Emerson Mnangagwa announced the next election dates. So all workers must consider the state’s balance sheet. The national debt to GDP ratio explodes year over year peaking to 102.33% in 2023, with our lives in hock to imperialist finance capital year over year into the future. Zimbabwe experienced another round of hyperinflation hitting a high of 175.8% in June retreating in July to 101.5% . This is how our ruling class imposes its debts on us, as long as we let them.
This is the second time, the other was last year around the same period, that in a short space of time the incomes of workers were wiped out by over 500 per cent with prices of basic goods and services ballooning at an absurd pace whilst incomes remain stagnant. Their debt imposed on the masses poses the question. For the working class to survive the capitalist system at home and imperialism must die. The working class needs to take control of wages and prices! Only the Revolutionary Workers Group(RWG) has a program to stop inflation. Our transitional program completes the national democratic revolution, it breaks the debt trap by workers self management and control of the big national and foreign businesses, industries, mines, and lands.
The immediate background to this is the neo liberal policies of the second regime which devalued incomes and savings by equating the values of the local currency and that of the US dollar in 2018 followed by a directive scrapping the use of other currencies other than the local one without express permission via the law. We need the laws to be written by and for the working masses, the poor and landless farmers. Our transitional program creates a bridge to the masses writing the laws that govern the economy, and that bridge is through class struggle, self-organisation and political independence from the capitalist class both foreign and domestic.
Through these raft of policies the state ensured that business and government made massive profits and surpluses respectively whilst the working masses continued to pay for the crisis through devalued wages right through the Covid-19 era. Internationally the last five years have generally been characterised by slow growth and a recession during the Covid-19 era with governments, from imperialist centres and semi colonies, resorting to attacks on incomes and working conditions to navigate the crisis of falling profitability.
STATE OF THE WORKING CLASS
The state of the working class is dire. De-industrialisation and informalisation of the economy has drastically reduced the numbers and quality of employed workers. Workers in formal employment now constitute a minority of the working population which is dominated by informal or self-employed workers with a large number of unemployed on the margins. This objective situation has weakened the working class coupled with subjective actions by leaders which have rendered the class redundant and docile in the face of attacks by capital. Very few trade unions are still standing up to attacks by both business and capital as they force on the working class the burden of paying for the crisis of capitalism in a subdued semi colony.
The situation has been made worse by the capture by the ruling party in alliance with its Chinese and Russian masters of a leading faction in the main trade union federation the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) at the 2021 congress resulting in the up to now dominant pro main opposition, Citizens Coalition For Change(CCC), faction being vanquished. Despite being aligned to the opposition the former leaders engaged in actions which despite being insufficiently prepared provided opportunity for deepening and broadening fight backs.
Today even token action has become taboo with the last nail in the coffin being the suspension of a militant trade unionist on spurious charges in desperate attempts to weed the federation of any alternative voices. The recent call by workers for action against useless local currency(ZWL) wages and in support of a petition to stop the president from signing the Labour Amendment Bill was actively sabotaged by the federation. Workers should organise themselves on the ground to conquer unions and a federation which are independent of various wings of imperialism through total workers control and militant action.
FORTHCOMING ELECTIONS
On 23 August presidential, legislative and council elections will be held. This will be the second time Zimbabweans go to a poll since the advent of the post-coup second republic. In the 2018 elections we called on workers to boycott the plebiscite as a contest between bourgeoise parties in which workers had no viable representative. Our assessment is that the election is heavily tilted in favour of the ruling party which has manipulated the pre-election environment as well capturing the election management body, Zimbabwe Election Commission (ZEC), despite its core base of the peasantry and beneficiaries of mining claims and residential stands in the cities and peri urban areas. South Africa Federation of Trade Unions(SAFTU), in its statement on the elections, acknowledged that the elections will not be free and fair and are essentially a contest between parties that represent the reigning and rising wings of imperialism. The opposition CCC enjoys massive support across the population especially from workers, informal workers, unemployed youths and urban poor. A large number of the peasantry also support it. The continued economic crisis and absence of a viable working class alternative have all worked in favour of the opposition despite its pro-capital and impractical Manifesto.
The chances of the opposition in this election can, to an extent, be favoured by the relative access to rural areas, digital innovation and cracks within the ruling party and regime which can manifest in the conduct of ZEC, the courts and security apparatus. Its greatest challenge will be the entrenched apathy among its support base and its organisational capacity as a result of shambolic primaries and sidelining of key leaders and groups. To its credit CCC did survive an onslaught to capture and/or crush it by the ruling party using an array of strategies soon after the death of its founding leader in 2018. It has emerged as a strong petit bourgeoisie party rising on the desperate support of the working class and poor masses eager for “change”. Despite the economic crisis and huge support, its ascendancy to political power depends to the extent to which ZEC, the courts and security forces are “pressured” to respect the will of the “people” by the working masses, ruling party factions, observers and most importantly the different wings of imperialism.
LEFT DIVISIONS ON PARTICIPATION OF WORKERS
Three distinct positions have emerged on the attitude organised labour, the working masses, youths/students, progressive movements, radical intellectuals and socialists should take on the impending elections. Two are on extreme ends with one occupying the middle space. The first one is that ‘…let us fully and unconditionally support the viable opposition, CCC, as the best foot forward to defeat the regime and usher in democracy first. Everything else, including key workers’ demands, would follow from this.’ No conditions just hope for the better thus giving the opposition a blank cheque. This position is being propelled by the pro opposition bureaucrats with some workers in tow. The second, and middle of the road, position is, that ‘…despite the character of the main opposition and facing a formidable and ruthless dictatorship workers cannot stand aside and have to offer conditional support to the viable opposition, CCC, by tabling workers demands to it.’ The main reason for this is the entrenching of an authoritarian dictatorship of the military supported regime that has closed all democratic space through crushing protests and strikes as well as persecuting and jailing activists and workers. A section of the working class and socialist organisations champion this call. They argue that not doing so will alienate the left from the workers still under the grip of liberal illusions.
The last position characterises elections as a bourgeoisie democratic ritual more so if it is a contest between capitalist parties. In the absence of a workers or centrist party workers would be called on to boycott the elections and concentrate on building their forces to fight neoliberalism and dictatorship in alliance with progressive sectors of society. It argues that, firstly, it is naive for workers to think that merely participating in an election being run by an authoritarian and neoliberal coup dynasty (waiting for turns to rule) can usher in a new government. Secondly, it is disingenuous to suggest that a new petit bourgeoisie neoliberal (anti-worker) government brings about democracy and good conditions for workers.
It is true that workers still have faith in CCC because of its roots in the working class but we cannot run away from the fact that once in power CCC will not serve workers but capital so it is our duty to point out clearly that a CCC victory will not fundamentally change the situation of workers. The condition of workers can only be transformed through struggle. It is not in dispute that we are in a semi-colonial authoritarian state presided over by a comprador bourgeoisie class managing the economy on behalf of both Western and Eastern imperialism and local capitalists whilst looting massively. It is doing everything to close the democratic space and take away workers rights simply because that is demanded by imperialism facing acute crisis coupled to late primitive accumulation.
“Crony capitalism” is small fish compared to traditional, historic capitalism and imperialism despite its apparent concrete and immediate form. It is expressed as anachronistic “primitive accumulation” which involves overt looting and corruption, actions that have been disguised by the big mafia through legal and ideological smokescreens. The basic proposition is that the working class should not rely on elections to change its situation. Instead it must take it upon itself to organise and lead the fight for basic social and economic rights and interests.
TASKS OF REVOLUTIONARIES FACING MONOPOLY CAPITALIST STATES
The level of democracy corresponds to the economic stability of a given country. It is naive to think that any new leaders would be neutral on labour and democracy issues especially now when the capitalist system threatens human existence and nature. An example is Zambia where the “liberal” Hichilema is already closing democratic space by blocking the opposition from holding rallies as the economic situation begins to deteriorate with the price of basic goods like mealie meal skyrocketing. The form of a bourgeoisie regime or state does matter to the working class in proportion to its level of organisation and preparedness to fight.
In Egypt and Sudan workers played a key role in bringing down brutal dictators despite subsequent retreat as a result of insufficient organisational and ideological independence. The crisis of the working class in Zimbabwe is a crisis of working class leadership. A liberal state can change into a dictatorial one and vice versa due to objective conditions and not subjective choices. Why do workers have to wait for elections to fight a dictator who is in charge of the elections when it could have unleashed the mighty power of the working class? What we are seeing is the deliberate design by labour leaders to ignore basic working class principles only to stampede behind a liberal regime as part of a counter-revolutionary global popular front with imperialism.
What then should be the attitude of revolutionaries to an election in which there is no workers’ alternative yet the issue of protecting the democratic space is of great importance? The ruling regime has become so vicious and brazen that in the near future it would be almost impossible to organise if workers do not act in time. The recently passed Labour Amendment Act makes it impossible to engage in a lawful strike whilst punishing severely anyone involved in collective job action, the bedrock of working class resistance and advancement of its interests. Other laws have been enacted to criminalise receiving support and solidarity from outside as well as making it impossible for community organisations to operate. What is more threatening is the lurking military faction of the regime waiting for total control and imposition of deep attacks on workers on the basis of a militarised state like Rwanda and Thailand. That would spell doom for the workers and must be resisted.
URGENT TASKS
Workers should not wait for five years to fight dictatorship and poverty through a popular front with an anti worker petit bourgeoisie party that is controlled by Western imperialism through the Brenthurst Foundation, a rabid anti worker outfit. Any call for support of the main opposition is a deliberate ploy to deliver the working class to imperialism disarming them for imminent struggles ahead, no matter the outcome of the elections. A united, mobilised and independent platform of workers alongside other exploited and oppressed groups can fight the dictatorship better.
Workers must fight and defeat partisan bureaucrats tying them to different imperialist wings thereby demobilising them. Ultimately, the question of working class action is a question of leadership and workers control of unions. We cannot rely on China to resolve our problems brought to us by western exploitation. Workers need to organise councils in the factories, build the unions and councils and coordinate them across Southern Africa that fight and are managed democratically, up to and including the insurrection by a Government of Workers and poor Farmers!
