Class Struggle 122 Spring 2017
Class Struggle 122
Briefs
Kim Dotcom & Internet Freedom
Kim Dotcoms name is now synonymous with
internet freedom which is now an urgent struggle as
the internet is fast becoming the domain of
monopoly Big Data such as Google and Amazon and
the state spy agencies. The Internet Party is now
revived and campaigning online internationally
against the surveillance state. Communists fight to
defend bourgeois civil rights when they can be used
to advance the cause of socialism.
So, for example, we defend the right to privacy, but
not as an abstract bourgeois right of the individual
bourgeois subject, such as liberty, equality and
fraternity, which mask the exploitative and
oppressive class nature of capitalism. These rights
are a fraud so long as capitalism imposes a
fundamental class inequality between the right of
workers to be exploited and the right of bosses to
profit from our labour.
That is why we defend this right as a means of
resisting the bosses state from spying on our class
organisations and actions which purpose is the
overthrow of the state and expropriate capitalists
wealth. That is why we are 100% behind all social
struggles that defend the rights of workers to
mobilise against the capitalist-imperialist ruling
class.
Internet freedom is one such basic right because it is
a powerful means of communicating ideas and
organizing collective action. We want to take the
internet out of the hands of corporates and their
state backers and put it in the hands of the workers
as an expression of workers democracy and socialist
planning.
For a New Red Fed!
In his blogpost on The Daily Blog
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/06/23/guest-blog-
ben-peterson-ideas-arent-enough/ Ben Peterson
says ideas are not enough. Look, he says, at Corbyn
where ideas and practice are combined to build a
new movement to revive the Labour Party. Correct,
ideas and action cannot be separated. But what
ideas and action? Is Corbyn the model we need in NZ
or do we have one here that is better? What about
the idea of socialism in theory and practice? Take
the Red Fed as an example.
The Red Fed of labour came out of the mass unions
in the early 20th century rejecting the state
Arbitration Court line that bosses should pay only
Spring 2017
wages they could afford. Christened by Harry
Holland as labours leg-iron. A bad idea which
produced a good class struggle idea for action,
direct bargaining and strike action to show the boss
who actually is boss -those who produce the wealth
and not the parasitic class that lives off them and
controls the state to enforce their class rule. This
was met by another bad idea. Strikes were attacked
by scabs backed by police and Cossacks (farmers
on horseback).
By 1913 the Red Fed general strike was defeated by
the military with machine guns at the ready.
This defeat produced another bad idea from
labourite moderates who defended the state
arbitration of labour relations. As if the state could
reconcile the class interests of producers and
parasites. Never mind, the labourite moderates
actually believed that they could tame capitalism
and create class peace. That worked well, didnt it?
The taming was not of capitalism but of the
working class. First WW Gager Thesis and The Great
Wrong War. Then depression where Labour in Govt
tamed unruly workers buying them off with state
welfare and work made possible by the protection
of the NZ bourgeoisie from foreign competition i.e.
economic nationalism. Then in WW2 where Labour
tamed workers by shipping them off to an
imperialist war, and passed anti-strike and public
conservation (law and order) legislation in the
name of the war effort at home.
After a century of Labourism locked into the states
leg iron, general strikes sold out by union leaders
from 1913 to 1992, and the unions gutted so that
workers have no protection from a de-regulated
labour market such as that which killed the Pike
River miners. Workers need to rebuild their class
independence and that is not possible without a
strong democratic, fighting union movement.
Today we have to get back to organising labour as
the only progressive force in capitalism capable of
bringing about the change that would enable
workers to earn a living wage. As the right-wing
smears of the volunteer Campaign for Change
workers show, any serious attempt to mobilise youth
around a radical program brings down a shit storm,
not only from the far right, but from the Labour
right frightened of waking up an angry working
class.
We need a new Red Fed that takes as its collective
gospel the IWW slogan, the working class has
nothing in common with the exploiting class, and
the founding principle of Trade Unions, an injury to
one is an injury to all. For workers to live, let
alone take back the wealth ripped off by bosses to
Class Struggle 122
pay for free health, education, welfare, public
transport etc., capitalism must change into
socialism. This can only happen when workers as a
class recognise that they create the wealth and have
the power to expropriate that wealth to build a new
society where the producers, rather than the
parasites, control production, distribution and
exchange.
US vs China/Russia = WW3
The Pentagon now agrees with us that the US is in
decline and faces the rise of Russia and China. They
term this the loss of US primacy or hegemony, and
want the US military to gear up to take on Russia
and China.
China and Russia are engaged in purposeful
campaign-like activities that are focused on the
material reduction of American influence as the
principal arbiter of consequential international
outcomes. They seek to reorder their position in
the existing status quo in ways thatat a
minimumcreate more favorable circumstances
for pursuit of their core objectives. However, a
more maximalist perspective sees them pursuing
advantage at the direct expense of the United
States and its principal Western and Asian allies.
Each possesses substantial conventional and
nuclear military capability. Further, each is
aggressively pursuing interests in direct
contravention of international norms and in ways
that are threatening to U.S. and allied interests.
In bourgeois, bureaucratic and military jargon, this
passage is a useful gloss of Lenin's theory of
imperialism where the rival imperialist powers "core
objectives" are to grab more territory and resources
at the "expense" of their rivals, by going to war to
"re-order their position" and re-dividing the world.
Then the Pentagon spoils it by revising Lenin.
Thus, while the United States faces a clear
resurgent great power challenge, the nature and
character of that challenge is not a mirror image
of pastespecially Cold Warcompetition.
Contemporary great power antagonism instead
occurs principally in the gray zone where U.S.
adversaries substantial military capabilities are
side-lined, over the horizon, or only marginally
employed, but deter more activist U.S. responses
nonetheless. Meanwhile, the principal
competition occurs in murkier, less obvious forms
of state-based aggression, where rival states
marshal various instruments of influence and
intimidation to achieve warlike ends through
means and methods falling far short of
unambiguous or open provocation and conflict.
What the Pentagon, along with Trump, fails to see is
that this gray zone reflects the early stages of
great power antagonism where Russia and China
can successfully compete with the US without
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resorting to world war. But that does not mean that
we can avoid the inevitable armed clashes between
the two imperialist blocs as the stakes get higher.
Right now, we can see the stakes in the Middle East
and East Pacific escalating rapidly. Neither US in
decline, nor the rise of Russia and China, can be
stopped by the military might of the Pentagon
because the decline is terminal. Only socialist
revolution can avoid a WW3.
We argue that the US decline is terminal for two
related reasons. First, US capitalism has exhausted
its ability to survive without forcing workers
worldwide to pay for its crisis of falling profits out
of their wages and living conditions. Despite its
boasts, it has failed because workers and other
oppressed have refused to pay the price with their
livelihoods and their lives. The US has not returned
to profitability and GDP growth is largely fictitious.
Here it is important to make a clear distinction
between Marxists who recognize that crises arise
from the TRPF (tendency of the rate of profit to
fall) which demands that terminal decline must
necessarily be overcome by survival socialism, and
under-consumption theory which explains crises as
the overaccumulation of capital due to low wages
and consumption and which can be overcome by
reforms to equalize income-distribution.
Second, the US also faces (along with all other
states) the devastating impact of climate change
that will provoke massive social unrest and
instability as there are more extreme climate
events such as Cyclones Harvey and Irma. The link
between the two aspects of the terminal crisis is
manifest in the contradiction between profits and
nature; that the value of the US petro-dollar is
pegged to carbon production backed by a strong US
state when this is the prime cause of impending
climate catastrophe.
So, US imperialism is in decline and its military
adventurism can only accelerate this. Trump is
symptomatic of this decline and look to see him try
to concentrate state power in the Presidency. China
on the other hand is proving capable of out-
competing the US in productive growth. Along with
Russia it is developing an alternate financial
structure which began well ahead of Trump and his
populist rhetoric. It has the production of goods and
services to back a new global currency.
Chinas and Russia's success in restoring capitalism
and projecting their global reach is mainly due to
inheriting the command economies of the former
degenerated workers states. They will not sacrifice
this under political or military duress. We will never
see a Wall St take over China's state banks. This
reality is clear to the EU powers that are now
hedging their bets on the future of the Atlantic
Class Struggle 122
Alliance vs Russia/China. They can see that the
balance of geopolitical power is shifting to Eurasia.
For worlds working class, future inter-
imperialist wars can be stopped only by
workers refusing to fight workers and instead
turning their guns on their own ruling classes.
FLTI on Venezuela
When a revolution stops halfway instead of going all
the way to victory, it will be defeated by the
counter-revolution. Since Chavez took power in the
name of the Bolivarian Revolution and proclaimed
21st Century Socialism we saw this clearly as an
attempt by the Bolivarian fraction of the national
bourgeoisie to build a sort of half-way house -
Cuban/Chinese socialism-in-one-country. The fate of
such a half-baked revolution would be that the weak
national bourgeoisie would have to act as
compradors to not only US imperialism, but the
rising Russian and Chinese imperialism, to suppress
the workers revolution.
