Budget: a Fig-leaf

Defend Public Health!

Zimbabwe and China
South Africa in Crisis
Reclaiming Marx at 200
LCC Mayday Statement
Review/OCTOBER pt 4

!
Class Struggle #125
Action to defend public health
A legacy of neglect
Both National led and Labour led governments have
allowed the public health system to be undermined
by private health providers. Since the 1980’s they
have pursued the neo-liberal agenda of shifting the
burden of taxes onto workers away from corporates
to free up pressure on falling profits.
This means real falls in spending on health,
education and social welfare (social spending) and
the social wage (i.e. state provision of social
services that represented a 'social' component to
the market wage). Health services have been
rationed!
Why is public health run down?
In reality, workers pay for both bosses’ profits and
the taxation that is diverted to pay for social
services out of both wages and profits. Neo-liberal
ideology lies about this. It claims that profits are
squeezed by wages and demands that taxes on
profits should be cut and the social wage eliminated
as a drain on profits.
However, falling profits are not caused by rising
wages. If that were the case then how do we explain
the massive increasing gap between ‘rich and poor’
– that is the rising gap between wages and profits?
The fact is that despite cutting real wages, profits
still fall because capitalists cannot exploit workers
enough to maintain their profits. Their object is to
avoid paying taxes entirely and to run-down and
privatise the public system so that bosses can profit
from making workers pay for their health-care out
of their market wage.
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The result is cutting social spending on public health
reduces taxation and forces more and more workers
into the private system where health is provided for
profit. A Capitalist model of health provision: only
if you can afford it – have the correct insurance.
The Labour Coalition treats health as just another
budget item that has to compete with all others
within the constraints of 'fiscal responsibility' i.e.
the neo-liberal euphemism for balancing the budget
by cutting social spending to allow cuts in business
taxes.
While Labour voluntarily confines its social spending
by a fiscal cap, then it can never find the money to
pay for restoring the social wage of public sector
workers, nor the capital funding to maintain a
healthy state system.
Support Nurses vote for Strike Action!
Already, as the Nurses prepare for strike action, PM
Ardern is backpedalling from promises to fund the
deficit in public health. Labour calls for
“independent” help to paper over the chasm
between living wages for health workers and those
rich enough to have a bob each way on private
healthcare. Never considering the charity from
health workers (in unpaid labour) that keeps public
health services running.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s move was for an
‘independent’ panel; nothing independent about it!
Our employer is the government on behalf of the
people, who we provide health care to. Finance
Minister Robertson will have a veto over any level
of health spending that puts pressure on the budget
cap. Health Minister has an amount of money set
Class Struggle #125
aside in the budget. Unless workers organise to bust
the fiscal cap, it will not be just Nurses and patients
who suffer but all workers in every sector.
Ardern talks about being a compassionate
government. Yes, we provide compassionate
healthcare but under increasing pressure of
underfunding, understaffing (unsafe workloads).
Time to deliver on compassion! Unlock the fiscal
cap to provide adequate funding for safe staffing
levels and real wages that attract enough workers
to these jobs.
NZNO members, we support rejecting the DHB
offer. Health care assistant wages should not be left
behind, below the living wage. Again, the DHBs have
tried to divide members against one another, for
managements’ benefit.
When members are, ready to act, sometimes the
paid organisers get in the way. We expect paid
union officials (of any union) to act in the interests
of the members democratic wishes. The reality is,
some block members struggle for fair wages and
conditions. Replace sell-out union officials!
Gendered labour and the caring professions
For historical and cultural reasons more women
than men work in caring professions. Women are
statistically earning less than men. The state has
come up with a redistribution approach to even
wages up – ‘gender pay equity’ settlements. Now
both the NZNO and PSA are pursuing legal paths to
gender pay equity as a short cut to large pay rises
for healthcare workers.
This is a weakness when an organised workforce is
the only power of real use to force employers to pay
what the workforce need - living wages! Real gender
equity of roles would see equal value and
opportunity for men and women (and non-binary
individuals) working in all the roles and professions
(i.e. including men in caring).
Don’t delay. Start closing the gender pay gap now
by delivering sizable wage rises. We all need to
organise and value women’s work and take action in
support of pay equity. Organise for Industrial
Action!
What to Do?
The public health workers campaign needs to take
on private health parasites to highlight the real
differences between a neglected public system and
private healthcare.
Former Minister of Health for the ruling class,
Jonathon Coleman moves sideways from his role
running down the public system infrastructure and
still demanding outputs, to a new job in private
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healthcare. Is it any change in role for him? As
Minister of Health he was pushing DHBs targets and
that meant public money going to private providers!
Now Coleman is chief of private health company
that takes public money to meet DHB elective
surgery targets (that he set). Of course, private
providers also give the rich or well insured a way to
shortcut the obscene waiting lists he helped to
create in the public system.
Health workers don’t like to take strike action
because it effects the public. But defending public
health is for the benefit of the public. Reject media
scares about strikes causing deaths by proving that
it will save lives! Win support from all other unions
for strike action and get the public onside in the
defence of the public health system. Send flying
pickets to private hospitals to stop them cashing in
on elective surgery.
Hint: places to picket. Jonathon Coleman went to
‘Acurity Health’ which runs Bowen and Wakefield
Hospitals in Wellington, and Royston Hospital in
Hastings. ‘Acurity’ proudly boast about how they
received Hawkes Bay DHB money for elective
surgery services. Where to hurt the rich is in their
pockets, since they are more concerned about
money than health. Cancelling elective surgery at
the private hospitals will hurt the rich more than
cancelling elective surgery at public hospitals.
• Defend the public health system and
oppose privatisation that profits from ill-
health.
• Heath workers should fight for a free, fully
funded, healthy and safe public system. At
the same time, they should oppose all
attempts at privatisation and stop public
subsidies to the private system.
• Put people before profits! Bust the fiscal
cap! Pay All Health workers a living wage!
• We support an 18% increase now; Start
closing the gender gap Now!
• Safe Staffing: We need adequate staff
numbers to meet the demand for health
care!
• For a free, comprehensive public health
system! Including taking over private
health facilities (without compensation) –
to meet the needs of the public.
To end the rationing of health services will
require the working class to take over the whole
economy. Working class control can organise all
society to produce goods and services to meet
needs; instead of capitalists who fixate on
profits. Only socialism has the potential to run
the economy to meet needs.
Class Struggle #125
Labour’s Budget: a fig-leaf for naked capitalism
Budget for business
Labour’s budget has been condemned by left and
right as breaking its promises to spend more on
restoring funding in health, education, housing and
income support. Labour’s excuse is its ‘fiscal
responsibility’. This in turn is widely criticised as a
major concession to the right, as if any political
party in NZ could survive in parliament today
without ‘balancing the budget’. This means that
the state can only spend what it gets via taxes and
other income.
What it actually means that capital does not want
to pay taxes at all, never mind that these taxes are
deducted from profits created by wage-labour.
Because such taxes are a drain on profits, and
profits are falling as capitalism itself is in decline.
Look beneath the fiscal cap and find the truth –
profits rule.
Therefore, it is not enough to hold the Labour
coalition to some impossible dream to live up to
its promise of a ‘human face’ for capitalism. It is
not enough to claim Labour is hostage to
‘bourgeois ideology’ without understanding what
this actually means, because to talk of getting rid
of bourgeois ideology is to talk revolution.
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Bourgeois Ideology
Bourgeois ideology is a system of beliefs that
misrepresents the social reality as egalitarian when
it is in fact fundamentally unequal. It holds that
economics is based on the free exchange of value
between equal citizens who buy and sell
commodities as workers, capitalists and landlords.
But this is a fiction based on the way capitalism
appears in everyday life where the sphere of
exchange masks the underlying class inequalities in
the sphere of production. It obscures the fact that
labour is the only component of economics that
creates value. The role of landowners and
capitalists is to take advantage of their historical
dispossession of workers and peasants of land and
tools as a means of production. To subsist workers
then have to agree to work for capital where they
are paid out of their future labour value and work
for longer hours than is necessary to pay their own
wage, to provide surplus value which is the basis of
profit (and its ‘overheads’ interest and rent.)
The bourgeois state
The same material conditions that produces the
ideology of market equality, produces the ideology
of the bourgeois ‘citizen’ – the sovereign individual
who acts freely politically to represent his/her
private interests in the market. Yet neither can be
Class Struggle #125 June-August - 2018

