The Internationalist No. 41 September-October 2015 50¢ Trump, Sanders, Clinton – Immigrant-Bashing, Populism andFor Warmongering Workers Action to Defeat BarackCapitalism’s Obama’s Iraq/Syria Racist War Electoral Circus Is Back Break with the Democrats, Republicans Ferguson One Year Later and All Capitalist Parties!

Build a Revolutionary Workers Party! Whitney Curtis for the New York Times

They’re back. Once again the politi- ington announced that cians of the partner parties of American no charges would be capitalism are polluting the airwaves with filed against the police their election pitches. The Republican de- who murdered Mexican bates are an orgy of racist reaction, a com- agricultural worker An- petition to see who is the most hateful boss tonio Zambrano Montes of all. Donald Trump says he would build last February. And liber- a border wall and put hs name on it, while al Democratic president Carly Fiorina’s claim to fame is that she Barack Obama has by fired 30,000 employees of Hewlett-Packard now deported over 2.5 during her stint as chief executive. million immigrants, far The Democrats, meanwhile, are en- more than conservative gaged in a non-debate between “Hillary” Republican George W. (Clinton) and “Bernie” Sanders posing as Bush. When you include “progressives” even as they gear up for the “removals” from the next escalation by the U.S. war machine in border area, Obama has response to the Syrian refugee crisis. Sand- expelled over 800,000 ers wants to contract out the fighting while people a year, while Clinton wants to drop U.S. bombs on Assad keeping tens of thou- if not put boots on the ground. sands (including many In fact they are all defenders of capital children) locked up in and enemies of poor and working people concentration camps. Protests on the one-year anniversary of the police murder of Michael Brown were again met who produce the profits, of the African Over the summer, with a massive display of police force in Ferguson, Missouri. All the capitalist candidates American, Latino, Asian and immigrant Donald Trump grabbed support the racist killer cops, for the police are the first line of defense of capital, against us. population that bear the brunt of the repres- the headlines with his threat to deport all 11 figure in U.S. capitalism. pandering to the racist vote, in a July 23 sion. And so long as workers are chained to million undocumented immigrants. Actu- The Wall Street bankers, industrial speech she said “the sight of a young black the politicians and parties of the ruling class, ally, when you include family members the magnates and technology tycoons who man in a hoodie” causes fear “for a lot of particularly the Democrats who act as the number of those who daily face the threat of constitute the decisive sectors of capital open-minded, well-meaning white people.” “people’s party” of American capitalism, being kicked out of the country and having will not tolerate a loose cannon like Trump Hillary and her handlers believe she can get things will keep going from bad to worse. their lives destroyed, the total is over 15 for long. For one thing, he joins liberal away with it, since the overwhelming major- Despite months of massive protests million. Trump gives voice to the unalloyed economists like Paul Krugman in opposing ity of African Americans who vote cast their coast to coast, racist murder by police racism that other politicians won’t say out the tax exemption for hedge fund operators ballot for Democratic candidates. continues unabated. We’re now up to 890 loud. He outrageously labels Mexican im- (no skin off his back, he makes his money Husband Bill Clinton has for years civilians killed by cops in 2015 and count- migrants criminals, drug dealers and rapists, from gambling and construction). If Jeb basked in an ill-gotten image as somehow ing. That’s on track to match or surpass the when in fact he has been accused of raping Bush appears to be a cipher, the big money favorable to black people, despite the vi- 1,100 gunned down, choked and beaten to his former wife Ivana. may ultimately go to Fiorina or someone cious impact of his presidential policies, death last year. After Sandra Bland’s life The spectacle offered by the Repub- else deemed both sufficiently ruthless and from the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill and was taken by lynch-law terror when she was lican debates is somewhere between a TV reliable to be CEO of U.S. capitalism. the 1996 Effective Death Penalty Act to arrested for the “crime” of “driving while reality show (“Who Wants to Be President”) skyrocketing inequality during his adminis- black” in July, tennis star James Black was and a WWE Friday Night Smackdown. Democrats Squirm tration. Hillary was particularly responsible brutally tackled outside a Midtown Manhat- Trump brags that he has made billions, but Over Black Lives Matter for the “reform,” intended to “end welfare tan hotel for “standing while black.” And his leadership style and business acumen Over on the Democratic side of the as we know it,” that threw millions of poor, on September 24, Jeremy McDole was cut seem to consist of screaming “you’re fired.” bourgeois political spectrum, Hillary Clin- overwhelmingly black women into poverty. down in a hail of at least ten bullets by police While he has oodles of cash, and the capi- ton staked out her terrain as a “tough-guy” A new Clinton presidency will ramp up the in Wilmington, Delaware for “sitting while talist ruling class does exercise its rule by militarist hawk during her term as Secretary war on the oppressed that has escalated dur- black” ... in a wheelchair! throwing around money sweated from the of State. As a candidate she is pro-war, ing the Obama years. Meanwhle, prosecutors in Pasco, Wash- toil of workers, Trump is actually a marginal pro-cop and pro-death penalty. Blatantly continued on page 2 Dossier: What Road for Greece: Perpetual Debt Corbynmania Sweeps Peonage or Workers Revolution? . . . . . pp. 8-19 Britain...... p. 6 a new model police training program that issued a plat- Electoral Circus... reorients the way we do law enforcement form along continued from page 1 in this country. With input from a broad very similar For his part, Bernie Sanders is cam- segment of the community including ac- lines calling paigning as a standard-issue economic pop- tivists and leaders from organizations like for body cams, ulist. His program boils down to capitalism Black Lives Matter we will reinvent how demilitariza- with a slightly higher social welfare budget. we police America” (berniesanders.com). tion, training, Many on the left see him as the reincarnation Candidate Clinton was already well “community of the Occupy movement, with support for along this path, hiring former Congressional representa- a sub-minimal $15 per hour minimum wage Black Caucus executive director LaDavia tion,” etc. replacing populist rhetoric about the 99% Drane as her “black outreach director.” In – plus “fair (which always made the “1%” a little ner- late July, Drane attended the Movement police union vous). Repeatedly elected to the Senate by for Black Lives convention in Cleveland [sic] con- one of the “least diverse” states in the U.S., to hold one-on-one meetings with activists tracts” to “re- Sanders made few efforts to even pretend as part of a push to “engage a wide array move barriers he cared about black people. of stakeholders, including members of the to effective Enter Black Lives Matter. An August black lives matter movement,” a campaign misconduct 8 rally in Seattle – a Democratic campaign official stated (“Clinton Campaign Starts investigations event commemorating the establishment of Black Lives Matter Outreach,” BuzzFeed- and civilian Social Security (by FDR) and Medicare (by News, 26 July). oversight.” LBJ) – was addressed by a local congress- But things went awry when a group It is note- man and “socialist” Seattle city council of Black Lives Matter activists was barred worthy that Break with the Democrats and Republicans, parties of member Kshama Sawant, who called for “a from an August 11 forum on “substance a prominent racist repression and imperialist war. We need to build a political revolution, as Bernie Sanders has abuse” that Hillary Clinton held in New member of revolutionary workers party. said.” As Sanders stepped forward to give Hampshire. Afterwards, the candidate Campaign Zero’s planning team, Brittany seek to reform the system, to eliminate the the keynote address, two activists from the spoke with three BLM activists, who held Packnett, is the head of Teach For America worst excesses. They want the police to re- local BLM group took over the microphone her “personally and politically responsible in St. Louis. TFA is a union-busting outfit spect black lives, they want to restore social to demand that Sanders be held “account- for policies that have caused health and that recruits Ivy League students to spend services and reduce mass unemployment. able” for downplaying issues of racial human services disasters in impoverished a couple years in inner-city schools while Yet they have been uniformly unsuccessful. communities of color through the domestic equality. Part of the overwhelmingly white blaming teachers unions for the failures of The fundamental fact is that they are and international war on drugs that you crowd chanted “Shame on you” against the the public school system which TFA and its coming up against the capitalist system championed as first lady, senator and sec- protestors, while Sanders stood by scowling Wall Street backers want to milk for private itself. As we noted in our last issue (“Killer retary of state.” and eventually left. profit. Packnett was part of Obama’s Task Cops, White Supremacists: Racist Terror Clinton’s response was a display of That night Sanders issued a statement Force on 21st Century Policing, along with Stalks Black America,” The Internatioanlist finger-wagging arrogance, chiding the denouncing the “two people [who] disrupted the Baltimore police chief who was held No. 40, Summer 2015), all the proposed activists on the need to “change laws” and a rally attended by thousands,” while claim- up