We wrote in 2009 that the regime was nationalising
US oil interests, but at the same time becoming
dependent on Chinese and Russian loans to keep the
state oil company, PDVSA, solvent. Its anti-
imperialist credentials against the US was boosted
by its Castroite and Chinese market socialist
credentials under the guise of a 5th International!
When we pointed this out to the FLTI we were
condemned as US social chauvinists.
As predicted, today we see the Bolivarian regime
under pressure from imperialism, and from its own
working class suffering from years of deprivation
and repression by the regime. The FLTI see this
crisis as one of the US staging a coup dtat and
restoring the oppositional bourgeoisie to power to
control the PDVSA. We see it as much more than
that.
The US under Trump is acting to limit the growing
influence of its big rivals, Russia and China. Already
its sanctions have forced the regime further into the
arms of Russia and China. They have responded by
upping their ownership and control of Venezuelan oil
resources.
This means that as Russia and China increase their
stakes in Venezuela, US sanctions will hit their
investments hard. The have every reason to support
the regime and its repression of the workers who
turn against it.
Most important, the failure of the FLTI to
understand the rise of Russia and China as
imperialist, disarms workers who still have faith in
the Bolivarian regime and its Russian and Chinese
backers. If the army splits and a coup is attempted,
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then it is all on for a war between the regime
backed by the US bloc and the opposition backed by
the Russia/China bloc.
The FLTI is calling correctly for workers to break
from the US lackey regime and build an independent
workers government. And in the event of a coup and
civil war it will correctly defend the regime
militarily from US imperialism. But what will it say
about the role of Russia and China when they take
the side of the regime to defend their investments,
and workers illusions in the Bolivarian revolution
disarm them in the face of these new imperialist
powers? To claim that Russia and China are dupes of
the US wont wash. Time to face the reality that
Russia and China are new imperialist powers.
Boris and Brexit
Boris Johnson recently visited NZ to pledge his
loyalty to NZ as a traditional member of the British
Commonwealth and to cultivate pledges of servility
to Britain outside the EU. Johnson is a walking
advert for the state of Britain today. Stuffed. Once
the dominant imperialist power, it is now shrunk to
a decrepit shadow of its former self, with its
industry gutted and even its parasitic finance center
in the City of London reduced to a haven for
fictitious capital. In desperation one fraction of the
ruling class want to dissolve into the EU, in the same
way that the motor industry dissolved into the Euro-
car, while another retrograde fraction wants to
return to the Glory Days before the EU. Johnson is
the exemplar of the glory days brigade. Hence the
plunge into Brexit and the life line thrown out to the
US and other Anglo nations to re-join the better
Britain and plug the Brexit void.
Brexit is also evidence of the left's weakness on
many levels. The workers who voted for it proved
that by voting against foreign migrants that they are
'Brits' and not 'internationalists'. British imperialism
is reduced to a dying parasitic finance capital. The
only force that can overthrow a dying capitalism is
the proletariat. Greece has a case for Grexit
because it is an oppressed semi-colony, as is Ireland.
Brexit however is a futile attempt to revive 'little
England' as a "Greater Britain" and to drag the
working class in behind the blood-stained 'Jack'.
Without a politically conscious class struggle that
burns the 'Jack' the proletariat will continue to be
dragged backwards towards a new imperialist war
where they become Trident fodder to US
imperialism in its death throes.
We argue (see Corbyn and Ireland in this issue)
that not until British workers unite with Irish
workers to unite the British colony of Northern
Ireland with the Irish Republic, will they have
decisively broken with the British ruling class.
Class Struggle 122
Labour turns Liberal
So, the Blairite centrists finally took power with Andrew Little, as the last surviving
notable link to the union bureaucracy, gone, and a Generation Y professional
politician, Jacinda Ardern, now leading the party. Chris Trotter goes into raptures
that this can be a revolution. Not the old fashioned one led by armed Reds, but by
post-modern hipsters it seems. A gentler, kinder, peaceful, 21st century revolution
in the image of Lennon, not Lenin.
But where is the substance to complete this style
says Mike Treen. Labour needs a Corbyn who adds
substance to this style. Lets see Jacinda Ardern
come up with policies that turn on the missing
million workers turned off by elitist, distant, self-
serving politicians. But Treen is too late. We agree
with his comrade Joe Carolan that Labour is dead
and that no amount of prettifying the corpse will do
any- thing for NZ
workers. However,
for those who hope
labour can return
from the dead, we
say that this is not a
zombie movie but a
death from which
there is no return.
Labour has been
pronounced dead by
the missing million
as the party that no
longer represents
workers. We suggest that we look to see what
disease Labour died of.
When the NZLP was founded in 1916 it was to divert
the labour movement away from industrial struggles
that divided the nation and threatened the future of
capitalist profitability. Its purpose was to take
control of the majority of workers and split them
from the Red Feds, anarchists and socialists who
were committed to radical industrial action to
negotiate their wages and conditions. Labour
promised to win what workers needed through
parliamentary reforms. It would impose the 1890s
Liberal IC&A Act that arbitrated agreements
between workers and bosses that had split the
Labour movement and given rise to the Red Fed
and make Arbitration compulsory. Labour therefore
was the party of the state controlled unions until
compulsory arbitration was repealed by Labour in
1987 and compulsory unionism by the NACTs in
1992, which together broke the back of the unions
resistance to neo-liberalism, taking workers back to
the 1880s.
The NZLP had inflicted a mortal wound on itself. To
serve its purpose as the Party that could reconcile
workers to capitalism it needed to represent the
Spring 2017
unions and its membership to have any claim to be a
workers party. It had to win a majority based on a
working-class constituency if it was to be useful to
the ruling class. 1984 changed all that because
Labour abandoned its founding pretence of
advancing the interests of workers and instead made
workers pay for the capitalist crisis facing NZ by
introducing Rogernomics. Then PM Lange called this
the pain before the
gain.
Despite this historic
betrayal, the union
bosses fought to keep
New Labour Party
Labour alive so that
leader and a former
leader of the Socialist when the New Labour
International Youth, split occurred only a
Jacinda Ardern few small unions left
Labour for NL. The NL
split was premature
and fizzled out as NL
joined forces in an
amalgam of Greens, Liberals and Mana Motuhake
that became the Alliance. Labour survived by
expelling its right- wing faction which became ACT
but under a succession of new leaders remained a
Blairite, Third Way party trying to achieve a
classless balance between capitalism and socialism
represented by the notorious middle [class].
It has not renounced its neo-liberal turn because
getting the state out of business and policing fiscal
responsibility is the new normal and Labour
cannot serve its purpose unless it reconciles
workers to the neo-liberal market and its brutal
attacks on workers.
But surviving the near-death experience had a cost.
Labour lost its working-class mojo and could no
longer count on a majority from the labour
movement. The NACTs continued their anti-worker
attacks and drove some workers back to Labour, not
because they believed in Labour as their party but
because it was the lesser evil. Labour had lost its
reason to exist. The unions were gutted by the
NACTs ECA in 1992 and ceased to be a force capable
of sustaining the party. The Labour caucus focus on
the middle class reinforced the neoliberal
Class Struggle 122
ideology that unions no longer served workers who
had to rely on their individual efforts to get ahead.
Labour was in limbo with its traditional role
overtaken by the new role of representing a
classless utopia of petty bourgeois middle NZ.
Under Helen Clark Labour sold itself as the natural
party of the centre-left majority. To sell this it
needed to compete openly with the NACTs whose
history gave it much greater claim to represent the
grasping petty bourgeoisie. After all the NACTs
originated as a farmers party and with urban petty
capitalists very much in tow. Labours fate then was
to abandon its working-class constituency the
missing million and recreate itself as the bland,
Blairite, classless party.
To do this it had to present itself as the alternative
to the NACTs which has close links to the capitalist
ruling class that owns business, including the media;
a burgeoning new petty bourgeoisie in the cities and
a new rural gentry getting rich off dairying. Every
leader who stood up to claim this title was shot
down by the caucus of Blairite time-servers until
Andrew Little, the last vestige of Labourite ties to
the union bosses, was forced to resign. Arderns
fresh style may attract more votes from the
middle, but it is the death knell of Labour devoid of
substance as the party of workers in Aotearoa/NZ.
Yet, only the death knell, because what will finally
kill off Labour in the end is not its failure to
advance workers interests, it is its open
renunciation of its duty to attempt to do that by
joining with the Greens and NZ First to form a
government. Labour parties, and social democracy
in general, can always come back from the dead so
long as workers live in hope. But by forming a
coalition with openly capitalist parties like the
Greens and NZ First, as even critics like Mike Treen
advocate, sends Labour back to where it began, the
Liberals of the 1890s.