the case when capitalist social relations are and today by the destruction of the ecosystem that
reproduced by the state. That is why Marx talked sustains most life on the planet.
of the bourgeois state as the “organising
NZ Labour today is no longer the social democracy
committee of the ruling class.” The bourgeois state
that contained the working class by promising
exists as the guardian of this fundamental class
equality and security. It is now in a liberal coalition
relation and to reproduce capitalism as an
with other parties who are all committed to
exploitative system. The state and its various
defending the naked rule of capital, but with a so-
apparatuses, parliament, the bureaucracy, the
called ‘human face’. But this is a glaring
judiciary, the military, and above all the
contradiction. How can capitalism have a ‘human
executive, are all devoted to protecting private
face’ when it is destroying humanity?
ownership of the means of production, and hence
the production of profits. So, what to do?
This obviously The working
means containing majority in
and repressing Aotearoa needs to
opposition on the throw off the yoke
part of the of bourgeois
working class to ideology and its
its exploitation. sham democracy
The main means and organise
of containing independently to
workers is to end the rule of
present bourgeois capital. We do not
parliament as need the bosses to
‘class neutral’, organise
i.e. representing production. The
the democratic free market is a
will of the fiction as profits
majority of equal citizens, voting for parties that have always been based on the social compulsion
claim to represent the ‘national’ interest. This of wage labour and the expropriation of surplus
presents policy making as a political contest on the value.
terrain of the ‘nation state’ between parties who
represent the majority at any given time. However, • We need workers control of
as the class struggle intensifies the state’s ability production based on workers councils
to contain opposition peacefully within the and the socialisation under workers
framework of parliament is strained. control of all basic industry without
compensation for centuries of
Parliamentary sham exposed
exploitation.
Parliament is a front behind which the power of the
state is mobilised by one class against the other – • We need workers democracy in which
surveillance, media manipulation of events, the producers of value also make the
criminalisation of workers etc etc. Parliament is decisions over the economy to plan
exposed as the democratic facade of what is really production for need and not greed.
a bourgeois dictatorship – the dictatorship of
capital. The historic role of social democracy is to • We need a central bank that prints a
attempt to contain workers in parliament pinning currency whose function is to act as a
their hopes on reforming capitalism when measure of value and medium of
objectively it needs to break with bourgeois exchange.
ideology for form independent working-class These and other fundamental transformations of
parties to challenge the rule of capital. our economy and society will follow once the
“Objectively” in this context, means that working majority is in power in a workers’ state.
capitalism is manifestly in decline and destroying But to make this happen we need first to destroy
its own productive base. The 20th century is the the material basis of bourgeois ideology – our
history of capitalism mired in depressions and wars compliance as wage slaves of capital.
that could only prolong its life at the expense of
the lives of the world’s workers and poor farmers,
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Class Struggle #125 June-August - 2018

Yarmouk and Gaza: Palestinians under continuous attack

Victory to Palestine! Long live the Syrian Revolution!
The trigger for the latest Zionist barbarity in Gaza was Trump’s change of position on
Jerusalem, which was a clear signal that the U.S. is not interested in a Palestine solution. The
U.S. has junked the UN resolutions on getting a settlement before arriving at a solution for
Jerusalem. That caused a massive- and angry Arab response which fueled the mass Gaza
protest. It licensed Netanyahu to go after Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah and Iranian forces in
Syria. Netanyahu got the green light to ramp up the rivalry between Israel and Iran and he
repaid Trump in kind with ‘evidence’ of WMDs in Iran as a pretext to break the nuclear deal
and impose more draconian sanctions. This forces the EU powers to make a decision either to
stick with the U.S. bloc or risk the loss of U.S. markets by moving towards Russia and China.
That dilemma faces them now, (e.g.) as Nord Stream pipeline from Russia to Germany nears
completion.

