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Libya: Neither CNT of Qadafist generals, managers of the ENI and oil companies, nor Federation of billionaire-sheikhs and slaveholder bosses! The exploiters and their agents ought to get out and away NOW from Libya forever! Provisional revolutionary Government of the factory committees and workers militias that neither sell themselves to the CNT nor give in their weapons! After the overthrow of Qadafy, the working class has returned to factories to produce. In the oil wells, the construction, the ports, the steelworks and the light industries, again the workers have started to work, this time grabbing the firearms that they seized to fight against Qadafy. In each factory and workplace people count dozens of labor martyrs of the revolution. This proves -against all the reformist scoundrels that smeared the militias saying they were "NATO ground troops", not workers-, an undeniable fact: the heart of the revolution was and still is the Libyan working class which conquered their armament defeating Qadafy’s army. They are, the Libyan revolutionary workers, who now again turn on the ovens of the steelworks of Misratah and coordinating with the militias, get the necessary inputs for production, organize it and begin to expel the Qadafist bosses and managers from the companies’ boards. Also they start educating in the schools and cleansing services in the cities and re-establish all the public services. The port workers of Tripoli are organized, staging strikes with armed pickets, raising their list of demands and calling to coordinate all workers, example that today Misratah port and metallurgical workers are following, beginning to put in place their own factory committees. Thus the Libyan exploited have begun to take the resolution of the crisis in their hands, setting in motion the whole production. The workers, with their demands, are carrying the revolutionary struggle against Qadafy to each factory, putting in question the property of capitalists. The Libyan masses did this despite and against all reformist leaderships which mounted a international fence around them telling the world working class that the revolutionary militias were "armed by imperialism", so no one wanted to defend them. They did, as always, everything in their hands to prevent the working class from taking power, and the world masses from beginning to fight like in Libya. Two powers face each other in Libya today. On the one hand, there is the power of the Libyan working class and exploited, who in their heroic fight for bread, jobs and national independence dismantled the police, destroyed the army –conquering their armament-, reduced to smithereens the foundations of the bourgeois state and are now setting armed factory committees together with the militias. On the other hand, there is the power of the bourgeoisie, the Qadafist generals and politicians that today comprise the National Council of Transition (CNT), absolutely -lackeys of imperialism. Today they still concentrate under their command the control of the main Libyan productive activities, as is the case of oil, which they are delivering to multinationals such as the French Total and the Italian ENI… more than 300 thousand barrels per day. Workers, weapons in hand return to the factories, and this is irreconcilable with the bourgeois order. This leads to a permanent tension between the two powers: that of the exploiters of the CNT, lackeys of imperialism, that have expropriated, for now, the triumph of the revolution; and that of the working class, its armed factory committees and its militias. Due to the betrayal of the reformist leaderships, which encircled and isolated the Libyan militias by slandering them, and submitted the exploited in Egypt and Tunisia to the "democratic" traps; and despite the revolution in Libya having gone such a very long way, the masses have not yet seized power for themselves. It is a fact that capitalism does not prepare them to do so and the masses -not having at their head a revolutionary party that works for centralizing their organizations and takes them to seize power-, do not arise, even though they are armed and have the power to their fingertips. That is what transforms the strength of the masses, the excessive confidence in their armament, in their weakness, since the key levers of power remain in the hands of the bourgeoisie. At the same time as the masses press it without taking power, the CNT gives them minor concessions, while ensuring the imperialism the sacking of essentials of Libyan wealth, and tries to mend the shaky institutions of the bourgeois state. To get up to the slightest of concessions, such as the wage increase conquered by the workers of Misratah, they had to carry out a revolution, overthrow Qadafy and leave thousands of martyrs on the Libyan soil. This situation cannot be maintained for much longer. Either the working class and the exploited are made of power, or the bourgeoisie, servant to imperialism, if it manages to impose the deceptions and conspiracies against the masses, will reconstitute a regular army that will soak Libya in a new bloodbath, imposing a regime equal to or worse than Qadafy’s. Not to pay for the global economic crisis of its own system, imperialism has concentrated its forces in massacring the Syrians, to prevent the working-class from seizing power and in order to give a warning to the exploited masses of North Africa, the Middle East and the world that revolted against hunger, unemployment and oppression. While