25.1.2011

Tunisia: The start of capitalism’s 1989?

Away with the ‘unity’ government of imperialist lackeys!
Forward to a workers’ and poor peasants government!

Imperialism is manoeuvring to neutralise the committees of protection and supervision of the revolution
During the early stages of the current revolution the Tunisian masses set up their own organs of self-rule, called the committees of protection and supervision of the revolution. These committees are made up mainly from workers, the unemployed, the poor peasants and were based on the destruction of the police stations, disarming the police and the arming of the masses. Imperialism through their NGO’s in Tunisia are signalling that they want to set up a governing council ‘of protection’ of the revolution. This is an attempt to hijack the revolution and to neutralise the revolution and rob it of its essence. Any council that proclaims to ‘safeguard’ the revolution must be based on delegates from all the grassroots committees, be based on the disarming of the police, disbanding of the army and the arming of the masses.
The composition of all such committees and council, from top to bottom should exclude the upper middle class, any capitalist, any member of the officer caste of the army, and any careerists. Such council can only have meaning if it is based on the expropriation of all Tunisian capitalists and all imperialist assets, without compensation to any capitalists, and is under workers’ control.

The threat of a military coup
The leadership of the UGTT (Tunisian Trade Union Federation), is engaging in a dangerous exercise of openly giving support to the head of the army, General Rashid Ammar just because he gave orders to the army not to shoot on the protestors. General was advised by imperialism not to fire on the protestors because the conscript army would have disobeyed him and gone over to the side of the revolution. The soldiers would not have opened fire on their own family members. Imperialism realised this and manoeuvred to keep control of the army. The leadership of the UGTT (and the left who support them) are playing a treacherous role, boosting the standing of an imperialist agent, General Ammar. If imperialism cannot control the masses, then imperialism may resort to a military coup. But this can only happen with a blood bath of the masses as the General’s rule would be based on, not only the army, but the hated police. The General would not expropriate the Tunisian capitalists nor the imperialist assets. Being tied to capital, the General would continue the offensive of high prices and high unemployment against the masses- not a ‘defence’ of the revolution, but smashing it. More than ever the grassroots committees in Kasserin and other areas need to incorporate rank and file soldiers in their ranks, training and arming the asses, preparing to undercut and prevent a possible counter-revolution by mperialism.
Imperialism is preparing day and night to attack and defeat the revolution. We all on the working class in the neighbouring countries: Algeria, Libya, France, Italy, Greece, Spain and beyond, in Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Germany, UK, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Rumania, Russia, USA to prepare to rise up in defence of the Tunisian revolution, against their own regimes. Out with all the dictators, whether military or posing as ‘constitutional democratic’. Obama and Sarkozy have blood on their hands.

On the so-called 3-day mourning period
The illegitimate ‘unity’ government is desperate to begin to gain credibility and to hide its own lack of support among the masses. This is why imperialism instructed it to call 3 days of ‘mourning’. They are meeting with their allies, including the UGTT leaders over this period to work out their next step in strangling the Tunisian revolution. Imagine, the killers of over 200 of the Tunisian masses are leading the call for the mourning of those that they massacred! Who can really take them seriously except traitors to the revolution. The first step that any democratic regime should have taken should have been to lift the curfew so that the masses can exercise their newly won freedom to associate with and meet with whomsoever they choose. They would also have disbanded the police, the very ones who perpetrated the murders and put them in front of a workers tribunal. The ‘unity’ government cannot even take these basic steps because their real aim is to strangle the revolution. The real aim of the curfew is to prevent the masses from meeting and from organizing themselves to take power into their own hands. There was no curfew for the family of Ben Ali when they left with 1 ½ tons of gold. The ‘unity’ government was complicit in this theft from the masses of Tunisia. This is why the central demand must be: away with the ‘unity’ government of imperialist lackeys- Expropriate Ben Ali and all Tunisian capitalists! Expropriate all imperialist assets! Forward to a workers’ and poor peasants’ government!

The Tunisian RCD regime is a lackey of imperialism
It is US and French imperialism that are primarily responsible for the starvation of the Tunisian masses. When direct colonial rule by French imperialism was no longer possible, under threat of revolution by the Tunisian masses, Tunisia was granted limited political independence in 1956.
Management of the economy was handed over to a local elite while in reality imperialism remained in control of the commanding heights of the economy. This process was replicated all over Africa where the local middle classes usurped the revolutionary struggles of the masses.

