Class Struggle 121 Winter (June -August) 2017

Class Struggle 121 Winter 2017

Class Struggle 121 Winter (June-August) 2017

Corbyn: A Partisan Revolution?

Best of luck to the 'non-partisan' Matt McCarten in revving-up the 'missing million' in
NZ, he will need it. If there was any message in Corbyn's revival of the British Labour
party is it his 'partisan' democratic socialist stand. Much has been made of the 'lessons'
for NZ. Veteran class fighters Mike Treen and John Minto see the need to get rid of
the Blairites. Many others seem to think it wasn't Corbyn's program that worked
wonders but his appeal to non-voting youth. Bomber Bradbury even ranks all the
political parties on their youth appeal as if missing youth are a mere segment in the
political marketplace. That is what happens when you replace class with generation
as your main political motivator. Social class disappears and youth appeal becomes
the cue for the Blairites to once again accuse Corbyn of splitting the Labour Party.

Its all about class
Speaking for the NZ Labour Party Blairites in the NZ
Herald, Josie Pagani complains that Corbyn could
have won a majority had he united with the hostile
Blairites behind a more moderate program. These
same Blairites who rejected Corbyn and his program
as 'their' leader! And for Pagani, obviously NZ Labour's
current centrist tack to reclaim the middle ground
from National is the way to go. Here we can see how
the fixation on youth appeal at the expense of
socialist program leads to cross-class identity politics
displacing working class politics.
The reason that thousands of young people flocked to
Corbyn's program was because they were inspired by
it. As were many die-hard older Labour supporters
despite decades of Blairism, and before that, decades
of Labourite attacks on the working class. Why?
British Labour, like NZ Labour is a class divided party.
They were both created by the conservative trades
union bureaucracy in the early 1900s to divert the
class struggle from the workplaces into parliament
when the unions found that their ability to fight for
wages and conditions came up against the bosses'
cops and Cossacks and when they really pushed hard,
the military. Because...they were breaking the law.

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Class Struggle 121
When communists said there is one law for the boss
and one for workers (Labour's leg-iron), the union
leaders said, no, we are all subject to the one 'non-
partisan' law for all so we have to obey the Labour
Law and take the fight to parliament to reform the
glorious law. So Labour Parties have in their DNA a
class contradiction between workers who want
Labour to advance their interests, and their
leadership that has signed up to the bosses' law. This
was true at the beginning of the 20th century and it
remains true well into the 21st century.
That means there can be no 'unity' within Labour
parties unless one or other class wins. Either the
workers take their demands to parliament and get
them all voted in because they have turned it into a
mass workers party capable of winning a general
strike. Or, the bureaucratic Labourite leadership
suppresses workers demands and imposes the bosses'
program of more profits. Historically, the Labour 'left'
has been confined to relatively small groups who have
battled away against the bosses' program to make
profits at the expense of workers living standards.
Labour parties have been able to suppress the class
struggle inside the party divide and rule the class
struggle outside. So long as the left inside Labour
plays by these rules then there will always be hope of
winning reforms in parliament delivering the holy
grail of parliamentary socialism.
Reformism Rules
This is the meaning of Corbyn's victory. It's all about
class partisanship. Corbyn found his missing million
by standing on an anti-austerity program. If he had
stood on a full-on parliamentary socialist program,
might he have won a majority? After decades of
Blairism (both socialism and conservatism have
failed, we need a new middle) Corbyn, who for
decades as a backbench rebel was fortuitously
(against resistance of the party establishment)
propelled into the leadership. There it exploded into
a major revival of the disenfranchised left who could
see the program working for them all, young
(education, housing) and old (NHS, pensions etc) and
all those in between (make rail run on time!). The
disproportionate rise of disenfranchised youth was
not a function of age but of a youth wasted by the
decades of Blairite and Tory austerity. But the youth
were not totally wasted and rose up in response to
the hope of socialist reforms.
Against Josie Pagani, and all the 'non-partisans' in the
Party, it was not the failure of unity in Labour that
lost the election but the partisan class stand of
Corbyn that won the seats of hundreds of Blairite
MPs! Yes, had Corbyn not been already moderating
his program (ignoring Brexit, voting for Trident, etc)
to pacify his enemies in the party, and stood on a full
blooded socialist program, Labour could have won
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Winter (June-August) 2017
and put the Blairites on notice. Get behind our
program or get out! This would be the first step
towards throwing them out and replacing them with
MPs that represent the interests of the massive
activist membership, at around 800,000 - and rising.
Where to from Here
The Blairites will pull their collective head in, but
continue to undermine and water down any Corbynite
policies. They will claim his victory and their seats
but conspire to dump him from the leadership. But
first they have to remove the election of leader by
the membership which was the only thing that kept
Corbyn as leader. It remains to be seen how Corbyn
will move from here. Will he become that Labour
rebel who now fights to remove the bourgeois
leadership and turns Labour into a mass democratic
workers party? Or will he act as the Pied Piper who
takes a new generation of young idealists into
parliament only to destroy their hopes as he pulls
back from a genuine working-class program?
Even if we assume the former, Corbyn cannot deliver
what workers need without putting workers into
power. Capitalism cannot deliver reforms when its
terminal crisis demands the destruction of workers as
a class. There is no way out on the parliamentary
road. Corbyn can play a role in breaking the working
class from bourgeois parliamentarism only if he
empowers the Labour membership and turns Labour
into a mass workers party. If he tries to form a
minority government with the Scottish National Party
and the Social Democrats he would be already selling
his supporters out to a multi-class, non-partisan
popular front with bourgeois nationalist parties to
suppress the partisan membership.
However, if Corbyn now realises that he could
have won had he stood for a red-blooded
socialism, and if he mobilises his 100,000s of
left wing supporters outside parliament, he
can fight to bring down the Tories over their
hard Brexit, rabid austerity and police state
plans, and go to another election on a platform
for a Socialist Britain in a Socialist Europe.
But to make this a reality, and withstand a Tory
coup, Labour would have to be an openly
partisan working-class party that has the
strength to mobilise the masses outside
parliament, reviving the unions as democratic
fighting unions, and creating workers councils
or soviets everywhere as the basis for a
socialist revolution and a Workers'
Government!
Class Struggle 121 Winter (June -August) 2017

NZ: No vote for the Ruling Class!

