Class Struggle 115

Summer 2015-16

Class Struggle 115

Summer 2015-16

Editorial: Survival Socialism

The terminal economic crisis of capitalism is evident in the growing level of destruction of
wealth; of the many wars and the human destruction caused; and the inevitable onset of
climate catastrophe. These are all the terrible consequences of capitalist society
destroying nature in the interests of the class that owns the means of production. The
capitalist class cannot survive without destroying the proletariat and with it nature; the
working class cannot survive without overthrowing the capitalist class and imposing its
own solution: survival socialism.

Society vs Nature?
Most analyses of this predicament cast evil
capitalism against good nature. This idea is now
highlighted in the term Anthropogenic that
refers to the changes brought about in climate
(nature) as a result of industrial society. For
climate warriors society has to return to nature
to survive otherwise suffer the pain of
extinction. Marx did not agree. For him, society
and nature are one.
The
contradiction
between society and
nature is not that of
capitalism
versus
nature, but one that
runs through the heart
of capitalism.
It is the contradiction
between the class that
uses its natural labour
power to meet its
social needs - the
working class in the widest sense, and the
ruling class that exploits and owns the workers
productive output as private property destroying
all that is natural in society to increase its
wealth. This is not about the financialisation of
healthy capitalism. The whole capitalist class is
parasitic on the natural labour power it exploits.
Therefore class struggle, and class war,
expresses the contradiction between nature as
use-value and capitalism as exchange-value
that permeates the whole of capitalism as the
motive force for its historic rise and fall.
We can call this the dialectics of nature. The
Marxist concept of dialectics is not confined to
society as separate from nature. For Marx,
dialectics was a method of analysis which took as
its starting point the reality of social change as a
material process driven by humans producing to
meet their basic needs. Before the birth of
capitalism in Europe in the 16th century, human
society was seen as dominated by nature because

its ability to control nature was limited. Change

occurred when new technologies allowed greater
control of nature (growth in the forces of
production) and the growth of a social surplus.
Society evolved by a series of revolutions in
social relations to create new classes of owners
and producers. Men overthrew women in lineage
societies to privatise the surplus and create
patriarchal society; then some men became
slaveowners
to
privatise the labour of
other men and all
women; then some
men
became
landowners
in
tributary or feudal
society, privatising the
labour other men and
all women as rent;
finally, some men who
started as merchants
became capitalists by
creating the factory system to privatise the
labour of landless labourers. Each revolution
enabled the new class to claim its historic
superiority in developing the forces of production
to new heights until replaced by a new
revolutionary class capable of even greater feats
until they too become defeats.
Each historic class society harnessed nature for
private wealth. The socialised forces of
production clash with the privatised relations of
production that form a barrier to their further
development. Capitalism long ago ceased to
develop the forces of production except by first
destroying them. The contradiction between
social nature and privatised society that runs
through capitalism has reached bursting point. So
capitalism, in turn, has exhausted its capacity to
develop the forces of production and is overdue
to be replaced by a new revolutionary class, this
time one that is genuinely superior because it is
universalistic.
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Class Struggle 115

A socialist revolution is necessary to restore
those forces of production to nature by removing
the parasitic capitalist ruling class. Capitalism
has terminated the pre-history of class society by
creating the pre-conditions for real human
history where the privatised surplus is socialised
once more, not under a condition of scarcity, but
of plenty. The contradiction between potential
humanity in nature to reproduce itself and the
ruling classes that expropriated the social
surplus, can now be resolved (the negation of the
negation) by the working class, now no longer a
class, but as universal or human because it ends
the privatisation of production relations and
socialises production as part of nature.

Social revolution for humanity/nature

Quoting from the article Why Russia is in
Syria: How do we want to die? Ground down by
a terminal crisis of global capitalism? In one or
other of the proxy wars that fosters national,
religious or tribal divisions, slaughtering
100,000s of workers to smash their democratic
or socialist revolutions? Surveilled and executed
in our streets in the mayhem of global terror? Or
will those who survive these, then face a slow
death by climate or nuclear meltdown? Of course
these are all in the last analysis manifestations
of the decline and collapse of global capitalism.
Economic crisis makes wars necessary and the
massive waste and destruction of war-torn
capitalism makes climate collapse more certain.
It should by now be obvious that capitalism has
to die for the working masses of the world to
survive!
The question then is how? As in all historic
crises of modes of production that stagnate, they
fall when a new class overthrows an exhausted
and defunct ruling class. Today we face a
terminal crisis. If no new class emerges in time
to replace capitalism with survival socialism,
humanity and many more species will become
extinct. This time the stakes are higher than ever
before. It is not just about breaking barriers to
the further development of the productive
forces, but breaking the barriers to our survival
as humans. The ruling class must be overthrown,
not simply because it destroys the potential for
future development, but because it is capable of
destroying humanity/nature embodied in all past
and future social development.
Can we do it? Yes, capitalism has created its own
gravediggers. Everywhere, it has abandoned
bourgeois democracy and the rule of law and now

Summer 2015-16
rules by naked force, militarising society to
destroy all political opposition. Its weakest point
is US imperialism whose productive capacity is
now devoted to the military destruction of
humanity. The US is forced to confront its rivals
directly through invasions, occupations and
ongoing wars. In its desperation to contain its old
rivals Russia and China whose demise as
communist states and emergence as new
imperialist rivals the US turned the triumph of
global capitalism into its nemesis. This explains
why the US and its EU and Japanese allies to
contain its rivals by expanding NATO and building
economic trade blocs like the TPP and the TTIP?
The growing popular opposition to war shows why
the US use of proxies like al Qaeda and IS to
create an Islamic mortal enemy in the clash of
civilisations to divide and rule the global
working class and blame Islamic terrorism rather
than capitalist terrorism.
Capitalism has outlived its use-by date. It now
openly destroys humanity and nature by dividing
and ruling the working class globally. It has to be
overthrown by resisting its destruction at every
point. The class war is now openly being fought
everywhere by Arab and Kurd warriors resisting
military dictatorship and imperialist bombs, by
anti-austerity and anticapitalist youth, by unions
defending casualised workers, by hackers and
whistleblowers, by social mediaphiles using the
internet as a weapon, and by climate warriors
against fracking and deep sea drilling. This is a
universal class war where the arms combine
ideas, high tech, civil disobedience and military
resistance.
However, the class war will remain disorganised
and fragmented by imperialist memes of nation,
Islam, terror, violence, etc until the working
class becomes conscious of itself as the class that
represents humanity and fights for itself as
humanity. Essential to this task is the
international organisation of the working class as
a united anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist
force with a program for socialist revolution
that can counter and defeat the organisation of
the imperialist ruling classes. That program must
empower the working class in its historic mission
of restoring humanity/nature and where its
victory in the class war will open the future of
communism. The victory will be sweetest for
women
workers
who
were
the
first
representatives of humanity to be socially
oppressed.

