Traducción final y corrección: Viernes 01 de Agosto de 2008
Publicación Organizador Obrero Internacional Nº 8 Abril de 2008
May 1st 2008
Appeal of the Leninist Trotskyist Fraction
The crisis in the capitalist imperialist world economy; the struggle against the capitalist restoration in Cuba; the fraudulent "Bolivarian revolution"; the heroic resistance of the masses of the Middle East: these are the frontlines in the class war that divides reformists from revolutionaries. We put forward our revolutionary response to these acid tests of the global class struggle.
LET'S BUILD A REVOLUTIONARY INTERNATIONALIST BLOC
TO FIGHT FOR THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF PRINCIPLED TROTSKYISTS AND REV0LUTIONARY WORKERS' ORGANISATIONS!
The 3rd Congress of the FLT resolved to call for the formation of a revolutionary internationalist bloc to fight for an international conference of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary workers' organisations. Today, as in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War and the betrayal of the Social Democratic International, we face a crisis of the capitalist imperialist world economy and the catastrophe that this will bring upon the masses; we are confronted with the Cuban question, the struggle against the fraudulent 'Bolivarian Revolution', the war in the Middle East and the international tasks and obligations that poses for the working class in all countries, and the questions of Colombia and Venezuela. These are all acid tests of the struggles of the world working classes that clearly divide the reformists, revisionists and opportunists from the real revolutionary internationalists that look anxiously for a path to regroup their forces at an international level.
These are the red hot questions facing the international working class that will be the acid tests of all the currents that claim to be revolutionaries and internationalists. They are a real life test for these currents' program and politics, to prove clearly who speaks the truth and who actually fights in the trenches with the proletariat and all the exploited. Facing these sharp events the principles and program of them all will reveal who are the revolutionary internationalists and expose all those fake Trotskyists, impostors and opportunists, who during the workers holidays hail the socialist revolution and the Transitional Program, and proclaim loudly for the "Reconstruction of the IV International", yet everyday follow the political path of class collaboration with the social democrats and Stalinists and become their successors.
We publish here then, the call of the FLT expressed as a number of points that we put forward in response to the crisis of the world capitalist imperialist economy; to the Cuban question -that shows clearly, as did the Russian question, who fights for the proletarian dictatorship and who does not - facing the war and the heroic resistance of the masses of the Middle East; and against the fraudulent claims of the "Bolivarian Revolution". These points concentrate the elementary principles on which to build a true revolutionary internationalist bloc.
The call contains 23 points as a revolutionary response to the acid tests of the world class struggle, as proposals for discussion, amendment or development, by the revolutionaries of the world, as a principled basis for a bloc to fight for the convening of an International Conference, and to prepare for the rapid international regroupment to fight the treacherous leaders that are stopping the world proletariat from going on the counter-offensive against the world economic crisis that has begun, and so returning to the road of the proletarian revolution.
All of the points presented here have met with the agreement of the comrades of the Marxist Workers Party (POM) of Brazil who have adhered to them from their particular vision and conviction and put their resources in the service of the fight for an International Conference. The POM has taken the initiative to host in Brazil, towards the middle of the year, a Pre-conference of all the groups and currents that agree with the call and share its aims. Consequently the FLT, having raised the need for a debate with all the groups and currents that will come to the Pre-Conference in Brazil, puts forward this call to open the discussion on how to build a revolutionary internationalist bloc to fight for an International Conference.
Therefore, on May 1st, 2008, in order to advance this struggle for a bloc to fight for an International Conference on these principled bases, we declare the urgency for a true Zimmerwald and Kienthal of the 21st century, capable of building an international center that can fight to create a new party of world socialist revolution on the basis of the legacy and program of the Founding Congress of the IV International of 1938, which represented the continuation of the legacy of the Bolsheviks and the Revolutionary Third International of Lenin and Trotsky.
We call upon all internationalists that share our view to regroup around the following responses to revolutionary acid tests of the world class struggles that clearly separate two trenches in the world arena between those who fight for the victory of the workers' international socialist revolution and those who betray the proletariat to the bourgeoisie. In the imperialist epoch of crises, wars and revolutions, there can be no national programs. There is only the world program of the proletariat that allows the internationalist revolutionaries to be able to lead the working class to take power in the national arena as a step to the world revolution.
Facing the Crisis of the world capitalist imperialist economy: in the struggle for social revolution AS the MOST URGENT task to save the proletariat from the catastrophe of barbarism, against all the reformist paramedics that try to save capitalism’s life.
1
Only the triumphant proletarian revolution can stop the catastrophic barbarity of rotting capitalism. “Socialism or Barbarism” is not a matter for the future. It is now a slogan for an urgent program of immediate action!
The world capitalist crisis and the catastrophe that it is already unleashing upon the working class and the oppressed means that the dilemma “Socialism or Barbarism” must now become the slogan of revolutionary Marxists for a program of immediate action.
The grips of world crisis and recession, carrying the attacks by capitalism on the jobs, livelihoods and lives of the working masses to their utmost show that they can only be defeated by the struggle to smash the world capitalist imperialist system. It puts on the agenda as the first task of the day, the fight for the proletarian revolution. Only by revolution will the world working class escape the misery, poverty and destruction of life under capitalism. So that the working class and the exploited masses can survive, the imperialistic capitalist system must die!
Against the reformist politics that attempts to confine the working class to the struggle for the econimical demands, we hold on to the Marxist motto: while telling the masses their daily tasks must now be for the seizure of power and the dictatorship of the proletariat, since that is the only way that they can overcome these attacks, we do not renounce to conquer even the most minimum of demands from the bourgeoisie. But we know that they shall be lost unless the proletariat takes power. The fight for food, work, land, against the war, against imperialistic oppression, can only be won with the victory of the international socialist revolution. Against the fraudulent posturing of the “socialism of the 21st century” proclaimed by the supporters of the World Social Forum, our war cry to save the planet from the catastrophe of barbarism is: “Socialist Revolution”.
As in 1914, with the outbreak of the interimperialistic World War I and the historic betrayal of the proletariat by social democracy, today the crisis of the capitalist world economy and the catastrophe that this will unleash on the exploited of the world, mark clearly the front lines between the reformists, paramedics running to help capitalism, which now includes the deserters of Trotskyism, and the revolutionaries who fight along the world proletariat to be gravediggers for capitalism. Either one is for the international socialist revolution, and fights with this perspective every day, or one tries to pressure the bourgeois for more reforms for breadcrumbs. Either one is for the socialist revolution and fights for it every day, or one is in favor of that fraudulent “market socialism” and “revolution of the 21st century”, as promoted by the Castro bureaucracy and ‘Bolivarian bourgeoises’ as a “redistribution of the wealth”. One cannot say to be a revolutionary and support national bourgeoisies like those of El Fatah and Hamas, prison guards of their own Palestinian people on behalf of the Zionist occupant; or those colaborationists of imperialist occupation of Iraq and ferocious reppressors of its own working class, like the Iranian bourgeoisie; or like Hizbollah, which negotiates with the pro-US imperialist government of Siniora and with the UN imperialistic troops who occupy the south of the country, with the blood and the sufferings of the Palestinian martyrs and Lebanese exploited as bargaining chips. Either one is for the fight for the socialist revolution, or one becomes the tool of the national bourgeoisies, the junior partners of imperialism, who pay them to prevent the workers from embarking on the road to the triumph of socialist revolution, only way to end colonial and semi-colonial oppression.
In 1914, when the workers were dragged by the sociaimperialists to kill each other on the battlefields to defend the class interests of “their” respective bourgeoisies, the immediate task to stop the war and to win the “peace”, was none other than socialist revolution: “to turn the guns around, and transform the imperialistic war into a civil war against the own bourgeoisie”. Such was the revolutionary program raised by Lenin, Liebcknecht and the other internationalists of the “Zimmerwald left”, which in 1915 could all sit in one couch, but by 1917 had become the core of the revolutionary leadership of the Russian proletariat which turned its program into the reality.