The role of Stalinism (and the ‘left’ who capitulate to them) in supporting imperialist rule
The Stalinist Communist Parties (CP’s) played an important counterrevolutionary role by refusing to call for the working class to take power into their own hands and supporting the local petit bourgeois (leading the national revolutionary movements) to become the new managers for imperialism. The pan-africanists who took over the countries, riding on the backs of the Africa masses, were also propped up by the ‘left’ around the globe, who labelled such leaders ‘Socialist’. Even Mugabe, Nasser and Bourguiba (the first President of the RCD Tunisian government) were all labelled ‘Socialist’ back then by the ‘left’. What was central to the control of the masses was the vision of ‘national Socialism’, in other words, the possibility of attaining Socialism in a semi-colony without the working class having to take power in the imperialist centres. Further, the path to Socialism, so the CP’s argued, required the rule for many years of the African middle class. Thus the politics of Stalinism and the capitulation of the world’s ‘left’ to Stalinism is what sustained imperialist plunder in Africa over the past 60 years. Specifically, while the RCD sustained itself through a brutal police rule since 1956 (there are 150,000 police in Tunisia), imperialism also sustained the Tunisian regime through the support of the trade union movement, the UGTT, and principally the support of Stalinism (through the CP- the Ettajdid) and Maoists (PCOT) and the ‘left’, all of whom lead in varying degrees, this union movement. The UGTT leaders have consistently supported the RCD regime, through all the massacres of the masses over the years; they supported the structural adjustment programmes of the IMF, the collapse of self-sufficient agriculture as part of the demands of the imperialist WTO and even openly opposed this revolution of the Tunisian masses at the beginning. They agreed to send 3 leaders to be part of the ‘unity’ government of the RCD, until the masses surrounded their headquarters and threatened to overthrow all the UGTT leadership. Even while the masses were in the streets being shot down the RCD regime (after Abedine Ben Ali was told by imperialism to catch the next flight to Saudi Arabia), the officials of the UGTT were still saying that they were prepared to accept ‘Prime Minister’ Ghannouchi, himself an RCD minister since 1999. [Ghannouchi is a former director of the imperialist IMF-International Monetary Fund]. The leadership of the UGTT is one of the main pillars of imperialism to control the masses.
It follows that the most immediate task of the revolutionary masses is to extend the fighting structures of the Committees for the protection and supervision of the revolution to all workplaces, farms, mines, indeed all corners of Tunisia; these committees need to be centralised into a national council of committees of protection and supervision of the revolution, with delegates from regional and local committees, with delegates from all workplaces, delegates from the unemployed, from the poor peasantry, from rank and file soldiers. As part of these committees should be generalised armed workers militia which will lead the masses to defeat the armed bandits of the Ben Ali regime and completely disband and root out all the police stations, the bastion of Ben Ali and imperialist terror over the years.
It is this central council of delegates of regional and local committees of the protection and supervision of the revolution that should take power into its own hands and constitute the workers and poor peasants’ government. This can only be based on the expropriation of the Tunisian capitalist class and all imperialist assets.
It follows that an immediate democratic task is also the expulsion of the proimperialist leadership from the UGTT, starting with Abdessalem Jared, and the purging of the Stalinist structure of the UGTT which is based on the bureaucratic control of a small unaccountable clique.
Ghannouchi is a veritable Prince Lyvov (a tool by imperialism to try and bring an end to the capitalist crisis of regime and prevent the working class from taking power)- he and his ‘unity’ government must go, and go now! Despite the actions of the masses the ex Communist Party of Tunisia, the Ettajdid, is still part of the ‘unity’ government, claiming that Ghannouchi has no ties with the RCD- a better supporter of imperialism within the workers movement is hard to find. It follows that Ghannouchi, Mebazaa, Jared and all of the RCD and Ettajdid leaders should face a workers tribunal for their crimes against the Tunisian masses.