Class Struggle 115

Summer 2015-16

Smash the TPP! For a Workers Government!

Aotearoa/NZ is a semi-colony that has been undergoing re-colonisation for years . This is
how imperialists behave. Semi-colonies are ostensibly independent but remain
economically dependent. NZ has a long history of dependence which it moderated in the
1930s by a policy of economic nationalism. Deregulation by the Fourth Labour
Government removed some of the barriers to free trade and NZ dropped most of its
subsidies and tariffs. NZ became the US Deputy Dog in the South Pacific. But that is not
enough for US imperialism facing an historic decline rooted in a stagnating economy. It
needs open access to trade and to investment to boost profits and increase market share
to compete with its No 1 rival China. When Obama says the US not China must write the
new trade laws, he really means that US monopoly capital wants to extend private
property rights globally over all new ideas and technologies to exclude its big rival. This
will subordinate all the partners of the TPP to the rule of US monopolies. This means
reducing the NZ state to a neo-colonial puppet of the US. At stake is not only who governs
NZ in whose interests but the fate of humanity. Against US imperialist rule in the Pacific
we are for the Socialist United States of the Pacific!

Whats wrong with the TPP?

Why does it need to be smashed? US imperialism
is setting the rules to stop China setting them
and at the expense of workers in the Pacific Rim
countries.
New
Zealand is a semicolony. Its economy
is dominated by a
few big imperialist
powers US, China,
Britain and Japan.
But in the last 30
years it is being
recolonised
as
these big powers
have exerted direct
control of the NZ
state.
The 4th Labour Government began the process.
NZ dropped its economic nationalism and opened
itself to the global monopolies. Removing import
protection allowed the big powers to muscle into
the economy. But their drive to own and control
the NZ economy was still impeded so long as a
sovereign state could impose any barriers to the
monopolies freedom to invest in and take super
profits out of NZ. These barriers to naked neoliberalism became critical when Chinas rise
began to undercut US dominance of the Asia
Pacific region. To survive the US has to impose
its complete economic and political dominance
of the Pacific.
The TPP posing as a free trade pact actually
trades off NZs remaining national sovereignty for

tiny gains in market access for exports. The TPP

reduces national sovereignty to a total fiction
and will convert NZ into an outright neo-colony.
Just like Warner Bros imposed its own labour
conditions on NZ film workers in the Hobbit
movies,
US
monopolies will be
free to buy up NZ
assets and dictate
labour conditions to
pump out superprofits
at
the
expense
of
the
working people of
NZ.
To guarantee this
freedom to superexploit us, the US
will tighten its military and surveillance control
of politics and culture to extend its war on
terror to all of us who resist its hegemonic rule.
Serco is blatant example of the global world
order that enables US corporates to take over
state functions from jails to social welfare to
divide and rule the regions workers.

Social Democracy
Will any future capitalist government oppose the
TPP or have the guts to repudiate it? No. They
will say they cannot because of the terms of the
TPP which legally binds the signatories! Little has
ducked and dived over what to support and what
not to support when Labour should have
committed itself to condemning it. Why not?
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Class Struggle 115

The NZ Labour Party was founded as an antistrike party in 1916. It promoted a hysterical
hatred of the SU and painted all ideas of
communism as evil. It was created to divert
workers from class struggle like the general
strike of 1913, and to go to war on behalf of the
Empire to save capitalism from the threat of
communism. The Labour Party was born out of
the labour bureaucracy, the petty bourgeois
layer of privileged workers who were paid by the
bosses to con workers into believing that
capitalism could be reformed. But reforms
always put profits before workers. Labours WW2
anti-strike legislation and the 1984 neo-liberal
Labour Government was proof it that.
The problem is that there is no parliamentary
"winning strategy" in a tiny semi-colonial country
where foreign capital dictates state policy. A
Labour-Green-Mana-NZF etc. government would
not 'flout' the TPP because they are capitalist
parties that observe the rule of law, the rights of
private property (even when concentrated in a
few monopolies worldwide), and would not dare
to advocate repudiating the debt and
re/nationalising the key sectors of the economy.
Labour fakers like Chris Trotter blinded like
possums in the twin headlights of US and Chinese
imperialism try to rescue defunct Social
Democracy as our saviour from the neo-liberal
deep state. This argument is a variation on the
right wing conspiracy theory that provides an
alibi for the failure of bourgeois democracy. We
have news for Trotter; bourgeois democracy is
part of that deep state. It is the democratic
face of the dictatorship of capital.
That is why it is useless to continue to sow
illusions in parliamentary democracy to reform
and regulate trade and investment. Gordon
Campbell, Jane Kelsey etc., all focus on
defending legal mechanisms and state regulation
to challenge US global hegemony such as in the
Investor State Disputes. Campbell points to the
invasion of US corporates such as Serco in
privatising provision of state services. Any further
erosion of state regulation under the TPPA will
make worse the already dismal regulatory
regime, as in the lax border biosecurity. The
question then is: how can resistance to the TPPA
break out of the trap of bourgeois democracy and
take to the streets as a mass movement?

Radical Activism
Trades Unions and Social Movements that are
designed to pressure parliament are inherently
conservative. Strikes and protests are co-opted

Summer 2015-16
into
the
parliamentary
talkshop.
This
conservatism results from the ideology of
bourgeois democracy and the official leadership
of the labour movement that can only lead
workers to defeat. 30 years after the neo-liberal
counterrevolution began parliament has been
bypassed by the Bonapartist Prime Minister who
as the money man personifies financed capital.
For radical activism to advance it has to get out
of the parliamentary dead end and organised the
power of labour to strike, occupy, and build a
genuine working class party that mobilises
outside parliament to build mass working class
support for a Workers Government.
There is potential in the unions and the anti-TPP
resistance to take on the state by organising the
working class majority in NZ. For example,
Doctors for Healthy Trade have broken with
their conservative profession to speak up about
the impact of the TPP on the cost of drugs. The
PSA in the health sector in Auckland are fighting
cuts in their penal rates from double time to
time-and-a-half. Right across the social spectrum
the cuts in social spending and attacks on labour
relations of the NACTs will become much worse
under the TPP. The job of the unions is to step
up their opposition to political strike action that
breaks the ERA legal limits to strikes and exposes
the political leaders who stand in the way of
strike action. The advocacy for jobs, wages,
health, education, housing, social welfare etc.,
needs to build towards one big union and a
national strike coordinated with national strikes
in other countries as an international strike to
defeat the TPP.
Marxists argue that the limit to the radical
activism of trade unions and protest movements
is the ideology of bourgeois democracy. They are
trapped in the fetishized forms of capitalism that
blames crises on the abuse of power by the 1%.
Reforming this abuse is the objective of
whistleblowers and hacktivists like Assange and
Snowden. But this abuse is not an aberration. It
is endemic in capitalism struggling to survive. All
the evidence is piling up that capitalism is driven
by the worsening global crisis to attack and
destroy all the historic gains won by workers over
centuries and to the point of also destroying the
ecosphere. Radicals must be convinced that
capitalism can no longer be reformed but must
be overthrown to save humanity and nature!
This means proving to radicals that the only way
to fight the TPP is social revolution. The TPP is
designed to abolish all national barriers to US
monopoly capital. Logically, capital without
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Class Struggle 115