Fallout of US vs Russia rivalry

Gaza is a pawn in the growing inter-imperialist
rivalry between the declining U.S. and the rise of
Russia and China, a pawn where Israel and Iran are
the main regional proxies. As the focal point of the
only post WW2 colonial settler conquest in the
Middle East, Palestine remains at the centre of the
Arab revolution against the imperialist counter-
revolution.
As Russia gains over the U.S. in Syria and draws
Turkey, Iran and Qatar into its Eurasian bloc, the
U.S. is devoid of even a Kurdistan protectorate. put aside. In this light, the success of al Sadr in the
Trump wants out of Syria and wants to keep his Iraqi elections could mean that the U.S. and
promise to “let Russia handle Syria.” But U.S. Russia/China might clash over Iraqi oil, where both
troops are still in Syria and Assad wants them gone imperialist blocs have about equal stakes. It is
now (there are oil fields there) and is willing to possible that Iraq will once more become the focal
attack. The U.S./Russia “Bromance” agreement to point of their “Great Game” for the whole of
put their differences to one side and collaborate in Eurasia, throwing the Iraqi masses once more into
a “war on terrorism” was always just this the crucible.
problematic in practice.
Israel and Iran - proxies of US and Russia
But assuming no large-scale Assad attacks on
Deraa, the agreement now looks more likely, as Russia has been making a play to neutralize Israel
Russia grumbles about its ally Iran’s intentions in for several years and has an agreement to develop
Syria and across the Levant. The U.S./Russia offshore gas fields near Haifa. “Moscow did not
agreement is to smash the Arab revolution. As the condemn Israel’s strikes, as it had in the past,
military defeat of the Syrian revolution looms the instead calling on Israel and Iran to resolve their
prospects for revolution in Iran are growing, which differences diplomatically.” NYT (May 10). If for
has to make Putin contemplate his cost the moment Netanyahu plays blood brother to
projections! For now, we can expect Russia’s Trump after the embassy move, he is nevertheless
Astana plan for a new constitution and the likely seeking ways to inveigle the U.S. into war with
partition of Syria to embed the Russia/China bloc. Iran, a strategy the Zionist regime has pursued
since 1990. A former Mossad general has revealed
We nevertheless foresee a widening of the inter-
to Eliot Engel on MSNBC (5/25/18) that Israel now
imperialist conflict and more possibilities for full-
is engaged in a “rolling escalation” of attacks on
on proxy wars developing. These conflicts are
Iranian forces in a war with Iran that “already
driven by bigger economic frictions that cannot be
exists,” with the aim of making it impossible for
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Class Struggle #125
the U.S. to stay out of this war. Like Trump,
Netanyahu wants to break Russia out of its alliance
with China, so as to permit this war with Iran
without world war. But Trump has not taken the
bait yet and has only given the green light to use
up some U.S. furnished military supplies on Iranians
in Syria.
And just because we of the Communist Workers
Group (CWG) oppose Iranian and Russian
intervention in Syria, don’t think for a minute that
we condone or refuse to condemn the Israeli
escalation. Without support from Russian bombers,
Iranian “Revolutionary Guards” and the Hezbollah,
the people of Syria would have toasted the
overthrow of Assad years ago. While Assad bombs
Palestinians in the Yarmouk refugee camp Israel
guns down peaceful protests in Gaza. Israel is not
bombing Iranian positions in Syria to support the
Syrian masses.
Rather, taking the cue from Trump’s withdrawal
from the agreement with Iran, Israel is showing it
knows when it is obliged to use up stockpiles of
“equipment” which U.S. taxpayers (the most
generous people in the world) will be required to
replenish. On both sides of the aisle Democrats and
Republican legislators are preparing to sell us
World War 3 in hopes of securing new sales orders
to keep their benefactors, the military industrial
capitalists in the black. As a reward for its great
death-dealing customer, the U.S. administration
picks exactly this moment to recognize Jerusalem
as the capital of the colonial settler state! As long
as they can deceive the U.S. masses they do not
care that the world knows the U.S. has no more
interest in Middle East peace than its pet monsters
Netanyahu and Assad.
Lest anyone do any critical/historical thinking on
the subject of Middle East imperialist criminality,
Senator Schumer of New York introduced a bill to
make advocacy of the Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions movement a crime and to explicitly
outlaw criticism of Israel, with staggering
financial and jail penalties! This proposed law
follows the enactment of a similar South Carolina
statute. And if some in the Knesset right get their
way, it will be illegal to even photograph the Israeli
troops, since photos are used to shame them!
While branding Palestinians as aggressors, the U.S.
regime simultaneously cut off aid funds for
humanitarian organizations in Syria. Far from the
fake left’s alternative facts mantra that the U.S. is
trying to overthrow Assad, the funds cut slashes the
budget of the White Helmets (Syrian Civil Defense)
by one third!
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Down with Zionism and Iranian theocracy!
For decades liberal Zionism has argued that there
is no one on the Palestinian side to negotiate with
as they are all terrorists. Holding high the banner
of Israeli “democracy” they admonish the
Palestinians and the left to use non-violent civil-
disobedience in the tradition of Martin Luther King
and Gandhi to address their concerns, just as their
latest allies in the USA, the Socialist Workers Party
(SWP) do. This ruse is again being exposed this
spring in Gaza, just as when Rachel Corrie was
crushed to death by a Zionist home demolition with
a Caterpillar backhoe. In 2018 Gazans bravely face
gradual extinction due to contaminated water,
limited electricity, brutally restricted access to the
world, limited food and medical supplies. Today,
when peaceful protests are launched at the barbed
wire, IDF snipers are given orders to shoot to kill
unarmed civilians. The true program of Zionism is
to eliminate the Arab presence inside the green
line and ultimately across the West Bank, and by
making Gaza unlivable, to ethnically cleanse the
refugee camps just as Assad is doing in Yarmouk.
Learn and remember that despite the apparent
animosity between Israel and Iran they are both
undemocratic counterrevolutionary capitalist
theocratic regimes. Pragmatically and
strategically they are united with Putin, Trump and
Assad in their opposition to the resurgent Arab
National Revolution going permanent as it runs up
against the limitations of imperialism/capitalism
and seeks a socialist solution. We call on the
international working class to rise to the defense
of the Palestinian people, of the Syrian people and
the working masses of the Middle East.
• Victory to Palestine! Long live the Syrian
revolution!
• U.S./NATO and Russian/Chinese
imperialists out of the Middle East now!
• Down with the proxy regimes that divide
and rule their masses!
• For non-sectarian unity of all popular
Arab, Iranian and Kurdish forces for
national self-determination!
• For an international communist
movement that can intervene militarily
for the Permanent Revolution throughout
the Middle East!
• For a Socialist Federation of the Middle
East!
Communist Workers Group (USA)
http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=2115
Class Struggle #125
Zimbabwe: China’s Coup?
The recent coup was supported by China. What is China doing in Zimbabwe today?
Semi-colony of China
Under the years of Mugabe rule in Zimbabwe, China
became a substitute for the old Anglo-American
imperialist interests when Zimbabwe defaulted on
its debt and had economic sanctions imposed on it
in 2002. China’s role was to rescue Zimbabwe,
providing cheap loans and investment in
construction and infrastructure as well as
extraction of minerals, tobacco and cotton.
Mugabe presented this relationship as a
continuation of “socialist” China’s aid during the
liberation war in the 1970s, and one in which
China’s motive was the “win-win” strategy of
helping Zimbabwe to ‘develop’ along the same
lines as ‘socialist’ China.
However, since the beginning of the early 1990s,
China’s role had qualitatively changed from a
bureaucratically deformed workers state providing
aid to a similar one-party ‘developing’ country, to
that of an emerging capitalist imperialist power
whose interest is to extract and export surplus-
value back to China. In other words, China’s
involvement in Zimbabwe is much less a “win-win”
relationship than a “zero-sum” deal in which China
reaps the big benefits of Zimbabwe’s natural
wealth and Zimbabwean workers pay for this out of
the exploitation of their labour-power.
Zimbabwe is not alone in facing this quandary.
Other African states, notably South Africa, now rely
on the intervention of China to underwrite the
developmental programs of their national ruling
classes. It is this national oppression by imperialist
powers that requires a ‘comprador’ ruling class in
the semi-colonies to claim a share of the profits in
payment for overseeing the super-exploitation of
the masses and the suppression of mass discontent.
China also provided the means of repression by
supplying and training Zimbabwe’s military. This
parasitic comprador role explains why ‘corruption’
on the part of these client regimes is endemic,
creating factional rivalry and political instability.
China a new imperialist power
The question of China’s role in Africa has provoked
a widespread debate about whether or not it has
become a new colonial power replacing the
Western colonial powers. There are those who stick
to the old version of China as a ‘socialist’
benefactor of developing countries, but
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increasingly the evidence shows that China uses
cheap loans and swap deals where repayment is in
minerals and other resources, to extract surplus-
profits at no lesser rate than the old Western
imperialist powers. Imperialist Russia’s role as a
rising investor in Zimbabwe confirms this
conclusion and the fact that the two main
imperialist blocs US/EU and Russia/China are
competing for ownership and control of the world’s
declining resources.
Workers need to have a clear analysis of China’s
role in Zimbabwe in order to develop a political
program that opposes China’s super-exploitation of
their labour-power and the scarce resources of the
country. It also means opposing the complicity of
the political ruling class that still hides behind the
myth that China is a ‘all weather friend’ and that
the ruling ZANU-PF government is not sharing in the
booty extracted by China at the expense of the
working masses. In every struggle that the
Zimbabwe workers and oppressed make they
should be aware that their enemy is both the
imperialist powers, West and East, and the
national client regime, whichever party or party
faction is in power.
From Mugabe to Mnangagwa
The military coup that removed Mugabe and
installed Mnangagwa in December 2017 proves that
Chinese imperialism is the main enemy of
Zimbabwean working masses. Mugabe’s regime
remained in power due only to China’s colonizing
influence. But China’s super-profits were
endangered by Mugabe’s corrupt economic
nationalism – the indigenization laws that specified
foreign investors must give 51% of shares to
Zimbabwe citizens (chosen by Mugabe), and his
proposal to nationalize the diamond industry in
which the Chinese military have a strong interest,
not for the benefit of the working people of
Zimbabwe, but of Mugabe’s cronies. China was
unhappy with this and played a key role in
engineering the coup to replace Mugabe with
another old friend of China, Mnangagwa. Mugabe
was taking advantage of sunk Chinese investment
to increase his factional cronies share of the
profits. That is why there was a slowing down of
new Chinese investment in the last few years while
a smooth ‘succession’ could be arranged. Mugabe’s
sacking of China’s choice of successor, Mnangagwa,
Class Struggle #125
was the cue for a coup. Both Mnangagwa and army
General Chiwenga flew to China to get approval for
the coup which once obtained gave the go ahead
for Chiwenga to act.
The questions we are left with are these: will
Mnangagwa be China’s man and remove all threats
of indigenization and nationalisation as risks to
future Chinese investment in which case Zimbabwe
is reduced to a virtual colony. Or will he also
attempt to leverage a greater share of the booty
for his factional cronies? If the latter, will
Mnangagwa try to restore friendly relations with
the US/EU powers and play them off against China
and Russia? China has forgiven debt in the past and
may continue to write o future debt as part of its
economic strategy in Zimbabwe, but this won’t be
on the basis of any ‘socialist’ principle. It will be
on the basis of the principle of imperialist super-
Douma: Robert Fisk will lie for Assad and Putin until the last Syrian Child!
The fake anti-imperialists are trotting out their
conspiracy theories about the Douma gas attack on
7 April. They parrot the claim of Robert Fisk that it
wasn’t a gas attack but a lack of oxygen. We
wouldn’t believe anything Fisk says about Syria.
His celebrated ‘journalism’ has been to parrot the
Assad regimes line that he is against imperialism,
and that the rebels are jihadis trained by the CIA
for ‘regime change’. This is a lie that repeats
Assad’s justification for turning his military against
peaceful, popular, democratic uprisings so that
children and women became labelled as terrorists
and tortured and killed. Fisk’s latest lie is to
provide an alibi for Assad by claiming that the gas
attack on Douma was not gas but ‘oxygen
starvation’ caused by dust and rubbish. He did the
same to claim that Assad’s 2O13 gas attack was a
rebel attack. And we don’t have to wait for the
chemical warfare experts to tell us the truth.
The Islamophobia is not very deep here.
Islamophobes cannot credit that the Syrian people
can fight their dictator because they must be the
dupes of sectarian jihadis and ‘Islamic fascists’
(created by the US and its lackeys). The irony is
the Assad up to 2016 was losing his war on the
people despite the fact they didn’t have an
airforce and didn’t even have effective SAMS
against barrel bombs. Proving that the US support
for regime change was a figment of the fake anti-
imperialists and RT socialists. Then, imperialist
Russia stepped in as did its client state Iran, so
that the depleted ‘secular’ Syrian Army became
made up of mainly sectarian foreign mercenaries.
Yet far from being dominated by foreign jihadis,
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exploitation. Nor will the IMF and Western banks
remove the sanctions unless they get guarantees of
further attacks on workers living standards to make
the workers pay for Zimbabwe’s ‘recovery’.
For Workers to live, Capitalism must die!
In the last analysis the arrangements between
imperialist powers and the Zimbabwe comprador
regime matter less than what really is at stake.
Whatever imperialist alliances Mnangagwa jacks
up, this is only about how to divide up the proceeds
of the super-exploitation and oppression of the
working masses. As always under capitalism it is
the workers that pay the price for capitalist crises.
From Revolutionary Worker, Zimbabwe.
https://www.scribd.com/document/379135769/2
018-05-RW00005-FINAL-001#from_embed
the rebel armies fought for basic democratic rights
of freedom of speech and assembly which they
then tried to practice as local democracy created
in the occupied cities.
So the reversal of the popular uprising resulted
from the imperialist intervention of Russia and
hordes of sectarian mercenaries. Assad was saved
by criminal genocidal bombing and use of chemical
weapons against the popular revolution. Over
500,000 dead and yet he cannot refrain from using
chemical weapons to destroy all resistance. He
gassed the only hold out town in East Ghouta,
Douma, to force the rebels out. All the imperialist
powers including the US and Russia are the enemy
of the Syrian people. They divided up and ruled
over the Middle East after the defeat of the
Ottoman empire and are now joined in Syria by
Russia Today.
It’s time the ‘anti-imperialists’, who write off
Syrian people to champion the ‘secular, socialist’
Assad, started to fight their own imperialism at
home. They may be surprised to find that they are
supported by the Syrian people and attacked by
the fascists who support Assad. Only the popular
revolution of the Arab peoples can rid the region
of imperialism and their local lackeys from
Netanyahu to Khomeini. For a genuine left critique
of Fisk’s role as an embedded Assad ‘journo’ read
Idrees Ahmad’s article Robert Fisk’s Crimes
Against Journalism from 2016, and Louis Proyect’s
article Fisking Duma written one week after the
gas attack. See also
http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2017/12/syria-
break-siege-of-ghouta.html
Class Struggle #125 June-August - 2018

Review of Mieville: The Story of October

Part 4: Was Russia ready for revolution?