An election this year means little to the real power: The international capitalist
class. Governments whoever they are simply set the rules by which capitalism
runs. In NZ, that is the Health and Education systems, and union rights, etc. The
capitalist class has tamed parliamentary parties to its needs; none will deliver
meaningfully for the working class. Some cater to the needs of international
capitalism more than others (Labour, National), others to local capitalists (Maori
Party). Most parties now pretend to be class blind because this serves the ruling
class. Yet the Labour party claims to represent the organised working class. And
the Mana movement claims to represent Maori workers.

Mana and Maori
The Mana movement is a Maori nationalist movement
with some small capitalist influences. However, Mana
has a strong record of fighting for working class
issues, and on the side of colonised peoples. Mana has
made attacks from the left on the Labour party, for
Labours betrayal of working class needs generally, as
well as Labours theft of Maori rights to foreshore and
seabed resources. The Maori Party on the other hand
is the party of the Iwi leadership forum, not Maori
workers. It has already exposed itself as an outright
capitalist party as supporter of the National lead
government. Can we give critical support Manas deal
with the Maori Party?
Mana has an electoral agreement with the Maori
Party. They will not compete in each others
electorates for the candidate vote. They will
campaign for party votes. They will not criticise each
others policies during the election campaign period.
say give a critical vote to Hone Harawira in Te Tai
Tokerau but with no illusions that Mana will stick to
its promise to represent working class Maori in
parliament.
Labour as a Bourgeois Workers Party
Some workers believe that the Labour party promises
to deliver more for the working class. Since the
Labour party claims the name labour. They have a
few affiliated unions: MUNZ, E tu, and NZNO, Meat
Workers Union? The PSA is legally barred from
affiliating with political parties but is inseparable
from Labour.
The Labour party has already agreed to working with
the Green party and together they released budget
responsibility rules. These rules show the NZ Labour
Party has tied itself to the capitalist system and the
Green party. They promised to maintain a surplus
(keep the government in profit), reduce government
debt, reduce government spending to a 30% of GDP
ratio. How will they give the increases needed to
catch the health and education systems up to what
they were before the National government? No
chance because, in the fine print there will be no
change to taxation for the first term of government.
They will gather a team of experts to advise them on
progressive (fair) tax system. They dont even have
the backbone to suggest taxing the rich now - to pay
for what workers need now. So, they are not even
promising in the election campaign to do much to
deliver what workers need.

However, puts the Mana movement in a dangerous
electoral truce with a capitalist party to try to gain
seats in the capitalists parliament. This is a
backward move because it abandons Maori workers
and subordinates then to Iwi capitalists. After the
election, the Mana movement says the truce is over
(with the Maori Party) and everything will be up for
negotiation. Mana promises to keep its political
independence. But we say do not put any confidence
in Mana not to join a popular front with the MP or any
other party in an openly capitalist government. We
Labour has stitched itself to a coalition with the
Greens on a capitalist responsibility programme. It is
already committing to a popular front that may also
in include the openly capitalist NZ First and/or Maori
Party in a coalition. They have already got capitalist
(the class-blind Green Party) allies who they could
blame for their failure to deliver for working class
needs. They cannot be given critical support on this
basis. Their betrayal of working class labour has
been revealed before they take the parliamentary
leadership. The Labour party in parliament gives
crumbs to the union affiliates while working class
Class Struggle 121
wages and conditions are run down - including the
social wage of health and education systems.
Labour they have already signed an allegiance to the
capitalist class and the Greens through the above
agreement. That plan is blatantly capitalist.
Labour could have campaigned to run a minority
government, without capitalist plans and without
being tied to capitalist parties. Union affiliates, it is
over time to split from Labour, as it has already
shown it will not deliver what the working class needs
not after this election or the 3 years following.
We always called the NZ Labour Party a bourgeois-
workers party: because in spite of worker
membership they have had a capitalist programme.
The Labour Party has never challenged to overthrow
the capitalist economic system. Labour party sells
false hope that they could deliver what workers
need within capitalism. This means they serve to tie
workers into capitalism, the parliamentary road does
not lead to socialism. The task for revolutionaries
then is to break working class from this false hope!
The tactic of Critical Support
In previous elections, we have tactically called for
critical support for Labour (and in the past New
Labour and Mana) called on working class to put
Labour into government to show it up as failing to
deliver for workers. We could say that this tactic
broke some unions from Labour, after the 1984-1990
Labour government a number of unions broke
(disaffiliated) from Labour. In the absence of
revolutionary leadership, the maritime union is now
back as Labours union affiliates. These unions
continue to act as a pathway to suck working class
into parliament.
So, in this coming election we do not give critical
support for Labour. While it remains a bourgeois
workers party, the tactic of critical support cannot
work if Labour is tied to openly bourgeois parties -
in this case the Greens and/or NZ First in a
parliamentary coalition. This is because the rotten
bourgeois leadership of Labour can hide behind the
excuse that its partners in government stopped it
delivering on its campaign promises for workers.
Voting for Labour in the certain knowledge that it
has already committed itself to forming a popular
front with openly bourgeois parties would be to
conspire with Labour to hide its class politics from
workers. This would be a betrayal of our main
strategy to break workers from the labour
bureaucracy and from the bourgeois class enemy!
The main strategy is to build the working-class
movement independent of parliament, that is our
task. It is difficult when the unions are held by their
leadership in a relationship with the Labour party and
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Winter (June-August) 2017
the idea that capitalism can be reformed to meet the
needs of workers. Minor reforms in the face of major
erosion of working class wages and conditions over
the years shows how ineffectual reformism is. But
every election year the union leaders say vote
Labour and we could get more of what we need. This
takes the power of workers away from united action
into a meaningless voting box.
Independent working-class movement
The only reason workers need bother with parliament
is to use it as a place to speak and denounce
parliamentary democracy as failing to deliver what
we really need. We can only organise and take power
outside of parliament with elected delegates, with
councils of workers to run the towns and
communities, strikes to force living wages from
employers and occupations and running the
businesses under workers control.
For independent candidates of the working
class. Any working-class members of
parliament to use the place as a platform to
speak and raise revolutionary politics and
denounce the ruling class and all their
parties!
For working class candidates to stand
against labour candidates in the general
electorate seats and Maori seats, other than
Te Tai Tokerau where Hone Harawira will be
standing for Mana movement! Lets see
unions put up our own candidates in the
electorates. Unionised workers are ignored
and marginalised under Labour party rules
and deals, take the fight outside the party!
Revolutionary candidates only stand to use
parliament as a platform to speak- the
power of the working class is not held within
parliament. Remember the capitalist class
holds power outside parliament in the
police and armed forces as strike breakers!
There is a crisis of leadership of the working
class, labour and the trade union
leaderships have sold out the fight before
we even start: build a workers
revolutionary party!
Critical support for the Mana Movement
while it stays out of popular fronts!
No Critical Support for the Labour Party in a
popular front coalition with openly
capitalist parties!
No support for the other capitalist parties!
Build an independent mass working class
party capable of standing candidates on a
Transitional Program to build workers
councils and fight for a Government of the
Workers and Oppressed!
Class Struggle 121 Winter (June -August) 2017