The Liberal party was a cross-class party of workers,
small farmers and the unemployed. Its philosophy
was the reconciliation of classes under the Liberal
Democratic state that stood for the self-governing
nation within the British Empire. Sometimes
referred to as a liberal-labour or populist party
because it contained an open contradiction between
farmers and labourers that was suppressed by the
submersion fusion (and diffusion) of class in the
nation state; a state once called proto-fascist by
historian Willis Airey. This reconciliation could not
last as the Liberals blew apart when workers rose up
against the IC&A Act to form the Red Fed. Farmers
split from the labourers and were enrolled as special
police Masseys Cossacks to smash the Red Fed,
with farmers forming the Reform Party and defeated
workers the Labour Party.
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Spring 2017
Labour has come full circle. It has officially
renounced the existence of class politics in Aotearoa
and transformed itself into the classless populist
Liberal Party that is preparing to fuse its program
with the Greens and NZ First who both represent the
petty bourgeoisie in NZ.
If this government eventuates, it will limit its
program to that acceptable to a NZ ruling class
facing a global slump in profits and climate crash
dooming its future. This can only mean that the
working class will again be sacrificed to the holy
grail of a property-owning democracy dragging us
into more imperialist wars and down the road to
human extinction.
Workers now have no alternative but to struggle to
take control of their own lives by breaking with the
parliamentary farce and the bourgeois nation state,
to organise their own independent mass Labour
party and a new Red Fed, able to fight the class
struggle in the workplace and the streets as part of
a global mobilisation of workers, unemployed, poor
farmers and oppressed peoples for survival socialism
against a dying capitalism and rush to human
extinction.
Meanwhile, many workers will vote for the lesser
evil a Labour-Green coalition. If they become
the government, we call on workers to fight to
make that government deliver on its promises and
put working people before profit!
Reject the neo-liberal bullshit that the
budget must be balanced! Down with fiscal
responsibility!
Reject the legacy of Rogernomics! Demand
that they tax the rich to fund free public
health, education and housing!
Tax the Capital Gains of speculators!
For a living wage and living benefit. Make
the polluters pay! Open the books!
Demand NZ goes carbon neutral by 2030!
Re-nationalise privatised state assets and
nationalise firms that close under workers
control!
When a Labour-Green coalition refuses to put
working people before profits, and baulks at
taxing the rich to implement much needed
reforms, workers will realise the necessity for
their own political party to fight for a Workers
Government able to socialise the economy and
put workers needs before capitalist profits.
Class Struggle 122 Spring 2017

Trump Fires up Kim Jong-uns Fury

Trump is reviving Bush juniors bellicose approach to the DPRK which carries great
risks for the whole world. By revving up the axis of evil scenario he risks global
destruction for the sake of what: tourism? In his bizarre phone conversation with the
Governor of Guam he boasts that the publicity will boost Guams hotel occupancy to
110%, and that anyway Trump backs Guam 1000%. A fat lot of comfort that will give
to the citizens of Guam many of whom see themselves as pawns in the US global
game of chess.

China, according an
Editorial in the semi-
official Global Times,
sees the war of words
between Trump and Kim
Jong-un as a Reckless
Game. It states what is
likely to be the official
China line.
The US and North Korea
have both ramped up
their threatening
rhetoric. The Pentagon
has prepared plans for B-
1B strategic bombers to
make pre-emptive strikes Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump risk nuclear war
on North Koreas missile
sites. US Secretary of Defense James Mattis The prospect of a hot war between China and the US
issued an ultimatum to North Korea on over Korea is dangerous for everyone in the region,
Wednesday to cease any consideration of including New Zealand. It would risk escalation into
actions that would lead to the end of its regime nuclear war and that war becoming the dreaded
and destruction of its people. Meanwhile, WW3. China is currently trying to persuade both
North Korea issued plans to fire four Trump and Kim Jong-un to back off. But it could not
intermediate-range missiles to land 30-40 sit back while the DPRK is directly attacked or
kilometers from Guam and claimed it would invaded. So why is Trump trumping the most
finalize the plan by mid-August. belligerent of US Presidents George W. Bush in the
If these threats are acted on that would level of threats made against the DPRK?
seriously escalate the war of words in a shooting Is Trump such a maverick that he cant tell the
match. China would likely not intervene at this difference between what is good for business and
level but promises to do so if there is any what is good for humanity? Even casino Capitalism
attempt to invade the DPRK by the US and the requires punters. Clearly there is room for
ROK. moderating the Bush bellicosity in the direction of
China should also make clear that if North Korea Clintons negotiated deals on nuclear proliferation.
launches missiles that threaten US soil first and the Clinton knew that the DPRK regime was an
US retaliates, China will stay neutral. If the US and anachronism, a failed state, and not some threat to
South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow US interests. Obama continued this policy
the North Korean regime and change the political recognising that the DPRK was a small fish in its own
pattern of the Korean Peninsula, China will prevent tank compared with an expansive China. So is this
them from doing so. crisis down to Trumps personality, the back-to-the-
Great-USA fundamentalism of his militant support
Class Struggle 122
base pushing Trump into war, or is there something
deeper driving this?
The global forces that are behind this crisis are
those of a renewed rivalry between the declining US
imperialist bloc, and the rising China/Russia
imperialist bloc. The US has dominated the Pacific
since the end of WW2. It defeated Japan and
established its allies and bases in the region
including the armistice on the 38th parallel in Korea
separating the ROK and DPRK. But the US failed to
stop the Chinese revolution and having worked hard
since Nixon went to China in 1974 to restore
capitalism and destroy communism eventually got
its wish but was unable to reap the prize a servile
client state to inject some life into the US economy.
Instead of succumbing as new colonies of Western
imperialism with the end of the cold war, both
China and Russia as former workers states, used
their state controlled economies to deny the West
their prize of conquest. Both opened up to the West
but more or less on their own terms. Western
investment was quarantined within these state
capitalist regimes to benefit the red capitalists.
Today, both are emerging as rivals to the declining
US imperialism. And as is always the case with
declining capitalist powers they cannot compete
economically so they do so militarily. But today, the
US is no longer the hegemonic global power facing
Chinas economic dominance and Russias military
technology.
Trumps foreign policy in Asia, while adventurous, is
an inevitable expression of this rise and fall of great
powers. Korea is one of a number of flash points
around the world between the two imperialist blocs
where the US faces the rising influence of
China/Russia including Ukraine, Syria, the South
China Sea. All these flash points are evidence that
the rivalry between the old and new imperialist
powers explains what is going on in the world.
More importantly, all these imperialist powers are
facing a global, terminal crisis as the global system
stagnates. While they are competing in Europe, the
Middle East and Asia with economic and political
sanctions, and fighting proxy wars, facing
termination, these wars must escalate into regional
and ultimately global extermination. So, what we
are seeing in Korea today is the prospect of a cold
war on words that spreads to hot wars between
nuclear powers.
It is not in the interests of any power to go to world
war as it would destroy not only the enemy but any
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Spring 2017
economic base for survival of the human species.
The problem is that such wars can start by accident,
or by crazy Dr Strangelove actors who push the
wrong button. What can we do to try to stop such a
catastrophe?
For a start, we should tell our NACT regime not to
follow the Australian example of unconditional
support for Trump. NZ is a semi-colony of the US
AND China. Politically our ruling class it is client of
the US, economically it is a client of China. Both are
imperialist powers which exploit the NZ economy at
the expense of NZ workers. We must be against the
intervention of both (all) powers on the Korean
Peninsula and refuse to support any request to side
with one or other. Not because NZ has an
international reputation for peacekeeping which is a
lie as our intervention on Afghanistan proves. Our
neutrality should be against any war in which a
small power becomes a pawn in the fight between
two global powers because as a semi-colony
ourselves we defend the right of other semi-colonies
to be independent of imperialist domination.
Therefore, our neutrality does not extend to Korea
itself. We are for its self-determination which in
simple language means independence from all
imperialist powers. During the Korean War the left
in NZ was split between the Stalinist, Maoist and
Trotskyist left that defended the DPRK as having a
legitimate claim to oust the US from the ROK and
create a united socialist Korea. The rest of the anti-
war movement had illusions in the UN armistice as
creating peace in denial of the ongoing class war
that shapes our destinies.
Today we have to take the same stand against
Chinas threat to intervene to defend the DPRK. This
turns Korea into the site of another proxy war
between imperialists over who controls Korea.
Korean working people must determine their own
future in a united Korea. They must be supported by
the billions of working people around the world who
lives are at stake can change this by organising into
a global anti-imperialist movement.