Was the revolution “historically necessary”? Mieville says that by October 1918 the
Mensheviks come around to this position. In fact, it was only a few ‘internationalist’
Mensheviks wanting to rejoin the Soviet Government to fight the civil war and influence the
outcome. Their object was to increase the pressure on the Bolsheviks from within to steer
the revolution back to the bourgeois Constituent Assembly.
Meanwhile, the majority of Mensheviks remained
hostile to the Government and sided openly with
the imperialist counter-revolution. They claimed
that the Bolsheviks had hijacked the bourgeois
revolution by excluding all non-Bolshevik parties
from the Soviet government. They fought on the
side of the Whites in the Civil War 1918-1920. When
in 1921 the Kronstadt garrison rebelled against the
Bolsheviks and declared for the Constituent
Assembly – without the Bolsheviks – they were on
the side of the rebels. Clearly, the Mensheviks were
hostile to the bourgeois revolution ‘going over’
immediately to socialist revolution (permanent
revolution) and sought to replace the Soviet
Government with the Constituent Assembly
(halfway house).
Did Lenin think the socialist revolution was
‘historically necessary’? Of course. Without Soviet
power the bourgeois revolution would have fallen
to the counter-revolution. But Mieville states
wrongly that:
“Lenin startlingly claims as ‘incontrovertible’ that
Russia had not been ‘ready for revolution’”
In fact, Lenin is not referring to ‘revolution’ but
‘socialism’. Lenin is stating that Russia is ready for
socialist revolution, because the bourgeoisie are
too weak to overcome the fact that “the objective
premises for socialism do not exist in our country”. to power, but they would be incapable of
He actually says: completing the bourgeois revolution to create the
“The development of the productive forces conditions for socialism. This was the historic task
of Russia has not attained the level that of the proletariat. The Mensheviks refused to
makes socialism possible. All the heroes of accept that the bourgeoisie could not play this role
the Second International, including, of and would inevitably acted as a prop for this
course Sukhanov, beat the drums about this counter-revolutionary class. This explains their
proposition. They keep harping on this class-collaboration with the bourgeoisie to ‘push it
incontrovertible proposition in a thousand leftwards’.
different keys, and think that it is the The Bolsheviks, however, knew that the bourgeois
decisive criterion of our revolution.” revolution must be completed by the working class
(emphasis ours) Our Revolution, 1923. by means of the proletarian revolution (land
Here, Lenin is merely repeating the position that reform, national self-determination, peace). From
the Bolsheviks have held for a decade. The as early as 1905, despite other differences, Lenin
overthrow of the Tsar would bring the bourgeoisie (uninterrupted revolution) and Trotsky (permanent

10
Class Struggle #125
revolution) understood this continuous revolution
to be necessary. How long this transition would
take (‘a whole historic epoch’) would be decided
by the class struggle under the specific concrete
conditions. The proletariat would take over the
historic role of the bourgeoisie and leading the
peasantry would set up a ‘democratic
dictatorship’.
However, after the February revolution, the
Bolshevik leadership in Russia, notably Stalin,
Kamenev and Zinoviev, interpreted this to mean
the proletariat leading the bourgeoisie in a
‘socialist coalition’ in the Provisional Government.
Lenin in Hiding in Finland
Lenin’s return in April junked any compromise
between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie
(which also included capitalist peasants). This
would be a treacherous popular front with the
class enemy that was too weak to rule except in
alliance with the Tsarist restorationists and
foreign imperialism. It was necessary that the
proletariat, leading the poor peasants, would take
power from the craven bourgeoisie, declare peace,
and force-march the development of state
capitalism. April’s slogan “All power to the
soviets” became October’s, “We shall now proceed
to construct the socialist order.”
Misreading Lenin
As if the ‘uninterrupted’ or ‘permanent’ revolution
was not part of the Bolshevik program for over a
decade, Mieville interprets Lenin’s clear
11
June-August - 2018
explanation of this necessary act as a subjective
adventure in a ‘hopeless situation’. He [Lenin]
wonders pugnaciously, however, whether a people
‘influenced by the hopelessness of the situation’
could be blamed for ‘fling[ing] itself into a struggle
that would offer it as least some chance of securing
conditions for the further development of
civilization that were somewhat unusual’.
Mieville agrees that:
“Russia had no choice but to act, on the
chance that in so doing they might alter the
very parameters of the situation. That
things might thereby improve. The party’s
shift after Lenin’s death, from that
plaintive, embattled sense that there had
been little alternative but to strive in
imperfect conditions, to the hope of
Socialism in One Country, is a baleful result
of recasting necessity as virtue.”
This interpretation misreads history seriously. The
Bolshevik’s program did not leave things to
“chance” or “hope”. As Marxists they understood
what they were up against and the prospects for
success. They were on the side of history against
all those who sought to destroy the revolution
internally and externally. If they failed to
‘construct the socialist order’, it was not because
of anything that the Bolsheviks did, or failed to do,
despite many errors and mistakes as Lenin always
acknowledged. It was because the enemies of the
proletariat in the working class and petty bourgeois
conspired with the bourgeoisie and the surviving
feudal ruling class to smash the European
revolutions that could have rescued the
‘embattled’ Russian Revolution.
Here’s the full passage Mieville cites from Our
Revolution above:
“But what if the situation, which drew
Russia into the imperialist war that
involved every more or less influential
West-European country and made her a
witness of the eve of the revolution
maturing or partly already begun in the
East, gave rise to circumstances that put
Russia and her development in a position
which enabled us to achieve precisely that
combination of a “peasant war” with the
working-class movement suggested in 1856
by no less a Marxist than Marx himself as a
possible prospect for Prussia?
What if the complete hopelessness of the
situation, by stimulating the efforts of
workers and peasants tenfold, offered us
the opportunity to create the fundamental
Class Struggle #125 June-August - 2018

requisites of civilization in a different way civilization – so far. But this culture is ‘ruling class
from that of the West-European countries? culture’ which will inevitably destroy the gains of
Has that altered the basic relations capitalist civilization unless overthrown and
between the basic classes of all the replaced by a ‘proletarian culture’. The
countries that are being, or have been, proletarian culture represents its class interests
drawn into the general course of world and is expressed scientifically by the Marxist
history? method – dialectics. Lenin rips into the petty
bourgeois democrats. They are ‘faint-hearted
If a definite level of culture is required for
pedants’, have failed to understand ‘revolutionary
the building of socialism (although nobody
dialectics’, are ‘cowardly reformists’, and cannot
can say just what that definite “level of
understand that the West-European path of
culture” is, for it differs in every West-
development is not the only road to revolution.
European country), why cannot we begin
They refuse to understand that backward countries
by first achieving the prerequisites for
dominated by the European ruling classes do not
that definite level of culture in a
have the luxury of realizing socialism unless they
revolutionary way, and then, with the
declare independence from imperialism and from
aid of the workers’ and peasants’
social-imperialist fake socialists!
government and the Soviet system,
proceed to overtake other nations?” “You say that civilization is necessary for
(emphasis ours) the building of socialism. Very good. But
why could we not first create such
Here Lenin, in replying to the Menshevik Sukhanov,
prerequisites of civilization in our country
is directing his remarks to all the “petty bourgeois
as the expulsion
democrats” who
of the
are stuck in the
landowners and
old dogma that
the Russian
Russia is “not
capitalists, and
yet ripe for
then start
socialism”.
moving towards
There is nothing
socialism?
‘plaintive’, or
Where, in what
unexpected,
books, have you
about the
read that such
prospect of
variations of the
having a
customary
proletarian
sequence of
revolution in
events are
Russia to
impermissible
advance the
or impossible?
‘culture’ of
Napoleon, I
Europe where Figure 1Lenin declaring the socialist insurrection to be a success
think, wrote:
the revolution has been aborted by the treacherous
“On s’engage et puis…on voit.” Freely
betrayal of social democracy. It could have been
rendered this means: “First engage in a
taken directly from Marx and Engels in the
serious battle and then see what happens.”
Communist Manifesto where they argue that
Well, we did first engage in a serious battle
communists represent both the historic and
in October 1917, and then saw such details
international interests of the proletariat. If the
of development (from the standpoint of
Bolsheviks were ‘embattled’ this was following an
world history they were certainly details)
imperialist invasion and occupation of parts of
as the Brest Peace, New Economic Policy,
Russia during the civil war which laid waste to large
and so forth. And now there can be no
tracts of the country. Meanwhile, the ‘cultured’
doubt that in the main we have been
European petty bourgeois democrats, and their
victorious.” (emphasis ours)
Russian counterparts, taking advantage of their
Our Revolution.
bourgeois freedoms, did nothing, or actively
conspired against the revolution as ‘premature’. [Concluded in next Issue]
Talking of ‘civilization’ and ‘culture’ Lenin means
that capitalism and its culture is the high point of

12
Class Struggle #125 June-August - 2018

Reclaiming Marx at 200

Part 1: “I am not a Marxist”
A famous dead white man indulges us by coming back from the grave on his 200th
birthday for a bit of celebrity haunting. Why? Should we be impressed when the
interest in Marx is on the rise among academics, students and journalists? Not only
in the liberal bourgeois press such as the Guardian, or The Daily Blog, in myriad
‘left’ journals, like Jacobin, but also in the US colleges where The Communist
Manifesto is the most read book in college libraries. Not only that the ruling Chinese
Communist Party has held an official celebration and funded a statue of Marx
erected in Trier, Germany, his home town, upsetting some of the locals.