the workers refuse to surrender their weapons, the CNT, lackey of imperialism, conspires to disarm the masses and destroy the power of the working class The bourgeoisie of the CNT along with their Qadafist generals and politicians, all of them lackeys of imperialism, has made a thousand attempts made to disarm to the masses. All their plans have failed, however, because the masses refuse to surrender their weapons. First, the imperialist bourgeoisie wanted to convince the exploited of the world that it had been them who ended with Jackal Qadafy, in an attempt to expropriate the masses’ revolutionary triumph. However, Hillary Clinton had not finished to deliver her statement about "the NATO forces” having “killed Qadafy", when the truth was revealed, and the images of the execution of Qadafy at the hands of the revolutionary militias began to circulate throughout the world. When the lie was exposed and to prevent that the exploited of the world could follow the example of the Libyan masses, the imperialist staffs and their lackeys of the CNT announced that those who had killed Qadafy would be tried. This attempt also failed. Those who executed Qadafy were considered as heroes by the vast majority of the Libyan masses. At that time sectors of the global working class also raised that they had to fight as in Libya, like the Nigerian masses which revolted for bread, shouting: "Get away Jonathan, or die as Qadafy!". The bourgeoisie continued trying to disarm the working class and the exploited. With this goal the CNT announced an ultimatum for the masses handing over their weapons, giving them a due date: December 20 last year. However, once again the exploited refused to disarm and hand over their weapons to the CNT, whose member had never put a foot on the battlefield. Today before the failure of its attempts to disarm the masses, CNT’s policy -with the guide of imperialism- to destroy the power of the exploited consists in splitting and separating the militias from the bulk of the working class and their organizations. To do so, it promotes a policy of co-option of the militias to corrupt them, granting a compensation of between 2,000 and 4,000 dollars to each militiamen that declares his agreement to the CNT as legitimate power and admits to be under its command. The CNT needs to set up a regular army to rebuild the foundations of the bourgeois state, and for this, it offers $ 500 per month to each militiamen, with the condition of exercising one day a week as a soldier, and the rest of the week stay at home as a reservist. This plan aims at the gradual disarmament of the masses; because the soldier, once he accepts the plan to be a reservist, would not be able to carry his gun home any more, but should leave it in the barracks under the control of the Qadafist generals. The CNT, with just a handful of thousands of dollars, wants to corrupt the militias, while the transnationals to which this Government of Qadafist elements serves steal billions of dollars of the oil income. As the same Libyan workers say, it is as if "a thief, after stealing 42 years with Qadafy, wanted to return you a few coins of the spoils". Against the attempt to co-opt the militia leaders the latter should follow the example of the thousands of militiamen that do not subordinate to the CNT. CNT Hands off the workers organizations and militias! Our weapons will not be surrendered! The blood spilt by the martyrs will not be negotiated! Against the attempts of corrupt leaders of militias: you have to choose, through assemblies, recallable and rotating rank and file delegates! Everything that our struggle draws from the millionaires of the CNT, must be distributed democratically in assemblies of the factory committees, mass organizations and militias! Weapons are for defending the decisions of the worker assemblies! The CNT applies a policy of popular front, trying to numb the masses on democratic promises, as the announcement of elections for next July, just as they did in Tunisia, or giving secondary "concessions". The masses are fighting with strikes and demonstrations, weapons in hand, to get their demands fulfilled. In so doing they destabilize the Government of the CNT, the Administration and the normal functioning of the State and become impossible to control. CNT’s policy of deception and co-optation seeks to break the ranks of the working class, separate the militias of the exploited masses and advance in recomposing the bourgeois state. Once this is achieved - if the CNT manages to impose it - the bourgeoisie will not hesitate to implement counter-revolutionaries blows to liquidate the left wing of the Libyan masses, i.e. to smash the sector that does not subordinate to the bourgeois plan. But the vast majority of the revolutionary masses are not willing to disarm and, indeed, with their struggle, they confront the CNT every day. The crisis of the Libyan State and the disputes among the different fractions of the regional bourgeoisie to control the revolutionary masses and for the national income Both the CNT and the regional bourgeoisies of the whole Libya have the same objective: disarming the militias and stabilizing a bourgeois State that allows themselves to continue with the over-exploitation of the labor movement and the sacking of the nation for the sake of the transnational imperialists; in other words, both the CNT and the so-called regional "tribal chiefs", all of them billionaires and Qadafist, seek to defeat the revolution and restore the capitalist social order. Before the