Today, facing the onset of the crisis of the world capitalist system, “to turn the guns around” means to fight for the proletarian revolution, the only way to stop decomposing capitalism from unleashing its catastrophic barbarism of wars, massacres, starvation and overexploitation against the masses. It means to prepare a great counter-offensive of the masses on a world scale to transform the current food riots and workers rebellions in the opening up of the road to the proletarian revolution.
2
Against the World Social Forum and the fake Trotskyists who act as their “left wing” subordinating the proletariat to the “democratic” imperialists and the national bourgeoisies!
Preventing the proletariat and the exploited from taking the road to revolution is their subordination to the bourgeoisie compelled by the treacherous leaderships and their accomplices in the "left" including the fake Trotskyists. Some of them support directly and openly the “Bolivarian” governments as in the case of Chávez, in Latin America while others call on the masses to fight to exert pressure on all governments to take supposedly “progressive” measures to meet their demands. For example, the LIT pressures Chavez to “advance to socialism”. In Brazil the PSTU calls for referenda in the unions and universities to put pressure on Lula to abandon his "reforms” on labor, unions and university laws. In Argentina, we see the PTS saying to the workers in struggle to put pressure on the Minister of Labor, the “democratic” judges, the parliament, and some politicians, to make “favorable” rulings or laws for the workers.
This treacherous politics of class collaboration, popular fronts, “to support the progressive measures of the bourgeois governments”, to pressure the bourgeois state, its governments and regimes, is an absolute barrier preventing the proletariat from asserting its leadership of the ruined sectors of the middle-class of the farms and of the city, which is the only way to advance through a victorious insurrection towards the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Against these traitors, the revolutionaries who make this call, state categorically that anyone that creates even the smallest illusion among workers that they can solve their problems by pressuring the bosses state and/or the supposedly “progressive” bosses, is a declared enemy of the historical interests of the proletariat and the struggle for the socialist revolution.
That is why we declare war without mercy on the political camp followers that subordinate the proletariat to the “progressive” bourgeoisie. For example, in Bolivia they support Morales against the fascists of the “media luna” when it was Morales who was responsible for sending the army to attack and defeat the hard core of the Bolivian proletariat, the miners of Huanuni. They support the “Bolivarian” bourgeois governments of Correa and Chávez against Uribe, when they all joined in the Summit meeting of the Rio Group, where they celebrated their business interests on the spilled blood of the Colombian resistance. In United States, they shouted “Anyone but Bush”, subordinating the workers’ movement against the war in Iraq, to the French and German “democratic” imperialists, and to the Democratic Party. In the case of Argentina, the left wing of the World Social Forum facing the farmers and big rural bosses lockout were divided on which sector of the bourgeoisie to support: either the Kirchner government and the transnationals of Mercosur and big oil, or the new bourgeoisie and agrarian capitalists backed by the cereal transnationals of the Chicago Stock Exchange.
The signatories of this document will commit all our forces in the fight to defend what is written in blood in the program of the international proletariat, that there can never be any support given to any bourgeois sector, its governments, its legislation, no matter how “progressive” they are painted, because that means that we cease to call openly for the overthrow of the bourgeosie.
The treacherous reformist leaders try to justify class collaboration by means of the theory-program of “market socialism”. They cheat the workers into thinking that it is possible to reform rotting capitalism by “socializing the market” by means of a utopian “equalising of exchange”. According to this theory, the problem of capitalism is not in the sphere of production, but in the sphere of distribution, so that the problem can be solved by “redistributing the wealth” without touching the property of the capitalist parasites. The reformists expose themselves as the life support paramedics of capitalism who guarantee that nobody threatens the property of the seven cereal multinationals who control the production of cereals and beans which are today plunging hundreds of millions of workers and exploited all over the planet into starvation; the handful of oil monopolies that control the oil reserves and pipelines and who are responsible for millions of deaths and ‘genocides’ in their “wars for oil”; and all those companies owned by the national bourgeoisies as junior partners with the imperialist transnationals.
For that reason, we commit all our forces to defend what is also written in blood in the program of the international proletariat, that the problems of capitalism is not in the sphere of distribution, but in the sphere of production. This means that capitalist class owns the means of production as its prívate property, and that because the working class has no means of subsistence other than to sell its labor, the capitalists are able to exploit this labor to expropriate its profits. For that reason, the only solution to capitalism’s problems is the expropriation of the expropriators, that is to say, the victory of the proletarian socialist revolution that establishes a dictatorship of the proletariat to expropriate the bourgeoisie.
3. Facing the capitalist crisis and the offensive of the bourgeoisie to solve the crisis at the expense of the exploited masses, we must organise a workers’ counter-offensive to make the bosses’ pay for their own crisis!
Against all the revisionists and fake Trotskyists who were claiming that we were in the midst of a “long wave” of capitalist expansion which made reforms possible (so that the workers could consolidate their ranks through economic fights alone), the economic crisis is now full fledged and extends to the whole world capitalist imperialist system. The effects of this stage of the crisis, beginning with the recession in the United States and the onset of world wide price inflation, are already catastrophic for the working masses of the planet. While food production is at a record high, rising food prices have pushed millions into hunger and misery in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, which also begin to strike the workers in the imperialist countries. Thus, in the United States, already 28 million workers and their families depend on the food stamps of the bourgeois state!
In the first years of the 21st century, the treacherous counter-revolutionary leaders. the workers aristocracy and bureaucracy around the world isolated and fragmented the struggles of the masses and contained and diverted the most advanced forces of the world revolution, desynchronizing the fighting back of the different battalions of our class. Today, the impact of the capitalist crisis is forcing the masses to respond to the regimes, states, and governments that are imposing the policies of global finance capital. So the whip of capital unites and synchronises again the class struggle all over the world. We declare then that the most urgent task of the hour is to fightback against the crisis and the vicious attacks of the bosses against the exploited masses, to prepare and to organize a counter-offensive of the world proletariat, so that it is the capitalists who pay for the crisis they have caused.
To do this it is necessary to break with the bourgeoisie, to defeat labor aristocracies and bureaucracies of all kinds. This means to break with the so-called “market socialism” that prostrates the working class before the capitalist market controlled by international financial capital and the imperialistic transnational companies. That is the only way to turn the food riots and workers’ rebellions now spreading rapidly across the world into the start of a counter-offensive of the world proletariat against the crisis and the bosses’ offensive.
The section in our Transitional Program that we must raise with all our strength is: to transform the economic fight into a mass political fight against the bourgeois states, regimes and governments. We must help transform the spontaneous revolts of the masses against rising prices for the essentials of life, by raising the demands for the sliding scale of wages and working hours, for the nationalization and expropriation of the land, of the big oil and food monopolies; of the imperialist banks without compensation and under workers control. In this way the workers will turn their food riots into a fight for workers states that can expropriate the prívate property of the bourgeoisie and force them to pay for the crisis they have caused. The program and the activity of the revolutionaries aim to help develop the self-determination of the fighting masses which must create their own democratic political organs such as soviets or councils, pickets and self-defence committees, to prepare for the insurrections against the capitalist states and for the seizure of power. But those Insurrections will only triumph with a revolutionary Leninist fighting party to their head
4. The North American working class must stand up again to ‘turn its guns around’ against its own imperialist ruling class!
The North American working class, like the European and Japanese working class, can strike at the heart of imperialism, have in their hands the key to building a counter-offensive of the world’s workers in response to the crisis and attacks of the bourgeoisie. This key is the defeat of the treacherous union bureaucracy of the North American AFL-CIO that sold out the wage, conditions, health and retirement conditions won by long struggles of the working class. They, along with the World Social Forum – Castroists, Chavistas and the fake Trotskyists, put the US working class at the feet of the imperialist Democratic Party of Clinton and Obama! It is necessary to break with the Democratic Party, to defeat to the bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO, and to mobilise a political fight of the masses, with strikes, pickets, and demonstrations against the war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and to take up the demands of immigrant workers. This is the only way for the US proletariat to be able to face the brutal attack launched by the bourgeoisie against its historic gains and living standards, defeat the imperialistic regime of the “Republicrats” and make the capitalists pay for their own crisis, opening the road to the expropriation of the expropriators!