borders must be fought by workers without
borders. We wont stop the TPP in our
parliament because the NACTs have already
signed away parliaments sovereignty and the
Labour Party is too gutless to stand up to US and
Chinese imperialism to defend the interests of NZ
workers. Opposition to the TPP demands the
building of international social movements
capable of mobilising mass working class power
against US and Chinese imperialism. We have to
fight all imperialist
domination of NZ
and
refuse
to
become
missile
fodder for the US in
a war against China.
Its not enough to
Keep NZ Nuclear
Free we have to be
For a Nuclear Free
Pacific!
But
to
achieve all this we
will need a Workers
Government
that
can socialise all the
strategic sectors of the economy expropriating
both big national as well as foreign capital!

Marxist Revolution
To recap, liberals are opposed to the working
class joining forces with workers in other
countries. They belong to a middle class that
benefits from defending the nation state on
behalf of capitalism. Radicals have to break out
of this liberal trap and return to their historic
militancy in staunchly resisting the bosses
attacks. In fact the workers biggest fights in NZ
history were international fights. In the period
between the 1880s and the 1920s the struggle to
unionise and to strike for basic gains were led by
internationalists. The 1891 Maritime Strike was in
solidarity with Australian workers. The Red Fed
was led by recent migrants and many workers
who shifted between jobs in NZ, Australia and
the US, and were inspired by the IWW (Wobblies)
militant struggles. Opposition to the war was led
by those who united NZ workers with foreign
workers to oppose an imperialist war that divided
workers along national lines to kill one another
for the profits of the bosses.
But working class opposition to world war was
drowned in blood. The radicals and socialists
did not rise up en masse and mutiny against their
imperialist bosses who drove them to the
slaughter of the trenches to defend their profits.
The Russian Bolsheviks overthrew the ruling class

Summer 2015-16
but elsewhere there were no mass Marxist parties
capable of giving revolutionary leadership to the
armed masses. Without a Marxist international to
organise and guide their militancy, the radical
masses remained trapped by reactionary
bourgeois governments led by treacherous social
democrats. Today, to avoid being dragged into
World War 3 the spontaneous mass resistance
that is breaking out around the world desperately
needs a Marxist internationalist party and
program
that
is
capable of leading the
masses to take power,
to
put
Workers
Governments in place,
and build a world
socialist society.
Like Greece today,
there is no electoral
way to stop NZs neocolonial fate. We can
no more legislate to
stop the dominance of
US and Chinese capital
in NZ than we can stop the war in Syria. That
rests in the hands of its working people backed
by internationalist workers. The global recession
we are in will soon become a depression and the
trade wars between the US and Russia/China
block of imperialist powers are becoming hot
wars. Workers of Aotearoa must unite their tiny
forces with the massive forces of China, the US
and the rest of the world.
The only answer to the TPP as with all imperialist
policy that reduces its "partners" to no more than
flunkeys (Japan and Australia included) is the
rebellion of the workers in these countries,
united with the workers in the US and Japan, to
throw out all capitalist governments and replace
them with governments that represent the
interests of the working masses to prevent the
destruction of civilisation and nature.

Against monopoly capitals TPPA we need a

Pan
Pacific
labour
United
Front!
Build an international strike against the
TPPA!
For a World Party of Socialist Revolution!
For a Workers Government that implements a
socialist program!
For a Socialist United States of the Pacific!
http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2015/11/smashtpp-for-workers-government.html
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Class Struggle 115

Summer 2015-16

Why Russia is in Syria

RT socialists who back Russia and its allies against the insurgent masses of MENA are now
openly exposed as enemies of the socialist revolution. The shooting down of a Russian
plane by Turkey has opened peoples eyes to the bigger picture behind the dirty war
against ISIS. There are much bigger dirty wars going on, and they are the proxy wars
between the US and China/Russia imperialist blocs to back client regimes capable of
smashing the workers revolutions. The Middle East is now a war zone in the growing
confrontation between the two main imperialist blocs. It is high time for the Western left
to break from its social imperialist legacy and fight for socialist revolution.

RT socialists in bed with Russia

Meanwhile the RT (Russia Today) left that takes
its world view from the Russia state media giant,
is still pretending that the Syrian civil war is no
more than a US sponsored war to remove Assad,
while
Russia
is
defending
the
democratically
elected Assad regime.
Liberal John Pilger
says that Assad is
independent. From
what? Today Assad is
dependent on Iran and
its allies, Russia and
China to put down a
popular uprising. UK
Labour leader Jeremy
Corbyn is against the
UK bombing ISIS. Good
but not good enough. He still looks to the UN to
stop the civil war in Syria. Corbyn is taking a
classic social democratic stand against the right
wing Blairites who back imperialist war. He
argues that a war under the aegis of the UN is
somehow not imperialist. For him imperialism is
not inscribed in the DNA of capitalism, rather its
a disease that is not nice to have. By this
reasoning, the 'social imperialist' (socialism at
home and imperialism abroad) left rejects the
reality that Russia and China are imperialist
powers and defends them as progressive
regimes opposed to the world arch-enemy, US
imperialism and its NATO allies.
Now that the frontlines between the two
imperialist blocs are becoming clearly staked
out, its obvious even to idiots that the Syrian
revolution has for 5 years been suppressed by
both imperialist blocs as part of the great
game. We can see Russias dramatic upstaging
of the US in the war on ISIS as evidence that
Putin is no pawn of the US or EU. He has come
out as an imperialist rival capable of breaking up

NATO, dumping Turkey but drawing France and

Germany closer to the orbit of the Russia/China
bloc.
It is high time that the labour movement
declared its independence from both imperialist
blocs and stood for
the
class
independence of the
worlds workers. First
it has to abandon its
Eurocentrist faith in
'good'
capitalist
regimes like that of
Assad who have killed
400,000 and exiled
millions.
It
must
recognise the Syrian
civil war as todays
Spanish civil war, and
send volunteers and
arms to defeat Assad and to reinforce the secular
armed masses of MENA to advance the revolution
and overthrow the reactionary pro-imperialist
regimes and kick them and their imperialist
masters out!