Democracy for Dummies

Bravo Rachel Stewart for taking on the sour Old Men. It is true that a few grown-
up boys chose to lecture her in public. That is their problem. The real question is
what is democracy and why should we comment on its demise? For historical
reasons explored below most people actually believe in bourgeois democracy, and
it is not a personal failing, but one which is imposed in the popular culture like
baby milk powder. These people are not the dummies. The dummies are those who
have a professional/intellectual stake in defending bourgeois democracy against all
the odds. They include those criticise Rachel for diagnosing its deathly state, and
not Rachel herself who is asking the question of why democracy is not working.
But what is this democracy and why are those who defend it when they should
know better dummies? For us, dummies are like useful idiots, they glorify their
ignorance of the social reality and make do with superficial common-sense
platitudes because they do it for a living. They are the contemporary priests. So,
democracy is the weapon of goodness we use to destroy badness. Sounds like a
religion because when you analyse its origins it has the same roots.
Copernicus proved that the Earth was not the centre
of the universe. Darwin proved that humans evolved
and were not the progeny of any intelligent design.
Einstein overturned our dogmas about space and
time. And Karl Marx proved that democracy in
capitalist society was a ruling class idea and part of
the ruling class state. Those who are paid to
challenge these new scientific discoveries and
promote the defence of bourgeois democracy as the
solution to capitalisms problems are the dummies.
Maybe it is news to Rachel, but she is not the first to
predict the death of democracy. Marx did so after
1848 when the revolutions in Europe began to go into
reverse. The French Revolution gave birth to
democracy as the political ideology of the
bourgeoisie who rose up to overthrow the feudal
state and impose a bourgeois state. Equality,
Fraternity! What better slogans for the new society
trapped in the false consciousness of democracy
based on a new class division of the bourgeoisie as
as capable of reforming capitalism.
property owners who exploit landless workers.
Because workers would accept their exploitation if So, while capitalism was of its nature based on class
they believed themselves to be the equal of their struggle, it survived as long as it could escape the
employers as sovereign citizens capable of blame and point the finger at either landlords,
contesting power in a democracy. employers or workers as exceeding their fair share of
wealth. This meant rejigging the system not
Bosses had good reason to believe this would work
overthrowing it. If workers were equal citizens they
since they cynically promoted capitalism as an equal
could vote a majority of their representatives into
opportunity society. You see, they worked hard for
parliament and equalise incomes. Bourgeois
land because they or their forebears had acquired it
democracy therefore was the solution to all the
by abstaining from consumption and saving up their
problems of capitalist inequality. But such
capital. As Marx wrote, they wilfully suppressed
democracy was a fraud, because while on the surface
history as one of merciless rape, plunder and
democracy could legislate equal distribution in
genocide in the original (or primitive) accumulation
income, it could not cancel surplus value, so that
of their land and wealth. If workers did not accept
workers would never be citizens equal to employers.
this bourgeois myth of the origins of capitalism when
confronting by class inequalities, most would remain
Class Struggle 121 Winter (June-August) 2017

Marx explains this in his theory of commodity exploitative state and destructive society. As
fetishism. Most of the best scientific discoveries are mentioned above, bourgeois democracy came under
made to resolve anomalies in existing knowledge. challenge early in its life when the class war against
Marx discovered that capitalism is a society in which workers drove down wages and conditions and
commodities sell at their price, but that in the case threatened to destroy the working class as the basis
of one commodity, labour- of capitalist profits.
power, produced more value Workers Democracy differs from The most enlightened
than its own value - the wage. bourgeois democracy capitalists like Robert Owen, or
Commodities produced for
fundamentally. It is not a secret the Cadbury family, reinforced
sale in the market embodied a
ballot - one person one vote - to the fetishism of bourgeois
total value comprising the
elect a politician to office to democracy by supporting
value of the wage, all the
reforms like the 10-hour Act
value used up from machinery defend private property and and better wages and
etc in the process of labour exploitation. It is workers conditions. Ever since,
production, and surplus-value. voting for delegates to councils, bourgeois liberals like William
Thus, the capitalist paid the soviets or communes, to represent Pember Reeves, Chomsky, or
wage, retained the invested their interests in a Workers State. Piketty, despite growing
value used up in production, inequalities, crises and world
Marx laid down the conditions for
and then pocketed the wars driven by falling profits,
surplus-value as profit. So workers delegates at the time of have staked their reputations
how could workers who were the Paris Commune. The working on defending the democratic
exploited by producing class formed communes as the principles of commodity
surplus-value, and were thus basis of a workers government in fetishism. That is, whatever is
by definition unequal in a workers state. The delegates wrong with capitalism is due to
production, become equals an aberration in which one or
were bound to represent
with their employers in other class, sometimes
politics? responsibly the interests of the workers, but mainly bosses,
voters, and be subject to have used their power to
Having discovered that
workers were exploited in immediate recall if they failed. Yet increase their income share at
as Marx states, the Commune the expense of the other, thus
production Marx explained
could only succeed in representing abusing the free market.
how this unequal relation of
production was automatically the class interests of workers if it Yet, nothing comes of
inverted as an equal relation became the basis for the attempting to reform the
of exchange. Because the capitalist state that acts to
emancipation of labour and the
commodity incorporated value defend private property and
and was appropriated by the end of the rule of private to reproduce the working
employer, the existence of property. Hence the necessity to class as alienated, exploited
surplus-value was masked smash the capitalist state and all bourgeois subjects. The
within the total value of the of its institutions including the dummies, priests of
commodity. This inversion of bourgeois parliament! capitalism, pretend that the
unequal production relations inherent evils of capitalism
into equal exchange relations
https://www.marxists.org/archive/ can be resolved by voting for
Marx calls commodity marx/works/1871/civil-war- one or other faction of the
fetishism. The value appeared france/ch05.htm ruling class, right, centre or
to be inherent in the left, to legislate the further
commodity and not in the exploitation and inequality in
labour-power that created it. Moreover, this value the name of bourgeois democracy, equality and
appeared to distribute naturally into what Marx liberty.
called revenue classes, depending on their fair
The good thing about Rachel Stewarts charge that
share of value earned as rent, wages and profits.
democracy is dying is that it invites a further
Arising from this fetishised appearance of equal questioning of bourgeois democracy as the solution
exchange, the ideology of bourgeois democracy when it is very much part of the problem. The real
emerges, complete with the state that belongs to all solution is the end of capitalism and the beginning of
citizens. That is why Marxists call bourgeois workers democracy (see Box).
democracy the democratic dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie because it fetishises individual
https://situationsvacant.wordpress.com/2017/0
citizenship as sovereign, and masks a class 5/04/democracy-for-dummies/
7
Class Struggle 121 Winter (June -August) 2017