For the independent political mobilisation of the North American working class! Down with the imperialistic regime of the “Republicrats”, killer of the people of the world and exploiter and oppressor of its own working class! Long live the May 1st political strike of the ILWU dockers against the war and the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and in defense of the rights of workers, in particular, immigrant workers! “If there is no peace, we will strike: stop the war in Iraq and Afghanistan! Defend the rights of the workers. Defend the rights of the immigrants. Close all the West Coast ports on May 1st”. The demands of the dockers, are the demands necessary to prepare and organize the counter-offensive of the North American working class!
5. For the fighting unity of the European working class!
In Europe, dockers have taken industrial action against Sarkozy’s attack on their conditions, despite and against the social pacts signed by the labor bureaucracy, showing that the French working class have returned to struggle against the V Republic. The English workers have increased their militancy as teachers have gone on strike against Brown’s New Labour government of the corrupt and parasitic British imperialistic monarchy. The working class of the rest of Europe is also beginning to fightback.
Down with the social pacts and sellout deals of the labor bureaucracies with the imperialist bourgeoisies, defending the privileges of the labor aristocracy at the expense of the majority of workers in these countries! Stop subduing the working class and the exploited to the bourgeoisie! Down the union bureaucracy of the French CGT and CDFT; of the British TUC, the Italian CGIL, the CGT and Workers’ Commissions of Spain! Down with all the labor bureaucracies!
By throwing out the treacherous union bureaucrats, the French, German, Spanish, Italian, etc workers can unite and organise the most oppressed sectors of the working class, in particular, the millions of migrant workers overexploited and oppressed by the imperialist bosses. The migrant worker youth that rose up in Cités all over France to the shout of “Every night make Paris a Baghdad” set the example. That is the way to unite the working class of the European powers with their brothers and sisters, the oppressed workers and farmers of Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America!
That is the way to organize a counter-offensive of the proletariat against the regimes and governments of the imperialist powers, so that the ghost of the socialist revolution returns to haunt the old continent.
Down the imperialist regime of the V FrenchRepublic! Down with the rotten imperialist monarchies of Spain and Britain, and the treacherous social imperialist governments of Zapatero and Brown! Down with the imperialistic regimes of Germany and Italy, all of them exploiters and killers of the peoples of the world, as well as of their own working classes!
In order to advance along this way, the working class of the European powers needs to unite its ranks with the working class of Rumania, Slovenia, of the other states of the East – sold to the imperialist powers by the Stalinist gangsters as little capitalist republics for locating new assembly plants using cheap manual labor. The first task of French workers is to take up the demand of the workers of Dacia-Renault of Rumania who went on strike for equal wages with the French workers of Renault! Without this unity, French workers will not be able to defend their present wages and past gains from the boss’s attacks, nor prevent the level of wages of the French workers from being driven down to those of Rumania.
In order to prepare and organize a strong counter-offensive, the proletariat of Western Europe needs to include in its demands the restoration of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the former degenerate/deformed workers states. They must call for the socialist revolutions to overthrow the new bourgeoisies, now in partnership with the imperialists, in the Balkan states, Eastern Europe, Russia and the republics of the former USSR. This struggle must be tied to the defence of the right to self-determination of nations in Europe and the former USSR. For the right of self-determination of the Basque and Catalan peoples oppressed by the imperialistic monarchy of the Bourbons! For the independence of Northern Ireland from the British imperialistic monarchy! For the expulsion of NATO troops from Kosovo, and for an independent, workers and socialist Kosovo! Free Chechnya from the murderous Putin and the new Great Russian bourgeoisie! For the military defeat of the counter-revolutionary ‘white’ army!
Down with NATO and all its military bases! Down with the reactionary utopia of the “European unity” of Maastricht! By raising these demands now, the workers in all the European states will bravely face the attack of their "own" imperialist bourgeoisies, defend their gains and re-open the road to revolution for the insurrectionary overthrow of the imperialist regimes and governments, and create the dictatorship of the proletariat in France, Italy, Germany, Spain, England, etc. For the Socialist United States of Europe, from Portugal and the British Isles, to the Russian steppes!
6. The entire Middle East must become the graveyard of the imperialist powers and their Zionist gendarme Israel!
The combat of the international working class and the exploited of the world has dug in itsr heels in the Middle East. The armed rebellion of the Iraqi masses in Basra and Baghdad, even though it is led by the bourgeois faction of al-Sadr, has caused a huge leap in the national war of resistance with a resounding defeat of the Iraqi mercenary army and left the US protectorate government of Maliki hanging by a thread. In March more than 1300 soldiers and police of the regime refused to “fight against the rebels”. The puppet government only survives because al-Sadr has held back and wants to get some of his forces disarmed to prevent a Vietnam-type defeat of the invading Yankee troops. On top of this victory, the Egyptian workers have made a general strike, the workers of Dubai and Iran are on the rise, and the Palestinian masses threaten to break the control of al-Fatah and Hamas, those bourgeois jailers of their own people on behalf of the Zionist state.
Those who have signed this call have already put ourselves in the trench of the exploited and oppressed masses of the Middle East. We commit all our forces to the fight for the defeat of all imperialist troops in Iraq and Afghanistan! For the victory of the heroic resistance of the Iraqi and Afghan masses!
Stop the massacre and the genocide of the Palestinian people! For the destruction of the Zionist state of Israel! For a secular, democratic and non-racist Palestinian state of the workers and poor farmers government defended by the self-organised and armed Palestinian masses!
End the subjection of the Palestinian workers and oppressed people to the bourgeois factions of Hamas and al-Fatah, jailers and slave masters of their own people! For a National Assembly of Palestine that destroys the walls, and that calls for the Palestinian people of historical Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan to unite with its class brothers and sisters in Egypt, Iran, Dubai and all the Middle East!
Out with the UN imperialist troops from the south of the Lebanon! Down the pacts between HIzbollah and the pro-imperialist client government of Siniora!
The proletariat of Egypt, rising up against the brutal dictatorship of Mubarak, is already taking the lead at the head of workers and exploited people of the Middle East, all those subjugated in Palestine by the Zionist occupier, and by the Arab sheiks and the national bourgeoisies in the other countries of the region. When the Palestinian people of Gaza demolished the wall in Rafah and made contact with the Egyptian workers, they proved that it is possible to demolish the wall despite the fact that it has been rebuilt by Mubarak and Hamas, and extend the revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggle to Palestine, Lebanon and all Middle East, the only way to destroy the Zionist state of Israel and to liberate the Palestinian nation. Now it is the Egyptian proletarians who can raze the walls that separate the Middle East masses. Down Mubarak! For the insurrectionary general strike of the workers and exploited of Egypt that overthrows that notorious regime! For a soviet, workers and socialist Egypt! For a Federation of SocialistRepublics of Workers and poor Farmers of the Middle East!
Turn the Middle East into the graveyard of the imperialist powers and their Zionist gendarme!. To do this it is necessary for the working class of the Middle East to break with all the bourgeoisies of the region, who are the junior partners of imperialism in the plundering of its nations and the killing of its peoples. Long live the anti-imperialist fight of the masses of the Middle East and its struggle to defeat the imperialist troops in Iraq! Long live the working class of Egypt, Iran, Dubai and all the Middle East!
7.To mount the counter-offensive in Latin America we must break with the bourgeoisie!
In Latin America, to be able to organize and to prepare a counter-offensive of the proletariat against the crisis of the imperialist capitalist world economy and the brutal attacks of the capitalists, it is necessry to break with the “Bolivarian Revolution” and the Castro bureaucracy that is preparing to complete capitalist restoration in Cuba. Break with all submission to the bourgeoisie, its regimes and governments, ‘Bolivarian’ or not, which the plan of the World Social Forum imposes. This is the only way for the proletariat and exploited people of Latin America to return to the revolutionary road and shake up the continent, from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, with their revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggle!
8. Immediate and unconditional freedom for the many thousands of militant workers and people who are the prisoners of bourgeois states worldwide, hostages of the working class and exploited in the hands of imperialism and the national bourgeoisies!
To prepare and to organize the counter-offensive of the world working class, we also need to fight to release the hundreds of thousand of workers and people who are jailed in the capitalist states all over the world. They are held hostage by the imperialists and the native bourgeoisies to terrorise and blackmail the proletariat. These prisoners are the best fighters of our class and we need to release them to have them in the frontlines and strengthen the counter-offensive of the workers and oppressed of the world.