Imperialism screws MENA

The Syrian people, like all those of MENA (Middle
East and North Africa) are pawns in a power
game between the two rival imperialist blocs.
The main imperialist proxies (leaving out Israel a
US tool), SA on the US side and Iran on the
Russia/China side, happen to be Sunni and Shia
respectively, so the battle lines have increasingly
taken a sectarian form to rally and discipline
their forces. There is a history to this.
Since it was kicked out of Iran by the revolution
in 1979 followed by the counter-revolutionary
Shiite, Khomeini, the US and its Israeli stooge has
aimed its axis of evil policy at Iran. The US
backed Saddam in the Iraq/Iran war which Iraq
lost. Saddam began to challenge the US in Kuwait
in 1991 leading to the first Gulf war that killed
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Class Struggle 115

over a million Iraqis in that war or by starving
them with sanctions. At the same time the
collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of
the capitalist road in China made the US appear
invincible. The 9/11 blowback punctured this
illusion and Bush launched the frenzied 'war on
terror' to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. The US
smashed the Baathist regime because it began to
swing towards Russia. He used the occupation to
destroy the largely Sunni army leadership. It
turns out that many of these leaders formed the
beginning of what would become ISIS while in
jail.

Born again Russia and China

The rise of China and Russia as new born
imperialist powers in the 1990s and 2000s
changed the balance of power in MENA and
forced the US to compromise in tolerating
regimes in Syria and Iraq that did not rock the
boat. Israel, Saudia Arabia, the Gulf States and
Turkey, did not recognise this 'power sharing'.
They opposed the Shia dominated regimes as
extensions of Iran. When in 2011 the Arab Spring
broke out and the popular masses threatened to
revive the Arab Revolution, the reactionary
regimes tried to steer any development of the
revolution for democracy and socialism into
sectarian regimes. Behind the scenes NATO and
SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) lined up
with their Islamic proxies to contest the control
of oil in MENA, but the main enemy was now the
Arab revolution picking up momentum and
threatening to overthrow their client dictators.
This created an opening for al Qaeda to reemerge as the Sunni counterweight to the rival
Shia sects sponsored by Iran and now backed by
the China/Russia imperialist bloc. The Arab
revolution would be declared dead and buried in
a morass of sectarian infighting.
Instant repression such as in Bahrain, fake Muslim
Brotherhood democracy followed by military
dictatorship in Egypt, or NATO intervention in
Libya, held the revolution at bay. Only in Syria
did an armed popular revolution threaten to
overthrow a dictator. The US intervened mainly
to starve the FSA of heavy weapons (as it had
done in Libya) in the hope that Assad and the FSA
would fight to a bloody draw. After 4 years the
FSA looked like defeating Assad so Russia and
Iran stepped up their military support. The US
also tried to take over the popular revolution
with by arming and training proxy militias
without success. The long bloody stalemate in
the civil war opened up a vacuum waiting to be
filled by the radical Sunni sects like ISIS/Daesh

Summer 2015-16
willing to overthrow the Shia aligned regimes in
Iraq and Syria. But Daesh was not prepared to act
merely as a proxy for the US bloc, its origins in
the former Baathist Iraqi regime meant it wanted
to rewrite the old imperialist borders and exploit
its Sunni backing to build an Islamic State.
All of this proves that all the lying rhetoric
coming out of both imperialist blocs about a war
on terror is bullshit to mask their own rotten
role in screwing over MENA for at least a century.
Their power-grab today when the global crisis is
pushing the US to aggressively challenge both
Russia and China means that neither of which will
back down if their strategic interests are
involved. Daesh threatens the strategic interests
of both blocs because its rhetoric directly

challenges the DNA of imperialism to invade and

plunder with its own virulent DNA to recreate a
world-wide Islamic State. Daesh is not a problem
because it cuts throats and rapes women, but
because it is not prepared to bow down to either
US or Russia/China imperialist blocs. Those who
defend either the US or Russia/China bloc in the
name of 'democracy' in a 'war on terror' against
ISIS are no more than apologists for the
imperialism that dominates, invades, occupies
and represses the Arab masses.

Survival Socialism!
How do we want to die? Ground down by a
terminal crisis of global capitalism? In one or
other of the proxy wars that fosters national,
religious or tribal divisions which slaughter
100,000s of workers to smash their democratic or
socialist revolutions? Surveilled and executed in
our streets in a mayhem of global terror? Or will
we survive all these only to face a slow death by
climate or nuclear meltdown? Of course these
are all in the last analysis manifestations of the
decline and collapse of global capitalism.
Economic crisis makes wars necessary and the
massive waste and destruction of war-torn
capitalism makes climate collapse more certain. I
should by now be obvious that capitalism has to
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Class Struggle 115

die for the working masses of the world to
survive!
The question of whether this or that particular
proxy war will blow up into a world war depends
on how far the rival imperialist ruling classes will
go to beat their rivals. If history is any indication
they will go all the way. At a certain point bluff
and counter-bluff may lead to adventurist actions
that spark a meltdown. For example, Erdogan
shooting down a Russian plane has been met by
Russian sanctions on
Turkey and economic
and trade sanctions
are
always
the
opening gambit to
war. But at each point
in this destruction,
economic,
military
and
ecological
disaster
can
be
stopped. They are
man-made and more
importantly, made by
capitalism. Whether
we succumb to the implosion of global capitalism
critically depends on how quickly we can build a
mass anti-imperialist movement in the West and
the East that can unite our forces to halt the
drive towards crisis, war and the sixth great
extinction.
You can be sure that the only thing that will stop
the imperialists and their client states from
dragging the popular masses into a widening
global war of terror is mass resistance. That is
why it is essential to oppose imperialist
warmongering from the West and the East and
not to be diverted by the war on terror. Only by
stopping imperialism at home from intervening
directly or indirectly in MENA and by backing the
popular secular forces fighting for democracy
against imperialist and Islamic reaction can the
Arab revolution rise again with any prospect of
victory.