Hit and Run: War Crimes for Idiots

17 years after 9/11 and the official launch of the War on Terror (WOT) NZ finds
itself facing for the first time the undeniable proof that it was recruited by the US
(for us or against us) as mercenaries in the US campaign to avenge itself against
Islamic Terrorism. The occasion is not any actual current events in the WOT in
Afghanistan, but the publication of the book Hit and Run by Nicky Hager and Jon
Stephenson documenting Operation Burnham, the revenge raid against the killers
of SAS Lieutenant ODonnell led by the NZ SAS on two villages in the Tirgiran valley
during the dead of night on March 22, 2010. The title of the book might have been
'Hunt and Kill' as that more accurately describes the nature of the SAS mission
between 2002 and 2013. Operation Burnham failed as the Taliban militants who
killed ODonnell were not in the village, but hiding further up the mountains until
the situation had blown over. But never mind, reprisals in wartime have never
worried too much about hitting the targets. So, 21 civilians ended up dead or
wounded. The SAS reported 9 insurgents dead and no civilians killed. Do we
blame the fog of war? No. We blame capitalism and imperialism and the WOT.

The War on Terror is the real war crime
Both Labour and National governments covered up
killing of non-combatants by the SAS from February
2002 to April 2013 when the SAS returned to NZ for
the last time. They could cover it up because they
were mercenaries of the US in its latest imperialist
war. Whenever new evidence surfaced in the years
that followed it was met with denials and lies. Who
was going to blow the whistle? Well, the new book,
Hit and Run: The New Zealand SAS in Afghanistan
and the meaning of honour, presents conclusive
proof for the first time which is impossible to run
from - even if the one person most responsible for
Operation Burnham, John Key, has done a runner.
Still, the NACT regime in power continues the cover
up parroting the official NZDF line of no civilian
dead. The authors aim is to force an independent
inquiry to expose any war crimes and demand that
NZ troops follow the international rules of war in
any future engagements. While as Marxists we
support an independent inquiry because it will
expose more dirty secrets of NZs role as a deputy
dog of US imperialism, we know that this will not
stop the WOT. By its nature, as part of the class war,
Class Struggle 121
the WOT is conducted as a dirty war outside any
legal constraints precisely because it is an
imperialist war of conquest and exploitation.
The war crime is killing Afghans not civilians
Whats the difference between an Afghan citizen and
a Taliban insurgent? One might say an AK47. But that
is not true. In fact, it is whether or not a person is
running towards or from the SAS. Judging by the
bourgeois media reception of Hit and Run (e.g. the
New Zealand Herald calls for an inquiry) this abortive
mission which caused civilian deaths is worthy of an
official inquiry as a potential war crime. This
concept of war crime has a history, being defined
by the Clark Labour Government as killing non-
combatants, or torturing combatants. Thats why
earlier atrocities dating back to 2002 did not hit
headlines as no innocent civilians were recorded as
killed. When evidence that combatants handed over
to the US forces by the SAS were tortured of killed,
the Labour Government stopped the SAS taking
prisoners. The fiasco, (according to Defence
Minister Mapp who was at the time in Kabul, along
with Chief of the NZDF, Lieutenant-General
Mateparae a veteran of Labours 2002 fiasco) that
took place in 2010 only hit the radar because it did
involve civilian deaths and executions, and the NACT
regime suppressed the truth about it until John
Stephenson investigated the events and published
evidence of these deaths in 2011.
NACTS in official denial
True to form the NACT regime is in denial and
parroting the Defence Ministry lies that no civilians
were killed. But having its nose rubbed in the reality
of the dirty WOT is seems that liberal NZ has woken
up from nearly two decades of moral vacancy to
rescue NZs peace-loving reputation. Because any
idiot could have worked out that NZ should never
have been in Afghanistan in the first place.
The dirty WOT was and remains a blatant case of a
US imperialist invasion to occupy and colonise a
country that sits strategically in the heartland of
Eurasia and on Russias back doorstep. The Saudis
who perpetrated 9/11 were not hiding in
Afghanistan, nor was Bin Laden. If the Taliban were
terrorists threatening the security of the US and
the free West it was only because it was funded by
the US to fight the Soviet occupation in 1979. Now in
the fit of revenge following 9/11 George Bush the
younger, re-labelled the Taliban as terrorist and
the protector of Al Qaeda. Whats more Bush made
it clear that terrorists where not lawful
combatants and that they were not protected by
international law of war and human rights. The
NACTs as servile, US clients, do not intend to
abandon their historic role as loyal servants of US
imperialism without a fight.
9
Winter (June-August) 2017
What happened to women, democracy, human
rights?
All of the blatant excuses put up by the US to justify
the invasion of Afghanistan in the name of
democracy, women, and human rights were patently
false to anyone other than idiots. Women did not
benefit from the invasion. They suffered massively
as families and communities were destroyed.
Democracy failed from day one as the US simple
installed its client regime under its military ally,
Pashtun tribal leader Hamid Kharzai, in 2004. Bin
Laden was never found and only hunted down and
killed years later in Pakistan. The reality was that
the WOT was a unilateral war of vengeance for 9/11
directed at all militant Islamic movements under
the generic label of Al Qaeda. It was to become a
never-ending war against Islam as the existential
threat to the West that is, a threat to the
hegemonic rule of US imperialism and its allies and
client states such as NZ, against the spread of armed
resistance of national liberation wars against US
imperialist rule.
Avenging 9/11 for US global hegemony
What did New Zealanders think the SAS was doing in
Afghanistan? It was obvious that from the start that
NZ reacted to 9/11 by siding with Bush (you are
either for us or against us) by joining the WOT in
2001. There was strong opposition to Clarks Labour
Government legislating draconian measures to
combat the WOT at home, and sending combatant
troops into Afghanistan. Recognising this opposition,
the Government refused to send troops into combat
but agreed to allow non-combatants on a civil
reconstruction mission, and defended by the SAS.
This was condemned on the left as a pacifist cover
for participating in the dirty WOT. We didnt have to
wait long for proof. The SAS quickly fell into their
real role as mercenaries in the US WOT and to
dishonour themselves by reneging on their
obligations under the rules of war. In February, 2002,
the NZ SAS led a military attack on the village of
Band e Timor. According to Jon Stephenson who did
the outstanding investigative reporting to blow the
cover on this raid, its purpose was to arrest the
prominent Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Osmani.
Band e Timor raid led by SAS
But what was the SAS, alongside the Civil
Reconstruction Team in Bamiyan province on a
mission to win hearts and minds, doing leading a
military action on a village where a 70-year-old man
was shot dead and 6-year-old girl killed when she
panicked and fell down a well? Were they not also
complicit in the death of the village head, Berget
Khan, whom they handed over to the US only to have
his skull smashed in within hours. There was no sign