This is why we urgently need a left in NZ that is
anti-imperialist through and through rather than
pacifist with illusions in the UN. That is the only
way to unite workers in both Koreas, China, the
US and the rest of the Pacific, against the
imperialist regimes and their client regimes that a
pushing for war and risking global catastrophe. In
playing with fire in Korea Trump is playing with all
of our lives. To survive we need Survival
Socialism.
Class Struggle 122 Spring 2017

USA: Fight Capitalist Reaction!

Emboldened by Trump, neo-Nazis, KKK and other fascist groups have been staging
racist mobilizations not only in smaller cities like Charlottesville, but also in major
metro urban working-class centers such as Berkeley, Boston and Seattle. As shock
troops of divisiveness and hate, racist terrorists intend to instill fear among Blacks,
immigrants, Jews, Muslims, women, LGBTQI folk in order to divide and crush the
multiracial, multi-ethnic, multi gender working class. Make no mistake, they emerge
now not because of Trump but because the unfolding crisis of capitalism has created
such disparity that their American Dream has crumbled and they scapegoat you for
it.
The murder of Heather Heyer and the August 11th- creates the conditions for fascism to grow. So, for
12th provocation have unmasked, for all to see, the instance, every sort of supplier, salesman and boss
fascist underbelly of the mis-named Alt-Right. in the construction industry, and many of the
Those chanting blood and soil, proudly offering up formerly privileged labor aristocrats have been
the Nazi salute as they Heil Trump, and cry Jews ruined by the elimination of 1.7 million jobs in
will not replace us! are the vanguard of a nascent construction that existed before the 2008 stock
fascist movement which if not stopped now will market crash (Economic Policy Institute of the AFL-
propel the likes of CIO, Aug. 18,
Richard Spencer, 2017). It is the
Baked Alaska and ruined middle
the Based class (petty
Stickman into the bourgeoisie), the
mainstream. Their small
leaders (see Vice businessmen,
Interview 8/16) professionals,
celebrate students and the
Charlottesville as lumpen that have
a victory and no prospects that
promise more are driven to a
blood, egging on reactionary
malcontents like despairing frenzy,
those that what Leon Trotsky
murdered Heather referred to as
Heyer, Tyler Thousands rally in Boston against fascist terror, August 19th (Stephanie Keith/Reuters) white hot
Magill, beat capitalist reaction
senseless DeAndre Harris and injured 19 others (five against the working class, that form the social base
critically). A Trump supporter driving a car into anti- of fascist movements.
fascist protesters has horrified the world. But
The Communist Workers Group (CWG USA) agrees
Oathkeepers acting as demonstration Marshals
with Marxist economist Michael Roberts, author of
lend cover to the fascists claims that they are only
The Long Depression, that the 2008 economic crisis
exercising free speech as they march with tiki
was primarily brought to a head by the dynamics of
torches and attack and brandish and discharge
the capitalist system itself, by what Karl Marx called
firearms at those who object to them.
the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall (TRPTF).
Capitalism Creates the Conditions for Fascism
We agree with Roberts that we are at an economic
With the world economy still not recovered from the precipice, that the so-called recovery is weak and
2008 crisis, with the capitalists still unable to that Capital has not restored its lost rate of profit.
restore their declining rate of profit through the The U.S. is a declining imperialist power and the
destruction of capital, the US imperialist ruling days of post-WW II and the post 1989 unipolar
class, while not willing to engage in a costly fascist hegemony are waning. Trump promised to make
experiment at this time, are more USthan willing to America great again, but that is just populist
keep the fascists in the wings as shock troops to demagoguery. Capitalism is a history of peaks and
crush a resurgent workers movement. It is the troughs, with every crisis having a tendency to
economic outcome of the capitalist crisis that become sharper and longer. The stock market right
Class Struggle 122
now is peaking, with the media selling us full
employment and inflated stock prices that dont
reflect the profit rates. And Trumps full
employment claims that the media hypes are based
on the average wage and do not take into account
workers trying to survive on sub-living wages. The
stock brokerage newsletter Gains, Pains &
Capital, quoting the IRS, showed a real decline in
collected payroll taxes in April for 2016 vs. 15. For
many youth, a college degree means heavy school
loan debt and grim job prospects. Trump is a
product of the capitalist system which in crisis
produces the fascist resurgence as an option to
seemingly expensive bourgeois parliamentary
democracy. These reactionary forces instead of
blaming capitalism blame Jewish bankers, Blacks,
Latinos, immigrants, women, LGBTQI folk and
leftists (Marxists and anarchists) for shrinking
business opportunities.
Historically, the relatively privileged layers of the
middle class and lumpenized elements are drawn to
white nationalism and white supremacy because it
gives them an other to blame for the economic
crisis they are powerless over. They are powerless
because their middle class and lumpenized condition
is separated from the social relations of production.
They have neither the investable resources of big
capital nor their hands on the levers of production
as does the working class. Only capital and labor
have real power in society. Fascism is an existential
threat to the existence of the organized working
class. It is crucial that the working class organize
and mobilize to drive the fascist KKK, Nazis and
other Alt-Right racists from the streets.
The fascist groups focus their recruitment efforts on
a no hope generation of students at elite colleges
and universities, but this is not their exclusive focus.
Where prisons are schools for revolution, such as at
Attica in the early 1970s, since the 80s prisons
have been recruiting grounds for Nazis and similar
groups. We notice a growth of Ku Klux Klan style
groups, and these have pulled in members of the no
hope generation in the Bible Belt Christian right
milieu of small-town America, as well as lumpenized
Iraq and Afghan war veterans. Naturally, as more
usually the case historically, the ruined small family
farmers are a source of recruits too. We see
foremen workers anxiety over their mortgages and
kids future. We see the former union membership
that are now independent contractors driving for
Uber to try to make ends meet. For all of these
there has to be a scapegoat explanation of their
misery where Marxism makes no challenge to
puncture it. We begin puncturing it here and today.
Trump is not a fascist, but a racist, reactionary
populist know-nothing wannabe Bonapartist who
has few qualms about putting the wind in the sails
of the Nazis, KKK and other Alt-Right groups. Are
10
Spring 2017
we at a turning point now after the recent fascist
mobilizations? The fascist ranks are split with lots of
different factions and they have not coalesced into
a mass fascist organization. They dont have a lot of
ideological differences to sort out, though. Right
now, their donors are testing who can build a fascist
movement. In response to those who say ignore
them and they will go away, it is essential for the
working class to recall that Mussolini started with 54
in his outfit and Hitler joined the German Workers
Party when it had 100 members or less. Their rapid
growth was repeated in Greece in 2009 with the
Golden Dawn which emerged from the slime during
the crisis only to be projected onto the national
scene gaining significant percentages of the popular
vote in the last two elections. So it is imperative to
keep our eyes on our biggest enemies, such as the
capitalists and foundations who fund the racist
organizations such as ACT For America coalition.
We have identified a list of the donors.
The ruling class knows they are sitting on a
tinderbox and they rightly fear a class-conscious
working class mobilized for class struggle under our
own banner. But right now, the normal methods of
bourgeois democracy are sufficient for them to
maintain their class rule. They have their two major
political parties, the Democrats and Republicans,
which the working class is tied to, along with a
servile labor bureaucracy, a decimated labor
movement and a weak Left without revolutionary
working-class leadership. Capital right now rules by
throwing in state repression here and there;
unleashing their racist cops, La Migra and the
National Guard against the working class and
oppressed; and they are keeping the fascists as their
shock troop reserve, waiting in the wings ready to
crush the workers movement if necessary.
So, this is not a turning point, the fascist movement
is too toxic for the established Right to outwardly
embrace right now. Indeed, Trump and the recently
ousted Bannon are increasingly isolated from the
mainstream of bourgeois politics, but this could
change very quickly. August 10th saw a 3-day stock
market drop that had the billionaires freaking out,
which follows the 2016 major contraction
internationally in investment in production (see
UNCTAD, World Investment Report 2017). It is not
just Michael Roberts saying the world economy is
not stable, the bourgeoisie knows it too. They
recognize the class war and they come to the fight
prepared.
Charlottesville, Trump, and the Democratic Party
The aftermath of Charlottesville saw Trump initially
refusing to condemn the fascists outright and
blamed all sides and said the answer is law and
order. Then two days later bowing down to
pressure, he denounced the KKK/Nazis as
Class Struggle 122
repugnant, then backtracked again and blamed
both sides to the satisfaction of Klansman David
Duke. Even the bourgeoisie was troubled by the
fascist terror in Charlottesville as it sparked outrage
worldwide and drew too much attention to the
reality of racism in capitalist America. Better to
keep things like this in the shadows to maintain the
aura of respectability. Former Presidents George W.