as a model of community outreach, as reforms of the police have done nothing the “allocation of resources” – as if she and ing he would work for “criminal justice well as the Ferguson Commission set up by to stop the killing: “ No amount of protest her ex-president husband had not massively reform” and to “fight racism.” The Sanders Democratic Missouri governor Jay Nixon. will convince the ruling class to muzzle its mobilized laws and resources of state repres- campaign decided it would shout down fu- The machinery of Democratic Party uniformed guard dogs, whom it requires to sion against black people, immigrants and ture protesters with the “color-blind” chant control and cooptation will go into overdrive keep the poor and working people down.” the poor. “We stand together,” equivalent to white over the next period. Myriad NGOs, non- Racist repression “is essential to American Sensing both danger and opportunity, liberals trying to drown out “Black lives profits and foundations are there to grease capitalism, and has been ever since African the Democratic National Committee (DNC) matter” with “All lives matter.” In the con- the wheels. As we have underlined, no sup- slaves were brought here in chains.” frontation between the young BLM activists passed a resolution in late August in which posed “reform” will do away with, or even As demonstrated by the debacle in and Bernie Sanders, revolutionary Marxists it “joins with Americans across the country substantially reduce, racist police violence Greece (see pages 8 to 19 of this issue), there definitely side with the black “disruptors” in affirming ‘Black lives matter’” and call- in this country where racial oppression is a will be no escape from anti-worker austerity against the would-be nominee of the govern- ing to minimize the use of “weapons that pillar of capitalist class rule. under this system. The bankers’ diktat will ment party of American racist oppression. were used to police peaceful civilians in Without a program to pull racial oppres- trump any “democratic mandate,” for what The day after his Seattle debacle, Sand- the streets of Ferguson, Missouri” (under a sion out by its capitalist roots – that is, with- is involved is not a policy (“neoliberalism”) ers shifted gears into co-optation mode. Democratic governor and president!). out a program for black liberation through but the survival of capitalism, driven to Having hired Symone Sanders, a young To win the struggle against racist op- socialist revolution – even the best-meaning speculative frenzies and excruciating in- African American activist from the Coali- pression requires a decisive break from, activists will be politically disarmed in the tensification of exploitation by a falling rate tion for Juvenile Justice, he was introduced and head-on political struggle against, the face of this onslaught. of profit that produced the market crash of by her at a rally in Portland, Oregon. His Democratic Party, which rules on behalf 2008 and the ongoing economic depression. campaign suddenly announced that he was of the capitalist class which has always Build a Revolutionary unveiling a platform for “racial justice,” coined gold from the blood and sweat of Workers Party The failure of one outbreak of unrest centered on the usual calls for body cameras, African American people going back to Over the past year, tens and hundreds after another is centrally due to one key a call to “demilitarize” police departments, slavery days. of thousands marched, night after night, fact: the absence of a revolutionary leader- and the like. What was most significant This is far from the actual perspective against racist police killings. Yet the racist ship. The right-wing Tory press in Britain politically about the statement is its appeal of most leaders of the loose BLM move- repression goes on without skipping a beat. remarked that in another period, economic to more fully ensnare Black Lives Matter ment. Less than two weeks after Bernie Across the globe, the continuing capitalist distress on the order experienced in recent activists in schemes for “community polic- Sanders launched his list of pallid palliatives economic crisis has sparked protests and years would have produced a revolution. ing” – that is, being responsible for capitalist for “police reform,” the Campaign Zero site revolts, from North Africa to Europe and They thank their lucky stars that they only state repression: (joincampaignzero.org), closely associated Latin America: the Arab “revolutions,” the have to deal with a manageable Labour left. “At the federal level we need to establish with national Black Lives Matter organizers, indignados (outraged) in southern Europe, But they should not breathe a sigh of relief the Occupy movement in the U.S. Yet these too quickly. Visit the League for the Fourth International/ massive upheavals have all ended in defeat. Authentic Marxists seek to intervene The spectre of falling wages while on a program of revolutionary working- Internationalist Group on the Internet bankers make billions through speculation class struggle. Workers and fighters for http://www.internationalist.org and government subsidies has fueled popu- social justice must take up those struggles list parties and candidates from SYRIZA in that have pointed the way forward, such The Greece to Bernie Sanders in the U.S. The as the shutdown of the Port of Oakland, Internationalist bankruptcy of capitalism in its “neo-liberal” California last May Day by ILWU Local 10 A Journal of Revolutionary Marxism free-market phase has likewise contributed demanding “Stop Police Terror!” (see The for the Reforging of the Fourth International to the sudden rise of support for a left-wing Internationalist No. 39, April-May 2015). Publication of the Internationalist Group, leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Above all it is necessary to build a genuinely section of the League for the Fourth International Corbyn (see page 6). communist party of the working class, like EDITORIAL BOARD: Jan Norden (editor), Abram Negrete, Mark Lazarus, Marjorie Salzburg Each of these movements and upheav- the Bolsheviks of Lenin and Trotsky, so that The Internationalist (ISSN 1091-2843) is published bimonthly, skipping July-August, by Mundial als has been “unexpected,” at least to the rul- the upheavals are no longer unexpected, and Publications, P.O. Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A. Telephone: (212) 460-0983 Fax: (212) 614-8711 E-mail: [email protected] ing class, seemingly coming out of nowhere when they break out there is an organized Subscriptions: US$10 for five issues. and assuming mass proportions almost vanguard, to provide the necessary program, No. 41 1162-M September-October 2015 overnight. Politically there is a common organization and determination that are key thread running through their demands: they to victory. n 2 The Internationalist Wages, Hours, Jobs Cut – Union Health Plans Terminated Obamacare Screws Workers, Windfall for Insurance Companies By Class Struggle Workers – which have accepted “expanded” funding Brooks Johnson/The Daily News [Longview, WA] Portland for individuals earning up to 133% of the Federal Poverty Level. But Medicaid is PORTLAND, OR – The Affordable Care barred from covering abortion since the Act (ACA), commonly known as “Obam- Hyde Amendment was passed by Congress acare,” survived a key legal challenge in the and signed by the Democrat president U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, June 25. Carter in 1977. Combined with the increas- The court came down 6-3 against a suit by ing restrictions on abortion in the U.S. David King, a Virginia limousine chauffeur as legal traps and terrorist attacks shutter for a cartel of conservative ideologues who clinics across the country, this means that claimed that it was illegal for the federal millions of poor and working class women government to offer tax credits as a subsidy effectively have no safe, legal option for to offset the cost of purchasing private health ending an unwanted pregnancy. Far from a insurance, if the insurance was purchased step towards the free abortion on demand through the federal government-adminis- that we fight for, the ACA reinforces the tered marketplace. The ruling, along with legal obstacles to affordable abortion that the same day’s historic verdict allowing Democrats and Republicans have put in gay marriage nationwide, elated Democratic place since Roe vs. Wade. partisans, who have been all atwitter about the President’s legacy as he enters his “vic- What of the insurance that is offered? tory lap.” But Chelsea Manning, the trans- The sick reality behind the statistics of in- AWPPW Local 153 on strike at Kapstone paper mill in Longview, WA, August gendered Army veteran serving a 35-year creasing enrollment and decreasing number 27, over the company’s imposition of contract cancelling health insurance sentence for courageously revealing U.S. of uninsured since the passage of the ACA to avoid Obamacare “Cadillac plan” tax. imperialism’s war crimes, cautioned that the is that for working people, the insurance Supreme Court’s gay marriage ruling didn’t is an illusion, a scam that will not prevent private insurance plans are demanding for individuals in this country, and have mean equality for all. them from being cast into devastating debt increases of 20 to 40 percent for 2016. And been for decades. ACA has reinforced this If the court had gone the other way on because of illness, accidents or chronic through its “risk corridor” program, the ACA perverse system while liberal Democrats the ACA, it would have made it even harder disease. The “bronze” health plans have the guarantees federal subsidies to insurance like economist Paul Krugman crow about for millions of Americans to afford any kind lowest monthly premiums. These vary by companies if they fail to reap sufficient Obama’s historic “reform.” What’s new to of health insurance. That only goes to show state, and are expected to increase. Currently profits during the transition to the ACA! the ACA is a huge incentive for companies that in bourgeois politics, “it could always they are