We recognise the counter-revolutionary character of the situation that requires us to advance our program of building an Anti-imperialist United Front(AIUF) of Southern African workers and poor farmers to resist the imposition of a regional and global Imperialist Popular Front(IPF) behind rival imperialist blocs East and West. For us in the first instance this is a matter of fighting imperialist proxy wars and building the international party to overcome the crisis of revolutionary leadership by means of militant propaganda for Trotskyism and Leninism.
For a sliding scale of wages and prices and employment for all who can work; working conditions should improve for all workers!
For the introduction of state projects to employ all the unemployed; central and local government must stop the attacks on vendors!
Land must be distributed to all poor peasants together with a state bank to provide inputs to all small farmers!
Jobs for all with a reduction in working hours until all who want to work can find a job!
To provide jobs for all big and imperialist assets must be nationalised and put under workers control and self-management!
Workers form action committees to lead the resistance to the growing attacks on the wages and working conditions of the poor and the livelihood of the majority poor!
We call for free and quality health care, housing and education for all!
Workers break with CCC and ZANU (PF) and form a worker’s party that truly champions the interests of workers and poor masses!
Workers form rank and file bodies to lead action in all unions and break with the reformist trade union leadership!
For a workers state that defends workers and peasants against the local and foreign capitalists!
No to US/EU and China/Russia imperialism fronted by the two leading parties!
No to reformism, centrism and fake Trotskyism, build a fighting socialist party!
For a workers and peasants’ government on the basis of the armed people to implement decisions that benefit the workers and the poor!
For an African socialist revolution as part of the international revolution that alone can guarantee a better life for all!
For a new World Party of Socialist Revolution based on the Transitional Program of 1938 to lead the revolution to end capitalism and open the road to socialism!
In a few days’ time BRICS nations, comprising two emerging imperialist powers and three advanced semi colonies, will meet in South Africa (SA). For the first time, one of the leading members of the grouping, Vladimir Putin of Russia, will be absent following manoeuvres by traditional imperialists, using the International Criminal Court (ICC), to disrupt the gathering. The meeting takes place at an important juncture in the development, or rather degeneration, of global imperialism. The proxy war in Ukraine, pitting NATO and Russia over the control of Eastern Europe, is the main feature of imperialist tension and aggression in frantic attempts to salvage the sure decline and death of capitalism without regard for the fate of humanity and nature. Many semi colonial states have applied to be part of the grouping and in most likelihood will be admitted.
The bloc is an international alliance of former deformed/degenerated workers states and former western colonies and semi-colonies for the purpose of projecting the economic and strategic interests of China and Russia as emerging imperialist nations engaged in a vicious war with their western counterparts for the extraction of surplus value and guarantee of key resources. One subject likely to be on the Agenda in South Africa is ‘de-dolarisation’. BRICS members and prospective members are building closer trading relations paid by currency swaps. Brazil (and Argentina which is a prospective member) are already paying for imports with their own currencies. The UAE and India recently agreed to trade in oil with their own currencies. The effects will be to trade with partners without being forced to use the US$. The advantage of de-dolarisation is that it undermines one basic mechanism which exploits the oppressed countries.
The US$ is a fiat currency which is overvalued due to its role as a reserve currency. This undervalues other currencies relative to the US$ allowing a transfer of value from oppressed countries to the US. As more nations are attracted to the new trading bloc the US$ will gradually devalue weakening the financial hegemony of US imperialism. Whether de-dollarisation brings genuine economic independence to the BRICs nations from Russia and China remains to be seen. As imperialist powers they cannot afford to allow the genuine national self-determination of their economic partners. Of course, as agents of Russia and China, those in government and the labour movement in the oppressed members of BRICS, and who bought and paid for, promote the narrative of a multipolar world based on equality and sovereignty, using this prospect to sell BRICS membership to the masses as the road to national independence and freedom.
The attitude of so-called Marxists on the nature of China and Russia informs their position on the war in Ukraine and has influenced their characterisation of the role of BRICS in semi colonial countries like South Africa. Failure to recognise the imperialist nature of the two states has led to either defense of these countries as “progressive” anti-imperialist nations fighting for a “fair” multi polar world or exaggerating the influence and hegemony of the west. Either way the implication of such a view on the role these nations are playing in semi-colonial states is that they play a progressive role that is beneficial to them all. Nothing can be further from the truth. The relationship with Russia/China is one of unequals riding on the misery of workers and poor peasants who are affected by poor working conditions and displacements to make way for extraction of vital mineral resources and surplus value.
The SA Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is an excellent example of the new “progressive” popular front between a radical petit bourgeoisie party representing the ”Pan African” section of the national bourgeoisie in alliance with Chinese and Russian imperialism hiding behind the facade of mutual benefit. Malema is open about his admiration for Cuba as a model for future economic development in South Africa. China has found a reliable partner in the EFF which uses clever rhetoric to hoodwink the masses shifting focus from the African National Congress(ANC) which is reluctant to sever ties with Western Imperialism and the Maoist Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (SRWP) which has failed to build a strong mass base in the working class. The bureaucrats of the South Africa Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) have delivered the workers to the dead end of the EFF-China/Russia Popular Front to ensure a compliant and distracted labour force. As in Cuba and other Bolivarian states this alliance comes at the cost of workers’ rights and acute exploitation. Petit bourgeoisie radical nationalist parties like the EFF have anchored themselves on pseudo Marxism with their radical rhetoric capturing thousands in the working class. An example of China’s influence on political parties across Africa is that of the leader of the Socialist Party of Zambia, allies of SRWP, who has openly voiced support for the bourgeoisie Zimbabwe African National Union(ZANU-PF) in the coming elections.
Recently a coup took place in Niger ousting the pro France president and government. The coupists claim they were forced to act as a result of the deteriorating security situation in the country, a key reason given by other western African countries which have experienced a coup recently, Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso. Burkina Faso’s coup regime supports the coup in Niger and injects a strong advocacy for the Cuban and Boliviarian ‘revolutions’ in Latin America which are strongly tied to Chinese and Russian imperialism. We argue that the Bolivarian model has, along with the formation of BRICS, been a strong inspiration for national revolutions in Africa. We would predict more coups in Africa that hold up the Bolivarian/BRICS example as a guide to their participation in the dominant existing global imperialist popular front.
Soon after the coup France and other western countries together with ECOWAS condemned the coup and urged for restoration of civilian rule. France and ECOWAS have shown their intent to intervene militarily if civilian rule is not restored. This latest coup, showing popular hatred for France and support for Russia, is just the latest expression of the ongoing degeneration of Western imperialism which has caused untold suffering on the masses and ravaged the region through continuing war. The working masses are facing the brunt of the war and economic crisis through slave wages and high prices as France, along with other imperialist nations, want to shift the cost of paying for the structural crisis of capitalism to the shoulders of workers and the poor masses.
The coup is a pre-emptive tactic by a section of the local bourgeoisie to forestall popular revolt and direct anger to a wing of imperialism whilst leaning on another wing as the basis for maintaining capitalist relations against the threat of revolution. Popular support for the coup is a reflection of the desperate situation workers and the masses find themselves in and yearning to break free of the exploitative and oppressive environment they find themselves in. The only solution to the crisis of capitalism in a semi-colony is the permanent revolution that combines national liberation with socialist revolution in Niger as part of a socialist West Africa. We oppose the coup and call for the independent mobilisation of workers and poor masses against both the Bouzoma government and the coup government both representing wings of imperialism suffocating the country. This position arises from a correct view that contemporary global capitalist society is essentially characterised by the fight between traditional and emerging imperialist powers over resources and surplus value.
In SA the ANC and its spinoff the EFF arose out of the historic settlement to trade in the military struggle for bourgeois democracy in 1995. Since SA joined BRICS in 2009 it has pinned its hopes on China to break out of its subordination to Western Imperialism. 14 years later that dream has become a nightmare as the ANC regime is now not only the lapdog of Western imperialism but also China and Russia. The working people are locked into this imperialist popular front by the regime and by its corrupt unions incorporated in the state. In Zimbabwe ZANU-PF does China’s bidding legislating against Western sanctions, and against workers’ rights to meet the terms of China’s win-win deals. Here is the evidence that the BRICS model for development is a trap that denies the working masses any say in their future. This must not be the future of the Sahel and the whole of Africa where the military regimes are allowed to build new popular fronts with Russia and China. To smash the armed popular fronts like ECOWAS we call for independent workers’ organisations to form a continent-wide anti-imperialist united front capable of defending itself from military repression.
Marxists, opposed to Stalinists and centrists, should start from the basic position that China and Russia have transformed to become imperialist states exporting excessive finance capital for their own interests and using comprador bourgeoisie governments in semi-colonies and labour bureaucrats to protect and advance their interests. We argue that this relationship is that of an international popular front tying the working masses to the imperialists through the national bourgeois regimes. Against this popular front which exploits the masses desire for national independence to draw them into this popular front, revolutionaries must counter-pose the Anti-Imperialist United Front (AIUF) to break workers and oppressed from the bourgeois regimes and the imperialist powers they serve.
How will this struggle take shape? In West Africa we see the military leadership as one fraction of the national bourgeoisie substituting itself for the people. Marxists have no confidence in military rule which, like Sisi in Egypt, or Mnangagwa In Zimbabwe, imposes an authoritarian regime with the barest of democratic figleaves hiding their subservience to imperialism. Marxists warn against military regimes and their bourgeois and petty bourgeois nationalist agendas. We are for building an international united front of workers, poor peasants and rank and file soldiers in every country to take the power into our own hands, to join hands across national borders and fight to complete the unfinished bourgeois democratic revolution as the Permanent Revolution. The theory of permanent revolution is our guide for socialist action in a semi colony dominated by two wings of imperialism. Alliances like BRICS and NATO serve these different wings in a rush to maximise production and super-exploitation.