Imperialism always supports many horses (different political parties and or different leaders), so when one horse is discredited in the eyes of the masses they work to regain their control through their other agencies, that they have long been preparing.
The Tunisian revolution is being driven by the Tunisian working class who, having been repressed for many years, have broken with the regime, all the bourgeois political parties and the leadership of the UGTT. Against the Tunisian masses is world imperialism, all the bourgeois parties, the Stalinists and fake left, all of whom are centralised on a world scale. With the Tunisian masses is the world working class and the real possibility of the Tunisian revolution being exported not only throughout North Africa, the rest of Africa and the Middle East but into the imperialist centres. This is why French and US imperialism advised Ben Ali to catch to plane to Saudi Arabia. The very image of the masses directly overthrowing the Ben Ali regime and subjecting him and his cronies to workers’ justice is what imperialism wanted to avoid at all costs- it would have provided the world working class with a crystal clear example of how to fight the world imperialist-capitalist onslaught. This is what the imperialists and their agents hide and what they want to undermine. The work day and night to cover that workers revolution, workers forming their own organs of struggle and direct revolutionary mass action to overthrow the lackey regimes of imperialism, is what is the only way, for the working class to stop the world capitalist offensive.
Overnight, the ones who had sustained the imperialist offensive against the working class, now pose as the most ‘democratic’; they try to cover up their support for the Ben Ali dictatorship. They promise the world, as long as the masses do not take into their own hands, the assets of imperialism and the tasks of self-government.
Suddenly all shades of opportunists are coming out of the woodwork- all agents of imperialism- Raschid Ghannouchi from the Islamic party wants to run for President; Moncef Marzouki wants to become president. Abdessalem Jared, leader of the UGTT calls for a ‘government of national salvation’. The United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI), which has work within the UGTT, supports the call for this ‘government of national salvation’.
When it suits imperialism they use secular leaders like Ben Ali to control the masses; in other instances they do not hesitate to use religious leaders to crush the masses, eg the Saudi regime, Osama bin laden and the Mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Stalinists invasion, etc. Imperialism sent Khomeini to infiltrate and behead the Iranian workers revolution of 1979 from within (30 000 militants were executed within 2-3 years of Khomeini taking the reins of political power). In other cases union leaders like Lech Walesa was used by imperialism to strangle the Polish workers revolution.

What unites R Ghannouchi and Marzouki is their call for ‘peace’ and ‘an end to the violence’, which in the current context means keeping the repressive apparatus of the murderous regime intact and the prevention of the armed masses from carrying out workers’ justice. They are competing to become the new managers for imperialism to control the Tunisian masses. They realize they have played no role in the current stage of the revolution and they are the ones who are proposing that the elections be postponed by 6 months to give them time to build up some credibility among the masses so that they can better betray them. The central UGTT leaders are calling for a ‘Salvation government’ with the likes of R Ghannouchi and Marzouki. In other words, they too support the retaining of the murderous police and the entire repressive apparatus. The USFI, by their support of the national and regional leadership of the UGTT, thus also support the policy of retaining the repressive apparatus of the state, of workers being a minority on committees dealing with the crimes of the Ben Ali regime, of bourgeois nationalization assets of the Ben Ali regime- ie not under workers control (the USFI does not come out in support of the expropriation of imperialist assets without compensation and under workers control). The USFI accepts the UGTT bureaucracy’s definition of ‘democracy’ namely that the government is elected by the ‘people’ and controlled by the ‘people’. The ‘people’ include the Tunisian upper middle class and the bourgeoisie, who have been the mainstay of imperialist plunder for the past 55 years. The UGTT definition of democracy in no way differs from the radical bourgeois of the French revolution of 1789. The USFI does not counter-pose the grassroots committees of protection and defence of the revolution to the current ‘unity’ government or the proposed ‘salvation’ government. In other words, the USFI ignores the past 55 years of Tunisian struggles and the past over 100 years of world working class struggles, and puts faith in the Tunisian bourgeoisie and middle class to lead the process, through the national government of ‘salvation’ against imperialism-capitalism. This is like a sheep calling in a wolf to help draft a policy against it.

The true capitalist character of the ‘unity’ government and the ‘national government of salvation’ is exposed through the central demand: Break with the bourgeoisie, which takes the form of: Expropriate Ben Ali, all Tunisian capitalists and all imperialist assets and banks, without compensation to the capitalist, to be placed under workers control! This is the only basis on which a government of the workers’ and poor peasants can be formed. What is needed is a Soviet republic, not a return to ‘parliamentarism’ which is another form of dictatorship of the capitalist class and thus of imperialism.