around $150 per month. Already, Employer-sponsored plans are gener- to push to dismantle health care coverage be worse” for working people. If reaction- that’s a significant “invisible” pay cut for a ally marginally better when they are offered that unions have established through years ary troglodytes oppose the ACA because low-wage worker struggling to pay rent and (required for most wage workers averag- of protracted struggle. In 2018, an excise god told them to oppose any sort of social other essential expenses. Yet these bronze ing over 30 hours per week), yet most still tax of 40% will kick in on benefits valued welfare programs, especially those enacted plans can have deductibles of over $2,000 leave poor and middle-income workers in at over $10,200 per year for individuals or by a Black president, it does not follow that for an individual or $5,000 for a family, a catastrophic financial state before “insur- $27,500 for families, the so-called “Cadil- class-conscious workers should support it. and annual maximum out-of-pocket costs ance” kicks in. Again, there is the monthly lac” plans. Unions are doubly vulnerable This law gives billions to the insurance in- of $6,000/$12,000 family. Can you afford premium, a significant effective pay cut. in fighting this attack on workers benefits, dustry out of the pockets working and poor that? Many working people can’t. Three-quarters of company-sponsored because it comes from the Democratic Party people in the U.S. Class-conscious workers The Kaiser Family Foundation es- plans, according to the Kaiser Family Foun- that they loyally support. oppose the ACA and fight for a universal, timated that median single-person, non- dation, have a single-member deductible of The corporate analysis firm Jones Day socialized health care system while implaca- elderly households above the poverty level over $1,500, and the average annual out-of- offered clear advice to companies on this: bly defending every health care benefit that (in other words, those ineligible for standard pocket limit is $3,000-$3,500 dollars. So “Significantly, the ACA does not require workers have won as a concession from the Medicare or Medicaid) have liquid assets for singles, the maximum deductible – the employers to provide coverage for employers. And this can only be achieved of $2503, and net assets of just $1,369! amount a patient must pay up front before spouses and does not penalize employers as part of a broader class struggle against Households on the poorer end of this insurance covers anything – is greater than for excluding spouses from coverage, all factions of the capitalist ruling class, spectrum, earning up to twice the Federal the average total financial assets of the so employers will need to evaluate the particularly the Democratic party. Poverty Level, have liquid assets of just median household above the poverty line! potential savings from excluding spouses Obamacare is a far cry from universal $766. Low- to moderate-wage workers on On top of this, there are the several from eligibility for health coverage…. health coverage. The “insurance” it does the “bargain” bronze health plan cannot hundred thousand mainly low-waged part- While unions may resist efforts to curtail provide for millions of working and poor afford to get medical care! And only the time workers who have had their hours cut employee benefits in the near term, employers should consider the leverage people is often illusory. While it has ensured more expensive “silver” and higher plans to less than 30 a week so that the employers that avoiding the Cadillac tax provides a steady stream of revenue for private health are eligible for federal subsidies to cover don’t have to offer them health care (see at the bargaining table…. Employers out-of-pocket costs. The health-care reform Ben Casselman, “Yes, Some Companies insurance companies, it has had its intended should take advantage of the leverage lobbying group Physicians for a National Are Cutting Hours in Response to ‘Obam- effect of adding to the pressure on unions that the ACA provides, whether that Health Program accurately characterized to give up their hard-won health insurance acare’,” FiveThirtyEight, 13 January). Class means negotiating union waivers to allow low-end “affordable” plans as “a mirage, a programs. And that’s only one of the nega- Struggle Education Workers (CSEW) in employers significant flexibility to change simulacrum of insurance rather than actual tive aspects for workers. So let’s go down New York already exposed this vicious and modify their plans, negotiating the list. First up, who is excluded from the insurance.” anti-worker plan when it was being debated lower levels of coverage to balance out ACA? For starters, more than 15 million What we have here is literally “insur- in Congress and at the time of its passage. the added costs of expanded coverage, undocumented immigrants, many of whom ance” for the insurance companies: a See “On the Healthcare Crisis” (September or negotiating to end coverage under work in dangerous jobs like construction, guaranteed customer base that must pur- 2009) and “Healthcare “Reform” Law: Bo- employer-sponsored plans altogether.” agriculture and food industry, are denied chase “coverage” of dubious value, or pay nanza for Wall Street, an Attack on Working – “What’s the Deal? The Affordable Care coverage, even though many of them pay a hefty tax penalty. Yet in the event of a People” (March 2010), reprinted in Class Act in Labor Contract Negotiations,” Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes serious illness, they can only expect to see Struggle Education Workers Newsletter No. October 2013 from which they will never see any benefit. a payout long after they have been squeezed 2 (October-November 2010) and The Inter- In recent contract negotiations, union Class-conscious workers demand full citi- dry by medical bills. Key to this cash cow nationalist No. 32 (January-February 2011). workers have seen employers follow this zenship rights for all immigrants. for insurance companies is the “precarious” This bleak situation was not created playbook, demanding lower coverage and Second, while private health insurance workforce of part-time workers whose em- by the ACA. By every reasonable measure, ending employer-sponsored plans. plans may cover elective abortions, this por- ployers are not required to offer company the U.S. has long had one of the worst and While some of the most well-en- tion of the insurance cannot be subsidized health plans since they work less than 30 most expensive health care systems among trenched unions, such as the New York by the federal government under the ACA. hours per week on average at any one job. wealthy imperialist countries. Health care City United Federation of Teachers, have Medicaid coverage is available in states The New York Times (4 July) reports that bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy continued on page 5 September-October 2015 3 Down with the Racist Dominican Nationality Law – For Haitian-Dominican Workers Solidarity Stop Expulsion of Haitians from the Dominican Republic The following article is an expanded workers to carry out backbreaking labor in version of the Internationalist Group leaf- the Dominican Republic, with no rights, let distributed at the June 15 NYC protest was set up when both countries were under Libre Nehemías Alvino/Diario described below. U.S. occupation that began a century ago. JUNE 16 – Beginning this week, the gov- In addition, the Dominican border police, ernment of the Dominican Republic intends the Cuerpo Especializado de Seguridad to start the mass expulsion of Haitians and Fronteriza (CESFRONT), was set up at the Dominicans of Haitian descent. This impend- instigation of Washington in 2006 as part ing human disaster has been passed over of its drive to militarize U.S. borders, and it with virtual silence by U.S. and international has been trained by the U.S. Border Patrol. media. Based on a racist nationality law, hun- And last year, U.S. vice president Joe Biden dreds of thousands of Dominicans have been on a trip to Santo Domingo grotesquely deprived of their citizenship and are at risk of praised the Dominican nationality law as being seized on the street, at their workplace a “bold step” that would provide a “path to or in their homes in desperately poor bateyes citizenship” for people of Haitian descent, (shantytowns), and dumped across the border when in fact it makes official the stripping in Haiti. Many have lived all their lives in the of their citizenship! Dominican Republic, don’t speak Kreyòl and Rather than looking to U.S. politicians have no relatives in the neighboring country. and the Obama government – which itself Dominican police repress Haitian Dominicans seeking papers allowing them Now they are officially stateless, with no deports over 400,000 people a year, includ- to stay (temporarily) in the country where many of them were born. Hundreds rights at all anywhere. ing thousands of Haitians and Dominicans – of thousands are affected. An emergency protest was held on to hypocritically pressure the administrators June 15 outside the Dominican Consulate in of its Dominican semi-colony, we demand stripped of their citizenship. In practice, this while 250,000 people have registered to le- New York City. The Internationalist Group, an immediate end to deportations, release racist legal battery applies exclusively to galize their status, only a few hundred have CUNY Internationalist Clubs and Class everyone in the immigration jails and Dominicans of Haitian descent. received a temporary residency permit, and Struggle Education Workers participated in concentration camps and full citizenship In contravention of norms throughout “many of the immigrants, especially those the protest while calling for workers action rights for all immigrants in the U.S. as well. the Americas providing the right of citizen- who have lived in the Dominican Republic against the deportations and racist attacks, June 17 is the deadline for registration ship to all those born in the country (jus for decades, have no identity papers at all” 1 and for full