International revolutionary party

For this to happen, the political left that holds
back the revolution with parliamentary talk of
reformist compromises with the capitalists has to
be removed. These are the Corbyns, the Sanders,
the Syrizas, the union bosses, the NGO
bureaucracies and the left commentariat that
covers for them. Since the First Imperialist war,
the working class has been capable of
overthrowing capitalism. The only thing missing

Summer 2015-16
was a revolutionary party able to defeat the
treacherous social imperialist leaders that acted
as the agents of the ruling classes. In Russia a
Bolshevik Party emerged and the revolution
succeeded. Elsewhere social democracy prevailed
and the revolutions were defeated and the epoch
of fascism began.
Today it is the lessons of that period that are
most important. They are summarised in the
1938 Transitional Program of Trotsky and the
Fourth International. It is
necessary to build a new
World Party of Socialism
that can lead workers
united fronts to defend
the interests of workers
and expose and replace
the treacherous leaders
of the unions and social
democracy that are the
agents of the capitalists
in the working class, with
millions of revolutionary
leaders. This is the
revolutionary road to socialism, the only answer
that humanity has to the evils of economic,
military and climate destruction.
While the capitalist ruling class and its apologists
defend the worst excesses of capitalism in the
name of 'democracy', we have to say that
bourgeois democracy is a sham reserved only for
those who can buy it. Parliaments are talkshops
that divert us from the world of the workshops in
which the working billions create the world's
wealth. We are forced to work for a wage
because we have no other means to survive. Now
that our survival itself is threatened by the
capitalist system facing a terminal crisis and
ecological collapse it is time for the working
class to take control of the global economy and
get rid of the system that exploits both workers
and nature.
Clay Claiborns critique of Patrick Cockburn
http://linkis.com/blogspot.com/j7jkl
Pepe Escobar http://atimes.com/2015/10/asyriaberliner-ensemble-escobar/
John Pilger interviewed on RT
http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/john-pilgeron-paris-isis-and-media-propaganda/
Redrave
http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2015/11/why-isrussia-in-syria.html
9

Class Struggle 115

Summer 2015-16

Economic Crash Ahead

Will the coming meltdown of China mean the end of global capitalism? Lets have a brief
look at this question. Its pretty common knowledge that the so-called Global Financial
Crisis (GFC) was not some isolated crisis but a symptom of something fundamentally wrong
with the global capitalist economy. In fact, if it were not for Chinas rapid growth the GFC
would have turned into a long recession. Now China is finally slowing down but who can
say by how much? It is still a long way from a meltdown but it opens the door to a slump
or a crash in the near future. The big question today is whether or not the global
economy can recover from another big crash.
Economists on the Marxist Left, Neo-Classical
Right and Keynesian Centre can all see a slump
ahead but they disagree on the causes and the
solutions. The Neo-classicals blame state
interference preventing the market selfcorrecting by means of
depression. Socialism
for the Rich (QE, or
printing money) after
the GFC only postponed
the inevitable deflation
and depression ahead.
Keynesians
complain
that the QE trillions
went to Wall St instead
of Main Street whereas
policies like Sanders
and Corbyns plans for
peoples QE would
avert
another
depression. Marxists argue that QE cannot stop a
depression but for different reasons than the
Neo-classicals. The Neo-classicals want to
unleash a depression to smack working class
wages down to slave levels, and eliminate the
social wage while Marxists argue that workers
should refuse to pay for the capitalist crisis, rise
up and overthrow the rotten system that only
survives at the expense of the lives of working
people.
To put this debate in perspective we need to
take a deeper look at the history of capitalism.
Crises are not new. Capitalism has a history of
regular crises punctuating long upturns and
downturns. They are akin to the economy
breathing in and out. As the economy expands it
reaches a point where it cannot grow without
depressions that cut costs and increase
productivity. Each depression cleared the road
for a new expansion. Thus the crises of the 19th
century fuelled a process of national capitalism
which drove industrial revolution ahead. But by
the turn of the 20th century national markets

became fetters on growth and the more

advanced economies began to colonise the
backward countries to extract their wealth. By
exporting capital to the colonies the imperialist
countries took advantage of cheap labour and
raw
materials.
Crises
were now less like regular
breathing and more like
the gasps of a dying
animal. The downturns
were
driven
by
monopolies backed by
powerful nation states to
wage trade wars and
World Wars to defeat and
plunder their rivals and
fuel an upturn.
Capitalism in the 20th
century as a global system
was no longer progressive. Instead of developing
the economy by increasing labour productivity it
was destroying wealth in depressions and wars.
The capitalists were no longer entrepreneurs but
parasites living off monopoly profits that were
squandered on wars and speculation. The world
economy virtually stagnated between 1914 and
1945. Far from Keynesian economics stimulating
a post-war boom, the boom was possible only as
the result of such massive destruction of the
wealth by depressions and wars. Despite the
price paid for the post-war boom it didnt last
long and crisis set in again in the 1960s.
While capitalism staggered from crises to wars in
the 20th century the Soviet Union and then China
demonstrated that there was an another way of
organising society where economic development
did not need to destroy wealth. They proved that
by getting rid of the capitalists and planning the
economy they could grow much more rapidly
than capitalism. The superiority of planning over
the market forced world capital to impose
economic quarantines and a Cold War that
10

Class Struggle 115

ultimately forced Russia and China to return to
the global capitalist market.
Here the story gets more interesting. The return
of Russia and China to the capitalist world
economy did not rescue it by opening up Eurasia
to Western plunder. It proved that even the
dreaded communist regimes could retain their
economic independence and resist Western
domination. The communist elite could convert
itself into a new capitalist class and manage the
switch to the market without becoming recolonised by foreign powers. The result is that
since 2000 both Russia and China have become
rising imperialist powers that are now the main
rivals to the US imperialist bloc.
The joke on the Neo-classicals is that the former
communist states have proven they are able to
switch to state monopoly capitalism and apply a
centralised Keynesian economics to moderate the
anarchic effects of the global market. This is not
good enough for the ideologues who preach
more-market. They demand an end to
corruption, regulation of markets, currency
manipulation, off-book debts, fake statistics,
cyber war, one-party dictatorship, etc., knowing
that this would subordinate Chinese state
monopoly capitalism to US state monopoly
capitalism.
Meanwhile the Keynesians are seething with envy
because this state monopoly regime is what they
want in the US and EU to end financial
speculation and invest capital into the real
economy. As Michael Roberts argues, the end of
the post-war boom has already taught us that a
Corbyn-type peoples QE or more correctly the
multiplier, will not make capitalists switch from
parasitic speculation to invest in production
unless they are sure of making a profit. More
money
chasing
fewer
goods
leads
to
stagflation. If more proof is wanted, Japan has
stagnated for most of the post war period as a
result of such policies.
What is this root cause behind the China
slowdown? How best to explain this? For Michael
Roberts neither the Neo-Classical or Keynesian
approach can explain the rise and fall of China.
The Marxist model of rising productivity through
investment and innovation to replace labour and
the accompanying contradiction with the
dominant law of value in the world economy
provides the best explanation of where China has
come from and where it is going. (Roberts,
China: A Weird Beast).