Bush and George H.W. Bush, Mitch McConnell, and
five military joint chiefs denounced the fascists in
Teamsters Local 544 Worker Defense guard that drove the fascist Silver Shirts from the Twin Cities in the 1930's and 1940's
Charlottesville as did multiple Democratic and
Republican politicians, which is easy enough to do.
Trump has brought a lot of unnecessary overhead
and instability to bourgeois democratic class rule
that threatens to explode into mass struggle against
capitalism. A large percentage of workers and youth
are sympathetic to socialism. Workers, women, the
Black, Brown and immigrant communities, LGBTQI
folk and youth are sick of the con game.
A red-brown alliance is crystallizing in Democratic
Party circles at the same time as states are banning
demonstrations. Consider how many times the
Workers World Party (WWP) has endorsed
Democratic Party candidates, from at least 1975
down to today. This despite their support for
Muammar Khaddafi and the Assad dynasties. This
puts them in league with the Christian rightists
and David Duke, and so far, this has only caused
them to shrug. Tankies like the WWP and the
Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) dismiss the
operation of the laws of history. (The WWP et. al.
see anti-imperialism behind every comprador
upstart where the fascists see them more clearly as
the capitalist thugs and anti-Semites they are.)
Their political coincidence with the fascists is not
accidental. It is the expression of their petty-
bourgeois class identity operating inescapably in the
crisis. And we can expect fascism to grow at the
expense of the ranks of petty-bourgeois socialism,
as it did in the 1930s. Take a look at this!
Ex-fascist Christian Picciolini interviewed on
Democracy Now on 8/18/17:
You know, I, myself, have a very checkered past.
When I was involved in the movement, I was invited
to Libya by Muammar Gaddafi to receive money to
start a revolution against the Jews. I committed acts
11
Spring 2017
of violence that nearly killed many people. I
stockpiled weapons to prepare for what I believed
was an inevitable race war.
And this!, During a visit to Syria in 2005 David
Dukes speech was translated by the state media:
Following Dukes statement praising Assad, the
crowd was shown chanting, Our soul and our blood
we will sacrifice for you, Bashar.
It saddens my heart to tell you that part of my
country is occupied by Zionists, Duke said, just as
part of your country, the Golan Heights, is occupied
by Zionists. [They] occupy most of the American
media and now control much of the American
governmentIt is not just the West Bank of
Palestine, it is not just the Golan Heights that are
occupied by the Zionists, but Washington D.C. and
New York and London and many other capitals of the
world.
To Survive, the Working Class Had Better Fight
Antifa has risen to prominence in the wake of
Charlottesville and other fascist mobilizations. Along
with Redneck Revolt and the IWW (Industrial
Workers of the World) General Defense Committee,
anarchist workers and youth have been at the
forefront in defending the anti-fascist
demonstrations against attack. Antifa has come
under fire by Democratic Party liberals, the ACLU,
the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and so-called
progressive activists, for violence, implicitly if not
explicitly equating them with the Nazis and KKK.
These groups effectively repeat Trump, Fox and the
likes of ex-Vice reporter gone solo, Tim Pools
violence on both sides denunciations. Self-styled
anarchist Chomsky chimed in and even called Antifa
a major gift to the Right and he claims that
denying the fascists a platform is wrong in
principle.
The Klan and Nazis are not a debate club, but
paramilitary right-wing organizations who incite and
commit racist terror. They are a mortal danger to
the workers movement and all their intended
Class Struggle 122
targets. Their idea of free speech is as expressed by
Dylann Roof, Timothy McVeigh and James Fields.
Their free speech technique is the noose, the
bullet and the bomb. With the support of Breitbart
News, Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting, they
propagate a program of Free Speech,
(Confederate) Heritage Defense and Anti-Marxism.
The fascists use their rallies as a recruiting ground
for their genocidal program. Under the cover of Alt-
Right acceptability, the very fine people Trump
refers to are arming for race war and establishing a
whites-only United States where they will be the
capitalists state, the one legal body of armed
men.
The Communist Workers Group (CWG) is not against
peaceful demonstrations, but we are against a one-
sided class peace where the masses are left
defenseless. Liberals cheer when Governor McAuliffe
bans all demonstrations at Confederate Statues and
other white power monuments, little realizing they
have handed the fascists a victory for free. It does
not bother this Resistance that they have joined
in denying the working class and those targeted by
the fascists their right to self-defense!
Demonstrating by the tens of thousands against the
fascists in Boston does nothing to overturn the no
demonstrations laws in 20 states. The fascists will
never respect these laws and the police will never
enforce these anti-free speech laws against fascists!
Pacifism in the face of white supremacy only serves
to politically and literally disarm the masses and is
suicidal. The lessons of history are clear enough for
those who do not wish to be fooled and misled.
No more Dachau or Auschwitz! The CWG
remembers the heroism of the 1943 Jewish
Warsaw Ghetto fighters and the Soviet and
Jewish prisoners of Sobibor! We honor the
Auschwitz-Birkenau Jewish revolt of 1944!
The history of the labor movement and other social
struggles in the United States has witnessed self-
defense organizations take shape, from workers
picket lines to defend a strike, to the 1930s-40s
Minneapolis Teamsters defense guard that drove the
fascist Silver Shirts from the Twin Cities, to Robert
F. Williams and the Deacons for Defense and Justice
who organized in the face of KKK terror, to the
Black Panthers against racist cop terror. Self-
defense is a necessity of the moment tactic, not a
strategy of so-called violence. Today Antifa fills
the vacuum left by the shame-faced union
bureaucracy and their socialist apologists who in
their fetishized pacifism refuse to build (or even
12
Spring 2017
contemplate) building workers self-defense
organizations.
As Charlottesville showed, as heroic and defensible
as Antifas actions are, their political program of
organized groups of leftists attacking the white
supremacists has limitations, especially if the
balance of forces is equal. Antifa turns what can be
adventurous confrontations from a tactic to a
strategy. The day before the main rally in
Charlottesville saw the white supremacists marching
at the University of Virginia with tiki torches and
chanting anti-Semitic slogans, a surreal modern-day
version of the Nazi Brownshirt marches.
This caused the famous half-stepper, the left
Reverend Cornel West to say that only the presence
of 350 Antifa outside the church where he and 20
church folk were singing this little light of mine
saved them from the fascists surrounding the
church. West misses or refuses to make the
important point. The relationship of forces was
adequate on August 11th-12th; but this wont
guarantee anyones safety in days to come. We
need, like water or air, mass Labor, Black and
Brown workers defense guards, trained and
armed to defeat fascists and white supremacists!
It is worse than useless to repeat the insane idea to
trust the FBI or other government agencies to
handle sociopathic forces that are creations of the
ruling class!
August 12th Charlottesville videos show the fascists
marching through the crowd in a very organized
manner, attacking the anti-fascist protesters. Three
armed fascists were posted outside a synagogue.
Antifa courageously defended the demo. Sporadic
confrontations with the fascists by a relatively small
number of Antifa are no substitute for the forces
required for working class victory: history shows
these are mass organized trained and disciplined
contingents of Labor, Black and Brown self-defense
guards organized from out of our union halls.
Such displays of the power of labor will send the
fascists scurrying. The workers movement cannot
allow the fascists to march through our towns and
attack oppressed peoples and the anti-fascist
demonstrators. Labor defense guards and mass
mobilizations of workers centered on the unions are
not on Antifas political radar.
In a Democracy Now! interview, the author of the
upcoming Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook barely
mentions the working class, and then only in the
context of Redneck Revolt, a worker self-defense
organization that focuses on organizing working-
class whites against capitalism and white
Class Struggle 122
supremacy. In Charlottesville, Redneck Revolt
successfully defended their safe rally site from
fascist provocations, to their credit.
The very powerful ILA (International
Longshoremens Association) with a heavy
concentration of black proletarians and with ports
organized along the East and Gulf coasts, were only
a few hours away from Charlottesville. What was
needed in Charlottesville and everywhere was the
mobilization of the actual mass of the organized
working class that works in strategic industries.
There is a big and qualitative difference in social
power between several hundred or thousand Antifa
workers from various atomized industries and
workplaces and organized, militant and disciplined
trade union contingents from the ILA and other
unions. The police are less likely to attack the anti-
fascists where the ILA manifests the power to shut
down the ports. It also doesnt sit well with the
millions of other trade unionists to see their sisters
and brothers beaten by the cops or terrorized by
Klansmen, Nazis or white supremacist college
preppies. And labor defense guards organized today
against fascists and racist cop terror can also be
mobilized tomorrow to defend picket lines and seize
workplaces.