Class Struggle 121
of the wanted Taliban leader. The deaths of
civilians, the arrests, mistreatment and torture, led
to a massive uproar in the tribal people, especially
among women, undermining the ostensible mission
of the SAS in acting as a peacekeeping cover for the
dirty WOT. Why then, was this raid not condemned
as a war crime and the SAS reprimanded by the
Labour Government? The Clark government didnt
have the guts to stand up to the US so soon after
9/11 and accepted the legitimacy of the WOT even
if it pretended not to be engaged in actual firefights.
Meanwhile, back in NZ, RAKON, a NZ-based high-tech
firm was manufacturing and selling guidance systems
for missiles to the US. So maybe building guidance
systems is not a war crime because it could prevent
civilians being mistaken for targets by missiles and
drones? Idiotic!
The legitimacy of the war on terror
Its clear that once you accept the legitimacy of the
War on Terror it is a matter of a few short steps
from peacekeeping or civil reconstruction with
the right to armed defence, to leading a firefight.
Who knew or cared? The Labour Government tried to
limit the role of the SAS to avoid future deaths of
civilians and torture of suspect Talibs. But the nature
of the WOT meant that this was impossible. Sooner
or later the logic which drove the SAS to combat
roles would see it drawn into more firefights. It is
not possible to win the hearts and minds of an
occupied people subjected to the WOT when you are
on the wrong side. Who knew? A history lesson for
idiots shows that all foreign invaders of Afghanistan
have been defeated and expelled. Why should the US
coalition be any different? Communists who know
their history condemned NZs role in Afghanistan
from the start demanding that all foreign troops get
out or face defeat.
While we have no wish to see NZ soldiers killed, this
is what happens to troops that invade and occupy a
poor country to suppress a national resistance
movement. In Afghanistan, it happened to the British
in the 1840s and again in the 1870s and to the
Russians in the 1980s. So, it was inevitable that both
the SAS and the civil reconstruction team in Bamiyon
province would sooner or later face deaths in action,
and under the rules of the WOT hunt to kill the
perpetrators. Sooner or later the armed invaders
would face defeat. When Lieutenant Tim ODonnell
was killed by a IED on 3 August 2010 it took less than
three weeks to mount a series of reprisal hunt and
kill raids that began on the night of 22 August 2010
and continued until April 2013 when the SAS left
Afghanistan in defeat. The culture of vengeance that
drove the hunt and kill raids was signed off by
Defence Minister Mapp, Chief of NZDF Mateparae,
and PM Key. It remains to be seen whether or not the
National Party will be driven out of power in defeat.
10
Winter (June-August) 2017
SAS troops questioned breaking rules of war
From the start of the WOT not all SAS members
approved of their role. In his 2011 Metro article, Eyes
Wide Shut, Stephenson reports that after the 2002
raid, some SAS members were unhappy with the
treatment of prisoners by the US forces. They
expected them to be treated according to the rules
of engagement, but in fact found out quickly enough
that the US treated prisoners like they were in
Guantanamo. The SAS commander Lieutenant
Colonel Jim Blackwell raised their objections to the
treatment of prisoners with the commanders of the
Canadian, Danish, German and Norwegian special
forces. No action was taken.
Was this information passed back to the Labour
Government, to Prime Minister Clark, Minister of
Foreign Affairs Goff, Minister of Foreign Affairs or
Minister of Defence Burton? Of course. But failing any
satisfactory response from the NZ Government, our
position was, and remains, that troops have the right
to refuse orders from their officers and to mutiny if
ordered to kill or torture outside the rules of
engagement. Of course, this is far from a mutiny
rejecting the legitimacy of the WOT in Afghanistan,
but it is a natural justice response on the part of
ordinary soldiers to the hypocrisy of idiots similar to
that which motivated the whistleblower Chelsea
Manning to expose the dirty WOT in Iraq.
What did the Labour Government do?
Stephensons 2011 Metro article Eyes Wide Shut
documents Labours policy stance from 2001.
Hypocrisy sums it up. Clark as PM was really in charge
of NZs role in the WOT. The Band e Timur raid was
Labours fiasco. It was also Clarks fiasco as she
signed off the SAS Rules of Engagement. Goff in
2007 recollected that in 2002 (when he was Minister
of Foreign Affairs) concern over the treatment of
prisoners in this raid caused the Government to seek
assurances that prisoners were treated humanely. An
attempt was made to involve the Red Cross to
monitor this process, but Stephenson found that the
Red Cross were unaware of this.
After the revelations about Abu Ghraib in April 2004
and the Human Rights Watch Report Enduring
Freedom of March 2004 which detailed abuses in the
treatment of detainees, the SAS was instructed to
hand over detainees to the Afghan, and not the US,
authorities. Who were they fooling? For example, a
token attempt to track 3 detainees from Band e
Timur who had been sent to Guantanamo was futile
because NZ did not supply their names!
Despite mounting evidence of more raids, torture
and killings in which the NZ SAS were complicit, it
kept the SAS in Afghanistan until 2005. It did not
send them back when re-elected for a third term
Class Struggle 121
because it viewed the Afghan Kharzai government as
corrupt and US policy in fighting the WOT as
indefensible after Abu Ghraib revelations. The public
abhorrence of these graphic images of inhumane
torture made it impossible to maintain the pretence
that NZ could keep its hands clean and not be judged
as complicit in the US and Afghan conduct of the
dirty WOT. It is clear that the Labour Government
commitment to the WOT trumped its professed
concern for the human rights of combatants and non-
combatants until the systematic abuse of prisoners
in the WOT and almost total impunity of the US
from any charge of war crimes created widespread
popular repugnance.
Labours fiasco in 2002 and its failure to seriously
correct the abuse of prisoners for which it had
responsibility, removed any doubt that it was, like
the National Government, a deputy dog of US
imperialism, and that its SAS troops were actually
mercenaries dressed up as humanitarians until this
disguise was stripped off. We cannot put any trust in
a future Labour Government, any more than a
National Government, to refuse to participate in the
ongoing US dirty WOT!
NACTs roll over for Obomber
The NACTS in government deployed the SAS back to
Afghanistan on 10 August, 2009, but this time the
disguise was the SAS role as mentors of the Afghan
Crisis Response Unit (CRU) formed to replace
departing US troops. PM Key said that if the SAS
detained suspects they would most likely be
handed over to the Afghan rather than US
authorities. He had received assurance from the
Afghans that they observed the Geneva Convention.
In January, 2010, the SAS was involved in a training
exercise with the CRU in Kabul to detain suspects
that led to a firefight that was reported in the NZ
media with photos of SAS personnel moving in full
battle dress along a street. And we now know that
on March 22, 2010, NZSAS were involved in Operation
Burnham fiasco in the Tirgiran Valley, Baghlan
province when 21 non-combatants were killed or
wounded.
This Operation was kept secret by the NACT regime
until Hagers book Other Peoples Wars was
published in 2011 and Stephensons Maori TV
documentary Collateral Damage was broadcast in
2014, raising questions that were met with the
standard denials and evasions. But the cover up is