Imperialism controls the economy of Tunisia, they control the economy of North Africa, the world oil production and indeed the entire semicolonial world
While Tunisia produces 92 000 barrels of oil per day it only refines 32 000 of these and has to import most of its daily oil requirements. Even Iran, which is one of the leading producers of oil, it has to import its oil requirements. Thus it is a myth that OPEC countries control world oil production. World oil production is controlled by those who control the world’s oil refineries; these are largely in the hands of imperialism. Through control of oil refineries, French imperialism, through Totalfina, still controlled the Tunisian economy. US imperialism also has a major share in the control of the hydrocarbons in Tunisia. The US capitalist regime has had links with the Tunisian regime for 200 years. US and French imperialism compete with each other over control of the Tunisian repressive forces of the state. US and French imperialism have sustained since 1956 the brutal regime of the RCD. The privatization of state assets, the maintaining of Tunisia as a slave camp for US, French, Italian and German, Spanish imperialism; the free trade agreement with the EU that was due to come into effect in 2011 while Tunisia already has a free trade agreement with the US imperialism, all show that imperialism was really in control of Tunisia, through the regime of Ben Ali and the RCD. It is imperialism that regulates the size of the Tunisian middle class and that suppresses the growth of any independent Tunisian capitalist class. It was imperialism that was directly and indirectly responsible for the starvation of Mohamed Bouazizi and the hundreds of thousands, millions of Bouazizis in the region, across Africa, across the world. Now that their lackey has been discredited they work day and night to install a new capitalist regime that they will continue to control. Algeria, after 48 years of ‘independence’, still only has one product as export, namely crude oil. The whole of Africa and all semicolonies and colonies are either exporters of raw, unprocessed goods, or have become assembly plants and warehouses for imperialist-controlled production. Saudi Arabia is nothing but a slave camp of US imperialism that controls the oil production, sustains the brutal regime directly through US military bases and indirectly through the fascist Israeli regime.

It is time to do away with all the brutal lackey regimes that control the masses on behalf of imperialism.

Imperialism is shaking. The Tunisian masses are showing the way to the workers of China, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Bolivia, Mexico, DRC, USA, France, Romania, Russia, Zimbabwe, etc, how to fight and defeat the world capitalist offensive, namely through a workers revolution and revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist regime.
Further, the relation of imperialism to the semi-colonies and colonies shows that in order for the world ‘Tunisian’ revolutions to advance to Socialism, they have to be extended into the imperialist heartlands, otherwise the imperialist counter-revolution will eventually, sooner or later, strangle the revolution. With the recent wave of revolts in Europe, in Greece, in France, Rumania, in Ireland, in Spain, in Portugal, there is nothing that scares imperialism more than the prospect of the working class in these countries breaking from the treacherous leaderships in the workers movement, smashing the capitalist regime and taking power in their own hands. A Soviet France, for example, would immediately spark workers revolution in all the French colonies and semi-colonies. For the starving workers in the backyard of the European imperialist powers to live, Maastricht needs to die. The working class in North Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East needs to unite with their class brothers and sisters in European imperialist centres- we are one class- one revolution. Forward to a federation of Socialist workers states of Europe. A Soviet USA would impulse a giant leap to Socialism as all the capitalist regimes around the world would immediately come under threat of workers’ revolution. Any workers’ revolution in an imperialist centre would shake the world capitalist regime and opens the path to Socialism. It is this prospect that makes imperialism, despite their differences among each other, to work together against the Tunisian revolution and indeed any ‘Tunisian’ revolution on the globe.
The NPA , the USFI and other reformists call for the confiscation of the wealth of Ben Ali but do not call for the expropriation of imperialists assets. They do not raise in France, where they are based, that ‘the enemy is at home!’ and that the key to the Tunisian revolution is for the working class in France to take power. Thus they play the same class role as the Stalinists which isolate the revolutions in the semi-colonies from the revolution in the imperialist centres. The NPA raises economic demands whereas the key task at the moment is for the working class, organised independently, to take power in their own hands. The key for the revolution in North Africa is for the working class to take power in Europe, demolishing Maastricht and forming a federation of Soviet socialist states of Europe.