The ILA and the ILWU (International Longshore &
Warehouse Union) has mobilized against the KKK
before, notably in 1982 in Washington DC. ILWU
Local 10 have pledged to march in San Francisco on
August 26th where the white supremacist Patriot
Prayer organization is staging a free speech
provocation. The Alameda Labor Council (AFL-CIO
Central Labor Council) has endorsed the peaceful
counter protest in Berkeley at the UCB campus,
some blocks away from the fascist Anti-Marxism
rally at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Park
(!!!) on the 27th. Of course, just like AFL-CIO
President Trumkas and other labor bureaucrats
denunciation of the Nazis and white supremacists,
these are public pronouncements that do little to
mobilize the heavy battalions of labor to fight. The
trade union bureaucracy is busy preparing for the
next election cycle to revive the fortunes of the
Democratic Party, not mobilizing the ranks to fight.
The Bay Area Rally against Hate coalition made up
of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the
International Socialist Organization (ISO), the
Morenoites, USec, Labor Rising, and other leftists,
and the Berkeley Democrats, along with a
smattering of workers this popular front club is
13
Spring 2017
going to hold their non-violent rally on August
27th, not where the white supremacists are rallying,
but on the other side of Downtown. If what is
desired is putting the local fascists to rout, this is
demobilization of the struggle. This is a
demobilization if what is desired is a pedagogy in
action that increases worker militancy.
Putting the fascists to rout and increasing worker
militancy is the historic occupation of the
vanguard, who will demand Jobs for All, sharing
the available work at no cut in pay (30 hours
work for 40 hours pay), Free Universal Quality
Medical Care (socialized medicine), Free
Universal Quality Education from daycare thru
post graduate.
To win, new unions and old must assemble a
unionized army of the unemployed to demand
work at union wages for all. Mass meetings of the
working people and the oppressed can then
discuss how to fight for every demand arising from
their social situation, including transitional
demands that place socialism on the order of the
day, such as nationalization of the commanding
heights of the economy under workers control
without indemnification to the major
shareholders.
By degrees workers can win some concessions
and/or learn why they cannot under the
dictatorship of capital, and it will be their own
revolutionary workers party who teaches this
lesson and why workers must take political power
to plan the economy and have any future.
Democratize our unions to fight for working class
political independence! Break with all bourgeois
parties and their parliamentary fetish! For a
Fighting Workers/Labor Party that fights for a
Workers Government!
What the anarchists, the Antifa, Redneck Revolt
and much of the rest of the Left miss is the
organization and mobilization of the international
working class as a class under our own banner
united in a revolutionary international workers
party and armed with a revolutionary political
program to sweep fascism and capitalism away. To
defeat all imperialisms internationally we must
defeat fascism too!
Workers of the world unite! You have nothing
to lose but your chains! For world socialism!
Reprinted Class War Supplement of CWG(US).
Class Struggle 122 Spring 2017

Corbyn on Irish Unification

Labour parties have always been chauvinist in the nicest possible Fabian way, holding out
hope that nations can be peaceful by end wars of aggression with peacekeeping forces. That is
why they send workers to war under the banner of defending democracy from fascism
and/or terrorism. Yet this is a form of class peace that turns workers into cannon fodder for
the imperialist ruling classes. Lenin called it Social Imperialism - parliamentary socialism at
home and democratic anti-imperialism in the colonies. In reality, parliamentary reformism at
home is always paid for by the extraction of super-profits from the colonies. The price of
living off colonial super-profits is that the semi-colonial working class has to pay the price in
blood. Hell no. We wont pay for your rotten crisis!

Corbyn has no intention of breaking from this tradition.
He opposes the Syrian revolution because Assad is a
socialist leader committed to secular democracy
resisting overthrow by Islamic fascism. That is why he
opposed the Baathist socialism of Saddam Hussein being
overthrown by a US invasion in 2003. It doesnt matter
how many millions die in the process so long as it is in the
name of democracy against fascism.
So Corbyn is part of the crypto-Stalinist left in the West
committed to defence of democracy at home and abroad
as opening the road to socialism. That is why he supports
a democratic Brexit against a hard Brexit so that
workers can use their own parliament to demand the
peaceful development of the third world against
malignant British finance capital.
It also explains why Corbyn supports Sinn Fein but not the
IRA. Sinn Fein are fighting for Irish unification by
democratic means whereas the IRA are fighting by using
terrorist methods. How committed Corbyn is to his
democratic British imperialism was already tested well
before the recent election. Brexit for all its support from
workers suffering decades of attacks from both Blairites
and Tories are being dragged into a revanchist British
chauvinism to revive the profits of British finance capital
and its domination of the semi-colonial world which
includes NZ.
But a Hard Brexit is putting up a road block to Corbyns
peaceful road to socialism under the EU. Yet EU powers
are alongside Britain in the US alliance bombing Syria.
Corbyn needs to go to the membership to stop Labour
paying $200 billion to upgrade Trident. He should fight to
break from the Atlantic Alliance and NATO and spend the
money reviving social services. In the event of British, US,
German or French imperialism going to war with Russia or
China, Corbyn will not shirk from sending British
peacekeepers to their death in foreign wars.
But there is an immediate test of Corbyns commitment
to the international, as opposed to the British, working
class. And that is the self-determination of Britains
first colony, Ireland, which remains divided as the
result of the British defeat of the Irish Revolution in
1921.
He can declare his intention to reject British imperialism
by supporting a referendum on Irish unification. He
condemns Teresa May talking to the reactionary unionist
DUP in the Six Counties but seems reluctant to meet with
Sinn Fein. Sinn Fein was reported to be willing to take up
its seats in Westminster to help Corbyn form a
government if he promises a referendum on a united
Ireland.
Even if Corbyn baulks at that because Sinn Fein has no
mandate since it was elected on the boycott of
Westminster policy, it is his duty as a leader who opposes
the military suppression of British colonies to take the
initiative and force the issue. That he is reluctant should
be rejected by the membership of the party that looks to
him to fight on its behalf. Members have to demand that
he acts on internationalist working class principles and
that includes opposition to British imperialisms role in
holding back Irish self-determination.
Such a push from the membership would be a big leap to
the left repudiating centuries of British oppression of
Ireland. It would mean that a Tory Government that has
been formed by an alliance with the reactionary unionists
of Ulster, could be challenged by an anti-imperialist
Labour Opposition. That in itself, even without the 7 Sinn
Fein votes, would make the Tories holding onto power
even more tenuous.
The Irish Question has always been used by the British
ruling class to rally British workers behind it in defence of
the Empire. Not until Ireland is united and the British
colony in the north ended can we talk of any real Irish
independence and any real unity between British and Irish
workers. Sinn Fein wants a referendum on unity. This is
the ultimatum it has used to boycott its Westminster
seats. To meet this demand all it needs is for Corbyn to
attack the rotten heart of British imperialism the
colonial divide and rule of its first colony and promise a
referendum.
If Sinn Fein does not respond to such a promise and go to
Westminster when it is represented in the EU parliament,
yet serves in an imperialist-imposed power-sharing
regime in the Northern Irish Assembly, then its putting its
sectarian stand before the unity of Ireland and more
important, the unity of Irish and British workers, and will
be condemned by all internationalist workers.
https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-
corbyn-on-northern-ireland
https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/tom-griffin/corbyn-
mcdonnell-and-irish-peace-process
Class Struggle 122
CTU: Working Peoples Share of Income
We critique the Confederation of Trade Unions use of bourgeois economics to hoodwink workers to
struggle for fair shares. The simple fact is that to increase productivity under capitalism is to
increase the rate of exploitation. We want to overthrow the wage system not fiddle with it.
The share of income that working people receive from all the
income generated by their work the labour income share is
important for many reasons and has long been of interest. It is a
measure of income inequality because the richest people in the
country tend to make most of their money from unearned
income from wealth such as dividends, interest and capital gain
rather than work the capital income share. If the labour
income share is falling it can mean that wages are not keeping
up with rising productivity. It is also a way to compare wages
(and the cost of labour to employers) between countries. New
Zealands labour income share fell steeply after the 1980s one
of the sharpest falls in the OECD. The share going to wages and
salaries is low compared to most other OECD countries.
Current official data goes back to 1972. What happened before
then and how it has changed over our history. Has New
Zealands labour income share always been low? Other income
inequality measures show high inequality in the early part of the
20th century, falling during the 1940s and 50s with the welfare
state, stronger unionism and collective bargaining and
progressive tax systems, but rising back to high levels since the
1980s. Is the labour income share similar?
In short, there was a rise in the income share for wage and
salary earners between the 1940s and 1970s and a steep fall
CWG reply: Labour Productivity = Labour Exploitation
The only period in which labours share of income increased
relative to capital, was the period from the late 1930s to the
1970s. This is not the result of Labours policies such as the
welfare state, but of the return to profit of international capital
resulting from the state restructuring of capital coming out of
the depression and World War 11, both of which destroyed
massive amounts of constant and variable capital and created
the conditions for a new cycle of capital accumulation the
post-war boom.