To provide jobs all big and imperialist assets must be nationalised and put under workers control and self-management!
For workers action committees to lead the resistance to the growing attacks on the wages and working conditions of the poor and the livelihood of the majority poor!
Workers form rank and file bodies to lead action in all unions and break with the reformist trade union leadership!
No to US/EU and China/Russia imperialism fronted by local bourgeoise parties!
No to reformism, centrism and fake Trotskyism, build a fighting revolutionary socialist party!
For workers and peasants’ government on the basis of the armed people to implement decisions that benefit the workers and the poor!
For an African socialist revolution as part of the international revolution that alone can guarantee a better life for all!
For a new World Party of socialist revolution based on the Transitional Program of 1938 to lead the revolution to end capitalism and open the road to socialism!
Socialism or Extinction! Down with Capitalist War! For a Socialist World!
From Crises to Wars
As Marx once said the old order is dying but the new order is yet to be born. Capitalism is a finite society which goes from its birth in Europe in the late 18thC to maturity in the late 19thC century, the ‘Late stage’ capitalism in the 20thC finishing in ‘End Stage’ capitalism in the 21stC. The basic contradiction between Capital and Nature brings the death sentence to Capital. As the contradiction intensifies it speeds up events driven by class struggle. Capital’s destruction of the material conditions for its own existence becomes visible as chaotic forces such as slumps and ecological collapse. There is no way out for the ruling class. It can no longer rule in the old way because the working masses have nothing to lose and refuse to be ruled. Workers refuse to starve or die in wars of mutual destruction to give the breath of life into capitalism. As Trotsky said, workers are natural dialecticians, they see the objective reality of capitalism destroying itself, creating the chaos of destruction of nature and humanity, and subjectively begin to become conscious of the necessity for socialist revolution.
The new socialist order exists inside the dying capitalist order in embryonic form as the precondition for socialism. The working class is now the big majority, and its advanced productivity can produce enough material plenty for a good life for all. But while it is conscious of itself, it is not yet conscious for itself as the only class capable of building a new socialist order. Workers need an international revolutionary party and program based on Trotsky’s Transitional program of 1938 that subjectively transcends the objective situation. The program teaches them that class struggle will prove that even their most basic needs for life and liberty cannot be met short of the overthrow of the capitalist system. Yet since capitalism will not die of its own accord it has to be overthrown. In what follows we outline our method and program for making that historic transition from the death agony of capitalism to the birth pangs of socialism. We begin with the analysis of the war in Ukraine.
The Lessons of the Ukraine War
The war in Ukraine is the chaotic manifestation of the underlying contradiction between Capital and Nature exploding to the surface in the inter-imperialist war for Ukraine. Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism – the epoch of crises, wars, and revolutions. The war is the result of the terminal crisis that leads to war which in turn creates the conditions for revolution. Lenin, in Imperialism; the Highest Stage of Capitalism, argues the limits to profitability in the advanced capitalist countries forces them to export surplus capital to the colonies to extract enough labour value, by driving down the value of wages, to restore the rate of profit in the ‘motherland’. Marx explains in Capital that this is caused by the Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall (LTRPF) due to the rising ratio of Constant capital which does not create value, to Variable capital which does produce value (c/v). The export of surplus capital is a counter-tendency to the LTPRF and drives the redivision of the world among the big powers competing to maximise super profits/absolute rent.
Ukraine is a perfect example. Applying Marx’s law, in the post WW2 boom period the US and the EU powers experienced falling profits. To create the conditions for a new boom in production it was necessary to massively destroy existing c and v as the equivalent to another world depression or world war to restore the rate of profit. Neoliberalism was launched in the 1980s to ‘restructure’, i.e., destroy fixed assets and wages in the semi-colonial world and the imperialist heartlands. But the real prize of neoliberalism was the restoration of capitalism in Russia and China in 1992 opening up the former Degenerated Workers States (DWS’s) to world capitalism and a massive devaluation of c and v. Yet by 2000 the Western Powers had failed to replace the state monopoly capitalist (SMC) regime in Russia then under Putin and gain access to devalued assets. Similarly, in China they succeeded in opening up the restored capitalist economy for Western investment, but failed to break the monopoly state’s control over its banks and key economic sectors. Even the ‘boom’ of the 1990s was due more to credit and speculation than real value growth. All up neoliberalism failed to return the rate of profit to the post-war boom level and the so-called “End of History” was history.
Neoliberalism privatised state-owned property and drove down wages in the existing capitalist states, but ultimately failed to re-colonise the newly restored capitalism of the former Soviet Union and capitalise on the re-valuing of assets and labour to counter the Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall (LTRPF). So long as the former DWS’s resisted colonisation by Western imperialism it was Russia and China which capitalised on their massive territories and economic resources beyond the super-exploitation of Western finance capital. The US/EU then resorted to an aggressive expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe and the Baltic States, using the membership of Georgia and Ukraine as a weapon to provoke a war. The object was to bankrupt, force a regime change and breakup Russia as a stepping stone to recolonising the ex-Soviet Union (SU) and the whole of Eurasia. This plan backfired dramatically as Russia’s economy is now growing faster than Germany’s.
The imperialist ruling classes are in denial. Ideology and the propaganda war in both camps dress up their imperialist rivalry with slogans about personal/national freedom (US) and equality/win-win (China). The reformist left pimps the bourgeoisie’s propaganda – for US imperialism or for Russian and Chinese imperialism. This is the social imperialist left – living off the super-exploitation of their colonies and semi-colonies. Most advocates of US social imperialism defend Ukraine from Russia on the grounds of supporting Ukraine’s independence. Those who deny the proxy character of the inter-imperialist war, put Ukraine’s national rights ahead of defeating US militarism. US social imperialists justify the killing both Ukraine and Russian workers in uniform in a war which risks breaking out into nuclear war.
In reality, inter-imperialist war sharpens the contradiction between bourgeois democracy/ equality, and the underlying bourgeois dictatorship. It exposes the hypocrisy of praising Western democracy against Eurasian dictatorships when both evolve into imperialist monopoly capitalist states to manage inter-imperialist war. US military invasions since 1991 push the propaganda of ‘democracy and freedom’ against Russia’s ‘equality and sovereignty’ and China’s ‘socialist win-win’ narratives. All are crisis-driven projects that serve their bourgeois sovereign ‘right’ to restore profits by any means necessary. The cannon fodder gets no say in this proxy war in Ukraine as it affects both individual rights and national rights of minorities. Ukraine’s right to national self-determination, and the rights of national minorities such as Russian speakers in the Donbass, are sacrificed to the inter-imperialist war. This subordinates these national rights to the reactionary right of rival imperialist powers to go to war over Ukraine to decide which one will exploit the strategic resources of their victims.
Geopolitics: From Eurasia to Africa and Latin America
Imperialism arises from the shift from competitive capitalism to monopoly capitalism where finance capital concentrates and centralises into fewer, bigger imperialist powers to create state monopoly capitalism. As mentioned above, it is the reaction to the limits set by nation states by exporting capital to capture super-profits and absolute rent to counter the crisis of falling profits. But 100 years later when neoliberalism has failed to restore profits, the structural crises of the 20stC Late Capitalism has become End Stage Capitalism’s terminal crisis in the 21stC as it crashes into the limits imposed by Nature. We define the terminal crisis as capitalism destroying its conditions of existence. It can no longer activate measures to counter the LTRPF without destroying nature. The terminal crisis spreads from the top to bottom to download the cost of the crises onto the workers and poor farmers in the semi-colonies and the imperialist rivals, as they compete for the shrinking sources of strategic resources.
As the terminal crisis intensifies it picks up speed and spreads globally creating the impression of chaos among nations. But ‘chaos’ is a bourgeois tag which does not penetrate to the underlying causes of the terminal crisis which is the decay of global capitalism. Lacking a Marxist analysis, the bourgeois fail to see that their national sovereignty like their individual sovereignty is a fetish. Nations were formed to protect national capital, but capitalism since the late 19thcC was forced by the LTRPF to escape national borders to restore the rate of profit. All wars since have been in the interests of one or other imperialist power. That is why the war in Ukraine cannot be a war confined to Ukraine and Russia and must overflow into a global war. It is currently the major front marking the fault line between Europe and Asia – a proxy war on both sides that must spread to other fronts across other continents to repartition the world and reset the imperialist pecking order. We scratch below the surface of trade deals, coups, special military operations and there we find the US/EU facing off against China/Russia.
The speed and intensity of this global war drive cannot be explained other than by Marx’s dialectical method. The US and EU powers as declining imperialisms exhibit a failing capacity to produce value at home caused by the LTRPF. The export of excess profit to compensate for falling profits at home then determines their relative competitiveness in the world market. To make super-profits abroad the US and EU have to build branch plants in countries with cheap labour and compliant states. As we argued above the US/EU were desperate to recolonise the SU and China as new sources of strategic resources and markets to save their massive capital stocks from devaluing. They poured in masses of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to take advantage of the natural wealth of these countries only to be faced by protectionist barriers imposed by a newly evolved form of state monopoly capital. The outcome is that the US/EU economies in decline not only failed to recolonise them, they had to face the prospect of failing to compete with them on the global market.
As the war in Ukraine heads for a stalemate Russia and the US are negotiating with advanced weaponry over a new border between Eastern and Western Ukraine. Both are under pressure from their allies to end the war. The EU cannot sustain more economic damage from the blowback from the war and China has to make preparations for what it sees as the coming war with the US. The US sees China as its mortal enemy globally as each competes to expand their spheres of influence at the expense of their rival. The Ukraine war on the Eurasian front is now ‘pivoting’ into a wider war with Russia and China in East Asia over several fronts. While Taiwan is the main target as the US Pacific ground zero, South East Asia and the whole Asia Pacific is being drawn into the fallout. In Europe, Poland is mobilizing at the Belarus border as Wagner parks its troops there. At the same time new fronts are developing in Africa and Latin America.