citizenship rights for all living under the Dominican Republic’s Program soli), the Dominican Republic joins with and thus cannot register. in the Dominican Republic. Against the rac- of Identification and Documentation of Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship in Dominican authorities have carried out ist champions of anti-Haitian “Dominican- Immigrants from Haiti (PIDIH) and the basing it on “blood law” (jus sanguinis), ex- mass expulsions in the past. In 1999, tens of ness” (dominicanidad) we call for workers National Program of Regularization of cluding the children of “foreigners.” And it thousands were deported to Haiti in just two revolution throughout Quisqueya (His- Foreigners (PNRE, according to its Span- joins Hitler’s Third Reich, whose infamous weeks. Buses cruised the streets of the Do- paniola). The key is Haitian-Dominican ish acronym). These two programs were Nuremberg Laws canceled the citizenship of minican capital of Santo Domingo snatching workers solidarity, and the place where it set up to implement the September 2013 Jews, in excluding a particular group. These anyone who “looked Haitian,” including can begin is New York City, where hundreds Dominican Constitutional Tribunal sen- Nazi-like laws and decrees “denationalize” hundreds of dark-skinned Dominicans. of thousands of Dominican and Haitian im- tence (TC168-13) and subsequent Law No. upwards of half a million Dominicans in Although Dominican authorities claim that migrants are likewise deprived of rights by 169-14 that decreed that any person born addition to persecuting another half million deportations have been suspended for the racist immigration laws. in the Dominican Republic whose parents, immigrants born in Haiti who are a key com- last year, they have soared at the main border Moreover, we point out that Domini- grandparents, great-grandparents or earlier ponent of the workforce. Any defender of crossing point in the north, reaching 6,700 in can-Haitian tensions are fueled by U.S. im- progenitors migrated to the country with- democratic rights must demand the immedi- the first four months of this year, triple the perialism. The system of importing Haitian out immigration documents since 1929 be ate abrogation of the Dominican Republic’s rate of 2014. So far, some 53,000 Domini- racist nationality law. cans have had their citizenship canceled, and Under these grotesque laws and decrees, while this was later supposedly reversed, any “foreigner” without the required papers they have not received identity cards and will be subject to immediate deportation. thus could be picked up and expelled. There should be no doubt that the Dominican Meanwhile, as always when the Do- government is preparing for mass deporta- minican authorities step up anti-Haitian tions, on an industrial scale. Already it has repression, this has been accompanied by an requisitioned a fleet of buses sufficient to de- escalation of anti-Haitian bigotry and grue- port 2,000 people a day. A formal agreement some attacks, lynchings and pogroms. On Internationalist photo has been signed with the Dominican Army February 10, a Haitian man, Henry Claude to carry this out, and detention facilities have Jean (known as “Tulile”), 35, a shoe shine been set up along to border. worker, was found hanging from a tree in Santiago Park. The day before, a machete- The general who heads the immigra- wielding band of masked Dominican nation- tion department announced that “begin- alists gathered in Santiago to trample on and ning Thursday” (June 18) teams including burn a Haitian flag while calling for mass soldiers “will comb urban areas with large deportations. Videos have circulated on the numbers of immigrants to detain and deport 1 Since the 2004 immigration law, Dominican those who have not registered” (El Nacio- hospitals have routinely refused to issue birth nal, 16 June). Agents have been “trained certificates for babies born to undocumented Internationalists at protest outside Dominican Consulate in New York City, to pick up in the street those who, by their parents. Without this, children cannot be en- June 15, protesting racist nationality law and demanding stop of deportations, appearance, could be foreigners without tered in the civil registry, and without identity in Dominican Republic and the U.S. residence permits.” El Nacional adds that papers cannot attend schools. In the U.S. and D.R.: Full Citizenship Rights for All! For Workers Mobilization Against Deportations and Racist Attacks 4 The Internationalist Internet of a mob attack on April 8 in the city the U.S.’ Dominican flunkey, and the racist militant class struggle is anathema to the Recently, 800 members of Local 153 of Moca that drove out 300 Haitians. Images policies continued during his seven terms present pro-capitalist misleaders of labor. of the Association of Western Pulp and show young men beating women, breaking as president. The international outcry against the Paper Workers (AWPPW) at the Kapstone into homes and smashing everything in sight The present “denationalization” of Do- xenophobic “Sentencia 168/13” has been paper mill in Longview, WA were forced with the complicity of the National Police. minicans of Haitian descent has been carried very strong, even among imperialist or- to go out on strike after rejecting a conces- Amid this mounting anti-Haitian hys- out under the presidencies of Leonel Fernán- ganizations like the United Nations, the sionary “final offer” from the company. teria, as the June 17 deadline approached dez and Danilo Medina, both of the Do- Interamerican Court of Human Rights The most prominent concession that the thousands of undocumented Dominicans minican Liberation Party (PLD). But it was and pro-imperialist “non-governmental bosses demanded was to cancel the work- have sought to register, even as foreigners, based on the 2004 immigration law enacted organizations” like Amnesty International. ers’ health insurance in order to avoid the to avoid being deported. But while long lines by the government of Hipólito Mejía of the But of course, this will have no effect. U.S. ACA tax and replace it with a cheap “high have formed outside the registration offices, Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), imperialism is so concerned about a mass deductible” plan. The strike was called off only small numbers are admitted. There which classified undocumented residents as exodus from Haiti (whose poverty is a direct on September 3 when the company brought have been angry protests every day this “in transit.” When one of those affected, Ju- result of U.S. policies, from the destruction in scabs, but the fight continues. Meanwhile, week in the capital of Santo Domingo, dis- liana Deguis Pierre, appealed to the courts, of rice farming to superexploiting Haitian 2,200 metal workers across the country persed by police using tear gas. The Union the Dominican Constitutional Tribunal ruled workers in garment sweatshops) that it has have been locked out since early August of Cane Workers was promised 10,000 on 23 September 2013 to uphold the racist permanently posted the Coast Guard to by Allegheny Technologies, among them permits for those receiving pensions after law, and make it retroactive to anyone whose prevent “boat people” from escaping, it has United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7150 at working decades in the sugar cane fields, ancestors arrived in the Dominican Republic kept Haiti under occupation by “U.N.” mer- a titanium plant in Albany, OR, for refusing but only 2,900 have been approved since in the last 84 years! Hundreds of thousands cenary troops (the MINUSTAH) since 2004, the company’s “offer” that slashed health most lack even Haitian papers, and only a of Dominicans were declared “in transit” and it invaded the country following the insurance benefits. There, too, management small number have been given documents. although they were born there and lived in 2010 earthquake in order to prevent unrest. is using scabs. Meanwhile, some 49,000 people live in the the D.R. their entire lives. After the Dominican court’s ruling Similar fights over essential health cov- bateyes on the sugar plantations. From the 2004 Dominican immigration was announced there were several protests erage are posed from coast to coast. Obam- The government of the Dominican Re- law onwards, we are seeing a real “ethnic in New York City in 2013 demanding that acare is one more weapon in the arsenal of public is infamous for its continuous racist cleansing in the Caribbean,” as Sonia it be reversed. In 2008, the Internationalist the bosses’ offensive against the unions. and xenophobic attacks against the Haitian Pierre, the late president of the Movement Group helped initiate and organize a dem- AFL-CIO leaders have criticized the tax population. This can be traced all the way of Dominican-Haitian Women (MUDH) onstration bringing together Dominican, on union-negotiated health plans, yet they 2 4 back to the 1937 “perejil” massacre led by titled an article. Although she was hardly Haitian and U.S. leftists and labor activists keep on rounding up votes for the Demo- U.S. puppet Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo, radical (she was twice given awards by the to protest the racist treatment of Haitians in crats. This sorry spectacle underscores that 5 a/k/a El Chivo (The Goat). More than 30,000 imperialist U.S. government), the leader of the Dominican Republic. But such protests whether the issue is union-busting “right to Haitians and dark-skinned Dominicans were the MUDH received constant death threats are not enough. What is needed is a class- work” laws or attacks on health care and re- massacred from October 2 to 8 of that year because of her defense of Dominicans of struggle program that seeks to mobilize the tirement benefits, the key for labor to defeat 3 near what in Haiti is called Massacre River. Haitian origin. Pierre died in December power of the working class on both sides of these attacks is adopting a class-struggle Trujillo headed the National Guard, which 2011 due a heart attack caused by hyper- the Hispaniola island in defense of Haitians program for