Constant capital invested in plant and machines is destroyed as
factories close and farmers walk off the land. Unemployment
drives down variable capital or wages so that labour is cheaper.
Normally this creates the conditions for new investment and an
upturn in production and profits. But this was not enough to end
the Great Depression so the major capitalist powers went to war
to plunder their rivals, destroy old plant and machinery and
force workers to work for slave wages to restore profits. So it
was not the welfare state that got NZ out of depression into the
post-war boom but the warfare state.
The post-war boom ended in the 1970s as the Tendency for the
Rate of Profit to Fall (TRPF) caused a crisis of overproduction;
falling profits meant that the wage share had to fall. Thus,
there is no such thing as a fair share of wages vs profit, only
the class struggle over the share of value produced by labour.
Ken Douglas, head of the CTU at the time of the Employment
Contracts Act of 1992, notoriously justified the fall in the share
of labour relative to capital as the division between labour and
capital of new productivity, as if capital is productive and
deserves a share.
But capital is not productive. All productivity comes from
labour. Not only the living labour that produces new wealth, but
the stock of expropriated past generations of dead labour
accumulated as wealth in the hands of the capitalists that is
invested in new technology.
Spring 2017
from the early 1980s. The fall resulted from a combination of
wage freezes, radical restructuring of the economy and the
state, deregulation and individualisation of employment
relationships and de-unionisation. It brought the labour share
far below the OECD median and comparable economies.
Part of the reason for the pre-1970s rise was the fall in self-
employment (dominated by farming), many becoming
employees. By 2016, the self-employed had their lowest share
of income since 1939. The largest beneficiary was corporate
profits which rose to a 19 percent share in 2016, a level reached
before only in 1940 under wartime conditions.
Labour productivity and real wages (wages after taking account
of inflation) appear to have been closely in sync only during the
period 1947 to 1974 when New Zealands industrial conciliation
and arbitration system of collective bargaining extended by
awards was working relatively well. From about 1990, under the
deregulated employment conditions resulting from the
Employment Contracts Act 1991, real wage growth fell behind
productivity growth.
Summary from the CTU Economic Bulletin
Taken back to basics, labour productivity under capitalism is the
same thing as the rate of exploitation - s/v. Surplus value (s) is
that which is expropriated as the source of profit. Variable
capital (v) is the value of the wage or of labour-power measured
as socially necessary labour time. Increasing the rate of
exploitation (s relative to v) in a period of capital accumulation
can cause both actual profits and real wages increase. But that
also depends on the class struggle or the balance of power
between labour and capital to divide the share of value. In the
long run, (s) increases relative to (v) exponentially.
Talking about sharing productivity is therefore a giant con
trick which represents capitals projection of its own class
interests masking the origins of its profits as expropriated
labour. It is premised on the myth that capitalist growth is
permanent and that rising productivity allows both wages and
profits to rise like competing cats on hot glass foils.
The share of self-employed suffers the same declining share in
income. It is subject to the same laws which govern capitalist
accumulation and the cycles of booms and busts. That is
because the labour of self-employed is a form of disguised wage
labour hiding behind contract law. Most self-employed are ex-
wage workers who were made redundant in the 80s and 90s as a
result of the Rogernomics restructuring. As contractors and sub-
contractors their income is squeezed down by big capital, which
explains the phenomenal short life of most small businesses.
All of this proves that income shares are not the result of
government policy but the capitalist cycle of boom and bust
the rise and fall of profits which is determined the rate of
exploitation of labour in the last instance, itself the result of
the class struggle the relative power of labour and capital to
determine income shares from the same value produced by
the working class.
Class Struggle 122 Spring 2017
Review of China Mievilles

October: The Story of the Russian Revolution

Commenting on the many works on the Russian Revolution, China Mieville says his book, is a
short introduction for those curious about an astonishing story, eager to be caught up in the
revolutions rhythms. Because here it is precisely as a story that I have tried to tell it. This
captures the purpose but also the vivacity of the book which is like a beautifully written film-
script told by invoking the living flesh and blood individuals and life and death events that
made 1917 such a world-historic year exactly 100 years ago.
demanded the formation of a provisional
The story begins with a prehistory of the years
revolutionary government along the lines of Lenins
before 1917 as the struggles against the reactionary
slogan for a workers government to carry through
Tsarism test the various revolutionary currents, in
the bourgeois revolution.
particular the Bolsheviks who rejected the standard
Eurocentric Marxist dogma that after the Tsar would But the Bolsheviks were not ready for power and
come the rule of Russian capitalists. It is the preferred that the Soviets support the bourgeois
experience of the 1905 revolution that convinces the provisional government provided it met a list of
Bolsheviks (majority of the Russian Social democratic demands. This was the Menshevik
Democratic Workers Party) to break with the position where the Soviets would force the
Menshevik (minority) line that the bourgeoisie must Provisional Government to take power and go to a
lead the fight against the Tsar. The Bolsheviks, by Constituent Assembly or bourgeois parliament. Only
contrast, contend that in the context of the soldiers, rejecting the ongoing war, resisted
pusillanimous liberalism, the working class itself handing over their armed power to the bourgeoisie
must lead the revolution, in alliance not with those without a fight and demanded that the Soviets not
liberals but with the peasantry, taking power, in the bourgeoisie would control the army! Trotsky
what Lenin has called a revolutionary-democratic later referred to this Order No 1 as a charter of
dictatorship of the proletariat dictatorship of the freedom for the revolutionary army. The Soviets,
proletariat and the peasantry. even the Bolshevik leadership, were lagging behind
the revolutionary masses.
The book then weaves a story of the development of
the revolution, month by month, from the opening The question of failure of leadership was raised
February Revolution to the closing October dramatically by Lenin from exile. In early March, he
Insurrection. February ends the Tsarist rule as when wrote a series of Letters from Afar proving that
100,000s of women and men strike in their factories, despite his absence he was in touch with the
joined by mutinous and sailors, to take to the masses. These letters re-affirmed old positions,
streets demanding bread and peace. This is not most urgently against defence of the fatherland as
a mutiny, comrade admiral, shouted one sailor. the Provisional Government continued the war.
This is a revolution. The power vacuum is filled Some Bolsheviks thought that a bourgeois republic
by a desperate scramble of the Duma (Tsarist should defend itself from German imperialism. Lenin
parliament) to create a Provisional Committee pointed out that revolutionary defencism was a
for a Bourgeois Parliament, and by a Temporary crime. Russian imperialism, aligned to French and
Committee for a Soviet of Workers Deputies. British imperialism, was engaged in an inter-
Hence the arrival of dual power shared by the imperialist war. More shocking was Lenins total
bourgeoisie in the Provisional Government and the rejection of any support for the bourgeois
workers in the Soviet! Government which was on the side of imperialism
against the revolutionary masses. The first stage of
The revolution can now go nowhere other than
the revolution will not be its last. The workers
forward to victory, or back to defeat. There is no
must take power in order to complete the bourgeois
half-way house. In the months that followed, the
revolution. The anti-war mood grew and soldiers
struggle for power zig-zagged between both classes
were chaffing under the weak Bolshevik policy of
as the bourgeoisie resisted the call for All Power to
the Soviets conciliating with the bourgeois-
the Soviets. In March, the workers and soldiers had
imperialist Provisional Government.
the power but not the leadership to use it
effectively. The Bolsheviks were caught off guard. Meanwhile Stalin, Kamenev arrived in Petrograd and
Even Lenin in Switzerland thought he might not live took-over Pravda, the Bolshevik newspaper. On
to see the revolution. Workers and soldiers March 15, they condemned the slogan, Down with
Class Struggle 122
war, and argued, Our slogan is to bring pressure
to bear on the Provisional Government so as to
compel it to make, without fail, openly and before
the eyes of world democracy, and attempt to
induce all the warring countries to initiate
immediate negotiations to end the world war. Till
then let everyone remain at his post. In case there
was any doubt, post meant, answering bullet
with bullet and shell with shell.
March ended with another sort of bombshell, the
arrival of Lenin in Petrograd with his famous April
Theses. The Bolshevik old guard was lagging
behind the revolutionary masses and had to be
straightened out. The scenario, Lenin meeting the
welcoming crowds at the Finland Station, is well
told. Lenin stuns the conciliating Bolshevik leaders.
What Lenin demanded was continual revolution.
He spoke briefly to those present. Scorned
watchfulness as a position on the Provisional
Government. He denounced the Soviets
revolutionary defencism as an instrument of the
bourgeoisie. He raged at the lack of Bolshevik
discipline. His comrades listened in stricken
silence. The next day Lenin intervenes at a
Bolshevik-Menshevik meeting to discuss unity. He
presents his 10-point April Theses.