Reclaiming Marx from the Graverobbers capitalism and arrive at communism. But how do
we decide who was right on this and other
Yet if Marx was alive today I don’t doubt that he
questions?
would react much as he did shortly before his death
in 1883. “Just as Marx used to say, commenting on To know who was, and is right today, the
the French “Marxists” of the late [18]70s: “All I evaluation of Marx 200 years after his birth needs
know is that I am not to be based on how well his ideas have been tested
a Marxist.”” This in practice and
rebuff was the last proven correct or
of many times that not, rather than the
Marx castigated ideas of ‘self-
various “self- proclaimed’
proclaimed” Marxists, no matter
Marxists for how well
misrepresenting his intentioned. Here I
ideas in their am not dealing with
attempts to anti-communists,
‘improve’ or hostile to Marxism.
‘update’ them. Let’s We can leave the
see why Marx found aversion to Marx of
this necessary. But people like Ana
to do that we have Stankovic to stew in
to reclaim Marx from its own juice.
the grave robbers. We should also make passing reference to life
Any evaluation of Marx cannot be left to the President Xi Jinping whose celebration of Marx is
superficial idea that “Marx was right” without grotesquely contradicted by ‘socialist’ China’s
setting out what it means to be “right”. It means restoration of capitalism and rapid rise as the
knowing how he used the scientific method to world’s second biggest economy and chief rival of
understand capitalism and how he applied this US imperialism. Such blatant caricatures of
knowledge in a program for revolutionary Marxism are so grotesque as to be already headed
communism. His dispute with the French ‘Marxists’ for the dustbin of history.
in 1883 was over their practical demand for wage More dangerous is the social/liberal left that pays
increases, without making it clear that the struggle its respects to Marx’s life work only to disarm him
for higher wages must lead to the overthrow of the and inoculate workers against his revolutionary
wage-system itself. Class struggle was not about message. But most dangerous are the self-
adjusting to capitalist exploitation but developing proclaimed Marxists or all shades, Stalinist, Maoist
the class consciousness needed to overthrow and fake Trotskyist, who drag his name in the mud
13
Class Struggle #125
rendering him a common liberal. How do we decide
between Marx and anti-Marx? One example: Anti-
Capitalist blog does a good job deconstructing
Yanis Varoufakis Introduction to a new issue of the
Communist Manifesto which covers Marx with faint
praise while trying to bury him -from Yanis to Karl,
with love.
Marxism vs pseudo Marxism
Marx considered himself to be a scientist whose
critical ideas had to be put into practice by the
class struggle to test and develop them. It was the
class struggle that would prove his, rather than his
political rivals and opponents, right or wrong.
Remember the 11th thesis of the Theses of
Feuerbach: “The philosophers have only
interpreted the world… the point, however, is to
change it.”
Marx’s critical theory of capitalism was of an
historically limited form of society based on the
exploitation of labour that must sooner or later
exhaust its potential to develop the forces of
production (using labour to increase productivity)
as they were in contradiction with the social
relations of production (capitalist ownership of the
means of production). This would ultimately
destroy the forces of production including throwing
living labour out of work and necessitate a
proletarian revolution to overthrow capitalism and
replace it with socialism.
To activate his theory a program of action was
necessary to represent and advance the interests
of the proletariat. The Communist Manifesto of
1848 was the result. Here Marx and Engels
described the overthrow of bourgeois rule by the
revolutionary proletariat which would open the
road to communism. Marx and Engels saw the
Communist Party not as substituting for the
proletariat, but as part of the proletariat,
embodying the program and separated from other
workers’ parties only by its program advancing the
historical and international interests of the
proletariat.
Paris Commune: “storming heaven”
The first major test of Marx’s program came in 1871
with the Paris Commune when the working people
of Paris rose up against the bourgeois government
after the defeat of the Emperor Louis Bonaparte
(Napoleon’s great-nephew) by the Prussians.
Already by that time Marx was convinced that the
proletariat has succeeded the bourgeoisie as the
revolutionary class. The failure of the 1848
attempts by European bourgeois classes to make
their “French” revolution against their ‘ancient
14
June-August - 2018
regimes’ collapsed in embarrassing deals with the
feudal ruling classes.
This default on the part of the European
bourgeoisie left the proletariat with the
responsibility for completing the task of developing
the forces of production in the name of socialism.
For the first time Marx spoke of ‘the permanent
revolution’ signifying that the proletariat had to
step onto the stage of history and take over the
task of the reactionary bourgeoisie of completing
the bourgeois revolution and creating the
conditions for socialism. But how to do this: reform
or revolution? It was the Paris Commune of 1871
that put the Marxist program and the various
reformist programs to the test with a bloody ruling
class vengeance.
The lessons of the Commune were clear. First,
disproving the reformists it was proof that the
bourgeois state had to be overthrown by
proletarian armed force or it would physically wipe
out all working-class opposition. Second,
disproving the anarchists, the overthrow of the
bourgeois state had to be replaced by an armed
workers’ state to defend the revolution. The
Marxist program was amended in the light of these
lessons but the defeat of the Commune ushered in
a period of capitalist reaction. The First
international collapsed after bitter in-fighting with
Bukharin and the anarchists. And Marx had to fight
the retreat of ‘Marxists’ back to reformism, most
notably at Gotha in Germany in 1875.
Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program
Marx’s “Critique of the Gotha Program” was an
angry attack on those who followed Lassalle’s
“falsification” of the Communist Manifesto. But it
was largely futile and the Marxist party was only
revived when the Second International was
founded in 1889. Engels carried forward the
defence of the program until his death in 1895.
Then the task of defending and developing the
program became that of the next generation of
Marxists – in particular, Kautsky, Lenin, Luxemburg
and Trotsky to name the most important. We can
judge whether Marx would have disavowed or
accepted these new leaders as worthy of real
Marxism starting with their position on the lessons
of the Commune, and then what they did to apply
the theory and practice of Marxism in the 20th
century. [15]
[to be continued: Part 2, “Marxism after Marx”
and Part 3, “Marxism Today”.]
Class Struggle #125 June-August - 2018

South Africa: Ramaphosa takes charge of the ANC

Break with the ANC and Capital!