Such fronts in South East Asia and the Asia Pacific are being built to encircle China as the US bullies countries in the region to sign up to NATO East to oppose China’s growing economic influence. The object is to boost friendly regimes like Myanmar and regime change unfriendly ones such as Thailand. Australia’s Labor Government is in AUKUS and NZ is attending the meetings of NATO East. In East Africa the latest coup in Niger has thrown up a new front where a proxy war between US/France and Russia for control of its uranium appears certain. The US has long supported Uganda and Rwanda in a covert war in the DRC to contest China’s grab of vital minerals like diamonds and Cobalt. Other African countries are being forced to take sides or stay neutral.
In Latin America the US is bullying Brazil and Argentina to abandon BRICS as the BRICS meeting draws closer. In all the Latin American regimes, the fractions of the bourgeois that side with one or other great powers, will create opportunities for the US to intervene to stage color revolutions and coups that end in proxy wars. All these wars are blatantly about whether the US or China dominates the control of global strategic resources like uranium, gold, lithium etc etc to further plunder the Global South and impoverish its peoples.
As the global terminal crisis of capital deepens, imperialism unloads the cost of paying for its crisis onto the shoulders of the poor masses of the global south. They have no choice but to fight for their existence. In the past the Western powers subdivided the world into their own spheres of interest. Both world wars arose when a declining power Germany went to war to rebuild its global position. Today, the whole West is in decline. Germany’s GDP has fallen behind Russia as it pays the price of the EU backing the US/NATO war on Russia. Ironically Russia has taken its place as the economic sanctions and the Ukraine war has forced it to develop a close strategic alliance with China.
So, while Western imperialism declines, the new imperialism of the East continues to grow. In End Stage capitalism as we have argued, all wars will tend to become a world-wide war with many fronts. Since both imperialist blocs are equally destructive of humanity and nature, both must be opposed by the world’s workers. Yet the revolutionary left either does not recognise Russia and China as imperialist, or retreats to the defence of one against the other as being the more ‘progressive’, suppressing the organisation of an independent working-class position on imperialist war. We now move to an analysis of the prospects for a growing resistance to inter-imperialist wars, to the alliances between imperialism and pro-imperialist bourgeois regimes, and the need for the new world party of socialist revolution and program necessary to lead the global masses to overthrow imperialism and build socialism.
The Global Imperialist Popular Front
The vast majority of the ostensible revolutionary left include those from Stalinist, Maoist or centrist Trotskyist origins. They are the modern Mensheviks who believe that imperialism has the capacity to be reformed in stages. This strategy calls for popular fronts, in which workers ally with the progressive petty-bourgeoisie and the liberal bourgeoisie, to take the parliamentary road to managing any crisis in the interests of workers. Historic examples abound of such imperialist popular fronts (IPF) betraying the workers to imperialism and preparing the ground for fascist reaction. Both WW1 and WW2 were sold to workers by Mensheviks as gigantic IPFs. Workers were rallied around the national flag of one or more imperialist powers against the enemy imperialist powers.
The historic betrayal of the Menshevik 2nd International in not opposing WW1 was condemned by Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky at the Zimmerwald conference in 1915. Lenin and Trotsky guided the Bolsheviks through the first four Congresses of the Comintern to counterpose the Anti-Imperialist United Front (AIUF) to the IPF. The Stalinised Comintern after 1924 transformed the AIUF of the Second Congress into an imperialist popular front. Stalin’s first great betrayal was the ‘block of 4 classes’ with the bourgeois KMT which led to the massacre of the leadership of the Communist Party in 1927. Later, following its ultraleft block with Hitler against the German revolution in 1933, Stalin flipped into a popular front with social democracy and the centre parties in the European imperialist states to forestall socialist revolutions in Europe and prevent the political revolution against the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. It was in this period that Trotsky warned that in Latin America the Popular Front Party (PFP) was the governmental form of the IPF, betraying the revolution in Latin America in the interwar period. With the rise of Russia and China in the 21stC our tendency was the only one to argue that the Bolivarian movement of Chavez joined with Castro’s ‘socialism’ in the ALBA states, to form an IPF with the emerging Russian and Chinese Imperialism. The rise as a ‘progressive great power bloc’ was sold to the masses as the‘socialist 5th International’ alternative to Western imperialism, and an escape route from the crisis of capitalism wrought upon the global south entirely by the US/EU powers.
We predicted that the Bolivarian IPF would become an example for more betrayals across all the continents. The Mensheviks in the West (aka social imperialists) put off action to defeat their own ruling classes into the future. In Ukraine, the Russophiles pretend that the war is not a proxy war between imperialists because Russia is not imperialist. Those who recognise Russia and China as Great Powers refuse to acknowledge that they are imperialist in the sense of plundering the Global South for strategic resources and pumping out surplus value immiserating the working masses. Russia is only defending itself from US regime change and NATO encroachment with the help of China and other allies. They conveniently pass the task of defeating US imperialism to Russian workers in uniform in a military front with their national bourgeoisie. It is not surprising then, that as the war spreads to more fronts on other continents, that the prevailing position in the Global South is inspired by the Bolivarians.The US hegemon is held responsible for all the reaction in the post-WW2 period and Russia and China are progressive states defending themselves.
The formation of two blocs around the US/EU and Russia and China exist only because members regard theirs to be the more ‘progressive’. We have seen how this applies to the Western bloc’s propaganda proclaiming dedication to democracy and human rights. It is equally clear in the Eastern Bloc. If we take the case of BRICS+ which is undergoing rapid expansion, we hear the same message from the pro-Russia/China national bourgeoisies. It runs like this. ‘Russia and China do not sanction or threaten to go to war with their partners. They do win-win deals where both sides get a fair share of the profits. Their models of economic development since the restoration of capitalism continue that of the Soviet policy of economic and military aid. It represents the historical model for the Global South where state to state deals are done without political strings attached.’ The bi-polar military front opening up over Niger vindicates this model when the Coup leader preaches the evils of US/French colonialism and the benefits of alignment to Russia.
This Bolivarian model is presented flamboyantly by Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in South Africa. He campaigns like an African Hugo Chavez for a united Africa which can become equal partners in the development of capitalism with the help of Russia and China. His statement that “Africa is open for investment” is clearly directed mainly at them because, unlike Western imperialism, they supposedly do not behave like imperialist powers. We reject the popular front narrative of Russia and China engaged in win-win diplomacy and economic fair shares with their colonies and semi-colonies. The slogan of multipolarity rather than bipolarity is a cover for BRICS as a union of oppressor and oppressed countries as if they were equals. We argue that the win-win deals are between the imperialist ruling classes and the semi-colonial ruling classes whose ‘fair shares’ in the plunder cost the workers and poor farmers their lives.
‘Win-win’ deals or ‘fair shares’ steals
Let’s unpack the delusion of the ‘win-win-fair shares’ model which sends the message that Russian and Chinese imperialisms are ‘progressive’. Much of the appeal of this model is the history of both as ‘socialist’ states. Julius Malema speaks effusively of China’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. We heard that often from Castro and Chavez. We argue that all that remains of this legacy today is the centralised bureaucratised capitalist state. The state monopoly capitalism (SMC) of Russia and China is subject to the law of value and defends that law. Their states’ ability to moderate the free market is designed to maximise profits in the interests of state capital-in-general. In other words, any advantage they have in competing with the US/EU powers owes nothing to ‘socialism’, past or present.
It took Western imperialism 200 years from birth to maturity to become imperialists exporting capital to super exploit the world’s workers to restore profits. China (and Russia after the lost decade of the 1990s) has had to take the same path from restoration of the market to a high-tech global value chain in 30 years. But it is the same imperialism, the same relations of production, and the same underlying laws of motion. It follows that as SMC regimes Russia and China must compete with their Western rivals to prevent the LTRPF from driving down profits. This means that any sharing of profits with partner regimes will be based on China’s own experience of capitalist development but presented as ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.’ Aid and debt forgiveness then is made to appear as part of a state socialist plan to gain popular approval for equal shares in ‘progressive’ win-win state-to-state deals.
Therefore, mimicking China’s developmental plan requires similar SMC regimes. State-to-state deals between Russia and China and their economic partners must share the ‘characteristics of state capitalism’. In the name of ‘state socialism’ the partner states will eliminate the problem of private property, a major unnecessary cost to capital, by nationalising property rights. Malema is a big fan because he knows that the ‘win-win’ deals depend on taking the workers along.. To win popular support for ‘state socialism’ the working masses must believe that they will get a fair share of the win-win deals like Chinese workers with the provision of infrastructure, jobs, health, housing, living incomes etc. shifting millions out of poverty. China was able to do this by allowing Western imperialism to profit from FDI with cheap inputs from Chinese and global labour in exchange for technology transfer.
But critically, China never allowed imperialist private direct investment to spread from high tech manufacturing to control of the state, finance and state-owned land. Russia since 2000 has rolled back foreign investment to restore a centralised state-run economy. But now Russia and China are becoming their imperialist partners, they will not be able to retain sufficient value to control the economy except as the agents of imperialism. So while Russia and China’s partners in the Global South may technically become economically independent but not as Malema promises on ‘our terms’, rather ‘their terms’. Those terms will be dictated by the making of profits that are necessary to allow Russia’s and China’s stock of surplus capital to be reproduced at a long-term profit rate that allows the further accumulation of capital. Any apparent ‘advantages’ over the US/EU bloc resulting from win-win deals with Russia and China of the US/EU will be determined not by goodwill, or ‘socialism’ but by the efficiencies of state capitalist long-term planning.
Therefore how can Russia and China deliver on promises made by the client regimes to the working masses? There are many risks. The ‘long term’ plan is subject to constant disruption by the terminal crisis of capital, the prospect of unending wars, and more importantly, revolutions. The terminal crisis affects all imperialist states, democratic or autocratic. Russia and China are not immune from the terminal crisis of capital, made worse by climate emergency and the threat of more pandemics. Capitalism on its last legs and nature on the brink of collapse does not contribute much to reducing the risk of permanent crises leading to war and revolutions.