For that reason, those who signed this call commit all our forces to the fight to liberate the hostages of the working class and the exploited people in the hands of the capitalist states. We must put on the banner of the world proletariat: For the freedom of the prisoners of Las Heras in Argentina, the prisoners of Guantánamo, and the prisoners of Oaxaca! For the freedom of the thousands of imprisoned fighters of the Colombian resistance in the jails of Uribe, the lackey of Bush, and his occupation army! For the freedom of the tens of thousands of tortured Palestinian political prisoners in the dungeons of the Zionist state of Israel! For the freedom of all the imprisoned fighters in the hands of Yankee imperialism and the CIA in its secret jails in Afghanistan, Iraq and many other countries!
CUBA: Down with the Castroite bureaucracy and their restorationist regime! For the triumph of the political revolution to save the worker state in decomposition from the catastrophic capitalist restoration!
9. For the political revolution in Cuba as part of the socialist revolution in Latin America and the world!
For the defence of Cuba: Down with the international counterrevolutionary restorationist bureaucracy and its policies, which aim to strangle the revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggle of the working class and exploited in Latin America!
For workers, peasants and soldiers’ armed councils to defeat the restorationist bureaucracy and turn Cuba into a link and a stronghold of Latin American and world revolution!
The signers of this call denounce and challenge the ongoing process of capitalist restoration in Cuba being pushed by the Castroite bureaucracy, and the restorationst regime already established. This regime is based on the suppression of the Latin American revolution and the subordination by Castro, the Chavistas and the World Social Forum of the emergent anti-imperialist struggle of the North American working class to the Democratic Party.
With the imposition of capitalist restoration in Cuba, imperialism, the “Bolivarian” bourgeoisies and the Castroite bureaucracy are prepared to bring about a terrible defeat to the Latin American and North American working class, rendering it inactive for some years. But it is about to learn if this gamble will pay off! Capitalist restoration in Cuba will not be peaceful, as the Castroite bureaucracy and its imperialist allies will have to overcome the revolutionary resistance of the Cuban masses with the methods of civil war. While the Latin American revolution has been contained, and the North American working class deceived and subordinated to the Democratic Party, the workers of the continent have not been smashed and removed from the scene for an historical period.
The restorationist bureaucracy that wants to become a new bourgeoisie, has already tied its fate to the “good neighbor” policy of French imperialism and entered into joint ventures in the nickel business. It has also aligned with the US imperialist Democratic Party, gambling on the presidency of Obama or Clinton which will lift the embargo and boost the process of capitalist restoration. And it has allied closely with the bourgeois regimes on the Continent with which it collaborates to suppress the revolutionary struggles of the exploited people of Latin America.
Today, the bureaucracy and its restorationist regime has allowed free access to the hotels, which have shopping malls filled with consumer goods – electric appliances, cell phones, computers, etc. – to the bureaucracy, their children and a minority of the new middle-class that work in the industry. This move aims to create a social base for capitalist restoration, and opens at the same time a new source of benefits for the bureaucrats turned would-be capitalists. Left outside this consumption are the large majority of workers and farmers who earn $13 dollars a month and who live with food rations. With these measures, the restorationist regime legitimizes and legalizes the emergent capitalist market, so that it can prepare its conversion from bureaucracy to new bourgeoisie.
Today, the defense of Cuba means to fight for the victory of the political revolution. That means to form workers, farmers and soldiers councils and the arming of the people. That is the only way to defend Cuba from imperialism and to stop the restorationist regime and its officer corps, which with Raul Castro himself controls most of the joint-ventures with imperialism. Far from defending socialism, these officers as junior partners are naturally committed to capitalism and will defend by any means these joint ventures, the market reforms and the ever-worsening social inequality.
In order to defeat the restorationist policies and the bureaucracy that apply them, these workers, farmers and soldiers' councils must be built raising on their banner the demands: Down the capitalist restorationist regime! Down with the new rich of the Castro bureaucracy! Down with social and wage inequality, down with the medals, privileges and decorations! Down with the joint ventures! For a single currency, a single economy: immediate renationalisation of oil, nickel, tourism and other joint ventures, without compensation and under workers’ control! Re-impose the monopoly of the foreign trade, the nationalisation of land, and a democratically planned economy by the armed councils of workers, farmers and soldiers, the only way to make Cuba part of the Latin American, North American and world-wide revolution.
Let's fight to stop the final blow on the historic gains of the Cuban revolution! The Cuban revolution last bastion lies in the Latin American revolution, that has been suppressed but not defeated, and in the world revolution! It is urgent to defeat the counter-revolutionary world politics of the Castro bureaucracy! Smash the “Bolivarian” regimes and governments in Latin America that expropriate and suppress the revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggle of the masses! Defeat the imperialistic regime of the US “Republicrats”!
If the Latin American revolution succeeds, the Cuban workers and farmers will find in the revolutionary struggle of the Latin American and North American working class, the solution to the shortages imposed by the Castro bureaucracy with its treacherous class collaborationist politics and “socialism in a single country”. The Argentine revolution will provide the Cuban masses with enough cereals, meat and milk to feed their children; the Brazilian and Mexican revolutions will provide the light industry; a victorious revolutionary Venezuela will supply oil. The Central American and Mexican revolution will forge the link to the millions of Latin American workers in the United States who can unite the North American working class, which can provide the latest technology and higher productivity to rescue a socialist Cuba from isolation and backwardness.
In the trenches of the struggle to the restoration of proletarian dictatorship by revolutionary methods in China and Vietnam, former worker states where capitalism has been restored by the Stalinist bureaucracy become in bourgeoisie.
10. The burning Chinese question
Capitalist restoration and the flood of transnational companies in China meant not only the enslaving of the cheap manual labor of hundreds of million workers, but also the liquidation of nationalised property in land and the monopolizing of this land as the property of the CP ex-bureaucracy transformed into a new national bourgeoisie. The expulsion of millions of farmers from the land forced them to migrate to the cities to join the army of enslaved workers. As a result much of the agricultural production of the country was destroyed. So today China must import the greater part of the foods that it consumes, which prices continue to increase.
The destruction of the nationalized property in land is the fundamental cause of the hunger and the high cost of the means of subsistence in China. For that reason, the expropriation of the transnational companies, the “red industrialists” and the new landowners, and the renationalisation and collectivization of the land, are the only way to feed properly the 1000 million of enslaved workers and destitute poor farmers.
The new bourgeoisie and the “red industrialists” of the CP, are preparing to end everything to do with the old stagnant state sector, including sacking 40 million industrial workers. If they have been delaying the launching of this attack it is only due to the fact that in addition to the unbearable cost of living that may push a generalized upheaval. Landless farmers facing these attacks are already rising up against dispossession and hunger. Workers despite the ban on strikes are increasingly taking strike action.
Thus, facing the world economic crisis that has begun, the outburst of the “Chinese volcano” of workers and farmers is in the works. This uprising workers and poor farmers will raise as their most urgent tasks: victory to the social revolution that overthrows to the new bourgeoisie and imposes the restoration of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The alternative is the worsening crisis, hunger and killing of the masses, the break up of China as it is divided again by the imperialist powers.
The internationalists that make this call are already in the trench of the working masses of China, for the overthrow of the restorationist bourgeoisie and for the re-imposition of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but this time under the leadership of the revolutionary workers and farmers soviets!
Following this path, the Chinese class working can lead the struggle of all the exploited of Asia – already breaking out with the food riots in Burma, giving an important push to the heroic Vietnamese to return to their struggle. The Vietnamese proletariat who suffered a million martyrs in defeating the Yankee invaders today are enslaved in the assembly plants of the imperialist transnational companies in joint ventures with the ex-Stalinist restorationist bureaucracy, which has restored capitalism in this former worker state. The victory of the proletarian revolution in China is also vital for the working class of North Korea, where the former Stalinist bureaucracy is looking for ways to turn itself into a new bourgeoisie through facilitating the settlement of cheap labor assembly plants for the imperialist transnationals in partnership with the pro-imperialistic bourgeoisie of South Korea.