South Africa (SA) has entered a critical stage in the development of capitalism under the
reformist comprador bourgeoisie African National Congress (ANC) leadership. Class and race
tensions have been sharpened by the crisis of capitalism expressed in SA by the fall of
commodity prices. The end of apartheid only signified the formal political independence and
the transfer of nominal political power to the blacks whilst economic power remained firmly
in the hands of imperialists and local white capitalists. The election of Cyril Ramaphosa as the
head of the ANC and president of SA early this year as well as the on-going raptures between
the ANC and its alliance partners, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and
South African Communist Party (SACP), reflects the challenges facing the ruling class amidst
growing poverty and inequality. COSATU and SACP are in a difficult position following their
uncritical support of Ramaphosa in the ANC power struggles. The base of these two
organisations is pushing the leaders to denounce the policies of the ANC government that
seeks to intensify the attacks on the poor masses.
After a fierce political struggle Ramaphosa was reformist politician who believes that foreign
elected by a small margin as the head of the ANC investment and “economic growth” bring
ahead of Nkosazana Dhlamini-Zuma with the prosperity to the majority of the people.
electors splitting by almost half along factional
lines. The contest which essentially was (and is) But, to all intents and purposes this latest round of
about how best to control the masses and ensure political gimmicks is the culmination of a
massive profits for the various wings of capitalists protracted factional struggle within the ruling
was however projected as a fight between those party as well as the incessant struggles between
fighting against corruption (Ramaphosa faction) the ruling party and the opposition parties most
and those fighting for radical economic notably the liberal Democratic Alliance (DA) and
transformation (Dhlamini-Zuma faction). the radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) which
is a reflection of the struggle between different
In essence it was about how best to protect the imperialist camps as well as big and small
interests of imperialism be it western (US, EU and capitalists.
Japan) or eastern (Russia and China). The critical
role in the election of Ramaphosa was played by The EFF is highly critical of Ramaphosa who they
big business and the Stalinist SACP and pro-business rightly consider to be a puppet of both Chinese and
COSATU trade union. But, also important were the Western imperialism and is prepared to do
tainting of the Zuma faction on corruption charges whatever is necessary to ensure massive profits for
and the worsening economic situation. The his bosses. The Shanduka (owned by Chinese firms)
election of Ramaphosa as the head of the ANC has case, were he recently divested from citing conflict
not essentially changed the political premise of the of interests, is just one example of the capture of
ANC. The recent death of Winnie Madikizela- the president by big money.
Mandela brought to the fore the simmering tensions Workers resisting the crisis break with the
in the ANC and society at large between those who ANC
prostrated before capital and the masses who feel
they have been cheated. The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa
(NUMSA) spearheaded the formation of a militant
Rather, it has put to the fore the neoliberal and pro trade union independent of the ANC (the South
big business agenda at the expense of the radical African Federation of Trade Unions, SAFTU) and is
and pro small capitalist agenda that was being
facilitating the formation of a worker’s party,
championed by Zuma and allies as a political
albeit based on the Freedom Charter, a radical
manoeuvre to maintain grip on power and ensure nationalist document that masks the class
that they got more crumbs from the capitalists' contradictions. Last month SAFTU led a strike
table. Ramaphosa is an openly pro market
against a proposed minimum wage and restrictions
15
Class Struggle #125
to the right to strike. For their part, both the
Workers and Socialist Party (WASP) and the
Workers Internationalist Vanguard Party (WIVP)
have been consistent in their critique of the Zuma
government and now the Ramaphosa one. Regimes
can only be judged on the basis of their policies and
programs and not the colour and temperaments of
leaders. The real basis of the crisis within the ruling
party is the long-stretched crisis of the capitalist
system that has also affected the so called
emerging economies like South Africa, which are in
fact advanced semi colonies.
The worsening economic situation as a result of the
slow international recovery and stagnating prices
of minerals and other natural resources has
affected the working class and the poor mostly.
South Africa is considered the most unequal society
in the world regardless of the rhetoric of the black
comprador leadership of ANC and its alliance
partners. Twenty-four years into formal political
independence nothing has changed for the poor
majority.
To the contrary, China does not offer better or
different deals compared to the traditional
western imperialists. The so-called win-win deals
are in fact win-win situations between the China
and the South African ruling class. Only a handful
of the political leaders and their cronies have
managed to get some crumbs from the table of
bloody capitalists and imperialists. Workers and
the poor masses have been left with no choice but
to fight even for such basic rights as the right to
strike, education, health and shelter. The crisis has
squeezed the profits that the monopoly capitalists
and emerging comprador capitalists have been
sharing over the years since the end of apartheid in
1994. The fall and later slow rise in the prices of
minerals, which account for most of the national
income, has severely affected the relationship
between the two capitalist wings.
South Africa is an advanced semi colonial country
heavily dominated by international imperialism
and presided over by a popular front ANC
government with the support of the Stalinist SACP
and pro- government/employers COSATU
federation. The workers and the ordinary poor still
suffer deprivation and extreme poverty as
multinational companies rake in billions of Rands
yearly. The black government only serves to
stabilize the capitalist system that is under attack
from the black majority as well as to co-opt a few
black and formerly oppressed groups into the
native bourgeoisie circle to ensure continued
plunder of the natural and human resources of the
country.
16
June-August - 2018
All this was dramatically exposed by the murder
of workers at Marikana together with the clear
complicity of the ANC government and its
partners in the tripartite arrangement.
What Party and Program do the masses need?
Today we are witnessing massive struggles by
communities against poverty and social exclusion,
students and bus drivers. The stage has been set
for a decisive struggle between workers and
imperialism in the form of a general strike. We
salute the workers of South Africa who are leading
the way in the regional struggles against
imperialism both western and eastern and inspiring
workers in other countries to take independent and
militant action as the only weapon to conquer a
decent life for all. Workers should not be fooled by
either section of the capitalists who all seek to
exploit them for their own benefit. Workers must
fight for an independent program that puts the
question of power and control of resources at the
centre.
Such a program can only be based on the theory of
permanent revolution which places no artificial
distinctions between the fight against corruption
and the fight for socialism. The reformist Freedom
Charter cannot be the basis for such a fight as it
champions the interests of the black middle class
and emerging capitalists. Furthermore, the fight
against monopoly capital cannot be left to the
black capitalists who are only interested in getting
a bigger share of the profits squeezed from the
workers. Workers should indeed move towards
forming their own mass workers party on the basis
of a revolutionary program and not the centrist
program proposed by NUMSA and WASP, who are
both intent on driving the workers into the arms of
the trade union bureaucracy.
The program that champions the interests of
workers and the poor masses can only be advanced
through a mass workers party that pose transitional
demands which must essentially culminate in a
workers’ socialist republic of South Africa in a
federation of socialist republics of Southern Africa.
• A living Wage! Workers fight for a living
wage and better working conditions
through mass action controlled by
ordinary workers!
• Defend the right to strike! Against the
rising prices we demand a sliding scale of
wages!
• Against unemployment and destitution,
we demand a sliding scale of working
hours to provide decent jobs for all
Class Struggle #125
through massive public works programs to
provide housing, education and medical
care for all!
• Organise the unorganised! Form unions of
the unemployed as fully affiliated unions!
• Workers take back your unions! -Militant
workers form class struggle caucuses in
the unions to fight for this program!
• Workers form strike committees to lead
the resistance to the growing attacks on
the wages and working conditions of the
poor and the livelihood of the majority
poor!
• Workers form workers defence guards for
defence against state violence!
• A national strike committee to organise
and plan for a general strike!
• Workers break with the ANC Alliance and
build a worker’s party!
• No to US and Chinese imperialism fronted
by mainstream parties!
• For a workers’ government on the basis of
the armed people to implement decisions
that benefit the workers and the poor!
RWG ZIMBABWE STATEMENT ON ACTURUS MINE DISMISSALS AND EVICTIONS
NYAMBIRAI HANDS OFF WORKERS! WORKERS FIGHT DISMISSALS AND EVICTIONS!
SOLIDARITY WITH WORKERS AND THEIR FAMILIES!
Acturus mine former workers and their families are
sleeping in the cold after being forcibly evicted from
their company homes. This is being done by the
purported new owner of the gold mine, TN Holdings
owned by businessman and lawyer Tawanda Nyambirai,
who claims to have bought the entity from Metallon. As
we speak over fifty families have been evicted and are
sleeping in the cold with babies and young children.
Only last week a tent provided by a well-wisher was
forcibly removed by the company security and
impounded. The evictions follow the unfair and callous
dismissals of workers without any benefits and without
following even the basic requirements of bourgeoisie
labour rules guiding retrenchments and dismissals.
A brief context of the situation is as follows: In 2016 the
spouses of workers at the mine blockaded all entrances
to the mine thereby preventing workers and
management from working. This was in protest to the
prolonged salary arrears and lack of commitment on the
part of the management to resolve the wage issue. The
blockade was defeated after the betrayal of workers by
their union which agreed to a memorandum putting the
blame for the work stoppage on the workers and not the
owners who had provoked the spouses into action. The
management went on to use the memoranda as well as
the complicity of the union to isolate workers and
victimize them. Since then workers have been orally
and summarily dismissed without due process and
17
June-August - 2018
• Nationalisation of all companies without
indemnification to the big shareholders
under workers control! -Land to be
distributed to all poor peasants together
with a state bank to provide inputs to all
small farmers!
• For a workers’ state that defends
workers, poor peasants and the poor
masses against local and foreign
capitalists!
• For an African socialist revolution as part
of the international revolution that alone
can guarantee a better life for all!
• For a new WORLD PARTY of socialist
revolution based on the TRANSITIONAL
PROGRAM of 1938 to lead the revolution
to end capitalism and open the road to
socialism!
Revolutionary Worker, May 2018
http://www.cwgusa.org/wp-
content/uploads/2018/05/2018-05-RW00004-
FINAL-001.pdf
benefits. Late last year the company was purported to
have been sold to Nyambirai despite the fact that pay
slips still bear the Metallon details. Workers believe
Metallon colluded with Nyambirai to dismiss them and
evict them.
The issues at hand are clear: Bosses and the state are
taking advantage of the Zuva ruling (which allowed for