powerful working-class action was set up by the U.S. occupation authori- tension in the midst of a ferocious hate and their children as well as here in New across traditional trade-union divisions, ties, and the U.S. government effectively campaign and persecution against her or- York City, where well over 100,000 Haitians independent of and against all the parties of condoned the massacre, including by agree- chestrated by the government, media and and more than 600,000 Dominicans live. capital, Republicans and Democrats. ing to a miserable $525,000 in reparations. business sectors. World-famous Dominican “Sentencia 168/13,” the 2004 na- There’s no need for any of this deadly But of the supposed $30 per victim, survi- author Junot Díaz has also been demonized tionality law and all the rest are scraps of mess that’s called the health care “system” vors only received 2 cents each. The racist and labeled a “traitor” for denouncing the paper that can be ripped up. That requires a in the U.S. – except the need for profit. immigration decree “Sentencia 168/13” is infamous “Sentencia 168/13.” class-conscious working class which fights U.S. reported corporate profits are at over just the continuation of those attacks target- While the bourgeois ruling parties of the against the chauvinist poison of nationalism. $8 trillion per year. Even ignoring the ing Dominicans of Haitian descent, this time Dominican Republic, the police and army The Internationalist Group and League for fact that a socialized health care system by “legal” means. are up to their necks in the racist persecu- the Fourth International proclaim, as stated would be freed from the disastrous anarchy, For decades Haitians have provided tion of Haitian Dominicans, the Dominican in the Communist Manifesto, that the work- inefficiency and bureaucracy required by very cheap labor for the Dominican bour- left and labor movement have done little ers have no fatherland. We call for the fight- private ownership, the present U.S. health geoisie. Not only do they do the backbreak- or nothing to combat it. The Partido de los ing unity of Haitian, Dominican and U.S. care system, the most expensive in the ing work of harvesting sugar cane in condi- Trabajadores Dominicanos mildly criticized workers against capital and the racist rulers. world, consumes around $3 trillion per tions of near slavery, Haitian workers are the 2013 sentence, but it does not support Stop the expulsions of Haitians from year. Present corporate profits could fund also the core of construction workforce in the right of Dominicans of Haitian descent the Dominican Republic! it twice over with trillions to spare. But this the Dominican Republic, including in build- to citizenship, and it runs in election in a bloc Defend Haitians in the Dominican isn’t a question of accounting, tax rates, or ing the Santo Domingo metro. Haitians as with the PLD. Narciso Isa Conde, leader of Republic against violence and persecution! one that any “reform” of the present system well as their children born in the Dominican the Izquierda Revolucionaria (remnant of the Down with the racist anti-Haitian could achieve. Republic are an integral part of the Do- former Dominican Communist Party), did Dominican immigration laws! minican working class. But due to the racist issue a statement against the exclusionary Union signs call to “stop the war on Down with attempts to disenfranchise workers.” But that one-sided class war is hysteria whipped up by the authorities, they laws, but overall the left has been shamefully Dominicans of Haitian origin! are constantly being harassed, persecuted absent in the struggle against the virulent the domestic face of the imperialist war U.S. Full citizenship rights for all who rulers are waging around the world, and it and attacked. The bateyes where they live racist attack on this most vulnerable sector live in the Dominican Republic … and often lack a basic infrastructure of potable of Dominican working people. won’t stop until it is defeated by mobilizing the U.S.! ■ workers’ power, here and abroad. We can’t water and electricity, and they are easy prey Although weakened, there are still a accomplish that so long as workers are for lynch mobs there. number of unions in the Dominican Repub- 5 See “New York Protest Against Persecution of bound hand-and-foot to one of the bosses’ Ever since the Trujullo dictatorship, lic (CASC, CNTD, CNUS), but while they Haitian Workers in the Dominican Republic,” parties. As the union tops once again throw official government policy has been that have occasionally called national strikes The Internationalist No. 28, March-April 2009. their support behind the Democratic Party everything Haitian is condemned as bad, and against the economic policies of the PLD in the upcoming U.S. elections, worker must be eradicated. The 1937 massacre set government, they have not joined together militants must draw the lessons of their off a process of “bleaching” the Dominican with the Dominican Haitian workers of the Obamacare... continued from page 3 leaders’ support for the administration that population. After Trujillo was assassinated Unión de Trabajadores Cañeros de los Bat- designed the ACA bonanza for the insurance in 1961 (with the complicity of the CIA, eyes (UTC). When the UTC has marched for been able to resist ACA-related cuts to companies that is destroying health care for as the Democratic Kennedy administration medical insurance, to extend and increase their health care plans, in recent contract working people. figured El Chivo had become a liability), pensions and now to obtain legal papers, negotiations, unions across the country have the U.S. invaded the country a second time, they have done so alone. The Movimiento succumbed to the employees blackmail. The key lesson is the need for a class- in 1965, this time under Democrat Lyndon de Trabajadores Independientes (MTI) has Even some allegedly “progressive” unions struggle workers party. It all comes down Johnson, to prevent the Dominican Republic spoken out for rights for Dominicans of have gone to the bargaining table offering to a question of power, and Obamacare is from “going Communist.” Long-time Tru- Haitian origin, but on May 1, the interna- to slash members’ health care benefits right one more reason why the workers must jillo aide Joaquín Balaguer was installed as tional workers day, and in recent talk of a from the beginning of negotiations. This was rise up and smash the power of the tiny general strike, this burning issue has been the case in ILWU Local 5 covering workers minority of exploiters, rip the productive 2 Soldiers ordered detainees to say perejil (pars- unmentioned. Solidarity action by Domini- at Powell’s Book Store in Portland, which forces that we have built up out of the ley in Spanish), which many French and Kreyól Class Struggle Workers – Portland fought hands of these vultures, and establish a speakers find hard to pronounce. Anyone who can unions against the mass deportations to against. And across the board, increasing workers government to organize a planned failed to do so “properly” was killed on the spot. Haiti would throw the country into turmoil, 3 For a detailed account of lynch mobs against yet such an internationalist program of premiums and stagnating wages are forcing economy, producing to fulfill human needs Haitians, see “Stop Persecution of Haitian union members to make painful decisions rather than the dictates of profit. Otherwise, Workers in the Dominican Republic!” The In- 4 Sonia Pierre, “Ethnic Cleansing in the Carib- about canceling optional enrollment for the ACA debacle is a harbinger of worse to ternationalist No. 23, April-May 2006. bean,” Project Syndicate, 3 December 2008. spouses and domestic partners. come – much worse. n September-October 2015 5 Corbynmania Sweeps Britain On September 12, Jeremy Corbyn, fed up with a Tory-like longtime left-wing Member of Parliament party, led by money- (MP) from Islington North (London), was grubbing careerists and Sean Smith/Guardian resoundingly elected as head of the British austerity-mongering Labour Party. He won hands down on the technocrats. As such first ballot, with nearly 60 percent of the Labour had little chance vote. After a summer of predicting apoca- of defeating the real To- lyptic disaster should Corbyn win, with ries. Enough traditional swarms of immigrants overrunning the Labour voters stayed sceptred isle and the economy collapsing home or switched their as bankers fled the City of London, still the allegiance to give Da- British ruling class almost universally fell vid Cameron’s Conser- into shock at his incontestable victory. In vatives a comfortable contrast, there was euphoria among many majority. In Scotland, trade unionists and tens of thousands of which has been solidly young people who had flocked to the party in Labour for generations, hopes of turning out the vile “New Labour” enough voters switched crowd of acolytes of the hated Tony Blair. to the bourgeois Scottish Leftist activists were ecstatic when National Party (SNP) to Corbyn, chairman of the Stop the War elect 56 of Scotland’s Coalition and now Labour Leader, left the 59 MPs from that party, convention hall where the vote results were wiping out Labour’s announced and headed to a Refugees Wel- hefty contingent of Jeremy Corbyn at final campaign rally for Labour leadership, September 2015. come Here march. In Parliament Square he Scottish MPs. mounted the platform, gave a brief speech Thus the leadership vote was an elemen- to almost the entire panoply of socialist today of bringing potential radicals into the and together with singer Billy Bragg belted tal expression of outrage at what the Labour and ostensibly Marxist groups, including a Labour Party with illusions about eventually out the Labour anthem, The Red Flag (“The Party has become. Tony Blair is a certified number who mistakenly see themselves as pushing the party to the left. people’s flag is deepest red, it shrouded oft warmonger, reviled as (George W.) “Bush’s supporters of Leon Trotsky. Jeremy Cor- Over the course of his political career, our martyred dead”). They were even more poodle” for