The character of the Tunisian revolution and who leads it
Peasant farmers make up less than 20% of the work force while 30 years ago they made up almost 50% thereof. Today 15% of the farmers own farms of more than 20 hectares each and produce 62.5% of total agricultural production. 85% of the farmers have an average of 6 hectares and eke out subsistence, producing 37,5% of total agricultural production. Several of the large farms are joint ventures with imperialist companies. Imperialism has relocated several of its metal component and textile factories to Tunisia, taking advantage of the cheap labour and the repressive conditions.
The rest of the workforce is made up of the service sector (mostly tourism) and industrial workers. This revolution has been led by the industrial workers and the unemployed workers and sectors of the ruined middle class (in reality a semi-proletariat). Tunisia illustrates that imperialist control of a semi-colony cannot grant full basic democratic rights; it also shows that the fight of the masses for full democratic rights must mean that only the workers can lead such a fight to the end and these rights can rights can only be attained by the working class taking power.
Since January 4th, in several towns such as Kasserin, the masses defeated the police in the streets, disarmed them, destroyed the police stations and set up their own organs of self-rule, called the committees for the protection and supervision of the revolution. These committees took over the local regional UGTT offices and used them as organising centres. There seems to be confusion in the ranks of the working class (actively promoted by the Ettajdid, the PCOT, the USFI and Liaison Committee of ‘Trotskyists) supporting the call for a government of ‘national salvation’, in other words, that they should not take power into their own hands but give it up to a new bourgeois government as long as it is not linked to the Ben Ali regime.
It is an immediate task to set up committees of protection and supervision of the revolution, in every working class area and every workplace, based on proportional representation, with a majority of workers on every structure, with the right of instant recall of all representatives, with workers delegates from the workplaces, representatives of the unemployed and delegates from rank and file soldiers that support the revolution. In rural and farming areas there should be councils of protection and supervision of the revolution comprised of agricultural workers and separate such councils for the impoverished peasants. There should be a call for a national council of delegates from all the committees of protection and supervision of the revolution, to take power into its own hands, to co-ordinate the fight against the Ben Ali regime of the ‘unity’ government and against imperialism.

Outline of immediate democratic demands:
1. Down with the regime of Ben Ali that now parades as a ‘unity’ government minus Ben Ali;
2. break with the bourgeoisie and imperialism; this means the immediate expropriation of all assets of Ben Ali, the rest of the Tunisian capitalists and imperialist assets and banks, without compensation to the capitalist, placing these under workers’ control; for a single state bank under workers control;
3. All power to the worker committees of protection and supervision of the revolution; all leaders should be elective, subject to instant recall and be paid a wage of an average skilled worker. For a workers’ and poor peasants’ government based on these committees (which must be independent of the upper middle class, the officer caste and the capitalists)
4. Immediately lift the curfew so that the masses can meet and organise freely;
5. free all the political and economic prisoners;
6. Immediate disbanding of the police, the entire repressive apparatus and all the institutions of the regime, including the bureaucracy, disbanding the army; immediate arming of the masses and the setting up of armed workers militia as part of the committees of protection and supervision of the revolution; [the attempt of the police to form their own union is merely to prevent them from being killed by the masses-if they want to play a progressive role, they should hand their weapons over to the workers militia];
7. that the rank and file soldiers elect from their ranks their delegates break with the officer caste that is tied to the Ben Ali regime;
8. reduce the working day and share all the work among all who can work (without loss of pay); wages to increase when prices increase;
9. cancel all the debt made to imperialism under the RCD regime;
10. nationalise all the land; expropriate all capitalist farms without compensation to the capitalists- set up model collective farms under the control of the agricultural workers- working according to a national plan under workers control; for cheap credit and assistance to the poor peasant; for the joint councils of the agricultural workers and poor peasants to allocate land for use by the poor peasant;
11. cancel all secret and open agreements with imperialism that keeps Tunisia as its slave camp and its political tool against the masses in the region, not least the Palestinians;
12. that the Ben Ali regime, the officer caste, the police and the leaders of the UGTT face workers’ justice for their crimes against the Tunisian working class;
13. that UGTT be restructured along lines of workers’ democratic control;
14. publish all the secret deals between the Ben Ali regime and imperialism; expel all imperialist agents and agencies from Tunisia;
15. establish committees on prices comprised of workers, the urban and rural poor, to expose who benefits from high food and petroleum prices.
16. Equal pay for equal work for all workers in North Africa and Europe!