Therefore, it is the Chinese working class that provides the key to the revolution of the exploited masses of Asia, which will settle acccounts with Japanese imperialism, exploiter and killer of the Chinese, Korean and other oppressed nations of Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Down with the new Chinese bourgeoisie and its murderous and oppressor regime of the “red industralists” of the CP! For the restoration of the dictatorship of the proletariat of the revolutionary workers and farmers soviets in China and Vietnam!
DOWN WITH THE FAKE “BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION”, EXPROPRIATOR OF THE SOCIALIST WORKERS REVOLUTION!
Break with the bourgeoisie! Down with the popular front! Stop submitting the workers to the bourgeoisie, its regimes, governments and parties!
11. Long live the uprising of the working class and exploited people of Haiti for food and against the mercenary occupation troops led by the UN to maintain “order” in the Yankee protectorate!
For the military defeat of the UN troops from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Chile, mercenaries of US imperialism!
Revolutionary internationalists, alongside the workers of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Chile, and the rest of Latin America, have an undeniable anti-imperialist and internationalist duty towards the Haitian workers. And exploited. In this Yankee protectorate, Argentinean, Brazilian, Chilean and Bolivian troops, under the camouflage of the gang of robbers in the UN, are like “gurkhas” in the service of imperialism, killing the hungry and desperate people that rise crying for “Bread!” We must fight for the military defeat of all the UN troops in Haiti, especially those of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Chile. We say clearly that any Latin American soldier who occupies Haiti is a legitimate target of the resistance and the anti-imperialist struggle of the Haitian masses to expel the invaders and to liberate their nation from imperialist yoke
12.In defense of the resistance of the Colombian masses against Uribe and Bush and against the “peace” plan of French imperialism, the “Bolivarian” bourgeoisies and the restorationist Castro bureaucracy!
The signers of this call are struggling in the trench for the defense of Colombian mass resistance, against Uribe and his murderous occupation troops and against the plan for disarming and surrendering the FARC(CRAF) impelled by the “Bolivarian” bourgeoisie, Castroite bureaucracy and French imperialism. We see the “Bolivarian” Correa saying that any entry to Ecuadorian territory by the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) militants will be considered “an act of war against Ecuador”; There we see the ministers of the “Bolivarian” Lula announcing that “if the FARC (CRAF) enters Brazilian territory, they will be met with open fire!" Down with genocide Uribe and its semi-fascist regime! Down with the plan to disarm and make surrender the FARC and the Colombian resistance!
It is imperative to unify the resistance of the urban working class with that of the poor peasants by means of those workers and peasants committees with a program calling to break with imperialism and for the expropriation of all landowners. The program has to call for the allotting of Colombian soil among the peasants and of all the territories under FARC control in the first place. It has to call for the expropriation of monopolies, bankers and the great bosses, and the re nationalisation under workers control of all the privatised companies, for decent job and wages to all the workers, etc. This is the only way for the Colombian masses to unify their resistance and prepare a worker and peasant offensive against Uribe government and his semi-fascist regime. This will open the way to the revolution and the imposition of a workers and peasants government supported in the armed and self organised masses that can break with imperialism, expropriate the landowners and give the land to the peasants
Immediate withdrawal of the Venezuelan, Ecuadorian, Peruvian and Brazilian troops deployed in the borders with Colombia to enclose FARC and force it to accept surrender, while the genocide pro US imperialism Uribe government murders at close range every working and peasant organisation confronting it and its US commanded troops! That all the worker organisations in those countries put all their strength to the task of organising and supplying the resistance against fascist Uribe; all the forces to the service of every organisation of Colombian workers and poor peasants aiming to overturn the murderous government!
13. Let us stand up together with SIDOR heroic workers, for the true nationalisation of SIDOR without compensation and under workers’ control!
The signers and supporters of this call fight to unite all of the Latin American proletariat alongside the workers of SIDOR in Venezuela, who were violently repressed by the National Guard of Chávez and who today are striking and taking the factory to nationalise it. It is necessary to unmask the deprivation and repression that the “Bolivarian” governments and the national bourgeoisies impose on their own working classes. Stand up next to the SIDOR workers, for the nationalization without compensation and under workers control of SIDOR! Neither the repressive “Bolivarian” bosses like the Techint group, nor the fraudulent fake nationalization of Chávez where he compensates the bosses with the money of the workers. No to Chavez’ collaboration with bosses to build joint ventures and his use of the National Guard to repress and defeat the heroic fight of the SIDOR workers in order to guarantee the profits of the “Bolibourgeoisie”!
For the election of delegates of all the factories and workplaces in Venezuela, one for each 100 workers, to refound the UNT hand in hand with the SIDOR workers, and to break all subordination of the working class to the Venezuelan bourgeois state and the government of Chávez!
In the trench of the Bolivian Revolution: Break with Morales government and its constitution of the transnationals and the native bourgeoisie that are plundering Bolivian wealth, a constitution that has not given the gas to the Bolivians, the land to the peasants, bread to the workers!
Break with the bourgeoisie; raise a unified workers program to fight against poverty and misery; form workers and poor peasants militias and march on Santa Cruz to smash the reactionary fascist gangs, returning to the road of workers socialist revolution! Take back the Bolivian revolution stolen from the working class by the popular front government of Morales. Morales regime represents a faction of the transnational companies allied to a “Bolivarian” bourgeoisie to control and divide the spoils of the exploitation of gas. The expropriation of the Bolivian revolution and the subduing of the working class to Morales popular front lays bare clearly the fraud of the so called “Bolivarian Revolution”.The containment of the revolution could not have happened without the bureaucratic leaders of the COB and the COR who blocked with Morales regime to expropriate and derail the revolution of workers and peasants that began in 2003-2005.
Thus, the imposition of Morales' bourgeois Constitution is intended to consolidate a new regime better serving the exploiters of the working class and the selling off of the Bolivian nation.. The lifting of the barricades and the self-organisation of the workers and peasants, has trapped the masses in the popular front, allowing the fascists to rally their counter-revolutionary forces against the working class and the exploited people.
The fight for food, land, work and national rights cannot succeed without the return to the alliance between workers, poor farmers and urban poor. But to do this, and to convince the poor peasants to break with the bourgeoisie and re-establish the peasant-worker alliance, it is necessary for the proletariat -as the Bolivian experience clearly proves- to break all ties to the bourgeoisie, throw out the treacherous leaders that betray them, and with a revolutionary program and revolutionary leadership to take their struggle onto the streets. Only this open fight can prove to the poor farmers that the proletariat is capable of overthrowing the bourgeoisie, breaking with imperialism, and expropriating the expropriators to provide the food, land and gas that the exploiters need.
Today, the political situation is marked by an enormous strain between two factions of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie of Santa Cruz prepares to vote for autonomy on 4th of May; the government of Morals that represents the ‘Bolivarian’ faction of the bourgeoisie, declares it as “unconstitutional”, but the army has declared that it will grant the referendum takes place peacefully, which shows that the bourgeois state has not broken apart and there is not any immediate danger of a war between two bourgeois camps.
In this conflict between the two bourgeois factions that has developed for more than a month, the key role is being played by the treacherous leaders who are committed to the popular front. As the conflict between the bourgeois factions developed, a big wave of protests against the rising prices of food and gas was taking place among the workers and poor farmers. But instead of unifying and organizing the struggles the miners bureaucracy kept the protests separated and disorganised.
After 9 days of a general strike in the key mining district of Huanuni, the treacherous union bosses stopped the miners from joining the demonstrations and the roadblocks and putting themselves at their head, with the argument:
“The miners cannot go to blockade because they coul be seen as partisans of the Media Luna which wants to overthrow Morales government”… when it has been and it is the same Evo Morales and the MAS who have allowed the fascist reaction in the East to raise its head! We saw it with his restoration of Reyes Villa, the prefect [governor] in Cochabamba who had been overthrown by a mass rebellion! We saw it when Morales and the MAS, backed by the class collaborationist COB leaders, did deals with PODEMOS the party of the Eastern bourgeoisie, over more than a year in the Constituent Assembly!