his tail-wagging support for the byn is by all accounts a decent and fairly Corbyn has exemplified the values of the enthused two days later when at a veterans’ U.S.’ 2003 invasion of Iraq, supported by the principled social democrat, although under Labour left, extolling as socialism an ex- commemoration of the Battle of Britain, “dodgy dossier” of “sexed-up” (doctored) tremendous pressure as Labour Leader he is tensive program of capitalist reforms – a Corbyn, a republican opponent of the mon- intelligence purporting to document Saddam now setting aside some key positions (such strong national health service, nationalized archy, refused to sing the national anthem, Hussein’s non-existent arsenal of weapons as opposition to NATO). He has supported transport and utilities, union rights, equal God Save the Queen. The bourgeois media of mass destruction. Conservative prime Palestinian rights and opposed U.S./British pay for women, and social welfare supports. and right-wing Labour MPs, on the other minister Margaret Thatcher regarded New wars on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and He was a campaigner for and protégé of hand, were aghast at the “insult.” Labour as her greatest achievement. Blair Yugoslavia in the 1990s. He courageously Benn, the Labour left’s iconic leader who All week long, the press kept up a embraced her “TINA” doctrine – that There voted, according to a count by The Times, died last year. Corbyn has been a longtime deafening drumbeat of anti-Corbyn mud- Is No Alternative to free-market capitalism against 13 counterterrorism bills. But he is columnist for the Morning Star, the now un- slinging and red-baiting scare stories: – and continued her dismantling of remnants still a committed reformist. official mouthpiece for the staid Communist “Unions threaten chaos after Corbyn win” of the social-democratic “welfare state” Party. He has campaigned for gay liberation No Return to “Welfare State” (Daily Telegraph); “Corbyn union pals institutions previous Labour governments and in defense of the Irish victims of British pledge strike chaos” (Daily Mail); “Why had built up. Capitalism imperialism. In addition to chairing the Anti- Labour’s Corbyn is a danger to Britain” The Corbyn revolt threatens to resur- Corbyn’s election as Labour Party lead- War Coalition, he is a member of the pacifist (Daily Express); “Corbyn rocked by cabinet rect and revitalize the trade union-centered er has been described as an “earthquake” Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. chaos” (London Evening Standard); “Corb reformist party that Blair worked so hard and even a “revolution” in British politics, In some ways, Corbyn has taken snubs the Queen” (Sun). While the tabloids to destroy. He sought to turn Labour from which shows how insipid mainstream stands to the left of his mentor Benn, who were having a field day, the properTimes of what Russian revolutionary leader V.I. Lenin political life has been for years and why supported British occupation of Northern London dug up the old revelation of a “hot termed a “bourgeois workers party,” with so many are turned off by it. While it has Ireland and restrictions on immigration. affair” between Corbyn and Diane Abbott its working-class base and a pro-capitalist clearly shaken up the establishment and the But the reforms that Corbyn seeks are the (a black Labour left spokewoman who is leadership, into a straight-out bourgeois scribbling classes in the press, it is basically same that the Labour lefts have extolled for now his shadow minister of development) party, much as the once formidable Italian a return to the social-democratic Labour decades, and in some cases well to the right that ended during a motorbike tour of East Communist Party was transmogrified into Left of previous decades led by Tony Benn of them. The centerpiece of his economic Germany in the 1970s (“The motorcycle today’s Democratic Party. Blair dismisses and Ken Livingstone. And while “red Ken” program (“The Economy in 2020,” 22 July) diaries”). Even his wardrobe came in for Corbynistas as living in an “Alice in Won- managed to get elected mayor of London as is the call for “people’s quantitative easing.” ridicule (“50 shades of beige”). derland world, this parallel reality” (Guard- an independent over Blair’s opposition, this In other words, the Bank of England (like The frenzied assault on Corbyn began ian, 29 August) as he conspires with other supposed “hard left” never could and never the U.S. Federal Reserve) would keep on well before his election. It has been spear- leaders of British imperialism to force La- would be able to transform Labour into a creating money but instead of sitting in the headed not only by the hysterical Tory press bour to dump its new leader, pronto. But the socialist party. As Ralph Miliband (father of coffers of the commercial banks, it would but also by Blair himself and his formidable Blairites have just suffered a huge setback. Ed) noted in the first sentence of his book upgrade deteriorating infrastructure and New Labour machine – which includes the Supporting Corbyn is a renewed Labour Parliamentary Socialism (1961): go to a national investment bank to invest vast majority of Labour members of par- left wing, comprised of trade unionists, “Of political parties claiming socialism to in hi-tech industries. Nothing the least bit liament. Barely 20 out of 232 sitting MPs students, jobless youth, and black and Asian be their aim, the Labour Party has always “anti-capitalist” about that. actually supported the new party Leader in minorities. Many were participants in the been one of the most dogmatic – not about Meanwhile, the more radical-sounding his campaign, and even as Corbyn and his mass protests against the endless Tory/La- socialism, but about the parliamentary stances are rapidly being watered down. allies occupy the front bench as the official bour austerity cuts. They see Corbyn as their system.” Corbyn’s call for renationalizing the rail- Opposition in the House of Commons, his candidate, and several hundred thousand From its inception as the Labour Rep- ways, which has 70% support in the opinion “shadow cabinet” is far from uniformly signed up to vote for him. Tens of thousands resentation Committee in 1900, the Labour polls, including a majority among Tory vot- left-wing. Corbyn has been Labour’s most of new trade-union Labour Party members Party has been a mainstay of British capi- ers, has been reduced to restoring state own- intransigently leftist MP, defying the party were enrolled; many more voters signed up talism. Labour served in the government in ership as franchises expire, no earlier than whip in more than 500 votes – especially as supporters – a new category permitted by both imperialist world wars and was a key 2020. “Renationalizing” energy companies during Blair’s tenure as prime minister a rule change in 2014, requiring only a £3 component of the anti-Soviet Cold War would be by the government purchasing a (1997–2007) – and will have a hard time (US$5) registration fee. This really stuck beginning in the late 1940s. Even the most majority of shares. In the past, Corbyn’s calling the Blairites to order. in the craw of the rightists, since they had prominent Lefts, like Aneurin Bevan after shadow chancellor of the exchequer (the The vote for a new Leader came engineered that rule expressly to further WWII, were kept at a safe distance from equivalent of the U.S. treasury secretary) because the New Labour party that Blair dilute the power of the unions in the party. the center of power. And while Corbyn is John McDonnell has called for nationalizing made crashed and burned in the May 2015 Now the British left has been seized by the first leftist to be elected Labour Party the banks. At most they are now talking of elections. Its mildly left-wing leader Ed “Corbynmania,” attracting a whole layer leader over the objections of the parliamen- undoing the privatization of the Royal Bank Miliband resigned. Workers were clearly of people new to politics and extending tary party, he will serve the same function of Scotland (RBS) Group. As we have in- 6 The Internationalist sisted, nationalizing such failing banks is a setting their dogs in the media to hunt down decidedly pro­-capitalist measure, but it will the red fox. “Drunk on class prejudice,”

take nothing less than workers revolution to as Unite union leader Len McCluskey de- Getty images wrest control of the City of London “invest- scribed them, they are intent on destroying ment banks,” the key center after Wall Street the labor movement as they “paint the mil- of finance capital. lions of trade unionists and their families At bottom, Jeremy Corbyn has em- as ‘the enemy within’.” Conservative Party braced the same populist program of a right-wingers view Corbyn’s election as a return from “neo-liberalism” to the Keynes- godsend, believing him to “unelectable.” ian economics of yesteryear advocated by Party hacks make fundraising pitches: “La- “theoreticians” like Thomas Piketty (Capital bour’s new leader is a threat to our national in the Twenty-First Century), who is now a security, our economic security, and your McDonnell advisor, and bourgeois parties family’s security. We can’t ever let Labour and politicians like SYRIZA in Greece or back into power again. Donate now.” Democrat Bernie Sanders in the U.S. Un- They revile Corbyn’s close ally John like the latter two, Labour is still a workers McDonnell as “a socialist red in tooth and party, and under certain circumstances one claw.” McDonnell was an official of the might give critical support to it or candidates National Miners Union (NUM) and is chair like Corbyn, to expose the bankruptcy of of the Socialist Campaign Group. His earlier their reformist politics. Yet decaying capi- calls for nationalization of the banks, as well British general strike of 1926 (above) betrayed by Labour left leaders of TUC. talism will not tolerate the concessions it as saluting Bobby Sands and other Irish Re- operation to defame Wilson (codenamed ists), require super-majority votes to call reluctantly granted in the past to stave off publican Army martyrs, are