Therefore, any advantages that Russia and China have to displace the US/EU as the ‘lesser evil’, if not ‘progressive’ imperialist bloc, are subject to economic laws of motion that will mobilise an intensified class war between the capitalist and working classes on every front. This high risk of mounting class struggle is factored in by all imperialists when preparing contingency plans for risk management of investment. The new imperialists carry some soviet era goodwill baggage with them which once exhausted cannot offset the risk of the working masses rising up in revolution. This baggage has the name of the IPF used to trap, disarm and divert workers from revolution. This raises the urgent necessity of building an international anti-imperialist united front (AIUF) to challenge and smash the counter-revolutionary IPF.
The Anti-imperialist United Front
AIUF is a UF of workers and poor peasants against imperialism that embodies the permanent revolution in the epoch of imperialism. We recognise that after Lenin’s death the Stalinists turned it into a pro-imperialist popular front. For this reason, Trotsky abandoned it for his concept of permanent revolution after the defeat of the Chinese revolution in 1927. But it remains an accurate concept today, provided it consciously excludes petty bourgeois and bourgeois forces in the UF.
We justify this practice first, by Lenin’s characterisation of the epoch as imperialist where national self-determination is not possible without the defeat of both the national bourgeoisie and their imperialist masters. Second, by our recognition that Lenin shared Trotsky’s concept of permanent revolution in Russia which Trotsky, after the lesson of China, then applied to all the colonies and semi-colonies. Only revolutionary workers can resolve the unfinished program of the bourgeoisie by means of international socialist revolution. Hence the AIUF applies the method of the UF to the theory/program of permanent revolution in the epoch as a whole.
This is why in the first decade of the 21stC End Stage capitalism, when the new imperialisms of Russia and China are presented as the ‘progressive’ or ‘socialist’ friends and partners in the revolution, we opposed the Bolivarian IPF posing as a AIUF in front of the masses to trap, defeat and divert the workers and poor farmers. Hence, we recognised the Venezuelan PSUV and the Cuban Communist party as the same reactionary Popular Front Parties (PFP) that Trotsky identified in Latin America in the 1930’s. And this is exactly the model adopted in all colonial and semi-colonial bourgeois regimes in Asia and Africa. In fact, they describe the class composition of all ‘populist’ parties including the Peronist party, the South African ANC, and the Communist Party of China (CPC). In every case it is necessary to confront the PFP as the agent of imperialism with the AIUF to break the workers and poor peasants from the petty bourgeois and bourgeois classes.
The AIUF therefore is formed politically to break the workers from the bourgeois PFP particularly when it controls the government and hence legislative power. The object is not to create an independent workers’ party to contest elections but to build a revolutionary party. The AIUF can critically support workers’ parties inside government unless they are in a governmental popular front where the bourgeois partner dominates and provides an alibi for betrayal. When workers parties put up candidates they stand as tributes to promote the program, not to join in parliamentary circuses. Revolutionaries do not spread illusions in worker majorities, or in workers’ ministers, pushing a government to the left. This is the classic strategy of all shades of reformists who believe that workers can take power by winning control of the parliamentary executive. The object is not to participate in the government but to smash workers’ illusions in reforms and break workers from the PFP.
Marxists know that the state is the organising committee of the bourgeoisie. State power is not concentrated, nor separated, in the legislature, executive and judiciary. Bourgeois parliaments are the democratic front for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Once exposed the dictatorship will dispense with democracy and resort to the use of state forces to repress revolution. Therefore, the AIUF must be based on the independent organisations of the working class. It must be armed to defend itself from state and parastatal institutions/forces in order to win dual power and prepare for socialist revolution. Yet while the AIUF is the unity of a workers’ front for an action, specifically to break and destroy the popular front, it is composed of workers at different levels of consciousness. Reformist workers and trade union conscious workers remain trapped at the fetishised level of relations of exchange. Revolutionaries use the AIUF as a tactic to put transitional demands on the reformist leadership of the labour movement to expose their role as agents of the class enemy and transform the reformist workers and trade union conscious workers into class conscious proletarians.
From War to Revolution
The AIUF to be effective has to be guided by revolutionaries. And revolutionaries cannot exist outside a revolutionary party and its revolutionary program. The revolutionary party is the subjective force acting through its program to change objective reality. The AIUF is a tactic in the Transitional Program to break workers from the bureaucracy and from the bosses. We argue that the AIUF arose out of the discussion around the Left Zimmerwald Manifesto of 1915 which called for the defeat of both imperialist sides in war. In 1916 Liebknecht made his famous demand, “workers turn your guns on your own ruling class.” The Left Zimmerwald program on the war was summed up first as “turn imperialist war into civil war”, and second, “build a new international” to replace 2nd International which liquidated itself into social imperialism and social chauvinism.
The 3rd international was therefore also conceived at Zimmerwald. The AIUF tactic was next applied in the Bolshevik program that led to the October Revolution in Russia and the formation of the 3rd International in 1920. The Left Zimmerwald program was now part of the Bolshevik Party program “to turn the guns of the workers and peasants” in uniform on the Russian imperialist ruling class. After the February revolution led to the fall of the Tsar, the Bolsheviks applied the AIUF against the bourgeois Provisional Government. It was put to the test against the counter-revolutionary coup attempt by the white Russian (Tsarist forces) led by General Kornilov in August. The Bolsheviks formed a tactical military bloc with the bourgeois government against Kornilov to prove to reformist soldiers and trade unionists that the bourgeois government’s real class enemy was the Soviets not the Tsarists backed by the imperialist powers.
Then came the “turn imperialist war into civil war”. As the embryonic Red Army, the Soviet forces easily outmaneuvered and defeated the Kornilov coup as a preliminary to the Civil War that began almost immediately after the revolution. Workers and poor peasants staged the insurrection in October 1917, formed a workers and poor peasants’ government, and negotiated for peace at Brest-Litovsk with the German high command in the attempt to spark the revolution in Germany. This tactic did not wholly succeed as the Germans invaded southern Russia occupying around a third of the old Russian Empire, forcing an end to the negotiations on March 3rd 1918. As a result, this changed the character of the war in Soviet Russia into that of the national defence of the revolution in the Civil War against the imperialist powers.
Moreover, the Bolshevik’s stalling tactic at Brest-Litovsk may have helped incubate the wave of mutinies in the German armed forces that first broke out exactly eight months later in the navy at Keil on 2rd November 1918, setting off the German Revolution. Armed soldiers and workers set up soviets in several parts of Germany and turned their guns in their defence. But there was no revolutionary general staff to take the next vital step of armed insurrection, that is, to aim their guns strategically at the ruling class. The soviets were suppressed by ‘special forces’ of the defeated Germany army led by proto-fascist white guards. What was lacking was the next vital step, an established Bolshevik-type party that could stage the break from the treacherous social democracy which formed the popular front Weimar Republic.
The small Spartacist League of Luxemburg and Liebknecht came too late and was too small to make a difference. The general staff, revolutionary party and program, was missing in action. The ruling class suppressed the German revolution but feared its return unless the Soviet Union was destroyed. The imperialist powers buried their differences after the capitulation of Germany, invaded the Soviet Union to wage a civil war from 1918 to 1921, until they met an historic defeat at the hands of the Red Army. This stalemate made another world war inevitable, once more creating the conditions for revolution out of crisis and war to decide which class rules. The old world was still dying, the new world was born, but smothered by “all the old shit” of the old world.
The AIUF tactic was first formulated officially by the 3rd International led by the Bolshevik Party at its Fourth Congress in November 1922. It was part of the turn towards the United Front (UF) as a result of the failure of the workers revolution to spread to Europe and the rest of the world. The Congress balance sheet of this failure isolated the missing ingredient. It was the inability to break the social chauvinist and social imperialist IPF between workers and the bourgeoisie formed by the SPD as part of the executive of the new Weimar Republic. The way forward from 1922 was through the application of the United Front tactic led by Bolshevik-type parties in all the European powers to win the majority of reformist workers to class consciousness and the revolution. However, at that point the revolution was already isolated and degenerating under the influence of a growing bureaucratic leadership under the influence of the weight of the peasantry.
As the revolution degenerated under the influence of the bureaucracy, it became the task of Trotsky, and the Left Opposition, to take up the battle for the UF against the PF in the years between the WW1 WW2 against the bureaucracy in the SU and the rise of fascism. After the victory of fascism in Germany in 1933 Trotsky set out to build a new international. It was founded in 1938 on the Transitional Program based on the method of dialectics which shone through the writings of this period, many published in the book In Defense of Marxism. Here we have the living Marxism of Lenin and Trotsky raising the flag of the vanguard party firm in principle but flexible in tactics, preparing for WW2 and arming the worlds’ workers with the program to stop the war by turning our guns against the ruling classes and the imperialist war into civil war.
The application of the AIUF in WW2 continued that of WW1 but was now strengthened by the lessons learned by the victorious Bolshevik revolution. Two demands were fused together at its heart; the dual defeatist position in inter-imperialist war to turn the war into a civil war, and the unconditional defence of the Soviet Union. Dual defeatism required the arming of the working class to join with the ranks in the military to turn their guns on the ruling class. Revolutions in the imperialist states would empower the international workers army to unite with Russian workers and soldiers and stage a political revolution against the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union. In the US Trotsky devised the Proletarian Military Policy to arm the trade unions and unionise the official army. It was grounded in the lessons of the historic betrayal of 1914, the Manifesto of the Zimmerwald left of 1915, the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, and of the defeats of the German revolution at the hands of social democracy, Stalinism and fascism.
These are the ‘principles’ of the program against imperialist war rooted in Marxism that are the basis of any assessment of the application of the AIUF in WW2. All the preconditions for turning war into revolution were there in the program, but not in practice. The vital factor, the revolutionary leadership of the 4th International after Trotsky’s death, was lacking. The assessment of our tendency is that even more so than during WW1, the Bolshevik-type party was missing in action. Despite valiant struggles against the imperialists, Stalinists, and their own ruling classes, by the militant ranks, especially in Greece and Indo-China, the leadership of the main sections in the US and Europe capitulated to social chauvinism, and the war against fascism. Instead of turning their guns against their imperialist ruling classes the leadership of the 4th International turned their guns on the fascists in an IPF with imperialism and the Stalinist Soviet Union.