revolution, Qadafy was who delivered earnings and disciplined the bourgeois fractions in the Libyan regions. Initially he haggled for a slice of imperialist oil income to their masters, and in recent years, as every bourgeois nationalist government, became its agent direct. Given the impossibility of the CNT disarming the masses and destroying the dual power for now, the regional bourgeoisie want to show imperialism that they are which can control and disarm the militias, and so negotiate directly with imperialism their slice of the business. Speaking of "Federation, democracy and equality", these "heads of the tribes", true billionaire-sheikhs who were one man with Qadafy, try to turn Libya into a Federation, dividing it into three regions, each with its own local army: Tripolitania, where political power resides, and there are the main ports; Fezzan, where the businesses are concentrated as well as the slave labor force market; and Cyrenaica, essentially the home of oil. For that reason, it was the bourgeoisie of "Cyrenaica", where 70 per cent of the Libyan oil is produced and whose main city is Benghazi, which first spoke out to demand autonomy. This bourgeoisie, composed of politicians and businessmen who were former members of Qadafy’s circle, met to declare the "autonomy" of the region. But this "Council of Cyrenaica" was reviled by revolutionary militias, which marched to the place where the “Council” had gathered and burned the property to the cry of "thieves and corrupted!", exposing the tale of "democracy and equality". Without expropriating the oil that the transnationals steal, there is no "democracy" or "equality", or bread, or jobs! The masses continue their revolutionary struggle because the demands that sparked their revolt against Qadafy are still pending. The revolutionary crisis and the gaps in the heights remain open in Libya. Neither CNT of Qadafist generals, managers of the ENI and oil companies, nor Federation of billionaire-sheikhs and slaveholder bosses! The exploiters and their agents ought to get out and away NOW from Libya forever! Provisional revolutionary Government of the factory committees and workers militias that neither sell themselves to the CNT nor give in their weapons! The CNT attempts to expropriate our revolution, making us believe that only it can "manage the country's economy and establish international relations". They want to make the masses believe that without the CNT, foreign companies "will not help us", and that it is therefore "indispensable" to manage the country. This is the way! We must generalize factory committees all over Libya that will stand up to produce under the control of the workers! The bourgeoisie of the CNT, to the back of the exploited, places again Qadafist bosses and managers in the companies’ boards, but they are expelled by the workers of Misratah, which, retaining their weapons, are resolutely developing assemblies with direct democracy. Out with the murderous Qadafist bosses and board directors in all the Libyan companies! Worker boards elected in assemblies! For worker control of the entire production! To conquer bread, health, education, jobs, national independence, and all the demands of the exploited, they must begin by expropriating the oil and putting the economy to function under workers control. The CNT and the bourgeoisie want to enforce the "sacred" right to private property by saying that "the Qur'an forbids stealing". The only thieves here are the imperialists and the bourgeoisie who steal the oil and all the wealth we workers produce in Libya! We must regain that we stole! While the CNT says that there are no resources, it is exporting billions of dollars in oil for the transnational imperialists, and the exploited are condemned to starvation, unemployment and misery! A single class, a single fight all over North Africa, the Middle East and the world! Our class sisters and brothers in Egypt and Tunisia, by overthrowing Mubarak and Ben Ali, provided us the path of our struggle against the dictator Qadafy. Without that help, the counter-revolutionary armies of Tunisia and Egypt would have not hesitated in giving their aid to Qadafy and crushing our revolution. The Libyan revolution is one link in the single chain of revolutions across North Africa and the Middle East, where the exploited masses rose up against the starvation and misery they were condemned to by the capitalist parasites. Imperialism and their lackey governments try desperately to defeat and crush the revolution. The bloody massacre that today butcher al Assad, on account of imperialism, is downloading on the Syrian masses, seeks to curb the revolutionary chain of North Africa and the Middle East, and is therefore also a counter-revolutionary coup against the revolution in Libya, seeking to prevent it to expand to the entire region. To be able to come to the aid of their Syrian class brothers and sisters, the Libyan masses must defeat the CNT, expropriate imperialism and seize power. A single class, a single fight in the region! Misratah metallurgical workers have called to all workers of the world to follow suit and face their bosses’ governments and regimes to overthrow them, fighting for real socialism. This appeal must be taken in their hands by the port workers of Oakland returning to set up the movement against the war in United States; by the workers of Greece and Spain, who are imposed the same labor casualization enforced by Qadafy. The demands of the workers of Misratah are the same as those of all the workers of the world. Let’s