being paraded “Clockwork Orange”) and a 1974 military strikes and as much as 80% in “strategic” the “Communist threat.” There will be no in the media as evidence of lunacy, if not takeover of Heathrow Airport, about which occupations like the National Health Ser- second coming of the welfare state. treason. He is excoriated for a 2003 speech the government was not informed, as a dry vice. The bill, which goes far beyond even Across the planet, ever since the onset praising the bravery of the Provisional IRA, run. The head of MI5, Peter Wright, wrote Thatcher’s anti-labor laws, passed its second of the world capitalist economic crisis in and musing on a later occasion about going in his memoirs that the plan was a “carbon reading on September 14 after a six-hour 2007-08 which continues to this day with back in time to the 1980s to “assassinate copy” of the infamous “Zinoviev letter” parliamentary debate. But no amount of massive unemployment, falling wages Margaret Thatcher.” McDonnell dutifully forgery concocted to destabilize the first parliamentary haggling will stop its passage. and stagnant production, there has been an made the groveling apologies. Labour government in 1924. The Trades Union Congress annual upsurge of interest in radical politics. But But if Labour lefts are given to fan- But in 2015, as the author of A Very meeting at Brighton on September 14 if “neoliberalism” is past its heyday, it is tasizing, especially since they have been British Coup, Chris Mullin, noted (Guard- voted for a “day of action” against the bill. still enjoying a profitable afterlife, as banks consigned to the political wilderness for ian, 10 August), the first attempt to bring Corbyn spoke there, saying that the Tories continue to rake in stratospheric profits (and decades, their right-wing detractors are down Corbyn will likely come from the “are declaring war on organised labour.” bankers wallow in obscene bonuses) while making serious threats. In the past, Corbyn Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). It has Quite right. The question, then, is what to even highly educated youth toil at minimum called for British withdrawal from the already begun. The Sunday Times published do about it. Corbyn’s response sums up the wages or are unable to find any job at all. NATO imperialist military alliance and to a fly-on-the-wall account (“Knives Out for impotency of the Labour left: “We will fight The stark fact is that every single struggle scrap Trident, the U.S.-controlled British Comrade Chaos”) of conspiring amongst this Bill all the way, and if it becomes law against austerity and attacks on social ben- nuclear-armed submarine program. The the Blairites on post-election night at a pub we will repeal it in 2020.” So the capitalist efits, from North Africa to northern Europe, Sunday Times (20 September) quoted a near Victoria station and later in the week government is declaring war on the workers, has been defeated. The central reason is the “senior serving general” who was deployed in a flat in South Kensington. One after and the answer will be … to hope for an absence of a truly revolutionary leadership. in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and ’90s another former shadow ministers refused to election victory five years from now so that That means a leadership with the pro- saying that if Corbyn ever became prime serve under Corbyn. Their main thrust was Her Majesty’s Parliament can repeal it! One gram and determination to fight for socialist minister, the military would take “direct to prevent him from democratizing Labour couldn’t ask for a more succinct example revolution, not in the sweet bye-and-bye but action” to stop him: so that a party conference could overrule of electoral cretinism, the senile disorder as the goal and ultimate outcome of today’s “There would be mass resignations at the PLP and National Executive Committee afflicting the British workers movement. struggles, which is what Trotsky’s Transi- all levels and you would face the very (NEC), which the right-wingers control. tional Program is all about. It is vital to reach real prospect of an event which would Precisely because this law is a declara- out to the new layers energized by Corbyn’s effectively be a mutiny…. The Army The first clashes could come over tion of war on workers’ right to organize, it victory in the Labour leadership vote, with just wouldn’t stand for it. The general bombing Syria and Trident nukes, which can only be defeated through defiant class their will to struggle and their rejection of staff would not allow a prime minister to many Labour MPs support and Corbyn and struggle and industrial action. Signifi- politics as usual. It’s necessary to be atten- jeopardise the security of this country and most Party members oppose. As recently as cantly, the Brighton meeting also passed a tive should possibilities open up within the I think people would use whatever means this August, the new Labour leader spoke second motion, submitted by the left-led possible, fair or foul to prevent that.” Labour Party, but this will centrally involve against Trident, which is up for a £100 bil- RMT transport workers union, calling for In addition, a “senior intelligence source” intersecting them in struggle. Opportunities lion renewal next year. The nuclear subs, “generalized strike action” against the bill. reportedly said that a Corbyn cabinet would will soon arise, as showdowns loom over the left over from the anti-Soviet Cold War, are (TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady be denied operational information. Trident nuclear missiles, a vote on extending based in the Firth of Clyde in Scotland, and expressed “reservations” that it was open bombing to Syria and the trade-union bill The London Guardian pooh-poohed the the SNP and supporters of Scottish indepen- to “ambiguous interpretation.”) The RMT now before Parliament. Key in every case notion of a military revolt against Corbyn dence oppose them. In 2003, the Stop the along with the Fire Brigades Union, which is mobilizing workers’ power. as “far-fetched,” although their main argu- War Coalition, with Corbyn at the forefront, are not members of the Labour Party, had The sudden rise of the Labour lefts has ment was that “he is unlikely ever to become brought out up to 2 million people to oppose voted to back Corbyn along with Unite, already galvanized hundreds of thousands, prime minister.” Yet the flagship paper of the invasion of Iraq. But it didn’t stop even which is. This motion was clearly intended and it could arouse many more in the fight the “center-left” quoted the military chief one of Blair’s bombs from falling on Iraqi simply as another pressure tactic, but were against the Tory and Blairite imperialists of staff in a speech following the election children, as British workers and unions were a general strike to actually occur, which is and their hangers on. Yet this also creates of Corbyn as Labour Leader complaining not called upon to use their power as work- what the TUC tops fear, it would be the first new illusions in the arch-reformist pro- about the “ever greater constraints on our ers to shut Britain down. time in Britain since 1926. capitalist Labour Party that had largely freedom to use force” posed by the need for Rather than Corbyn’s pacifist politics of A real general strike is not the one- or dissipated. Whoever thought that Blair’s “parliamentary consent.” Many recalled the protest and of “unilateral nuclear disarma- two-day affairs that pass for one these days New Labour could be a road to revolution? 1982 novel (and later TV series) A Very Brit- ment,” revolutionary Trotskyists call for in much of Europe, which are nothing more Winning young radicals to become profes- ish Coup about the election of a left-wing labor strikes against imperialist war and not than glorified stop-work demonstrations. It sional revolutionaries requires telling the trade-unionist from Sheffield (the stomping one penny, not one person for the imperialist is the highest level of workers struggle short unvarnished truth, that the Labour Party will ground of miners leader Arthur Scargill) as armed forces. of an armed insurrection. Even if called as Labour Leader and the successful plot by never become socialist – not even under the …and War on Workers “at a defensive action, it necessarily poses the MI5 (Britain’s domestic spy agency) and question of which class rules. As Trotsky most left-wing Labour lefts – and will be a Home” key obstacle to revolutionary struggle. And military leaders to bring him down. wrote just after the May 1926 general strike we must aid in showing through experience That fictional account was based on Meanwhile the entire workers move- had broken out, it “demands a clear, resolute, the need for a genuinely revolutionary, the very real preparations for a coup d’état ment is facing a frontal assault by the firm (i.e., a revolutionary) leadership.” Not- Leninist-Trotskyist workers party. against the Labour governments of Harold government’s Trade Union Bill. This dra- ing that the TUC had declared the strike to Wilson in 1965 and again in the mid-1970s, conian piece of legislation aims to make it be non-political, he continued: Tories and Blairites Unite for confirmed in a 2006 BBC documentary. The well-nigh impossible to have a legal strike. “In the present strike there is no trace Imperialist War... plots involved military figures with connec- The bill would end closed shops and dues of such a leadership of the British David Cameron’s Tories act toward tion to the royals (Lord Mountbatten, the check-offs, require picket captains to regis- proletariat…. And herein lies the chief Corbyn with the bloodthirsty hauteur of a last viceroy of India), press barons (Lord ter with the police by name (thus providing danger: men who did not want the general party of lords and ladies riding to hounds, Cecil King of the Daily Mirror), an MI5 employers with a blacklist of union activ- continued on page 21 September-October 2015 7 Referendum Ploy: Syriza Government Caves In to Eurobankers’ Assault Greek Workers: Defeat the Bankers’ Diktat, Occupy the Banks and Ports! JULY 4 – For the past five months, ever since elected Greek govern- the January 25 elections brought the Coali- ment by using the crud- Only Workers Revolution Will tion of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) into office est financial blackmail in Greece, there has been a bitter struggle and doomsday threats. End Capitalist “Austerity” between the new regime and the European Workers must fight tooth Central Bank, European Commission and and nail against the as-