The lessons learned from this history of the AIUF in its struggle against the IPF are what shape our response to the war in Ukraine as the first of many wars towards a 3rd Imperialist war. In summary, we call for a New Zimmerwald and a new Proletarian War Policy embodying the principles of Lenin and Trotsky in a new AIUF. The old world still lives in all its reactionary barbarism and its counter-revolutionary IPFs. There can be no confusion here. The conditions for international revolution are now so overwhelmingly objectively present in the capitalist destruction of its ecological foundation in nature. Humanity survives only in the capacity of the working masses to put an end to rotten capitalism.
Yet the subjective will of the working masses which is bursting through the cracks to rise up, overthrow capitalism and restore nature in harmony with humanity, is blocked by the liquidation of the revolutionary Marxist party and its program. The new revolutionary international is still missing in action. We call on all those exploited and oppressed of the world who yearn to complete the world revolution that began in1917, to unite with us in our call for a New Zimmerwald. Together we can build an AIUF to smash the imperialist ruling classes and their client states and create a new World Party of Socialism to organise workers, poor farmers and all oppressed peoples internationally, for the fight to make a new world to save the world!
International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency-ILTT, 18 August 2023
BUILD PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM STOP THE INTER-IMPERIALIST WAR BUILD THE WORLD PARTY OF SOCIALISM
On this May Day, the international working class must ask, “what is the cause of the coming world war and how can we stop it?” As China eclipses the reigning economic and military hegemon (USA), war to redivide the world, despite all pretenses-to peaceful progressive growth, is not only on the capitalist’s agenda-it is their only choice. All the capitalist states prepare for war and are drawn into the unfolding inter-imperialist conflict at the expense of nature and social needs everywhere. The death agony of capitalism commits the world to wars for redivision of resources at the expense of the workers, poor farmers and oppressed.
Regardless of the truth regarding direct responsibility for the outbreak of the war, one thing is certain: the war taking place in Ukraine is the result of the inter-imperialist dispute, developing a qualitative leap in the trade war between the United States and China; it is a predatory war for the division of the world and spheres of influence. The commercial war thus becomes a military war, the political one by other means, namely, violence.
THE IMPERIALIST WAR with its epicenter in EUROPE has lasted for over a year, all the data and movements of NATO and Russia show that far from ending, it ventures as a war of extermination; the balance after one year of THE SAME is the waste of hundreds of billions of euros destined for the destruction of human lives and infrastructure. Displacement of at least 15 million human beings, far from finished, as the equipment is being prepared for continuity with high possibilities of becoming a global catastrophe.
The entire world situation, and consequently also the internal political life of the various countries, are under the threat of war. The approaching catastrophe penetrates the deepest masses of humanity with anguish. Across the planet inter-imperialist conflicts unfold under the hair trigger threat of nuclear war, today in Ukraine tomorrow Taiwan. Capitalism necessitates accumulation of capital at the cost of extinction. As a mode of production its unrestrainable anarchy is destroying nature, the means and forces of production while impoverishing hundreds of millions.
WHILE THE BOURGEOIS GETS RICHER, MILLIONS OF PROLETARIANS AND PEASANTS SUFFER HARDSHIP AND FAMINE
War is a gigantic commercial enterprise, especially for the war industry. That is why the “top 11 NATO companies” are the first patriots and the main provocateurs of the war. Yet while we shout the slogans ‘Socialism or Extinction!’ and “For Humanity to Survive Capitalism must Die!”, the treacherous leaders of the workers’ organizations work overtime to keep workers in one imperialist camp of the other. The social patriots of the west deny the US/EU role propping up the right wing Maidan and post Maidan regimes to proxy for their strategic encirclement and containment efforts. The social patriots of the east (including their 5th columnists in the west) perpetuate the myth of a China/Russia led anti-imperialist bloc with the “progressive” national bourgeoisies of the global south, with their working classes disorganized and submissive.
CHINA IS NOT THE ‘PROGRESSIVE’ FRIEND OF THE WORKERS AND PEASANTS!
The imperialist war is the continuation and exacerbation of the plundering policy of the imperialist bourgeoisie and their colonial and semi-colonial comprador agents. But the US imperialist bloc is not alone in plundering and dividing the world into their spheres of interest. Russia and China have emerged in the 21st century as rival powers to challenge US hegemony. They are not the saviours that the BRIC bourgeoisies and Maoist labour political bureaucrats claim as the ‘progressive’ multipolar alternative that workers can call upon to rescue rotting capitalism and save their jobs and livelihoods.
The restored capitalism in China was able, for a time, to sustain double digit growth, but the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall mocks the CPC’s claims it has resolved the capitalist laws of motion with its hybrid market “socialist” economy; the law of value prevails and Chinese capital is not immune. The accumulation of capital in China is driven by the very laws of motion Marx ascribed to capitalism resisted by workers. After the policy of ‘turning-in’, building empty cities and creating real estate debt bubbles at home, to keep its economic engine burning Chinese capital had no choice but to go outwards. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), outward foreign direct investments which includes unsustainable loans across the global south and into Europe, are objectively anti-labor, union busting and debt burdening all under the guise of ‘Win-Win’ mythology embraced by RT ‘socialists’, the Boli-bourgeois, Stalinists, M-L’s and layers of the comprador bourgeoisie across the global south.
We explode the myth that China and Russia’s economic expansion is a reformist, progressive escape route for capitalism. They cannot escape capitalism’s fundamental contradiction between nature and capitalist society. The class struggle between the social forces and social relations of production, sets the limits to capital expansion. Increasing investment in high tech to raise the rate of exploitation drives down living standards for the masses below subsistence and throws workers onto the rubbish heap. Capitalism cannot produce enough value to maintain profits. Rising mountains of debt can never be repaid and will disappear like bad bets in the global casino. Debt is a symptom of capitalism facing its terminal crisis. The circuit of capital is broken, the forces of production are destroyed along with the ecological basis for human life.
THE ENEMY IS THE BOURGEOISIE AND IS AT HOME!
The struggle of the proletariat against the imperialist war is the continuation and exacerbation of the class struggle. Thus, we are witnessing a new bankruptcy of civilization, political reaction, depression, inflation, economic crises, famines, human displacements, degradation. But nature is also in danger and with it, humanity.
Drought and extreme heat waves pushed 2.3 billion people into food insecurity in 2022, the majority in Africa and the Asian continent, according to the balance presented by the WMO, which cites the case of India and Pakistan as especially problematic, whose agri-food systems were practically exhausted due to the lack of water, a wave of food insecurity that, added to the supply problems derived from the war in Ukraine, has hit 20 million people in this area. All of this is symptomatic of capitalism’s long developmental decline into terminal crisis over the imperialist epoch.
The 1923 projection of the capitalist curve by Trotsky argued booms would be shorter and busts would be deeper as the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (TRPF) accelerates across all capitalist economies. The rise of fictitious finance capital (speculation) over industrial (productive) capital expands the claims on social surplus at the expense of the workers. Capitalism both in the imperialist centers and the semi-colonial resource rich states deepens the drive toward war for re-division of the spoils. Neither “neo-liberal” privatization schemes nor the monetary money supply and interest rate schemes have been successful at resolving the crisis. In turn the the bosses put the cost of the crisis on the working classes, the poor and oppressed nations.
FOR A NEW WORLD PARTY OF SOCIALISM!
The fundamental content of the politics of the proletariat is therefore the struggle against imperialism and its war. The fundamental slogan of this struggle since the Zimmerwald Left in 1915 is “The main enemy is at home” whether in an imperialist country or in a semi-colonial country. We reject all capitalism’s attempts to divide and rule the workers and poor farmers. Before exhausting, or drowning humanity in blood, capitalism poisons the world atmosphere with toxic vapours of national and racial hatred; we already see this as a product of the migratory displacements that seek to escape from the bombs and the kamikaze drones that fly over the cities, but also from the bad governments that enslave us, while their cynicism goes as far as the prohibition of migration and the imprisonment in false shelters or internment centers, where proletarians are detained for the mere fact of being.
This system must perish, open your eyes, learn not to forget, not forgive and not give in to the exploiters, to those who humiliate us, to those who subordinate us, to those who deny us the slightest possibility of existence. Imperialist war changes the situation and intensifies the class struggle, but it does not change either our objectives or our program for socialist revolution.
DEMANDS
We need a new Zimmerwald Left to mobilise the anti-imperialist left in an international workers united front to smash the imperialists’ warmongering international popular front!
We need to unite the workers of the world, against national, ethnic and gender divisions!
We call for enlisted person’s unions in Russia, Ukraine and all NATO countries to strike and fraternize as class brothers and sisters. Expose the commanders, elect your own officers and abandon the projects of the imperialists!
The commanders and imperialists do not fight for your national liberation! To win national liberation the victorious class struggle of socialist internationalism is required, not the patriotic fiction of unity with your boss!
We need a new party of world socialism to lead the fight to turn the imperialist war into a class war for socialist revolution!
We need a world party based on the method and programmatic content of the Transitional Program of 1938. We need to unite the workers of the world against national, ethnic and gender divisions!
Power for women workers, for the youth and all the oppressed sectors of the working class!
We are for the class struggle unions, the workers’ councils, the workers’ militias, etc., that fight and are managed democratically, up to and including the insurrection by a Government of Workers and poor Farmers!
For a world union of socialist republics!