On the call of the USFI and the PCOT for the convening of a Constituent
Assembly
Those who raise the call for a Constituent Assembly want to strangle the Tunisian revolution.
How is it possible that this ‘unity’ government that is tied by thousands of threads to imperialism, can convene a sovereign Constituent Assembly which is free from imperialist influence? This regime is the same that has massacred many over the past 55 years and that still shoots down protestors even now? This regime is backed by 150 000 police and world imperialism. Do you think that you can just sit around a table and persuade them to hand over the reins to a Constituent Assembly? This same imperialism cannot even ensure the return of the 6 million Palestinian refugees to their homes since their expulsion in 1948; this same imperialism is responsible for more than 6 million dead in the DRC while minerals are plundered even up until today; this same imperialism cannot even grant the Iraqis and Afghanis the unfettered right to choose their own leaders, let alone have control over their own economies; this same imperialism organised a coup in Honduras a few months ago; they invaded Haiti over the bodies of the dying in a recent earthquake, and you think they will allow a peaceful expulsion of imperialism from Tunisia, and this on the doorstep of Europe? You are misleading the masses. This repressive regime needs to be removed by force, by revolutionary mass action.
Even if imperialism agrees that the entire regime steps down and all the members of your national salvation government can guide the setting up of a Constituent Assembly, how will you proceed? Already R Ghannouchi and Marzouki want the masses to wait another 6 months. The masses are starving right now. Your ‘national salvation government’ will be protected by the murderous police and according to your own programme, will not expropriate imperialism. Imperialism demands their profits and it follows that they will only get the required amount from increasing the level of starvation of the masses. Your ‘salvation’ government, with its police and repressive apparatus from the old regime, will be forced to crush the masses, once again- it will be providing salvation to the imperialists, not the working class.
Go ahead! Organise your Constituent Assembly right now! The masses will immediately vote for an end to the Ben Ali regime, for the expropriation of imperialism, for the disbanding of the police. This is why imperialism and the bourgeois parties are doing everything they can to postpone even this bourgeois elections. They cannot afford even full bourgeois democracy for Tunisia nor any semi-colony on the planet.
The masses are calling for the overthrow of the Ben Ali ‘unity’ regime right now. This is the way to conquer conditions for the convening of a sovereign Constituent Assembly. But once workers have taken power into their own hands, why should they hand them over to a structure that contains bourgeois parties, parties that want to become managers for imperialism, that cannot meet even a single democratic demand of the masses. The more your fight for a ‘salvation’ government that contains bourgeois parties and that will supposedly prepare for the Constituent Assembly, the more the masses will realize that they need their own structures, such as the committees of protection and supervision of the revolution, soviet structures, to take power into their own hands.
The danger of the ‘Caravan for liberation’
Marching on the central institutions in Tunisia is excellent but the leaders of the UGTT and the USFI have other ideas; they hijack the bold steps that the masses want to take, namely through revolutionary mass action to overthrow the ‘unity’ government of Ben Ali leftovers. They send the masses, unarmed, to blow off steam, to pressure the regime for their ‘Salvation’ government to take over (in other words for those sections of the middle class and the upper classes currently excluded, to get part, if not all of the juicy business of being in government).
Without lifting the pressure on the regime for one moment, there needs to be generalised the committees of protection and supervision of the revolution in all workplaces, farms and across all Tunisia, convening of a central council of all these committees, with delegates from the urban and rural workers, from the poor peasants, from all other sectors in struggle, from the unemployed, from the rank and file soldiers. It is this armed, central council or Soviet that should constitute itself in Tunis and disperse the capitalist regime of the ‘unity’ or ‘salvation’ government. The central call again must be to break with the bourgeoisie, ie expropriate all of the assets of the Ben Ali regime, the Tunisian capitalists and of all imperialists, without compensation to the capitalists, placing these under workers control.

Towards the refounding of the Fourth International
That the murderous RCD regime was a full member of the Socialist International for many years, shows that the Socialist International has nothing to do with Socialism but everything to do with maintaining imperialist domination on the planet. The support of the Stalinists, the CP’s, for members of the Socialist International, such as the ANC and the Labour party of Britain shows that the Stalinists cannot be trusted; the capitulation of the NPA, the USFI and the ‘left’ to their own imperialist all shows that a new International is needed. The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) presents a caricature of an International, calling in general for ‘permanent revolution’, offering no programme for the world proletariat on Tunisia, and only proclaiming that workers should join them and the holy spirit of salvation will descend on them.
We need to unite the vanguard in Greece, in France, in Tunisia, in Algeria, in Bolivia, in Mexico, in the USA, in China, in South Africa, in the DRC etc in one international. This is the way to take the heroic battles of the working class to victory. It is time to refound the Fourth International!
Forward to working class power in Tunisia!
That the Tunisian spark will set on fire the whole of Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Americas, Australia!
Forward to an organizing committee to refound the Fourth International!
Forward to Socialism!