Summer 2015-16
On the Marxist model, Chinas real GDP depends
on production of value by its working class. But
this is subject to exploiting labour sufficiently to
make a profit. When workers resist, profits fall,
production slows down or stagnates, and excess
money that leaves production enters speculation
in existing commodities causing price inflation
and money devaluation. So while crises begin
with falling profits they usually blow up when
asset bubbles burst.
Rather than printing money that leads to
stagflation, the capitalist solution to the crisis
must be depression the devaluing of existing
capital, machines, raw materials and wages, to
the point where investment in production is
profitable again. But depression comes up against
the resistance of the workers that produce the
raw materials in Chinas trading partners
including NZ, as well as Chinese workers
producing finished products. The more-market
solution is a declaration of open class war inside
China and in all its trading partners. The Marxist
response is to say bring it on to workers in all
these countries. The workers united will never be
defeated!
Meanwhile, the growing antagonism between
Russia/China bloc and the US bloc sparked by
trade and finance sanctions on Russia has
escalated the rivalry between the blocs and
ramped up economic and military confrontations.
Russia may spark the crash by defaulting on its
debt to its Western creditors before a China
meltdown can happen. The proxy wars in Ukraine
and Syria may blow up into regional wars.
Whatever the timing of such events, there is
nothing that can prevent the China slowdown
becoming a meltdown sooner or later. Whenever
it happens a new global crash will pose the
question: is this the last crash before human
extinction?
https://livingmarxism.wordpress.com/2014/06/25/wh
y-are-russia-and-china-imperialist-powers-and-notcapitalist-semi-colonies/
http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2015/09/is-chinameltdown-end-of-capitalism_16.html
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/
debt-demand-and-depression/
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2015/09/17/
china-a-weird-beast/
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/10/23/guest-blogcomrade-dave-brownz-economic-crashahead/#sthash.3HvOnOcK.dpuf
http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2015/12/economiccrash-ahead.html
11

Class Struggle 115

Summer 2015-16

Karl Marx on Parisian Terror

Paris is once again in the news as the victim of a terror attack. Paris, the city, is more
than just a city. It embodies all that is good and bad about capitalism. It is the city of light
but also has a dark side. It dishes out much more terror than it gets back. The ebb and
flow of its history is a history of capitalism blow by blow.
As the site of the famous bourgeois revolution,
the French Revolution, Paris threw up the most
advanced revolutionaries, the Jacobins based on
the
sansculottes
(workers) who were
enlisted as shock
troops
by
the
bourgeoisie to carry
out the terror on
the
resistant
elements
of
the
aristocracy.
Having
appeared
on
the
stage of history in
their vanguard role of
doing the bosses dirty
work, the Jacobins
were soon paid off in
their own blood as
the bourgeois counter-revolution, now forced
back into the arms of the aristocracy, ultimately
entered into its Bonapartist period of
consolidating the first capitalist republic.
Liberty, Equality and Fraternity became
increasingly scarce commodities. Like the
American revolution these rights were the rights
of the bourgeoisie to exploit workers only made
possible because they lacked these rights.
Napoleon even revoked the freedom of Haitian
slaves to protect the profits and property rights
of slave owners and merchants and set about
terrorising the slaves. To prove he was even
handed Napoleon had to tax the Liberty, Equality
and Fraternity (profits) of the French bourgeoisie
to pay for his expensive wars.
By 1848 the European bourgeoisies proved
incapable of advancing their own revolution to
include any class but their own and in France had
to resort to another military Bonapartist pitting
the peasantry against the proletariat. A period of
instability came to a head in 1851 crowned by a
farce. The republican president Louis Napoleon,
nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, staged a coup
and appointed himself Emperor Napoleon III. This
was the occasion of Marxs famous statement
about history repeating itself, first as tragedy,
second as farce.

The farce ended in July, 1870, when Bonaparte

declared war on Prussia only to be defeated
when his army surrendered. Two days later a
Republic
was
declared in Paris with
massive
support
across France. The
return of the Jacobins
marked once again an
advance
in
the
bourgeois revolution,
but this time in the
name
of
the
proletariat.
The
French ruling class
rallied and joining
forces
with
the
Prussian army put
down the revolution massacring up to 10,000
workers and their families. It proved that for
workers to gain liberty, equality and fraternity,
Jacobin terror that did not result in the
overthrow of the bourgeoisie was not enough.
The Paris Commune proved that it was necessary
to smash the bourgeois state to win Liberty,
Equality and Fraternity for all citizens. Yet this
would require the overthrow of the very notion
of bourgeois citizenship itself. The Commune was
defeated when the French bourgeoisie enlisted
the support of the Prussian army, plunging Paris
back to the days before the French Revolution.
Revolutionary Paris was surrounded by the
Prussians while the French troops engaged in
their own terror against the Communards.
1871 marked a turning point in the history of
Paris. It was now the city of the victorious
counter-revolutionary terror against the first
proletarian revolution. It flourished as the head
of the French Empire that soon spread terror
across the world. The French Empire was
somewhat unique to the extent that its settler
colonies were incorporated into metropolitan
France, usually by force. When the barricades
came out again they would be in the colonies like
Indo-China, Algeria, New Caledonia and
Guadeloupe when protests escalated into
independence movements, and in the banlieues
12

Class Struggle 115

Summer 2015-16

of the cities when migrant workers and their

children blocked off streets during protests.

then had an interest in national unity with the

bourgeoisie in oppressing the colonies.

France bombed and strafed civilians in Vietnam

to terrorise the population. It used the same
methods in Algeria, including tortureand
execution to defeat the FLN. The FLN in turn
used the terror of parcel bombs to kill French
settlers. This is how France takes its revolution
to its colonies and to its own streets. Liberty,
Equality and Fraternity delivered by bomb. It is
no surprise that popular terror always prevails
over imperialist terror.

That is why in all of its imperialist wars, the

majority of the French working class was united
behind their bosses to defend their Empire. For
example in the Algerian war the French
Communist Party opposed independence. This
meant that apart from Vietnam, the leadership
of the national liberation movements fell to the
national bourgeoisie, and in the Muslim
countries, political Islam.