now threadbare because of the new facts
documented in Hager and Stephensons new book Hit
and Run. The fallout from the publication of their
book has created a national debate, and the call for
an independent inquiry to force a full disclosure,
and the possibility of war crime charges under
11
Winter (June-August) 2017
international law being laid against the NZDF or the
NZ Government.
Will an inquiry stop the WOT?
While the facts that have been covered up are now
disclosed by Hit and Run an independent inquiry
would severely weaken the ruling class practice of
secrecy that is endemic in the WOT. It may help us
open the books on the secret defence and security
pacts NZ has made with the US. It would be more
difficult for any future government to take us into
war without a public debate or referendum. At the
same time no inquiry can be truly independent of
the ruling class - the craven comprador Deputy Dogs
of the USA playing a supine mercenary role in the
dirty WOT. Whether or not such an inquiry is held,
we need a Workers Inquiry made up of NZ and
Afghan delegates elected by and accountable to NZ
and Afghan workers and poor farmers
organisations.
There is no doubt that the NZSAS, the NZDF and both
Labour and National Governments have gone along
with George Bush and turned a blind eye to the
inhumane treatment of both combatants and non-
combatants in Afghanistan. There is plenty of
evidence given by SAS members, by Afghans
submitting testimony to their NZ lawyers and from a
wealth of other sources to hold both NZDF and
Labour and National governments to account for the
breaking of the basic laws of war including the
Geneva Convention. The SAS even broke most of its
own Laws of War and Rules of Engagement in
adopting the US WOT standard Hunt and Kill
missions in Afghanistan. They shot civilians, left
them for dead as insurgents, even suspects. They
cynically handed over suspects to US and Afghan
authorities they knew would torture if not kill them.
However, only idiots ignorant of history and of
capitalist imperialism could draw the conclusion that
it is possible to stop such war crimes without
stopping imperialist war itself. It is the US-led WOT
itself which defines insurgents as unlawful
combatants with no rights under any aw that has to
be stopped.
Imperialist war: the crime on humanity
We oppose imperialist war because it is war by
oppressor nations against oppressed nations,
subjecting them to plunder to rescue falling profits
at home. While imperialist wars are wars between
nations, they are in essence class wars. We are for
the defeat of the ruling class in the imperialist
nations and the victory of workers and oppressed in
the oppressed nations that fight imperialism. The
20th century saw two imperialist world wars for
control of Eurasia, and hence world domination, and
many wars against colonies and semi-colonies to
Class Struggle 121
defeat the resistance of the popular masses to
imperialism. The US emerged as the dominant power
after WW2, but not until the defeat of the Soviet
Union and China as degenerated workers states
around 1990, did the US become truly hegemonic.
Yet this victory proved illusory and ultimately led to
further defeats.
The first Gulf War in 1991 created the conditions for
the rise of an Islamic blowback in the form of Al
Qaeda and the Taliban. Nor did the return of the
former bureaucratic workers states, in particular
Russia and China, to the world capitalist economy
stop the decline in global profits. By the turn of the
21st century, Russia and China were emerging as new
imperialist rivals for the control of Eurasia, and
therefore, the world economy. 9/11 marked an
historic defeat for the US. US hegemony was
challenged by a Radical Islamic blowback and the
escalation of new inter-imperialist trade and
military wars. The WOT was the US response to these
twin threats to its global hegemony. The invasion of
Afghanistan in 2001 was the first test of the WOT and
it led to an historic defeat for the US coalition. The
intervention of the NZ SAS cannot escape being an
integral part of that defeat.
Defeat all Imperialist Wars!
We draw the conclusion from Hit and Run that the
NZDF was behaving in 2010 just as it did in 2002 - as
mercenaries of the US coalition. It ignored the
international and national laws and operated as part
of the US secret war. George Bush in 2001
rubbished the Geneva Convention defining all
insurgents or terrorists as unlawful combatants.
If there are no laws limiting the WOT, then there can
be no war crimes as such. It is the war of oppressor
states against oppressed states that is the crime
against humanity. The crime is the act of an
imperialist oppressor and its mercenaries to invade
and occupy an oppressed state on the pretext of
fighting against terror when imperialism is itself
the main cause of terror.
Of course, in such wars, all sorts of other crimes are
committed. They only fuel the resistance of
oppressed states, or Islamic radical organisations
such as the Taliban, Al Qaeda, etc., to fight the
imperialist invaders as subject nations have done for
centuries. The invaders always divide the people in
an attempt to conquer. Today the US invader sides
with the Pashtun tribe against the Taliban by
designating the latter as terrorist. But the WOT has
strengthened the Taliban and brings its victory
closer.
Winter (June-August) 2017
So, whose side are we on again? Against the WOT we
must defend all national liberation struggles without
giving any political support to semi-feudal Islamic
movements like the Taliban. But only by throwing
out the imperialists can the Afghan people settle
their tribal differences and unite workers and poor
farmers to overthrow corrupt bourgeois regimes that
side with the invaders. Then it would be possible to
work together and create the conditions for a
democratic and socialist Afghanistan within a wider
socialist federation of Eurasia.
SAS Troops out of Afghanistan!
Disband the SAS!
Break with all imperialist alliances!
All imperialist troops out of
Afghanistan!
Down with the War on Terror!
Defeat imperialism!
For a Socialist Afghanistan in a
Federation of Eurasian Socialist
Republics!
Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson, Hit & Run: The New
Zealand SAS in Afghanistan and the meaning of
honour. Potton & Burton, Nelson NZ. 2017
http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2009/05/no-new-
viet-nam-war-in-afghanistan-and.html
http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2009/08/afghanista
n-defeat-imperialist-invaders.html
http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2011/01/free-
bradley-manning-and-defend.html
http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/afghanista
n-troops-out-now.html
http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2011/08/nz-sas-
troops-are-us-mercenaries.html
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/03/27/latest-
developments-in-hager-stephenson-nz-war-crime-
allegations/
http://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/22-03-2017/a-
depressingly-credible-account-of-blunder-
bloodshed-and-cover-up-hit-run-reviewed/
http://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/28-03-2017/hit-
run-author-jon-stephenson-responds-to-wrong-
village-riposte-from-nz-defence-force/
http://www.noted.co.nz/currently/politics/eyes-
wide-shut-the-governments-guilty-secrets-in-
afghanistan/
http://eveningreport.nz/2017/04/02/analysis-
lieutenant-general-tim-keatings-operation-
burnham-account-highlights-key-legal-concerns/
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/04/04/not-worth-
the-effort-decoding-bill-englishs-response-to-
operation-burnham/
http://apjjf.org/2017/07/Tanter.html
12
Class Struggle 121 Winter (June -August) 2017