———————————————— Liga Che Communista (Ar) International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency/Tendencia Trotskista Leninista Internacional (CWG NZ/Ao, CWG USA, RWG (Zim), GTR (Br))
Job Sikhala, affectionately known as Wiwa after the Nigerian environmental rights activist Ken Saro Wiwa, has been in pre conviction detention for over three hundred days now on trumped up and politically orchestrated charges of inciting political violence. Sikhala is the Vice Chairperson of the largest liberal and reformist opposition party, Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC). He was arrested after calling for defensive action by members of his party who were under attack from the ruling Zimbabwe African Nationalist Union, Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) youths and militias in the town of Chitungwiza where a member of the CCC had been brutally killed and mutilated by a ZANU-PF member in June last year after missing for two weeks. Sikhala had been appointed by the deceased family’s relatives to represent them.
We demand that the state immediately release Sikhala, the Mthwakazi Republic Party (MRP) nine and all political prisoners facing persecution for daring to stand up to the regime. The second republic has perfected and sharpened the oppressive tactics inherited from the first republic by openly abducting, jailing, victimising and killing ordinary masses, workers and their leaders. Such repression has been necessitated by the dictates of national economic crisis, massive looting and corruption, lack of popular support in the urban centres and need to thwart any dissent to anti-working class and anti-poor neo liberal capitalist attacks on the working masses on behalf of both wings of imperialism and local capitalist.
We submit that no regime makes a decision to be democratic or dictatorial. This is forced upon them by the prevailing conjuncture of the economy and relative stability of the regime in question administering the state on behalf of a parasitic class, the bourgeoisie. As such any response should be informed by the basic objective needs of class warfare and not reliance on any arm of government to be reasonable or amenable to mere demands without action or even waiting for elections to resolve the situation. Repression is a necessary tool for ensuring continued exploitation of workers, poor peasants and self-employed in the service of imperialism. We call for organised and active resistance to capitalist exploitation and dictatorship.
– Free Job Sikhala, the MRP nine and all political prisoners now!
– Stop the persecution and repression of the poor masses and their leaders!
– For the full right to strike, protest, assemble and expression!
– Workers to form strike committees to lead the resistance to the growing attacks on wages and working conditions of the poor and livelihood of the majority poor!
– Workers to form workers and community defence guards for defence against state violence!
– A national strike committee to organise and plan for a general strike!-For a workers government on the basis of the armed people to implement decisions that benefit the workers and the poor!
– Nationalisation of all companies without indemnification to the big shareholders under workers control!
– Land to be distributed to all poor peasants together with a state bank to provide cheap credit inputs to all small farmers!
– A workers’ and poor farmers’ government that defends workers, peasants and the poor masses against the local and foreign capitalists!
– An African socialist revolution as part of the international revolution that alone can guarantee a better life for all!
– A new WORLD PARTY of socialist revolution based on the TRANSITIONAL PROGRAM of 1938 to lead the revolution to end capitalism and open the road to socialism!
Revolutionary Workers Group of Zimbabwe, RWG-Z
(Section of the International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency-ILTT)
Workers, seeking economic and political refuge from the crisis of capitalism unfolding in the semi-colonies of Latin America, are being detained on both sides of the US/Mexico border as they try to come to the imperialist center for work.
The Democratic Biden regime, seeking to avoid the bad press endured by ex-president Trump for detention of migrant workers and families, has made Mexico their proxy enforcer. AMLO (President of Mexico Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador), a dutiful semi-colonial henchman, complied, restricting the rights of Latin Americans to pass freely, denying them visas to stay in Mexico and detaining them while waiting for entry to the U.S.
As a consequence of the inhumane detention conditions 39 detainees in the Ciudad de Juarez died on March 27th when a fire was lit protesting Mexico’s deportation orders back to their countries of origin. Guards refused to open the gates during the fire condemning the detained to their deaths. AMLO tried to download responsibility onto the detention center guards and the immigrants themselves. But workers understand the responsibility lies in the anti-immigration policies of the USA and their enforcer and partner in crime AMLO himself.
Protesters in the City Of Juarez have been assaulted, slandered and have sustained injuries at the hands of the state. Workers must unite under the banner “An injury to one is an injury to all!” We say build workers mobilizations and strike to free the detainees and open the borders!
AMLO’s role as chief executive of the Mexican ruling comprador class is to obsequiously assuage the interests of U.S. imperialism, navigating the flow of migrant workers, the drug cartels and the competing imperialist interests. China needs workers for its new factories and requires safe terrain to operate. Will AMLO create safe havens for Chinese capital as it has done for the U.S. dominated maquiladoras?
Just as low wage Maquiladora jobs did not resolve Mexican’s workers’ poverty, Latin American workers are not fooled by China’s promises of ‘Win-Win’ deals the Bolivarian ‘left’ hangs its hat on. The workers know these deals either from the North or the Far East are aimed at keeping wages low in the semi-colonies. That is why workers across the world are on the march toward the massive economic centers.
Workers in Latin America have only to look to the South African ‘Win Win’ experience, where in 1994 a quarter of all employment was industrial manufacturing, whereas now, with Chinese agents subverting the trade union militancy, the figure for industrial manufacturing is 12%. South Africa has mass unemployment and is just another source of bargain “Win-Win” raw materials. Likewise, Venezuela has been put in a Chinese economic vise by a long-term, bargain basement price oil supply deal, to the detriment of the state’s ability to support consumer goods production, even the production of basic necessities.
U.S. imperialism requires Latin American and Mexican workers to feed the assembly lines of the maquiladoras in the borderlands. Yet while labor shortages have spiked in North America pre-and post COVID and despite the need for workers in the United States, barriers to entry are maintained for both political, read racist, and economic reasons, read no profits in retraining.
Politically the U.S. immigration policy is a racist war of terror against migrant workers consciously being waged to stoke the embers of xenophobia and nativism; race and ethnic hatred are the capitalist’s tools used by media and politicians to drive a wedge into the heart of working class solidarity.
Economically, on top of and as consequence of the under-development and super-exploitation of the semi-colonial world, limiting legal entry creates pressure on hundreds of thousands of displaced workers, political and economic refugees to cross the borders without state approval and legal documents required to live freely and work legally. The capitalist employers exploit their vulnerability by cheating on labor laws, wage laws and health and safety regulations. The undocumented who make it to the US live a super-exploited, subterranean existence living in fear of ICE, La Migra, detention, familial separation and deportation.
The workers movement and the left cannot expect AMLO to undo the structures of semi-colonial oppression he has been hired on to administer and has agreed to enforce. It has become the task of the comprador ruling class of Mexico to control flows of labor across Mexico; AMLO can no sooner dismantle the detention centers than he can liberate Mexico from imperialism. Like other semi-colonial leaders, trapped by the reality of the power of imperialist finance capital, he is merely a foreman for imperialism.
We reject the fake left leaderships who build the Popular Front which deprives the workers, small farmers and oppressed across Latin America of their agency. The national big bourgeoisie sees the offers to support AMLO, if he would just ‘do the right thing,’ as the supine weakness of the far left, and as a signal they can bring on the Falcones or similar death squads. Perhaps they think that as an extension of the ‘Bolivarian revolution’ AMLOs’ turn toward China means he can lean on the ‘bourgeois progressive’ Chinese Communist Party to implement a branch of the Belt & Road initiative to develop the forces of production in Latin America and to open Mexico’s borders to the wider Latin American labor market.
The democratic demand that “the visa requirement to enter Mexican territory be annulled in favor of all Latin American citizens” demanded by this de facto peoples front and others would essentially decriminalize Latin American migrants while in Mexico, yet it is not a transitional demand but a mere protest culture manifestation with no threat to Capital’s profit for the workers movement to limit itself for the following reasons:
* It serves international finance capital by trapping migrant workers in Mexico seeking work at semi-colonial wages in the Win Win factories and maquiladoras
* It invites Latin American capitalists to pass freely into Mexico
* Does not call for open borders for workers into the U.S.
* Does not call on workers organizations to take up integration and hiring of migrants
* Does not fight for workers who do the same work to have the same contract on both sides of the border.
The fight for migrant labor rights of passage, free from detention and abuse can only be won by the mobilization of the workers organizations. Open the U.S. borders to immigrant workers. While finance capital crosses borders freely workers are detained and brutalized. Workers organizations must fight for migrant workers’ rights. In the factories and maquiladoras on both sides of the borders we demand: SAME WORK SAME CONTRACT SAME RIGHTS-elevate all labor to the highest standards!
For full citizenship and labor rights for all migrant workers.
We demand AFL-CIO stop affiliation with the US AID which subordinates labor unions around the world to US imperialism.
We demand AFL-CIO, SEIU, ILWU and other labor federations open membership to immigrant labor.
We call for labor self-defense guards, marches, labor actions and strikes at the borders to free the detainees and in the towns, cities and workplaces to protect and defend immigrant labor!
We demand jobs for all! Thirty hours work for forty hours pay! Open the books of all the employers, banks and finance capitalists and their politicians and lackeys!
Against inflation we demand labor set up worker run price and wage committees to set and enforce living wages and affordable prices!
Companies which do not comply must be nationalized without indemnification and run under workers control.
For a workers government which expropriates the capitalist class at the hands of workers militias deputized by the workers assemblies!
To win the fight for workers rights in the semi-colonies as in the imperialist centers, workers need a revolutionary workers party and new workers international that uses class struggle methods to displace collaborators from the leadership of the unions, to resolve the crisis of leadership raising up new leaders from the ranks-in particular youth and women–to apply the methods of the Transitional Program.
International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency (ILTT), 04/07/2022
The ILTT is a majority trade union member organization; today we are uniting revolutionary workers on four continents in focusing our attention and solidarity advocating that workers everywhere stand shoulder to shoulder with Namibian miners in their battle at the Rossing Mine against their imperialist exploiters of the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). We see Chinese imperialism pushing to destroy or neuter labor organizations across all of Africa.
We Demand the restoring of our brother workers to employment with all back pays and without retaliation of any kind today or tomorrow.
No Faith in the bosses arbitrators! For class struggle and international solidarity to restore workers rights to choose and maintain our own leaders to enforce our contracts!