The French Empire still exists but it is rotting

from its head in Paris. The latest terror
bombings of 13/11 reflect that fact. Perpetrated
by Muslim youth born and raised in France, it is
significant that the leaders were of Algerian and
Moroccan extraction. They are the product of
Frances internal colonies, the banlieues, where
migrant youth lack most of the benefits of
Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. The IS suicide
bombers are therefore essentially the same as
those who have long fought for independence
from France.
There
is
a
close
similarity
to
the
Algerian revolution led
by the FLN but which
was heavily influenced
by
an
Islamic
radicalism. We
can
argue
that
the
subsequent
rule
of
political Islam in Algeria
marked
the
degeneration of the
colonial independence
struggles for Liberty,
Equality and Fraternity into Sharia law based on
a reactionary interpretation of Islam. Yet the
real degeneration does not originate in the
Muslim populations oppressed by the French
Empire, nor in the interpretation of the Koran. It
is a necessary degeneration of that Empire itself
and in particular the regression of the French
Revolution.
We can see this in Hollandes appeal for national
unity after 13/11 to win popular support for
bombing no longer for peace but for vengeance.
National unity was first won by smashing the
Commune. Then it was built on the expansion of
Empire. The workers and peasants of the colonies
created the wealth that was trickled down to the
native French working class. That working class

This brings us to the conclusion that political

Islam is a reaction, in both senses of the word, to
imperialist oppression in Muslim countries. It is a
reaction to the imperialist bourgeoisies and their
client dictators exploitation and oppression. In
the absence of a popular secular leadership,
including that of communists, both in the
heartlands and the neo-colonies, leadership of
resistance to imperialist oppression defaults to
the radical clerics who mobilise their armies to
negotiate with imperialism a share of the oil. In
creating the history of colonial oppression, or
benefiting from it, the Empire unites bosses and
workers in a common
fight to defend the
basis of Empire, the
extraction of wealth
from the resources and
labour of their client
states.
The Empire therefore
is the head of
reactionary
terror,
its own being infinitely
worse than that of its
colonial
opposition.
The double reaction
that Empire produces, will not end until the
workers and other oppressed peoples unite their
forces in both the imperialist heartlands and the
neo-colonies and fight for the basic demands of
the French Revolution, Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity. These demands will only be realised
by the overthrow of the capitalist system and the
creation of a socialist society in which the
limited resources of nature can be utilised
sustainably to meet the basic needs of all.
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/11/19/guest-blogcomrade-dave-brownz-marx-on-parisianterror/#sthash.noymqfPf.XuGXPu6V.dpuf
http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2015/11/marx-onparisian-terror-daily-blog.html
13

Class Struggle 115

Summer 2015-16

Marx on the LOV (Law of Value)

When Chinas production begins to slow down, when bank interest rates in the West are
around zero, and sovereign bonds yield nothing, this signifies that trillions of QE easy
money is not being invested in production of value and the global economy is more or
less stagnating and heading for a crash.
Michael Roberts has just written another good
blog post with data supporting an impending
world crash.Of course every trader, money guru
and left wing academic is also predicting a crash,
sooner or later. At some point it becomes so
obvious it cant be denied. When Chinas
production begins to slow down, when bank
interest rates in the West are around zero, and
sovereign bonds yield nothing, this signifies that
trillions of QE easy money is not being invested
in production of value and the global economy is
more or less stagnating and heading for a crash.
Still the marketeers want a full-on depression to
write off debt in a storm of creative
destruction. The Keynesians want an end to
austerity and more state spending on jobs and
wages to stimulate demand, regulate debt and
encourage investment in production. But as
everyone knows capitalists dont invest money in
production unless it returns a profit. Marx
explained capitalist investment was based on the
price of production (POP) which is the
capitalists costs in machines, raw materials,
labour power and at least an average profit. If
this POP is too low and profits fall, bosses go on
strike, put their money in the bank and pray for a
bailout. At least thats the current situation.
This is not new. Marx was rediscovered in the
1960s by student radicals when the post-war
boom came to a halt. The New Right blamed the
workers (and the students, unions and reds under
the bed) for yet another crisis because it looked
like their wage demands were causing price
inflation and squeezing profits. The Keynesians
refused to blame the workers but could not bring
themselves to blame capitalists except for
blocking social democratic governments stopping
the crisis. What they had in mind was the welfare
state, not the warfare state.
All they had to do was read Marx and find out
where they were wrong. The LOV states that only
labour produces value. This is the basis on which
human society has existed for millennia and on
which capitalist production takes place. But
because it does not justify profits, rents
and interest, mainstream economists are in
denial of the LOV. Yet without knowledge of the

LOV we fail to understand the most elementary

features of capitalism including its inbuilt
tendency to crash and the inability of states to
prevent crashes.
The state serves the interests of the capitalists
by attempting to solve crises but it cannot take
over the investment decisions of the private
capitalists. It can help create the conditions to
drive down the POP by cutting costs through
depressions and wars, but since the essential
component of all costs of production are that of
labour (LOV again), then in the last analysis, the
working class has to suffer austerity, and the
historic destruction of past, present and future
labour to restore the conditions for profitability.
Surely if workers knew of the importance of the
LOV they would realise that resistance to
austerity can only succeed by getting rid of
capitalism.
However
capitalism
is
not
transparent. Capitalism encrypts the way it
exploits labour power as the ideology of the free
market, where individuals exchange commodities
on an equal basis. Though Marx cracked the code
over 150 years ago, this knowledge has been
suppressed by bourgeois intellectuals who
continue to create a smokescreen of neoclassical economics, and social democrats who
transmit bourgeois ideology into the working
class via parliament, education and the media.
Knowledge doesnt fall from the sky. It grows out
of the earth. Marx was a scientist whose
examination of the commodity cell of
capitalism revealed its contradictory dual nature.
It was a use-value to be consumed to meet
needs, but only if it was exchanged on the
14

Class Struggle 115

market for its exchange-value (the socially
necessary labour time (SNLT) used to make it).
Marx was not the first to discover that labour
was the source of value any more than he
discovered economic classes. But he was the first
to prove that the value of workers labour time
measured by the commodities they consumed
was less than the total value of the commodities
they produced. The difference was surplus-value
realised as profits.
The LOV became much less obvious with the rise
of capitalism because capitalists accumulated
their capital by dispossessing producers of their
land and means of production. They could then
force landless labourers to sell their labour
power and expropriate the surplus-value
produced as profit. When labour power is sold as
a commodity it is paid its exchange-value,
capitalists claim the surplus-value as their profit
for investing money in production, just as
landowners and bankers claim rent and interest.
The commodity then appears to be the source
of value and not the labour power that created
it. Marx dispelled this appearance of capitalism
posing as a Holy Trinity of land, labour and
capital, by ex-posing the origin of profits, rents
and interest in the surplus-value appropriated by
capital from labour in production.
However, if you reject the LOV, as non-Marxists
do, then you fetishize the Holy Trinity of
market shares and cannot account for crises of
production except by blaming workers for
demanding high wages, or economic policy for
failing to boost demand. Lets take the case of
Steve Keen, a radical post-Keynesian who rejects
the LOV as mysticism because value is not
observable. This amounts to a retreat to market
price rather than value and the Holy Trinity
formula as measure of income distribution. Keen
follows Minsky arguing that excessive debt
creates instability deterring capitalists from
investing in production. He rejects both
Keynesian under-consumption and Marxist
LTRPF explanations for that of banks creating too
much money. The solution is to mobilise workers
to vote for governments that will prevent private
debt from rising too far. This must fail because
Keen makes the fundamental mistake of
separating banks industry. He sees excessive debt
as the disease rather than the symptom of falling
profits.
Debt is the normal basis for investment in
production. What makes debt excessive is
insufficient profit to meet debt repayments. In
other words debt is a claim on profits. Keens