Suicide is about Alienation

Good on Mike King for attacking the gutless, shamefaced, official line on suicide as
part of the problem not the solution. And cheers to The Daily Blog for acting as a forum
on suicide with activists like Dave Macpherson and Martyn Bradbury exposing the
failures of the health system. While we agree that we need to change the official
response to suicide, that should be based on what causes suicide. We will argue that
suicide is a desperate act of refusal against a powerless, de-humanising, alienated life
under capitalism. But so long as the official line of taking the fight against suicide out
of the hands of people and keeping it as a function of the bureaucracy, judiciary and
medical profession remains, the epidemic of suicide will continue. Not until suicide is
properly debated and its causes fully understood can any real solutions be found. An
independent inquiry is a start in that process.

Competing theories of suicide
To reduce suicide to a personal choice, something
wrong with the genes, or neo-liberal social policy, is
to mistake the symptoms for the cause. There is a
long trail of bankrupt theories strewn along the
painful history of this subject. First, there is the
history of the Church, especially the Catholic church,
of reducing suicide to a sin in the eyes of God. Who
would know? Then
there is the mainline
bourgeois culture of
rampant Western
individualism that
suicides are failures
who havent found
success in the
market. Both of these
superstitions form the
underbelly of
attitudes toward
suicide today. Then there are attempts to find
measurable causes that can be traced back to
impacts on the individuals of social relations which
can then be isolated and treated as abnormal or
deviant by medicine or social policy.
Most notable was Emile Durkheim the French
sociologist who wrote Suicide: a study in sociology
in 1897. Durkheim was a positivist, someone who
observed behaviour and looked for correlations and
patterns to infer causes. He found 4 types of suicide
based on supposed differences in causation. (1)
Egoistic: caused by the excessive individualism of
modern (capitalist) society. (2) Anomic: the result of
a lack of social norms and institutions that support
the individual. (3) Altruistic: due to a lack of strong
individual traits when facing authority. 4) Fatalistic:
suicide resulting from overwhelming social pressures.
The two examples he used were slaves and married
women.
Durkheim proposed social policies for each type.
Egoistic and Anomic suicides could he prevented by
creating new social institutions to recreate the
mechanical solidarity (eg extended family and village
life) of pre-capitalist society to support individuals.
Altruistic and Fatalistic suicides were more
problematic because they involved critiquing military
and family authority both of which Durkheim
endorsed as necessary
for capitalism to
function. In fact he
supported the
authority of husbands
over wives and
opposed divorce. In
any event, these
tinkerings with social
policy have failed to
get to the root causes
of suicide in the
century or more since. The sociology of suicide has
fixated on symptoms while the state bureaucracies
and the medical profession prescribe good science
but continue to ignore the fundamental causes.
The most promising 19th century line of attack on
suicide was that of Marx which began 50 years before
Durkheim. It was not the social effects of capitalism
that were the causes but the social relations of
capitalism itself. For Marx, the basic cause of all
social ills was the alienation of individuals from their
labour though this also affected those who lived off
that labour the bourgeoisie. Marx never studied
suicide as such, but in 1845 he commented on the
work of French statistician and police chief Peuchet,
who found an obvious correlation between three
young bourgeois females subjected to extreme family
abuse (spousal abuse and public humiliation for
sexual deviancy) and their suicides by drowning in
the river Seine.
Class Struggle 121 Winter (June-August) 2017