workers to be dismissed on notice without benefits),
compromised unions and isolated workers to push the
burden of paying for the crisis of capitalist crisis on the
shoulders of the workers and poor masses. This is but a
clear class struggle that must be fought in terms of the
class means and not through reformist and legalistic
means. Workers dismissed and evicted should not move
an inch from the mine premises until proper procedures
are followed and all their dues and outstanding wages
and allowances are paid in full. This should be the basis
for the legal fight currently under way and in no way
should workers rely solely on legal tactics which can be
manipulated and frustrated by the bosses and the state.
But above all this, workers still in employment should
realize that it’s only a matter of time before they too
are targeted so a full blown indefinite strike is
necessary to reverse the losses suffered by the workers
since 2016.To sustain the strike and the sit in working
class solidarity is paramount. [Full statement of
demands to defeat the mine bosses is here.]
Class Struggle #125
Mayday: International Workers’ Day!
Workers’ Unite to smash Fascism and Imperialism, End
Capitalism, and Build Socialism to Stop Climate Catastrophe!
Comrades,
International
Workers Day, or
Mayday, has been
celebrated since
1886, three years
after the death of
Marx. But what are
we celebrating? This
year is 200 years
since Marx’s birth,
180 years since the
Communist
Manifesto, 100 years
since the Russian
Revolution and 80
years since the
foundation of the Fourth International. There is
plenty to celebrate. But where is the ‘spectre of
communism’ haunting the bourgeoisie today? True,
the bourgeoisie fear communism. They fear the
revolutionary proletariat as their ‘grave diggers’.
But we, the international workers, have yet to turn
that fear into the reality. Mayday has become less
than a celebration of victorious revolutionary
advances and more of a ritual occasion for the
bureaucratic leaderships of the labour movement
to hold ‘Sunday speeches’. Meanwhile the masses
resistance to the rise of counter-revolution and
fascism all over the world is isolated and defeated.
We should remember that ‘Mayday’ is also an
international emergency call sign. This is how we
should ‘celebrate’ Mayday, by disrupting the ritual
and calling for international workers to unite in
action to overcome a global emergency of climate
collapse and human existence. Everywhere
capitalism is in crisis. It can no longer rule in the
same old way. In fact every day capitalism survives
only by destroying humanity and nature. And
workers will no longer submit to extreme
exploitation without fighting back. There is no way
out for the bourgeoisie other than destruction and
barbarism. To survive as a dying mode of
production, capitalism is thrashing about
destroying everything that has been won over
centuries. It threatens to destroy humanity and
nature unless stopped by the global socialist
revolution. It is clear that for workers to live and
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June-August - 2018
humanity to survive,
capitalism must die.
But where is the
international
proletariat rising up
to smash capitalist
imperialism, and to
build world
socialism?
Syria: Revolution
or fascist genocide
This is no more
obvious than in
Syria, the Paris
Commune of the 21st
Century, where the
promise of the Arab Spring has been driven back to
near defeat by the combined forces of counter-
revolution. The bosses fear more than anything the
spread of a victorious Arab Revolution setting an
example to the rest of the worlds workers – the
imperialist powers and their murderous client
regimes have resorted to fascist genocide. Whole
cities and regions have been turned into bloody
rubble because the Syrian Revolution has been
ignored and isolated from any campaign by the
international working class to join the revolution
arms in hand. Most of those who claim to be
international socialists have turned out to be social
chauvinists and social imperialists. They condemn
the popular Arab Revolution as a counter-
revolution against Western democracy. The two
imperialist blocs led by the US and by Russia have
combined forces to smash the leading armed edge
of the Arab and international revolution, by
propping up a fascist dictator, and the servile
Western ‘left’ has provided a ‘left’ cover for
genocide.
This Mayday we are into the 8th year of the Syrian
civil war and the approaching defeat of the
revolution which will be a defeat also for both the
Arab revolution and the world revolution. So we
must ask what are the prospects for the
international revolution right now. Let’s reject
Mayday as a ritual ‘celebration’ and make it a call
Class Struggle #125
to a global emergency. Then we can act to
overcome that emergency by organising
international workers as a revolutionary force able
to defend every basic democratic right being
destroyed by imperialism in its death throes and
rebuild the ‘world party of socialism’ called for by
Trotsky in 1938 based on the Transitional Program.
This means fighting for a Marxist program that can
guide workers in every fight for their most basic
rights and needs, across the bridge to the
formation of soviets and militias, all the way to
socialist insurrection and a world federation of
workers states. For example, in Syria we need an
international party strong enough to mobilise
military support for the revolution for basic
freedom and link it to all other Arab resistance. It
means uniting the Palestinian revolution to defeat
the Zionist settler state with the workers
movements in every other country. We need
international brigades in Syria, and militant
uprisings against the imperialist ruling classes
threatening world war.
In other ‘hot points’ where the crisis is bringing
workers to their feet to fight, that new
international party has to have the forces to
intervene with a program that works to advance
the revolution against the counter-revolution and
make it ‘permanent’. The forces of counter-
revolution are the imperialist ruling classes, their
client states ruled by national bourgeoise factions
and their political parties, and the treacherous
fake ‘left’ of all shades that always sides with the
bourgeoisie against socialist revolution.
Under today’s crisis conditions, the imperialists
and their client lackeys are exposed as naked class
enemies. The fake ‘left’ however provides a left
cover to fool the workers. They are the most
dangerous enemies. We must expose and defeat
these bosses’ agents in our ranks. In every
revolutionary situation where workers are
mobilising they are on the side of the class enemy,
demobilising the masses. Let’s illustrate this by
using examples that demonstrate the way forward
in both semi-colonies and imperialist nations.
Zimbabwe, South Africa and Africa
The African continent alongside other semi-
colonial continents like Latin America and Asia (a
from Japan and China) have been hard hit by the
double burden of capitalism and imperialism. The
over reliance on the export of raw materials and
trapped as cheap labour havens causes acute
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June-August - 2018
suffering for the workers and the common poor.
The dictatorial and openly ruthless regimes in most
African states make it difficult for the common
masses to fight for their interests and against
dictatorship, poverty, capitalism and imperialism.
So, as we celebrate International Workers day or
May Day it is important to appreciate that workers,
poor peasants and the poor oppressed and
exploited masses can conquer a good life only
through socialism which must inevitably come
through the strategy of permanent revolution.
Two countries can help illustrate the condition of
the working class and poor masses in Africa. In
Zimbabwe the workers are under intense attacks
by the post-Mugabe pro-austerity bourgeois regime
that is delicately balancing between western and
eastern imperialism. A 2016 Supreme Court
judgement, despite nominal ‘reversals’, has made
it easier for employers including the government to
fire workers without compensation or real chances
of redress. Over 30,000 workers have lost their jobs
as a result of this ruling championed by the current
President of the main opposition party, Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC Alliance).
As a result of the judgement and the intransigence
of the bosses, workers have been forced to resort
to militant actions such as those at the National
Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) and Grain Marketing
Board (GMB) where workers staged prolonged
protests at the companies’ headquarters. Workers
at the Hwange Colliery and ZESA (a public utility
power company) are currently engaged in a vicious
struggle to get their overdue wages and
allowances. But most importantly, the strikes by
doctors and nurses has brought to the fore the true
colours of the regime, despite claims that this is a
“new era”. Nurses were summarily dismissed
before being reinstated. In a clear show of what
workers have to expect from this government it
displays for imperialism its willingness to continue
Mugabe’s alliance with imperialism and to crush
workers struggles.
In South Africa the situation is even more delicate.
The formal political independence of 1994 has
failed to change the lives of the poor masses that
are still faced with exploitation and poverty. The
reformist African Nationalist Congress (ANC) party
and its partners have failed to resolve the key
aspects of apartheid which include subordination
of the masses to the interests of imperialist
investment enforced by the state, racism and
exploitation of local and migrant labour as well as
Class Struggle #125
the continued plunder of natural resources.
Despite a constitution that was hailed by
imperialism and their middle class and petit
bourgeois surrogates, the material conditions of
workers and the poor masses has remained dire
forcing workers, communities, students and poor
peasants to rise in revolt. The most notable and
watershed revolt of the suffering masses was the
Marikana strike which resulted in the murder of
workers by the state in collaboration with capitalist
mine owners. The fight for a living wage, better
working conditions and the unfettered right to
strike has taken centre stage in the class dynamics
of the state. The strike by bus drivers has dragged
into the third week as workers reject slave wages
and attempts at dividing the working class.
Zimbabwe and South Africa to a large extent
reflect the current situation in most African states
in relation to the conditions of the workers, poor
peasants and poor masses. Slave wages, land
privatisation, commodification of education and
services, plunder of local resources, rampant
corruption and dictatorial regimes are the
hallmarks of African societies. May Day gives us the
opportunity to take stock of our position as workers
and the common poor and be able to chart a way
forward that ensures a better life for the masses.
Only independent mass action of the working class
and oppressed can win a better life. For this to
happen workers have to be militantly organised and
armed with a revolutionary strategy and program.
Brazil and Latin America
In Brazil and Latin America, considered a
“backyard” by US imperialism, the workers and
oppressed people resisted neoliberal policies with
militant class struggle in the streets. The reformist
Left channeled this fight into parliamentary
socialism or “socialism of the XXI century”, placing
in power several populist Popular Front
governments which continued to apply neoliberal
policies and the dictates of imperialism.
The global crisis of capitalism has hit Latin
America, and Brazil in particular, shaking
governments that attack the working class as a way
to resolve the crisis. The economic instability,
political and social, is growing. Far from meaning
“stability”, the return of the traditional rightist
governments in Argentina and Brazil is met with the
growing discontent of the working class, with their
living conditions deteriorating, being hit by
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June-August - 2018
unemployment, “reforms” that remove their
rights, and repression.
Unable to mitigate the economic crisis in Brazil,
the ruling capitalists could no longer afford the
luxury of the popular front. Thus Lula and the
Workers Party (PT) suffered a “coup” by their
bourgeois allies. Vice President Temer, in power
today now has low approval ratings, faces protests,
strikes and occupations of workers and social
movements in the struggle for better conditions of
life and work and against the “reforms” that