Summer 2015-16
rejection of the LOV accounts for his focus on
money rather than value. Marx shows how the
LOV contains the contradiction between usevalue and exchange-value that leads to the
Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall (TRPF).
Workers resistance to increased exploitation
(because the exchange value of their labour
power will not allow them to buy and consume
enough use-values to survive) forces the
capitalists to continually replace their labour
with better machines. However machines do not
create value they merely pass on the labour
value already contained in them as they are used
up in production. This means that capitalists
have to continually increase the rate of
exploitation of those still in work to produce
enough surplus value to return a profit on the
rising investment in machines. When workers
succeed in resisting a rising rate of exploitation
to pay for increasingly expensive machines, the
TRPF causes a fall in profits.
At this point crisis sets in and rising debt
represents capital that is not productively
employed which must then speculate in existing
assets driving up their price well beyond their
value. Such investments are called fictitious
because they cannot be exchanged for value. As
speculative bubbles grow banks create more
money to fuel the boom. Thus excessive credit is
an effect of the TRPF. So neither Keynes solution
of pumping up demand to induce capitalists to
invest to meet new demand, nor Keens solution
of using state regulation to stop banksters
creating mountains of debt, can prevent crises
because they are both effects of the fundamental
cause, the LOV and the TRPF which is inherent in
the social relations of capital.
If as Marxists claim the LOV means that crises
occur because capitalists cannot extract enough
surplus value from wage labour to make a
sufficient profit, then capital is to blame for
crises not labour. If you reject the LOV you
cannot explain why reforms do not work. You
resort to genes (human nature) or dreams
(Corbynomics). Without Marx and the LOV there
is no scientific theory that explains why crises
cannot be resolved except at the expense of
workers, which is why the proletariat has to rise
up and overthrow the capitalist class that
exploits them. Anything less brings us closer to
the
inevitable
crash
into
social
and
environmental oblivion. For the proletariat to
live capitalism must die!
http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2015/12/marxand-lov-law-of-value.html
15

Class Struggle 115

What We Fight For

Overthrow Capitalism
Historically, capitalism expanded world-wide to free
much of humanity from the bonds of feudal or tribal
society, and developed the economy, society and
culture to a new higher level. But it could only do this
by exploiting the labour of the productive classes to
make its profits. To survive, capitalism became
increasingly destructive of "nature" and humanity. In
the early 20th century it entered the epoch of
imperialism in which successive crises unleashed wars,
revolutions and counter-revolutions. Today we fight to
end capitalisms wars, famine, oppression and
injustice, by mobilising workers to overthrow their
own ruling classes and bring to an end the rotten,
exploitative and oppressive society that has exceeded
its use-by date.

Fight for Socialism

By the 20th century, capitalism had created the preconditions for socialism a world-wide working class
and modern industry capable of meeting all our basic
needs. The potential to eliminate poverty, starvation,
disease and war has long existed. The October
Revolution proved this to be true, bringing peace,
bread and land to millions. But it became the victim
of the combined assault of imperialism and Stalinism.
After 1924 the USSR, along with its deformed offspring
in Europe, degenerated back towards capitalism. In
the absence of a workers political revolution,
capitalism was restored between 1990 and 1992.
Vietnam and China then followed. In the 21sst century
only Cuba and North Korea survive as degenerate
workers states. We unconditionally defend these
states against capitalism and fight for political
revolution to overthrow the bureaucracy as part of
world socialism.

Defend Marxism
While the economic conditions for socialism exist
today, standing between the working class and
socialism are political, social and cultural barriers.
They are the capitalist state and bourgeois ideology
and its agents. These agents claim that Marxism is
dead and capitalism need not be exploitative. We say
that Marxism is a living science that explains both
capitalisms continued exploitation and its attempts
to hide class exploitation behind the appearance of

Summer 2015-16

individual "freedom" and "equality". It reveals how and

why the reformist, Stalinist and centrist misleaders of
the working class tie workers to bourgeois ideas of
nationalism, racism, sexism and equality. Such false
beliefs will be exploded when the struggle against the
inequality, injustice, anarchy and barbarism of
capitalism in crisis, led by a revolutionary Marxist
party, produces a revolutionary class-consciousness.

For a Revolutionary Party

The bourgeois and its agents condemn the Marxist
party as totalitarian. We say that without a
democratic and a centrally organised party there can
be no revolution. We base our beliefs on the
revolutionary tradition of Bolshevism and Trotskyism.
Such a party, armed with a transitional program,
forms a bridge that joins the daily fight to defend all
the past and present gains won from capitalism, to
the victorious socialist revolution. Defensive struggles
for bourgeois rights and freedoms, for decent wages
and conditions, will link up the struggles of workers of
all nationalities, genders, ethnicities and sexual
orientations, bringing about movements for workers
control, political strikes and the arming of the
working class, as necessary steps to workers' power
and the smashing of the bourgeois state. Along the
way, workers will learn that each new step is one of
many in a long march to revolutionise every barrier
put in the path to the victorious revolution.

Fight for Communism

Communism stands for the creation of a classless,
stateless society beyond socialism that is capable of
meeting all human needs. Against the ruling class lies
that capitalism can be made "fair" for all; that nature
can be "conserved"; that socialism and communism are
"dead"; we raise the red flag of communism to keep
alive the revolutionary tradition of the' Communist
Manifesto of 1848, the Bolshevik-led October
Revolution; the Third Communist International until
1924, the revolutionary Fourth International up to
1940 before its collapse into centrism. We fight to
build a new, Fifth, Communist International, as a
world party of socialism capable of leading workers to
a victorious struggle for socialism.

For a New World Party of Socialism!

Class Struggle is the bi-Monthly paper of the Communist Workers Group of New Zealand/Aotearoa, in a
Liaison Committee of Communists with Communist Workers Group (USA) and Revolutionary
Workers Group (Zimbabwe)
Class Struggle and most articles are online at http://redrave.blogspot.com
Phone +64 0272800080 Email cwg2007@hotmail.com
Archive of publications before 2006 http://communistworker.blogspot.com/

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