stand up alongside the Syrian masses! We must break the siege imposed against the heroic Syrian masses! That the martyred Palestinian masses get up again, now that they are once more under attack by the policeman of imperialism, the Zionist fascist State of Israel! For the military defeat of US imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan! For international labor brigades to go and combat in Syria, sent from the Egyptian unions, from the revolutionary Tunisia, from Europe, United States and around the world! Let socialist revolution in North Africa and the Middle East attain victory! That the European working classes stand up, untying the handcuffs imposed on them by the trade union bureaucracy and the reformist left! Down with Maastricht’s Europe, down with Merkel, Sarkozy, the Bourbon monarchy and the rest of imperialist butchers! Down with Putin and other murderers and lackeys of imperialism in Eastern Europe! The enemy has already been marked by the American vanguard youth and working class: it is a 1% of a global finances oligarchy, which throws all its crises over the working class and the oppressed peoples of the world. People have already fought for and painted on the walls in the streets of Misratah: "Today in Libya, tomorrow in Wall Street!" Now is the time to regroup forces of the internationalist revolutionaries within the world proletariat. For an International Conference of the principled Trotskyists and the revolutionary worker organizations! The leaders of all reformist organizations of the world, in the name of "socialism" have risen against the revolution in Libya and across North Africa, building around it a huge fence of slander, back stabbing, betrayals and deception. They are trying that the working class does not take power and the exploited masses of the world do not follow the revolutionary path outlined by the Libyan working class. Thus reformist leaderships have subjected the working class to its own bourgeoisie. In Germany, they said that German workers “must not pay the Greek crisis". In Greece the workers were told that they had to "blame the Germans" for the crisis. In England the immigrants were blamed for the crisis, and the union bureaucracies and worker aristocracies raised the slogan: "English jobs for the English!” Thus the social imperialist parties and the renegades of Trotskyism took care from the left of their own bourgeoisie’s pocket while the imperialist governments, with money stolen from the workers and the exploited masses, saved the bankers from their own crisis. From their comfortable armchairs and luxurious rooms, those rascals claim that the problem is that the masses of the Maghreb and the Middle East "have no Socialist consciousness". Their cynicism has no limits! What “socialist conscience” do they want the exploited of the region to have? On behalf of "socialism" the worst abuses against the working masses were committed. In Qadafy’s “Socialist companies”, as in the "Socialist Port Company", workers worked twelve hours per day, with miserable wages, destroying their health, without any rights, with a refrigerator for 2,000 workers and outdoor locker rooms. Ju Hintao and all mandarins of the Chinese PC, spokesmen for the "market socialism", are who guarantee the imperialist transnationals millions of slave laborers that produce in the worst conditions of maquila (sweatshops) and if they rebel, they are crushed to blood and fire. These same "Communist" bosses, together with butcher Putin, are arming to the teeth "Socialist" al - Assad, to help him do the "dirty work" -crushing the revolutionary masses of Syria on account of imperialism,. The Castro brothers are restoring capitalism in Cuba in the name of "socialism", laying off a million workers, accusing them of being "holigans". The "21st century socialism" of the Bolivarians is nothing more than starvation, misery and massacres against the workers, and super profits for the transnationals. All this is supported and legitimized from the "left" by the same "Messrs. leaders" who today complain of "the masses’ backward consciousness", when they have liquidated the fourth international, the party of the World Socialist Revolution. Seeing the response of the masses to the attack by capitalism in crisis, the reformists understood very well that their role was to save Capital from the hatred of the masses, because thus they were also saving their own skin. Here and there the onslaught of the masses, with the spirited Chilean youth and workers, with the movement of the “indignados” in Spain and United States, with the Greek workers calling to defeat the government and the murderous regime of Papandreou, etc., tended to break the siege of the treacherous leaderships. It was there that all leaderships concentrated to save the life of bankrupt capital. They did so with the Greek Communist Party breaking the heads of the working class to defend the bourgeois Parliament; struggling to prevent the American youth and working class from occupying Wall Street; drawing out of the scenery the Spanish indignados; and putting the European proletariat to plea as a beggar, begging for soothing the harsh measures of the imperialist governments. These treacherous leaderships held parliamentary diversions that were imposed in the revolutions of Tunisia and Egypt. And in places where imperialism started counter-revolutionary massacres, as in Yemen and Bahrain, they kept a complicit silence. Now, after leaving the imperialists a free hands to plan a massacre in Syria, kept a