In summary, Lenin says that for now, the order of
the day was to explain the imperative of a struggle
to take power from the government, and to replace
any parliamentary republic with a Republic of
Soviets. Mieville vividly describes the reactions all
round. Shock, horror, bewilderment, anger, among
the leaders, who write off Lenins personal
opinions as anarchism, schematism, Blanquism.
They reject Lenins new line that the bourgeois
revolution is completed, so on to the socialist
revolution. But when Lenin takes his Theses to the
mass meetings of the rank and file workers, soldiers
and peasants, his program resonates with the
revolutionary masses. They know that the revolution
has to be completed, or suffer the counter-
revolution. Lenin is accused of swallowing Trotskys
permanent revolution, which, though not mentioned
by Mieville, Lenin had defended as far back as 1905.
Between the minimum and the maximum
program (of the Social Democrats) a
revolutionary continuity is established. It is not a
question of a single blow, or of a single day or
month, but of a whole historical epoch. It would
be absurd to try to fix its duration in advance.
The masses were on the march whatever the
Bolsheviks said, so Lenin was in fact, marching in
step by fixing the duration of the historical epoch in
17
Spring 2017
advance, from February to the socialist insurrection,
the timing depending on the Bolsheviks winning the
majority of workers, soldiers (peasants in uniform)
and poor peasants. To prepare for the insurrection
the Bolsheviks had gain a majority in the Soviets
against the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries
(SR: the big peasant-socialist party). Despite the
bankruptcy of the Provisional Government, and the
growing anger of the ranks, the Soviets, under their
Menshevik and SR majority continued to collaborate
with the prime minister, Kerensky. From May to
September, the task of those who backed Lenin, was
to prepare for power, by continually checking the
balance of forces so as to judge when the time was
ripe for the insurrection.
May and June were months when the impatient
masses, particularly the soldiers, wanted to flex
their power and stage armed demonstrations against
the Government. In June, responding to pressure
from below, the Bolsheviks boycotted the Soviets
rally for the Constituent Assembly to finish the
bourgeois revolution. Instead they tested the
water by organizing protests demanding the end of
the Provisional Government. The result was as huge
rally behind banners calling for Peace! Bread!
Land!. Sundays demonstration, wrote Gorkys
paper, Novaya zhizn, revealed the complete triumph
of Bolshevism among the Petersburg Proletariat.
The Bolsheviks then tried to restrain further armed
demonstrations which the Soviets vowed to squash,
until they had the majority in the soviets.
July brought a more serious test of the balance of
dual power. Mass protests and street fighting led to
a clamp-down by the Government. The leading
Bolsheviks were jailed (Trotsky) or in hiding (Lenin
in Finland). From July to September, Lenin now with
Trotsky in the leadership, continually assessed the
balance of power to decide the timing of the
insurrection. First, in August, the counter-
revolutionary coup of General Kornilov was defeated
by the revolutionary masses. September saw Lenin
in exile constantly badgering the Bolshevik
leadership to boycott the conciliators attempts to
steer the revolution backwards to the Constituent
Assembly and bourgeois democracy the halfway
house. Finally, in October the Bolsheviks won a
majority of the Soviets and under the cover of
legal Second Congress of Soviets, planned the
insurrection. As Trotsky said in Lessons of October,
the refusal of the Petrograd Garrison to obey
Kerenskys order to go to the front began the armed
insurrection, and would set the scene for the
ultimate fate of state power. To be Continued
Class Struggle 122
Argentina: For the Appearance of Santiago Maldonado!
Since August 1, Santiago Maldonado has
disappeared after the repression of the National
Gendarmerie to a route cut of the Mapuche community in
Resistencia, Department Cushamen, province of Chubut.
Repression was ordered by federal judge Guido Otranto
and in which Pablo Noceti, deputy minister of the Interior
Ministry, participated. He was a defense attorney for
genocides of the last military dictatorship, and was
appointed by the current minister of interior Patricia
Bullrich.
Santiago Maldonado participated in the picket in
solidarity with the Mapuche community, and against the
extradition to Chile of Facundo Jones Huala (leader of the
small RAM group, Mapuche Ancestral Resistance, which
for the Argentine and Chilean governments is a terrorist
group. The last time Maldonado was seen, it was in the
midst of repression where the Gendarmerie shot the
Mapuches in Cushamen with lead and rubber bullets.
The Mapuche aboriginal community has been persecuted,
plundered and robbed of its lands for centuries by oil
companies, miners and large landowners, and North
American and European capitalists. Among them were
Benneton brothers, media tycoon and CNN founder Ted
Turner, millionaire Douglas Tompkins; Joe Lewis, of Lago
Escondido in Rio Negro, who is a friend of President
Macri; Ward Lay, the owner of Lays potatoes and Pepsi,
in Neuqun.
The Gendarmerie, the Judge, the Minister of the
Interior and his deputy minister, the Minister of Justice,
the official politicians and the President, from the
beginning tried to cover up the forced disappearance,
saying that he must be in hiding, that he could be
elsewhere or outside the country. They questioned the
Mapuche and Maldonado's relatives, for not collaborating
with the State, and demanded that the complaint was not
politicized. Meanwhile, the investigation was carried
out by the same Gendarmerie that attacked the protest,
and the same federal judge, Guido Otranto, that ordered
the repression.
But the few testimonies that exist, because the
state forces were responsible for erasing them, say the
opposite of what Minister of Interior Bullrich said in the
Senate. For example, he denied that the Unimog truck of
the Gendarmerie witnesses claim was at the scene of the
repression, and in which Santiago was charged, was
there. Also, the deputy minister, chief of the security
cabinet, Pablo Noceti, acknowledging that he headed the
operation, and congratulated the Gendarmes. Contrary to
what the witnesses say, the minister insists that it is not
proven that Maldonado was at the scene when the
repression occurred. At the same time, he exposed the
friend of Santiago, and a protected witness, Ariel Garzi,
to danger by naming him publicly.
Only on August 24 did Esquel's public prosecutor
request the judge, at the request of the Maldonado
family, to re-name the case as a forced disappearance,
but "without prejudice. The Federal Court was
requested to re-charge the case, which has been
Spring 2017
registered as a forced disappearance of persons under
Article 124 of the Penal Code'. It seems a step forward,
but that does not mean that Judge Otranto will find for
the family as so far, he has been saying the opposite. On
the other hand, it gives more time to find new evidence
and legal defence.
Everything seems to indicate that Santiago
Maldonado was killed by the Gendarmerie during the
repression on August 1, and that the Interior Ministry
itself covered up the crime and hid the body so that the
news was not made public 12 days before the elections.
Now the government is at a crossroads. Either it finds
that he was killed during the repression, which means
that the Gendarmerie will be discredited and less
effective in future. Or it finds that there is no evidence
to support forced disappearance. Meanwhile Santiago
Maldonado is smeared as a collaborator of "terrorists" (the
Mapuche who claim their land) and anything they can
invent, to weaken the defence and deny responsibility.
The government bets on the latter.
So far, the unions have not done much; neither
the CGT nor the CTA, especially the CTA that calls for the
re-appearance alive of Santiago Maldonado, against the
repression of the Mapuches, and leads many state and
teaching unions in Patagonia. They could, and should, call
for a strike and mobilization to demand the return alive
of Santiago.
-No confidence in the bosses justice! Only by
continuing the mobilization will it be possible to publicize
the situation and the struggle of the Mapuches for their
lands, and to continue the struggle for the appearance of
Santiago Maldonado! Trial and punishment of all the
perpetrators of the criminal disappearance of Santiago
Maldonado! For the freedom of Agustn Santilln, Hugo
Delgado and Roberto Fras, who are indigenous rights
activists, jailed for two months by the Kirchner governor
Gildo Insfrn! No to the extradition to Chile and for the
freedom of Facundo Jones Huala! Aboriginal peoples must
join their struggles to those of the working class, because
only the workers can expropriate the great haciendas and
return the lands to the native peoples! For socializing the
wealth and means of production! A Workers' Government
building Socialism, can provide the material means for
production and life (health, education, etc.) to meet the
needs of the current and future generations!-Working-
class parties, combative unions, sectional offices, and
internal commissions should call a Labor Congress of Base
Delegates to coordinate and defend against state
repression, and to organize the struggle for an indefinite
General Strike, until Santiago appears, until the
adjustment, labor flexibility and the government of Macri
is defeated! For a Revolutionary Government of the
Workers to make the capitalist pay for the crisis of
capitalism and not the working people!
Reprinted with permission. Translation ours.
Communist League of Workers, Argentina
lct_revolucionproletaria@yahoo.com.ar 28-08-2017
Class Struggle 122
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
and why the reformist, Stalinist and centrist mis-
Spring 2017
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 122 Spring 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)
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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

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