We view the behavior of the state with righteous anger at its unwillingness to enforce even its own inadequate labor laws in defense of the right of these elected local union leaders to perform the roles selected for them by the miners’ union membership. Instead, the state has behaved, down to today, as the accomplice and business agent of foreign capitalists in turning back hard won gains in the mines!
This political practice resulted in the Marikana massacre in South Africa and again promises more miners deaths in armed conflicts between competing imperialist interests. President Xi was in the awkward position of condemning the Kremlin-backed mercenary Wagner group for killing nine miners in a conflict between competing Russian and Chinese interests in the Central African Republic earlier this month.
Consequently, we are convinced every aspect of mining, of every major industry and government should be creations of the workers themselves.
For the expropriation of the extraction, refining and distribution industries! They must be run by the workers democratic self organization under a worker’s democratic central plan!
Now we see desperate Capitalism sharpening its knives for a new carving up of all that’s yours in the vain hope of restoring their fallen rate of profits. This is bringing every form of militarism, bringing small and major warfare your way, and we see every capitalist state and government preparing for it!
To win, workers must throw off the mis-leaders who refuse to defend the Rossing miners in this struggle because it is against their favored imperialist power. We say workers must oppose all imperialism and all their corporations as the inter-imperialist military redivision of the world unfolds across the dependent nations and the global south!
Therefore to oppose extinction of our species, like the many others we are watching vanish as Capital lays nature to waste, we call for a New Zimmerwald.
This concept. takes its name from the 1915 conferences that called upon workers to make war on war, to make revolutions making wars impossible. Like the old Zimmerwald left we seek to rally workers to the formation of a new revolutionary workers international to create another world of solidarity, sane planned development and peace. We stand with you today as we have and will tomorrow because we are one international social class and our battles are likewise the same.
International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency (ILTT) March 27, 2023
On Wednesday, 1 March 2023, teachers in Zimbabwe will go on a collective job action demanding a living wage which they have put at US$1260. On the same day the useless and pro employer National Joint Negotiation Council (NJNC), comprising government representatives and the perennial betrayers of workers, will sit to discuss the welfare of public sector workers. The Revolutionary Workers Group (RWG)supports the proposed action and stands in solidarity with teachers as they embark on a journey to improve their income and working conditions. We salute the ordinary teachers for taking this initiative and call on all teachers to join.
Teachers, and most civil servants, are currently earning a slave wage that cannot even provide for the most basic of needs yet are forced to work in difficult conditions which include over bloated classes and an incoherent curriculum. The second regime made a deliberate decision to make workers pay for the economic crisis through monetary measures which devalued the incomes of workers in real terms in 2018 using Statutory Instruments to declare that the local currency, ZWL, was equal to the more stable US dollar. Teachers witnessed their income reduced drastically from US$540 to around US$40 instantly yet prices of goods and services continued to gallop upwards. The attack on teachers and civil servants in general is also prevalent in the private sector which work in cohorts with government to lower incomes and maximise profits.
All previous attempts at fighting back have not progressed to their logical conclusion of closing classes and all public services thanks to the sell-out unions in the APEX, body of “representatives” of workers, who are more often the traditional ones. These are the same people who will claim to be representing workers at the NJNC meeting tomorrow yet they will be representing themselves and the government against the workers. Last year in February the collective job action was aborted by these unions making it possible for the employer to victimise, harass, suspend and expel workers. Yet the opportunity was there for a “killer punch” that would have won the US$540 salary and more. It is worth noting that this time around the initiative is being done, by and large, by ordinary teachers across the unions.
We propose the following to assist teachers. It is absolutely necessary to ensure that as many teachers as possible are mobilised for the action to avoid victimisation and divisions. The action should not be a one day and passive event but a rolling one based as much as possible on work stations. Teachers alone cannot sufficiently force the government to budge so they is need to call on other civil servants to come out in support. To avoid betrayals of the past the action should be controlled by and accountable to ordinary teachers on the ground through Strike Committees elected by the rank and file workers linking across all unions in struggle and representing all workers at the negotiations instead of the compromised union leaders. Ultimately it is important that all workers spread across the public and private sectors join hands to end exploitation and defeat capitalism and imperialism.
Teachers struggle to prepare the next generation. Not for a life of wage slavery and oppression by imperialism and national capitalists but for a life of solidarity and prosperity. To win we must turn our strike into a school of revolution, a school through which class solidarity is built in the streets and picket lines fighting for goals that unite all the workers, farmers, street vendors and unemployed. We demand Jobs For All and a shorter work week of 30 hours work for 40 hours pay. We demand a living wage for all determined and adjusted by workers’ price and wage committees. We must defend and organise street vendors and fight for land for the landless! Students cannot learn when families live in abject poverty! We demand all students be ensured open admission and free tuition, a breakfast and lunch program and school uniforms paid by the state! We demand open the books on all secret deals with big capital and public educational discussions to unwind the mystery behind national debt and enslavement to both the US/UK led imperialist bloc and the China/Russia imperialist bloc. To win we must unite our class to lead the fight to cancel foreign debt that strangles us and steals the riches of our land and all of Africa! A revolutionary workers party is needed to unite organised and non-union workers, parents, and students to turn this strike into a class wide battle against the ravages of the terminal crisis of capitalism.
–For a living Wage! Workers fight for a living wage and better working conditions through mass action controlled by ordinary workers!
-For free, comprehensive and secular education for all!
-Workers take back your unions!
-Militant workers form class struggle caucuses in the unions to fight for this program!
-Workers form strike committees to lead the resistance to the growing attacks on the wages and working conditions of the poor and the livelihood of the majority poor!
-Workers form workers defence guards for defence against state violence!
-A national strike committee to organise and plan for a general strike!
–For a workers government on the basis of the armed people to implement decisions that benefit the workers and the poor!
-Nationalisation of all companies without indemnification to the big shareholders under workers control!
-Land to be distributed to all poor peasants together with a state bank to provide inputs to all small farmers!
-A workers state that defends workers, peasants and the poor masses against the local and foreign capitalists!
-An African socialist revolution as part of the international revolution that alone can guarantee a better life for all!
-A new WORLD PARTY of socialist revolution based on the TRANSITIONAL PROGRAM of 1938 to lead the revolution to end capitalism and open the road to socialism!
Unite the working class in a united front against the Coup!
Only the working class is capable of defeating the fascists!
Since the end of the elections, the fascist hordes have organized themselves in camps in front of the Armed Forces barracks in several cities across the country. Lula and the popular front said that Lula’s inauguration would end fascism. After taking office, the government chose the governors, most of them “bolsonaristas” to fight the coup plotters. Predictably, and we predicted it, the popular front cleared the path for the fascist insurrection. NO ILLUSIONS IN THE POPULAR FRONT!
In times of global crisis like the one we are experiencing today, fascism and the coup is a weapon of the bourgeoisie against the workers. The bourgeoisie knows that the economic situation will not improve. Lula and the Workers Party (PT) are allied with the bourgeoisie and deceive the workers that everything can improve with the Popular Front government. Nurturing this illusion, they demobilize the working class, paving the way for the fascists.
Today we could see the police, commanded by PT allies, escorting the coup leaders to the square of the three powers, watching the invasions of the Presidential Palace, Congress and the Supreme Federal Court (STF), without any intervention by the security forces. Hours later, Lula used the Executive’s emergency action powers to gently remove the coup plotters with a reported 100 arrests.
Bolsonaro’s former justice minister is now the security secretary in the government of Ibanes, responsible for commanding the police to which Lula delegated the task of fighting coup plotters! The Brazilian fascist police fraternize with the coup leaders while their boss is in the USA!
The use of federal intervention to do what the local Bolsonarist-allied police refused to do, does not guarantee democracy. The federal intervention guaranteed the social peace deal Lula built with his coalition center-right partners. This is how Lula proves to the employers the Popular Front can control the situation without bringing the military into power. bringing in the tanks. Only revolutionary workers can guarantee democracy. This government will not take any action to organize and mobilize the workers. Meanwhile they prevent the working class from taking to the streets.
What should the workers’ response to the treachery of the Popular Front be?
The centrist left told us deals can be made taking a step to a parliamentary path to socialism by electing Lula. If the fascist coup makers were allowed to stay much longer, chances are that Lula’s ‘peaceful compromise’ with the right and especially the labor leaders who sold this fiction would BE EXPOSED! Exposed in the minds of the union memberships and the broader wage earner masses. Workers having been disabused of any illusions would express their rage on the street to confront the coup makers. This feather duster response by Lula is only a temporary measure to prevent any immediate working class responses taking the struggle to the streets.
The coup is the work of the big profiteers stripping the rainforest who financed the buses to the insurrectionary rehearsal. Lula used his personal charisma to keep the workers subordinated to the state power, to the employers’ coalition government. Cameras focused on him, the temporary escape of the Popular Front from its crisis passes unnoticed. However, Lula’s deal was not unnoticed by the most advanced workers. The bureaucracy and center right will want to turn Lula into a Bonapartist figure to express the balance of class forces by the authority of his personality. Workers beware! A Bonapartist Lula will be the last desperate act of the Popular Front before it must give way to fascism.
The workers movements must take to the streets and organize councils and self defense guards. We need mass worker-led anti-fascist assemblies, an anti-fascist national conference of trade unions and a workers’ struggle party that rejects blocs with capitalist partners. Workers desperately need a United Front now to turn street mobilizations into sit-down strikes, factory occupations, regional and nation-wide general strikes! The unity of the whole working class and the oppressed is crucial to defeat fascism and capitalist reaction.
Workers Break with the Popular Front government! No illusions in bourgeois justice and the reactionary Minister Moraes! There is no parliamentary road to socialism!
We call for the workers, unions, centrals, parties and organizations of the left to build a United Front against the coup movement.
We call on soldiers not to comply with any coup orders from their officers!
Organize workers’ committees and self-defense committees against the coup!
For a workers’ and peasants’ government based on workers and peasants councils!
To win, workers need a Revolutionary Workers Party and a new Workers International to fight for the World Socialist Revolution.
International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency (ILTT), January 8, 2023
RWG Zimbabwe 