Marx concluded that the common cause was virtually restored capitalism in the countryside to
alienation from ones labour, but more concretely in feed the industrial workers.
these cases, alienation in the bourgeois family in
The growing concentration of power in the state
which women were the slaves of their husbands.
disillusioned many and the state responded by
Proletarians are alienated, but women are also
clamping down on dissidents. Stalin and his apparatus
alienated from their husbands in the bourgeois
ushered in bureaucratic rule. At each point in this
family. And as the bourgeois family was the model for
reversal of the revolution, and as the hopes in the
the proletarian family, working class wives became
revolution were dashed, the rates of suicide went up.
the proletarians of the proletariat. So, to clear the
Suicide in the Soviet Union therefore was a direct
way for socialism the bourgeois family must be
result of the failure to break completely from
destroyed in theory and practice.
capitalism, and the inevitable degeneration of the
Does revolution stop suicide? revolution as the bureaucracy usurped power from
the workers. Most important, socialist equality was
Before looking as more recent attempts to apply stillborn as workers control of their labour was taken
good science to suicide, it is worth pausing to over by a state bureaucracy. Surplus labour was not
consider the theory and practice of the Bolshevik allocated to social needs on a democratic basis, but
revolution and its impact on suicide. Marxs theory expropriated by the bureaucracy. Alienation re-
predicts that the end of capitalism would bring an appeared in the unequal social relations of the
end to alienation and the beginning of real bureaucratic regime.
humanism. The end of the bourgeois family would
empower women and liberate them from domestic What to do?
slavery. What is the evidence? First, the freedom
We have argued above that alienation is the
from oppression was such that human creativity
fundamental cause of suicide. It cannot be overcome
blossomed in all walks of life. Workers control of the
unless there is an end to the unequal social relations
state and industry empowered them to make their
that produce alienation. The capitalist state is based
own lives free of the shackles of capitalist social
upon alienation and designed to reproduce it by
relations. The place of women became more equal.
legitimising unequal class relations. The state
The bourgeois institutions of marriage and the family
bureaucracy uses its power to monopolize knowledge
underwent massive changes.
and prevent any challenge to capitalist rule. In the
The result was that among those who made the post-capitalist states, a state bureaucracy emerged
revolution and participated democratically in to suppress the power of workers to block the road to
building the new society, suicides were almost nil. socialism and take the road back to capitalism.
Workers were no longer alienated from their labour
In Aotearoa, the first task to stopping suicide is to
by capital. They controlled their labour collectively
challenge and expose the state agencies and the
by democratic decisions in the Soviets which planned
Mental Health bureaucracy. An official inquiry will do
production on the basis of need. A new individual
nothing to expose the bureaucracy, plenty of earlier
began to emerge, the proletarian individual. The
disasters such as the police shooting of Steven
proletariat was within reach of creating
Wallace and the Pike River tragedy proves. An
humanity. Such were the expectations of a new
independent inquiry is needed to allow critics of the
order that the reversal of these conditions brought
official line on suicide to be heard and their issues
the inevitable downfall and with it, waves of suicides.
raised and debated publicly.
The degeneration of the revolution brought about a
But even so, more urgent actions are needed along
reversal of these new freedoms. Underlying this
the lines of the self-organising of workers and youth,
reversal was the failure of the revolution in Europe
especially Maori youth, to actively fight against the
and the isolation of the Soviet Union. The ideals of
official silence and apathy towards suicide. There are
the revolution came under increasing challenge. In
lessons that can be learned from the story of Yellow
the attempt to negotiate a peace with Germany the
Ribbon, that created student groups in many schools
vast areas of the South were devastated. The civil
to deal with those at risk of suicide and its closing
war against imperialist invasion required a war
down by the state agencies. And many more public
economy where the state took more central powers
initiatives to organise the grass roots communities to
and reduced those of the soviets. To feed the troops
campaign against suicide are important
the peasantry had their product requisitioned. This
developments. Focussing on the immediate causes of
turned many peasants against the workers state, and
suicide will wake people up to the underlying cause
in particular the Bolsheviks. The Kronstadt rebellion
of suicide the alienation of individuals from their
was ruthlessly put down. The New Economic Policy
labour, from their friends and family, and finally from
themselves.

14
Class Struggle 121
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 pre-
conditions 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, China and Cuba then
followed. Today only North Korea (DPRK) survives as
a degenerate workers state. We unconditionally
defend the DPRK 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
individual "freedom" and "equality". It reveals how
Winter (June -August) 2017
and why the reformist, Stalinist and centrist mis-
leaders 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.
Class Struggle 121 Winter 2017

For a New World Party of Socialism!

Liaison Committee of Communists

Class Warrior: Theoretical Journal of LCC http://www.cwgusa.org/?page_id=594
Revolutionary Workers Group of Zimbabwe (RWG-ZIM)
Email: rwg.zimbabwe@gmail.com
Website: www.rwgzimbabwe.wordpress.com
Revolutionary Worker (Paper of RWG-Zimbabwe)
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Email: cwg006@yahoo.com
Websites: http://redrave.blogspot.com Class Struggle (Paper of the CWG-NZ)
http://livingmarxism.wordpress.com
Revolutionary Workers Group of Brazil (RWG-BR)
Email: gtrevolucionarios1@gmail.com
Site: https://grupodetrabalhadoresrevolucionrios.wordpress.com
Guerreiro da classe Trabalhadora (Paper of the RWG-BR)
Communist Workers Group USA (CWG-US): Email: cwgclasswar@gmail.com
Website: Class War (Paper of the CWG-US) http://www.cwgusa.org/?page_id=16

Class Struggle is online at https://www.redrave.blogspot.com

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