This politics of the class collaborationist bureaucracy is a Stalinist policy, which is designed to stop the independent mobilisation of the proletariat. It contradicts the Theses of Pulacayo adopted by the miners in 1948, that says that anyone who speaks of national unity, in a country divided by classes, is an open collaborator with the bourgeoisie. The result of this Stalinist politics led to dividing the miners around the negotiations, and resulted in impotence, isolation and demobilisation of each fight for food .
Meanwhile the bosses can fight over the shares of the business from the gas and resources, while the masses already suffering from rampant inflation, hunger and deprivation, are contained inside the popular front by the Stalinist bureaucracy of the COB, supported on the left by the POR-Lora, earning their pay by keeping the lid on the rising irruption of anger of the masses who are again primed to explode.
We must break with the government of Morales and his Constitution, the constitution of the transnationals and the the national bourgeoisie that sacks the wealth of Bolivia, and has not given gas to the people, land to the poor farmers, or bread to the workers!
Break with the bourgeoisie, raise a unified program of struggle to end the hunger and misery, form workers, poor farmers and soldiers militias to march on Santa Cruz to boycott the referéndum and smash the fascist gangs!
To go along this way it is urgent to break with the popular front, defeat the treacherous leaders, call on the poor farmers to join with workers to form militias to smash the Media Luna fascists, re-establish the peasant-worker alliance of 2003 and 2005, expropriate the landowners and expel the transnationals.
15 For the Socialist United States of South and Central America!
Under the subordination to the “Bolivarian” bourgeoisies, far from the false promises of “Latin American unity”, we are facing increasingly ferocious disputes for control of business among those capitalists allied to the different imperialist powers and their transnationals.
The liberation of the Latin American nations from the imperialist yoke as well as the unity and integration of their workers and poor peasants will never come under the leadership of the national bourgeoisies. They are tied by thousand deals to the business and interests of imperialism and its monopolies. The most those bourgeoisies may do is to negotiate over their share of the business with their imperialist masters. On the contrary, like any exploiting class, they are in terror of the anti-imperialist struggle of the masses going beyond an attack on imperialist property to take that of its junior partners, i.e. the national capitalist property. That is why; they always end up side by side with the imperialism to smash workers.
¡Down the FTAA, the FTAs, CAFTA, Mercosur and other Free Trade Agreements of the transnational companies and the national bourgeoisies, who plunder our nations and overexploit the workers!
The working class is the class that has no borders because it does not have any interest that ties it to imperialism. It has only chains to break and is the only class able to unite and to integrate the exploited and oppressed nations of the continent, overthrow the bourgeoisie, destroy the bourgeois state and expropriate the expropriators. That is the only way to end the submission of our nations to imperialism. The victorious Latin American revolution is linked to the political revolution in Cuba, which defeating the restorationist bureaucracy, becomes a bastion of the American and world revolution. Thus is opened up the creation of the Socialist United States of South and Central America, the the only possible integration favorable for workers, that is, with the working class in power organising a rational socialist plan at level of the subcontinent to use the technology, natural resources, industry and the wealth of all our nations to meet the basic needs of the working class and poor farmers.
For a revolutionary and internationalist leadership for our class!
16. For independence of the unions from the capitalist state! Down with the bureaucracy and the workers aristocracy! For a revolutionary leadership in the unions!
The fake Trotskyists who have moved to reformism, now support the bureaucracy of the statised unions or act themselves as a ‘left’ bureaucracy, putting the unions and workers organizations they lead under the interference of the bosses’ state and honoring the same legal (bourgeois) framework within which the union bureaucracies function. Against all of these traitors, we fight, firstly, for the complete and unconditional independence of the unions from the capitalist state, to turn the unions into organs of the majority of exploited masses and not organs of the workers’ aristocracy.
Down with the compulsory conciliations! Out with the bosses’ states from the workers’ organizations! Down with all the bourgeois laws that regulate how workers must organize: We, the workers, must organize ourselves as we want! We fight for the maximum workers democracy inside the unions, and against the labor bureaucracy and aristocracy. Down with the bureaucracy and labor aristocracy! Down with the compulsory deductions of union dues! Stop the union leaders’ privileges: mandated and recallable leaders at any time by the rank and file assemblies paid no more than the average wage of the workers and after fulfilling their mandate, returning to work!
For revolutionary leaders in the unions! In the epoch of imperialism, the unions cannot be politically neutral, that is to say, they cannot limit themselves to serve the daily needs of the working class. They cannot be unions of anarchists because of the manifest dominant role of the bosses state in capitalist society. They cannot be reformist unions, because the conditions of rotten imperialist capitalism leave no room for significant or lasting reforms. For that reason, either the unions become in the hands of the union bureaucracy and reformists of all kinds, a tool of the capitalist state to subordinate the workers and prevent the revolution; or, on the contrary, they can become an instrument of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat, provided they are led by a revolutionary leadership that has won its place in the struggles of the workers and exploited people.
17. For workers democracy and the self-organisation and self-determination of the masses in struggle! For the formation of workers councils as a strategics to make the proletarian revolution!
In defense of the workers democracy banned from the unions and mass fighting organizations by the reformist leaders that subordinate these organizations to the bourgeois state, its compulsory conciliations, the ministries of labor and the laws that regulate the operation of the workers organizations. Out the hands of the bourgeois state of the worker organisations! For workers democracy to guarantee the minority the right to convince the majority! To allow the majority to put its policy into action against the exploiters! For the self-determination of the organisations of the masses! For factory and self-defence committees!
Down with the worker aristocracy and bureaucracies! Down with the class collaboration pacts with the bourgeoisie and the class enemies! The development of the workers’ struggle will bring with it the development of the methods of capitalism to smash workers. As it is said in the Transitional program, the bourgeoisie will not hesitate from using, in addition to its “legal” forces of repression: fascists, paramilitary, special police gangs, and the armed thugs of the union bureaucracies As always, the reformists of all kinds, infect the consciousness of workers with the poison of pacifism, and faith in appealing to the “democratic” institutions of capitalism, its laws, courts, etc to stop repression. Against all of these traitors, we say that the working class has thelegitimate right to defend itself: Strike pickets, committees of self-defense, in preparation for the formation of workers militias and the arming of all the workers!
The signatories and proponents of this call declare that no-one can be revolutionary or a Trotskyist who does not at the onset of a pre-revolutionary situation, put at the center of their program the demand to build, extend, develop, centralize and arm its organs of self-organisation and direct democracy, that is to say, its pre-Soviet and Soviet organs, in preparation for the insurrection and the taking of the power by the proletariat.
18. For the rebirth of proletarian internationalism destroyed by social democracy, Stalinism and the deserters from Trotskyism!
The fight for class independence, for a revolutionary leadership in the unions, for the self-organisation and self-determination of the masses in struggle, can only advance under the leadership of a revolutionary international party with the revolutionary Trotskyist program that fights for the world proletariat re-conquering its international consciousness and fighting –destroyed first by social democracy and then by Stalinism, and finally by the betrayers of Trotskyism and their contemporary currents.
In the first place it is necessary to re-affirm clearly the internationalist duties and tasks of the working class in each country. The revolutionary 3rd International of Lenin and Trotsky stated: The first duty of the working class in the imperialist countries –the US, the European powers and Japan –is to raise on its revolutionary banner, the demand for the liberation of the oppressed colonial and semi colonial nations, sacked, super-exploited and facing imperialist wars. Lenin said: “A nation that oppresses another nation cannot be itself free”.
In Latin America, it is clear that the defence of Cuba against capitalist restoration, along with the fight to return to the road of revolution of the workers and poor farmers of Bolivia, are the most important internationalist tasks for the proletariat of the continent.
In Brazil, for example, the working class has as one of its most important internationalist tasks the fight for the expropriation of Petrobras – partner and cover-up of the French imperialist oil company Totalfina in Bolivia and Ecuador. And it shares with the Argentine, Chilean and Bolivian working class the duty of fighting implacably for the military defeat of the mercenary troops sent to Haiti by Lula, Morales, Bachelet and Kirchner to kill the workers and exploited masses on behalf of Yankee imperialism.
19. Down with the fake “Latin American and Caribbean Congress of Workers” convened by the COB bureaucracy, betrayers of the socialist revolution in Bolivia, and the fake Trotskyists of PSTU and CONLUTAS in Brazil!