remove rights such as the pension reform. The PT,
even suffering the maneuver that led to the
impeachment of Rousseff and Lula in prison,
continues to defend the popular front and acts in
the labor movement through the Unified Workers
Central (CUT) and trade unions, demobilizes
workers (as in the dismantling of the general strike
against the welfare reform) and channels the
struggle into bourgeois democracy and the
elections in October. The Socialism and Liberty
Party (PSOL), in alliance with the reformist leader
of the MTST (Homeless Movement) entered into the
Popular Front, along with PT and the “democratic”
bourgeoisie in the struggle for “democracy” and
“sovereignty” during the government attacks and
the growth of the extreme right and fascism.
The solution for the workers and oppressed peoples
of Brazil and Latin America is the independent
political struggle of the working class against the
bourgeoisie and imperialism. We must build the
revolutionary party that fights for the organization
of rank and file committees of all kinds: grassroots,
factory, tenants’ and price committees,
neighborhood committees, and workers self-
defense guards that prepare the General Strikes to
win in the struggle for the expropriation of the
bourgeoisie and a true socialism. The Popular Front
does not fight fascism, it paves the way for fascism.
The so called left-wing governments in Latin
America apply the imperialist policy and harshly
attack the working class. Conflicts with the US
government like Venezuela’s do nothing to break
with imperialism, and the linkage with the
increasing imperialist bloc of China/Russian no way
means “sovereignty” or “anti-imperialism.”
Latin American workers need to break with the
reformist leaderships, which divide workers,
prevents class solidarity, as is shown by the
isolation of the Syrian masses’ revolution against Al
Assad’s regime and how the restoring of capitalism
in Cuba supports the repressive government of
Class Struggle #125
Venezuela. The Popular Frontists all together
denounce as “C.I.A. agents” the workers in
Nicaragua fighting against the government’s
pension reform, just like Assad labels his
revolutionary opponents agents of the west. This
same “left” defends the Popular Front in Brazil
against the right and the threat of dictatorship.
USA
Every “disaster capitalism” calamity visited upon
the world by the federal government is an index of
the decline of U.S. imperialism. The seldom seen
side of ‘populist nationalism’ is its inherent
autarchy. The retreat from such minimal world
consensus as is represented by the Paris Accords is
a pennant on the Titanic smokestack! The missile
attack by the U.S., Britain and France on Assad’s
empty facilities only highlights the growing
ineffectuality of the U.S.-led bloc while Trump on
more typical occasions calls for U.S. withdrawal,
leaving Syria to Russia. Crooks of the new “swamp”
have more personal interests to satisfy and are
getting theirs while those “qualified” to look out
for U.S. imperial interests are fired by Trump.
Ideologues replace professionals and the U.S. loses
market share. This results in trade war, the prelude
to world war. And Trump floats the idea of
becoming a Bonaparte for life after hearing of Xi’s
lifetime appointment. Nothing Trump says or
tweets is a joke, but signals that he knows the
various reactionary options. The Tendency of the
Rate of Profit to Fall has U.S. imperialism by the
short hairs.
Bourgeois talking heads won’t tell you the real
effects of a 10% drop of stock market prices in the
U.S. These losses have taken place post tax cut,
i.e. THIS YEAR. They take place while investment
lags and almost all economists say corporations are
hoarding cash. Trump threatens protectionism
while flip flopping on TPPA and NAFTA. None of his
moves hide the fact that the recovery is an empty
shell that keeps tens of millions of working poor
people and their families in an endless cycle of
poverty while wages have stagnated for decades.
Workers often need to take two or three jobs just
to pay the rent, while the ruling class continues it
assault on meager and humiliating public
assistance programs. The institutional hatred and
state repression of the working poor and people of
color is magnified by environmental racism and
housing costs which trap people in zones of danger
to their health. The lead poisoning of the water in
Flint Michigan is just the tip of the iceberg of
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June-August - 2018
industrial pollutants toxifying life sustaining
elements of the environment.
Meanwhile, it is only a harbinger of the
environmental threat the survival of capitalism
inescapably poses to human and other species’
survival in the near future. The capitalists prepare
for World War III, yet insanely retail the ICBMs of
North Korea and reactors in Iran as the gravest
dangers facing humanity to those who follow their
kept media. They incite the MAWAs (Make America
White Again mob) against immigrants and jail
refugees while putting the recovery of Puerto Rico
from a century event hurricane on rations, and all
the “friends of labor” have to say is vote for us in
November. Workers need our own party now, not
some day!
Some recognition that piles of money sit idle has
resulted in revolts of the base in some organized
sectors, revolts the bureaucrat/Democrats have so
far been able to run around in front of. Thus, the
United States has seen outbreaks of social and class
struggles. The 2011 Wisconsin struggle, followed by
Occupy and the Longshore ILWU EGT struggles, the
Ferguson stand-off, the self-defense actions of the
Black and Brown communities nationwide that
launched #BlackLivesMatter, the fight of the First
People’s Water Protectors against the Dakota
Access Pipeline, pre and post Charlottesville
mobilizations against alt-right fascists, the
women’s marches and #MeToo movement, the
broad defense of immigrants with social-media-
organized spontaneous direct actions at the
airports against the Muslim Ban and against torture
committed at San Francisco Airport by Homeland
Security, and the spread from state to state of
teachers strikes and a growing resurgence in class
struggle organizing and strike action by nurses and
airline workers as we march on May Day.
While Zionism doubles down in its daily war against
Palestinian lives, Israel can no longer count on the
unconditional support from Americans of Jewish
heritage who seek out and march in solidarity with
their Palestinian comrades. Yet a blood oath is still
required of the labor bureaucracy which is tied to
the imperialist Democratic Party’s projects
including unwavering support for Israel, Saudi
Arabia and the ruling class’s never-ending wars
against workers abroad and at home, both overt
and covert. Likewise, the labor bureaucracy is do-
or-die committed to the idea that police are
workers and not the slave patrols who daily
terrorize Black and Brown communities. Today’s
Class Struggle #125
struggles provide a glimpse of what could be,
except at every turn they are limited or derailed
due to lack of revolutionary leadership. The pro-
capitalist trade union bureaucracy behaves as if
the power of the workers and the oppressed is
small and has negligible possibilities beyond
legalistic self-defense. And everywhere the
bureaucrats are willing to sacrifice your right to
healthcare, even in otherwise victorious strikes!
They permit no self-consciousness about how
successful their strategy has been. It is a free fall
cataclysm. The rights of the mid-west labor
movement which used class struggle methods to
build the Teamsters and the CIO are mostly history
now, ignored by labor officialdom and contained
among arcane academics and nostalgic Reds. This
is exactly because class struggle methods of
combating the exploiters are treated as impossible
to carry out today.
Not only the strategy but the psychology the
bureaucracy projects is a supine weakness! The
Trump administration teeters legally even as it
carries out the real bourgeois program of “disaster
capitalism,” slashing every protection the masses
have won since the 1870s and now even
threatening the existence of public education.
Trump’s presidency really is only sustained at this
point by public relations. Both parties are guilty of
defending it with faint damnation: it becomes
clearer all the time that Democrats are not
interested in impeaching Trump this year, talking
increasingly that they will not seek to impeach him
next year, while many echo the former FBI chief
and now celebrity Comey who wants the voters to
sort Trump out in 2020. This talk is fine with
leaderships of central labor councils who never
have struggled for impeachment, despite Nixon
lawyer John Dean calling the present crisis
“Watergate on steroids.” They organize labor walks
for Democrat candidates. And the Democrats’
entire project is now transparently the co-optation
of the masses’ self-defense movements!
The masses are hungry for direct action, but this is
constantly used for politically limited pressure
street protests and election campaigning. The
“socialist” left is not able to contest for leadership.
They refuse to fight for a workers’ party, as they
tail after, or like the Democratic Socialists of
America (DSA), outright support Democratic Party
liberal politics and the labor bureaucracy. The
worst of them, the Assad/Putin socialists, also
abandon the Marxist program for world socialist
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June-August - 2018
revolution as they gush over the brutal Syrian
dictator Assad and promote Syrian conspiracy
theories that would make Alex Jones blush. The
fake left therefore loses whatever credibility it
ever had with American workers and oppressed
people and could not mobilize any real numbers of
them in the April “anti-imperialist” actions
following Trump’s missile attack stunt.
The revolutionary fight to defeat U.S. imperialism
at home and abroad, the main enemy of the
international working class, also means linking up
to the workers struggles in the Middle East and
everywhere in the fight for world socialist
revolution, not abandoning them to their own
brutal comprador bourgeoisie. As for the
anarchists, they are largely mute on smashing the
state as they engage in “propaganda of the deed”
militant but non-violent street actions, thinking
they will eventually replace the capitalist state by
building democratic assemblies and a utopian
alternate society within the current capitalist
system.
The leadership of the class is up for contest as
demonstrated in the rank-and-file-led actions of
the teachers in right to be enslaved states. To
defeat the ruling class and fight for socialism, we
have to defeat the fake leaders of the working class
who keep driving us back into the Democratic Party
in our unions and in our mass movements. The fight
for working class political independence leads
through the formation of rank and file class
struggle committees in the unions challenging to
bring class struggle methods back.
The present moment is a rare historical opportunity
for workers to organize their own party, to see
colossal corruption and perfidy for what it is and to
see that what is required is uncompromising class
struggle and the fight for a revolutionary socialist
political program, the understanding of the class-
for-itself political tasks of fighting for humanity’s
future.
Socialism is the last, best and only hope against
the drive for imperialist war and climate
destruction!
For a New Revolutionary Workers International
based on Trotsky’s 1938 Transitional Program:
The World Party of Socialist Revolution!
Liaison Committee of Communists -- May 1 2018
Class Struggle #125
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 capitalism’s
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 capitalism’s continued exploitation and its
attempts to hide class exploitation behind the
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June-August - 2018
appearance of individual "freedom" and "equality".
It reveals how 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 #125 June-August - 2018

For the World Party of Socialist Revolution!

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)

Communist Workers Group- New Zealand/Aotearoa (CWG-NZ)

Email: cwg006@yahoo.com
http://redrave.blogspot.com )
Websites: Class Struggle
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 http://www.cwgusa.org/?page_id=16

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

Phone +64272800080 cwg2007anz@hotmail.com
Archive of publications before 2006 http://communistworker.blogspot.com/

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