thunderous, cynical and despicable silence, that creates conditions for Assad to end his quelling the masses of North Africa and the Middle East, that today fight to the last drop of blood in the streets of Homs, Deraa and Damascus, etc. The huge working-class and socialist revolutions of the North Africa and Middle East were diverted, and in some cases expropriated with siren calls of "democratic" bourgeoisie and parliamentarian breakthroughs. But let us not deceive ourselves. The "CNT" and their derisible and fraudulent elections were called and supported by the social imperialist left. This, far from proposing the only possible way out of the revolutionary processes, i.e., the seizure of power, devoted himself to preach that everything would be solved by voting, and chattered about the "democratic revolutions" and "spring of peoples". But the "spring of peoples" is of no good in Syria, or against the Fascist sables in Bahrain and Yemen, or against counter-revolutionary coups by the military junta in Egypt, no less against new bombings and massacres in Gaza. These are traitors who, while they promise victories to the masses, will only deliver milestones of defeat. With these leaderships the working class cannot fight, much less draw lessons from their defeats. A new historical period has opened in 2007-08, the agonizing crisis of global capitalism. Where the bourgeoisie and imperialism have the upper hand, the counter-revolution comes and the sables of fascism appear. The proletariat needs a program and a leadership to expropriate the expropriators and seize power. This is the task of the Trotskyists of the FLTI. In their bout for bread and against their unheard-of suffering, the masses identify with certainty their enemy. Here and there they have been attacking and will continue attacking the Citadel of power. No party called the masses to perform such actions. Just the opposite. Today in Europe, where the proletariat suffered a brutal attack, the reformist parties called for small peaceful struggles of pressure, begging that the lion did not eat the deer; i.e. that the banker and the slave-owner bosses do not oppress or sacrifice the workers. The European working class is in bad condition, it now loses all its historical gains, because it has not taken power, and its treacherous leaderships prevent it from fighting for power.
Capitalism must die and for that to be accomplished, the treacherous leaderships that claim to speak in the name of the proletariat should be brought to the dustbin of history. Now is the time to regroup forces of the internationalist revolutionaries of the world proletariat. In this counter-revolutionary counteroffensive of imperialism, which focuses on Syria and is suffered by the working class of the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and the rest of the world, it becomes more imperative than ever to break the isolation of the forces that country to country are placing ourselves in the trench of revolution. From the FLTI we call to break this isolation. In the latest proletarian fighting in United States and Europe, in the Socialist Revolution of Syria, Libya, two theories and two programs are tested. On one side, the programs of class collaboration and subjugation of the working-class to its executioners, and on the other, in the opposite barricade, the Socialist Revolution and the international unity of the working class. Now is time to centralize the revolutionary forces at an International Conference of the principled Trotskyist and revolutionary worker organizations. All national isolation only serves to bring the working class to the feet of its own bourgeoisie. With this new crisis of capitalism a time has also become again of crisis and agony of "national socialism" of the treacherous leaderships, which are ready to accompany capitalism to its grave, because they live off the crumbs that fall from the table of the exploiters. The forces to set up this internationalist regrouping of revolutionaries are alive and fighting. They resist heroically, as yesterday they attacked the Citadel of power. These forces are massacred, as in Homs and southeastern China. The unheard-of suffering and the cruel wars will only deepen. A U.S. soldier came out of a barracks to slaughtering a family, including women and children in Afghanistan. He is not a misfit, he is a fighter of Obama, as well as is Assad executing women and helpless children in Homs. The proletariat must have a leadership so ruthless and shrewd as is imperialism and its murderous guards. The conditions for this are already emerging and will mature in the international events. At the heart of these, in the most advanced frontline of the combat of the working class, the flag of the fourth International has already been installed. It has reached the most advanced battles of the world proletariat, and we Trotskyists will be the last ones to withdraw from the battlefield. The flag of the fourth international, which could not be yesterday there due to the treasons of the Renegades of Trotskyism, today has become in Libya, Syria, Egypt and, no doubt, it will be part and parcel of the revolutionary fire of the Mediterranean, on one and another side of its coasts. For the working class to live, imperialism must die. Syria shows the accuracy of this sentence. Communism and fascism, revolution and counter-revolution will be increasingly looking at each other in the face. Long live the international socialist revolution! For the re-foundation of the fourth international! Paula M. and Pedro G. |