The working class of the American continent urgently needs to break with the bourgeoisies, and in order to do that with the treacherous bureaucracy, and with the fake Trotskyists who provide a left cover for the Castroites and Stalinists as the ‘left wing’ of the World Social Forum. Only then will it be able to unite its ranks across national borders and centralize its struggles to defeat imperialism, capitalist restoration in Cuba, and the national bourgeoisie in every country from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.
The fake Trotskyists such as the PSTU of Brazil, organize congresses like the “Congress of Latin American and Caribbean Workers” next July, convened by CONLUTAS, the Batay Ouvriye of Haiti, and the class collaborationist leaders of the COB of Bolivia –supporters of the government of Morales that has expropriated the workers and poor farmers revolution. This Congress deceives the workers claiming that it will advance the unity of the vanguard of the working class of the continent.
Those who sign and support this call, state that this “congress” will do the opposite. It will be a new obstacle to the struggle to unite the ranks of the working class in the continent. First, it says nothing about the burning Cuban question. It does not call for the development of the Latin America revolution, or a political revolution in Cuba to stop capitalist restoration.
Second, how is it possible to unite the ranks of the Latin American working class, without breaking from the COB bureaucracy has subordinated Bolivian proletariat to Morales bourgeois government, and accuses the striking miners of Huanuni of “playing into the hands of fascism”?
How can the Latin America working class unite their ranks under the leadership of the LIT, which refuses to call for the defeat of the Brazilian, Argentine, and Chilean troops who are suppressing the food riots of the masses in Haiti? Instead, they do the opposite asking workers from those countries to put pressure on the “Bolivarian” governments of Lula, Kirchner, Bachelet and Morales to “withdraw” their troops from Haiti!
How can Latin American workers unite behind the PSTU, that says to the Brazilian workers to pressure Lula for “plebiscites” to defend the rights of workers –when the only thing that this does, as Trotsky commented, is boost the paper-making industry.
This Congress will not raise the demand “Down the union bureaucracies”. Thus it will not even unite the automobile and metal workers of Brazil with those of Argentina. The imperialist transnationals have concentrated their automobile production in these two countries to make MERCOSUR a world automobile powerhouse based on the subordination of Brazilian workers to CUT -that enforces wage increases linked exclusively to productivity- and Argentine workers submitted to the UOM and SMATA unions whose union bosses enforce poverty wages and a capped wage bargaining to face hunger and a skyrocketing inflation.
This Congress will not call on Brazilian workers to fight for the expropriation of Petrobras and its French partner Totalfina in Bolivia and Ecuador, without which it is impossible to unite Brazilian workers with their Ecuadorian and Bolivian brothers and sisters.
There is no chance that the convenors of the “Congress” will demand that the workers organizations become independent of the state. They will not reject employers compulsory deductions of union dues, or fight for mandatable or recallable leaders, who could not be re-elected and must return to work, as elementary measures against the bureaucratisation of the unions.
They cannot make these demands since it would be suicidal for the COB bureaucracy that collaborates with Morales, or the PSTU that has turned CONLUTAS into a brand new stateside union upon its creation, in which they became a ready made ‘left’ bureaucracy (this current has been leading some big unions since the nineties).
Thus the CONAT (the founding congress of CONLUTAS) in May 2005, was presided over by two representatives of the restorationist Castro bureaucracy, James Petras and Celia Hart Santamaría who sang the praises of the “Bolivarian Revolution”. Sitting next to the leaders of the PSTU, these “Bolivarians” were granted many hours to speak and poison the consciousness of the delegates, while the revolutionary left opposition, that fought for a revolutionary regrouping of the Brazilian proletarian vanguard, had only one minute to display its positions in a plenary session.
For that reason, it is obvious that far from organizing a congress of workers, with delegates chosen by the rank and file in democratic assemblies, the conveners are preparing a “congress” of leaders, behind the back of the ranks, where everything will be negotiated and decided beforehand in closed meetings.
In short, this “Congress” will not serve to unite the ranks of Latin American workers since it does not fight, facing the current crisis and looming catastrophe, for the socialist revolution as the immediate task. That is, it does not call for the transformation of the revolts of the workers and exploited people against rising prices today, into a workers counter-offensive that opens the road to the socialist revolution, as the only way that workers can defeat imperialism and win the bread, land and work that they desperately need. and liberate our nations from the imperialist yoke.
It will be a Congress of the “left” union bureaucracy preparing itself to suppress and defeat all the radicalized fights of the working class against the “Bolivarian” regimes. Instead they will lead the workers to pressure these governments to “re-distribute the wealth” when it is obvious that the only things that they “re-distribute” are… shortages, inflation, hunger, sackings, poverty wages, beatings and jail for the exploited people.
The signatories o this document sound a warning to the proletarian vanguard of the continent about the massive deception being prepared by the fake Trotskyists, and call on them to oppose the “Congress” of the “left” bureaucracy and fight for an International Conference of revolutionary workers organizations and principled Trotskyists on the basis of the programmatic points developed here, so giving a real leap to the struggle to unite the ranks of the workers of the American continent.
20. In defense of the class morality and principles of the proletariat!
We are committed to the defense of the morality and the principles of our class, and against the infamous methods of the Stalinists, social democracy, and the deserters of Trotskyism, who persecute, assault, slander and attack the revolutionary currents in the organizations of masses where they are in the leadership.
For example, the Lambertists falsely slandered the Hungarian revolutionary leader Varga, accusing him of being an “agent of the CIA" in the middle of the workers’ revolution in 1956, an attempt to suppress political differences. We saw this current do the same against Ricardo Napurí in Peru. We saw the POR-Lora in Bolivia blaming Juan Pablo Bacherer, a leader of its own current that had political differences, of being a police agent, using that slander to expel him.
Finally, in Argentina in 2002, the Workers’ Party (PO) of Altamira, beat and handed over to the bosses’ police and justice system, Juan “Pico” Muzzio, leader of LOI (CI) – Workers’ Democracy. These are some of the many examples of the ways in which the renegades of Trotskyism have broken with the elementary principles and morality of our class, and have taken over the role of the Stalinists in the use of these infamous methods.
21. In defense of the democratic centralism!
The proposers and signatories of this Call, recognize ourselves as the defenders of Leninist democratic centralism, as expressed in point 10) of the “Declaration of the Four: On the necessity and the principles of a new international”, a bloc propelled by Trotsky an the Bolshevik Leninists in August 1933 which says:
“Party Democracy is a necessary prerequisite for the healthy development of revolutionary proletarian parties on a national as well as an international scale. Without freedom of criticism, without the election of functionaries from top to bottom, without the control of the apparatus by the rank and file, no truly revolutionary party is possible.
The need for secrecy under conditions of illegality changes completely the forms of the internal life of a revolutionary party and makes wide discussions and elections difficult, if not altogether impossible. But even under the most difficult conditions and circumstances, the basic demands of a healthy party regime retain their full force: honest information about the party, freedom of criticism and a real inner unity between the leadership and the party majority. Having suppressed and crushed the will of the revolutionary workers, the reformist bureaucracy turned the Social Democracy and the trade unions into impotent bodies despite their memberships numbering in the millions. Having stifled inner democracy, the Stalinist bureaucracy also stifled the Comintern. The new International, as well as the parties adhering thereto, must build their entire inner life on the basis of democratic centralism.”
We fight to build an international center to regroup principled Trotskyists according Leninist democratic centralism. We say that any international democratic centralism, far from perfect as it could be -as it depends upon the degree of programmatic agreement accomplished- is nevertheless a million times superior to the most perfect democratic centralism that exists in any isolated national group whose fate, sooner or later, must be one of degeneration.
The crisis of mankind boils down to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership of the proletariat.
22. 70 years since the Founding Congress of the IV International! Take back the legacy and program of 1938 from the impostor Celia Hart Santamaría and the betrayers of Trotskyism!
The 2 of September, 2008 will mark 70 years since the founding congress of the IV International. The deserters of Trotskyism and the impostor Celia Hart Santamaría will try to usurp that day to promote the falsification of the legacy of Trotskyism to cover up their betrayal of the proletariat and in particular, the restoration of capitalism in Cuba.
Against this treachery, we call for a campaign in defense of IV International of 1938, denouncing all the impostors and renegades of Trotskyism. The 2nd of September is the day on which we will proclaim the continuity of the legacy of the 1938 International, that is in the hands of those who pass the acid tests of world class struggle and choose clearly the side of revolution and socialism! The fight for the defense of the IV International of 1938 is today inseparable from the struggle for the political revolution against capitalist restoration in Cuba!
The best tribute that we can make to the IV International of 1938, and to its theoretical and programmatic legacy, is the fight to build an International Trotskyist Center dedicated to “retake the course” that was lost as of 1940 with the murder of comrade Trotsky comrade and the refusal, on the part of the leaders of the US SWP and the European Trotskyists, to immediately found a strong international center as the only means of guiding the revolutionary struggle during and in the aftermath of the 2nd Imperialist World War.
This was the only way to prevent the degeneration in the IV International that began in 1946 into a federation of groups and national leaders who, necessarily, ended up degenerating in centrism, and then into open opportunism.
The fight against the fake Trotskyists is inseparable from the struggle for a new regrouping of the internationalist revolutionary forces. The betrayers of Trotskyism constitute the “left wing” of the World Social Forum –a collection of
“Bolivarian” bourgeois, Social Democrats, recycled Stalinists, Castroites, and labor bureaucracies of all kinds.
Today, the “founders” of the World Social Forum - like Lula, Chávez, Evo Morales and others, are at the heads of bourgeois regimes and governments attacking the working class and the exploited people in Latin America. Alongside them, a section of the fake Trotskyists, headed by the Mandelists and the impostor Celia Hart Santamaría, have congealed around the parties of the “new” type like the PSOL, the MST of Argentina, ‘Marea Socialista’ of Venezuela, etc., continue to openly promote the World Social Forum, and directly supports Chávez, Evo Morales, Correa, and other “Bolivarian Presidents”.
Another sector of the fake Trotskyists, such as PSTU/ LIT, the UIT-CI, the MAS of Argentina, etc., try to move on the “left”, formally outside the World Social Forum. But, not much long ago they used to boast about having been present at its founding, and actually they participated in the meetings of the WSF. They have called for a “critical” vote to Lula- as did the PSTU in the second round of the presidential election of 2002- and the LIT voted also "critically" for Morales and Chavez, while demanding that they “advance towards socialism”.
We saw the LIT travel with a contingent of Spanish union leaders to the Gaza Strip on 1st May 2007, to meet with the unions led by el Fatah –the jailers of the Palestinean people on behalf of the Zionist occupiers. Moreover, the police of the National Palestinian Authority guarded this contingent! The leaders of the LIT called on the Spanish workers to put pressure on the social imperialistic government of Zapatero to send “humanitarian aid” through the blockade of Gaza at the same time that the Palestinian masses were rising up against el Fatah and its collaborationist police and intelligence services.
This faction of the fake Trotskyists try to impose a “Pivertist” politics of putting pressure on bourgeois governments so that they take “progressive measures”. They falsify the Trotskyist tactic recommended in the Transitional Program of demanding that reformist leaders of the workers break with the bourgeoisie and lead the fight for a workers and farmers government, and instead demand that the bourgeoisie “breaks” with itself!
They are the sector that having betrayed Trotskyism in the past, have usurped the name of Trotskyism and integrated the World Social Forum legitimating it as its "left wing". Today, trying to appear as disassociated from this Forum and even calling for the “reconstruction of the IV International”, as the LIT does, they act as a left flank of the “Bolivarian” regimes and governments. But they continue being the faithful militants of the World Social Forum which was, and continues to be, “its” true International, no matter how hard they try to hide it
That is why the signatories of this call declare that no one fights the World Social Forum who does not fight its “left wing” that gave it a left wing legitimacy yesterday, and that today tries to protect the “Bolivarian” governments from the rising anger of the masses by intercepting it on the “outside” with ‘Pivertist’ pressure politics.
That is why we support the sagacious cry of the Chilean workers and the youth: “the red pacos [Communist party ‘police’] are the truly dangerous cops!”. They are “dangerous” because they are the thugs of the Chilean CP that tries to contain the anger of the masses directed at the civic-military regime of Bachelet as part of the ‘left wing’ of the World Social Forum in Chile that supports the government.
We affirm that the most urgent task today is to regroup a revolutionary internationalist vanguard through the fight for breaking the world proletariat from the influence of the “left wing” of the World Social Forum.
23. For a revolutionary internationalist bloc to convene an International Conference of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary workers’ organizations
The crisis and offensive of the capitalist imperialist system has become a crisis of the whole of humanity, which in the last instance, is the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletariat. If the proletariat does not end the catastrophe facing the planet, then the imperialists will try to solve their economic crisis by means of wars and barbarism, risking the destruction of humanity.
The crisis of leadership cannot be resolved without settling accounts with the representatives of the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ – the collection of recycled Stalinists, Social Democrats and bourgeois ‘Socialists’ – but most critically the renegades of Trotskyism that have trampled the program of the IV International of 1938 under the feet of the treacherous leaders, labor aristocracies and bureaucracies all over the world. A revolutionary regrouping of the healthy forces of Trotskyism and the of other revolutionary workers organizations, is necessary and urgent.
The reformists have proved that they cannot meet even the most mínimum needs of the masses, much less lead the uprisings and revolutions that must come. Rotten capitalism cannot stop the masses from starving.
The urgent task of the moment is for a new Zimmerwald and Kienthal to regroup the global forces of revolutionary internationalists. That is why we put forward the 23 points as our responses to the critical acid tests which these revolutionary forces must pass in the regroupment process: the treacherous ‘Bolivarian Revolution’; capitalist restoration in Cuba; the war in the middle East; the tasks of internationalists on the Colombian, Venezuelan, Bolivian question, etc. Let us build a revolutionary internationalist bloc to summon an International Conference that is the rallying point to advance the struggle to defeat the treacherous leaders and the struggle to build a new party of World Socialist Revolution.
The time of national programs is finished. Only an international center can learn and apply the revolutionary lessons from the acute events of the international class struggles, and guide the proletarian vanguard in each country according to the interests of world working class, overcoming the national pressure on the proletariat in any single country. The dissolution of the international center of the IV International by the leaders of the US SWP in 1940, left each national section exposed to the terrible pressures of the national conditions in each country – of inter-imperialist World War and the defence of the USSR – and marked the beginning of the crisis and the degeneration of the IV International founded on 1938.
Today, it is necessary to build a new Zimmerwald and Kienthal that defends the continuity of the theory, revolutionary strategy and program of the Founding Congress of the IV International of 1938, and is prepared to challenge for the leadership of the exploited masses on the planet, so to make its revolutionary program, in the next period, part of the objective factor of world proletarian vanguard.
The capitalist imperialist system has once more run aground on the rocks of a global economic and financial crisis. Under these crisis conditions, an International Conference of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary workers’ organizations, must be our primary objective. The discussion and debate among all internationalist currents arround the acid tests we propose we expect will prove who are the revolutionary internationalists, and who are part of the reformist life-support system of the rotten capitalist imperialism.
The laws of history are stronger than any apparatus. In 1989-1991, we witnessed the total bankruptcy of the centrists and opportunists who, in the name of Trotksyism and the IV International, allied with the Stalinists who were restoring capitalism in the degenerated workers states. There is not the slightest doubt that, in the heat of the current events of the world class struggle and facing new crises and mass uprisings, the deserters of Trotskyism with their openly reformist politics, will betray again and again. Against this, it is necessary for the revolutionary internationalists to intervene now in all the struggles with the program of the IV International Congress of 1938, and transform the struggles of the Cuban workers and poor farmers against the capitalist restoration, the heroic resistance of the Iraqi, Palestinian masses and all the Middle East masses, and the struggles of the US workers the United States and other imperialistic powers, etc.
Our purpose then is to fire up an revolutionary internationalist bloc to fight for a new Zimmerwld and Kienthal International Conference that can serve as the launch pad for an enormous revolutionary force of the masses that will, in last instance, with its struggles and victories, determine the course of the future of humanity.