International Monetary Fund. The ECB/EC/ sault on their living stan- KKE IMF “troika” has insisted that Athens comply dards and very existence with the Eurobankers’ program of brutal, by these bloodsuckers. anti-working class austerity which has dev- But they cannot do that astated the Greek economy for the last five by voting “no” in the years. While European Union bureaucrats in referendum, for a very Brussels haggle about the details, hard-liners simple reason: Tsipras, in Berlin have made it clear that they were Varoufakis & Co. have prepared to boot Greece out of the common already capitulated to currency, the euro (one variant of what’s be- and accepted almost all ing called “Grexit”). SYRIZA, which is not the anti-worker demands a radical leftist party at all but a bourgeois of the troika. The gov- nationalist populist formation, has sought to ernment of SYRIZA and bargain for less onerous terms and for relief its right-wing populist from the staggering €320 billion public debt, allies of ANEL (Greek Thousands jammed Syntagma (Constitution) Square in July 2 Communist Party (KKE) protest while insisting it will not leave the eurozone.1 Democrats), which is against austerity plans of the Eurobankers and of the Greek government led by SYRIZA. On June 25, the Eurogroup of finance already looting pensions, is using the ref- And while they’re at it, since the fabu- June 24, the day after Athens’ proposal was ministers handed Greek prime minister Alexis erendum as a bargaining ploy: if they get lously wealthy Greek shipping magnates are handed in, the troika negotiators handed Tsipras and finance minister Yanis Varoufakis a majority “no” vote, they will use this to so adept at avoiding any taxes and hiding their Greek counterparts a red-lined version a “take-it-or-leave-it” final offer demanding attempt, once again, to negotiate a new aus- their assets, instead of hopelessly advocating with a whole series of amendments, notably: drastic pension cuts, tax increases on the poor, terity program that will further impoverish “tax the rich,” as most of the left calls for, • VAT (sales tax) to go to 23% immedi- privatizations and anti-labor “reforms.” In Greece’s hard-hit population. workers should seize the oligarchs’ sumptu- ately, including for hotels and restau- response, Tspiras announced that the govern- The first duty of revolutionary Marxists ous residences, estates and island retreats to rants. This would be a body blow to ment would ask the Greek electorate to vote is to tell the truth to the masses. The League be used as summer camps for poor children the one functioning sector of the Greek on whether to say “yes” or “no” to the troika’s for the Fourth International says that the only and other socially useful purposes. economy, tourism. extortionate demands, vowing that the govern- way to defeat the bankers’ diktat and put an By now there is hardly any need to con- • Raise VAT for many medical supplies, ment would not give in to the “ultimatum.” end to the devastating austerity program of vince Greek workers, pensioners or students, hitting the healthcare industry hard, This took the Eurobankers by surprise, and the Eurobosses is by mobilizing the workers’ or anyone on the left internationally, that the while setting lower prices for generic after first trying to stop the referendum, they power on the road to a socialist revolution in bankers’ demands are ruinous. Millions of pharmaceuticals, one of Greece’s main have launched a lavishly financed media blitz Greece and throughout Europe. To stop the Greeks have spent the last five years trying to exports to Europe. for a “yes” vote. Meanwhile, tens of thousands financial extortion, workers should occupy resist them, to no avail. What is worth under- • Abolish preferential tax treatment of working people, pensioners and others the banks and place them under control of lining is that the ECB hardliners have been and fuel subsidies for farmers, further who have borne the brunt of the austerity elected workers commissions against the pushing this program since even before SYRI- weakening agriculture, once a mainstay have demonstrated repeatedly in Syntagma Eurobankers and the Greek capitalist gov- ZA was elected. Indeed, German chancellor of the Greek economy. (Constitution) Square for “OXI” (“no” in ernment. Against the threat of privatization, Angel Merkel and finance minister Wolfgang • Cut back corporate tax hikes. Greek) while smaller, more affluent crowds workers in the ports of Piraeus, Thessaloniki Schäuble forced the January election by refus- • Raise the minimum retirement to 67, demonstrated for “NAI” (“yes”). and the Greek islands should occupy the ports ing to grant former premier Antonis Samaras except for those who have worked 40 There is no doubt what the “institutions” (and airports) and place them under workers of the right-wing New Democracy (ND) years, while eliminating supplements (i.e., the hated troika) want: total surrender control. Make public health and public trans- more time to carry it out. They figured that if for the lowest pensions, many of which to their program and “regime change” in portation permanently free, under workers SYRIZA won, they could burn it by forcing are around €360 (US$400) a month. Athens. Their aim is to bring down the control. As for the unpayable foreign debt, the these phony “radical leftists” to bow down to • Double the reduction in the military the bankers’ diktat, or failing that, could force budget and require “reduction in head- 1 See “Greece: The SYRIZA Illusion Ex- workers should repudiate (cancel) it entirely, Greece out of the euro, which would then count.” ploded” and “What Is SYRIZA?” in The In- as the Russian workers did in October 1917. ternationalist No. 39, April-May 2015. But that will take a revolution. unmistakably be the D-mark in disguise, with Obviously, this “proposal” was designed to the Bundesbank calling the shots. be rejected, as it would hit the poorest, most In fact, during the months of “nego- vulnerable working people hardest, devastate tiations” in Brussels the Eurocrats haven’t the functioning parts of the Greek economy, ceded on anything. Every time the Greek and encourage unrest in the military. Sure government gave up a point, the “institu- enough, within days the German press was dpa tions” demanded more. Already at the end of speculating about whether the Greek military May, Varoufakis handed in a 47-page policy was about to revolt and impose a dictatorship, draft (and another 8-page summary) agreeing as it did in 1967. The purpose of this exercise to run a 3.5% primary budget surplus (i.e., was to force the Greek government into before payment of debt) by 2018; to raise groveling total submission, or to lay the basis sales (value added) taxes to 11% for hotels, for a German-engineered “Grexit” should restaurants and most products and 23% for Tsipras balk. many foods; to gradually raise the lower age A “yes” vote in the referendum would limit for early retirement to 62 years; to priva- mean abject surrender to the Brussels bu- tize a host of state-owned enterprises (plus reaucrats, Frankfurt bankers and vicious tightening tax collection and raising taxes Berlin politicians who seek to humiliate the on the rich). Even though this represented Greek people. But can a “no” vote strike a an unheard-of level of austerity for a country blow against the austerity mongers? It can- in the depths of economic depression, it was not, because the whole purpose of “voting rejected out of hand. So the Greek govern- NO,” as Tsipras himself says repeatedly, ment capitulated again and submitted a new “means continuing the negotiation with bet- Athens street poster calling for “NO” (OXI) in July 5 referendum showing plan agreeing to just about everything. Troika ter conditions for the Greek people” (July German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble: “For five long years he has negotiators made positive noises. 3 TV speech). Or again: “NO is a decisive drunk your blood, now say NO to him.” But even that was not enough. On continued on page 19 8 The Internationalist The SYRIZA Debacle: “Leftists” Enforce the Bosses’ Austerity Greece: The Naked Rule of Finance Capital JULY 18 – Late in the night of July 15-16, the last five months has after going through the motions of a debate, exposed this illusion, the Greek parliament cast the fateful vote and shown how imperi- to accept the draconian austerity measures alist “democracy” only Getty Images ordered by Europe’s central bankers two masks the dictatorship days earlier. The “Agreement” was put of finance capital. forward by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras The mask is off, and and his governing Coalition of the Radical it is the working class, Left (SYRIZA). It represented the grovel- the poor and the op- ing surrender by these purported radicals pressed who are paying who won office in January on a program to the price of SYRIZA’s reverse the cutbacks and layoffs that have deception, which was devastated the Greek economy and drasti- eagerly promoted by cally impoverished working people over the its cheerleaders and last five years. Worse yet, the populist left apologists around the rammed through and is enforcing a raft of world, including those brutal anti-working-class measures that is who now scramble to even more brutal than what its conservative dissociate themselves predecessors tried and failed to carry out. from their erstwhile he- While claiming to have fought the good roes. As the conserva- fight, and pretending to have won some tive London Telegraph concessions, Tsipras & Co. acted as flunkeys (16 July) wrote: “By a for the Eurobankers, who used SYRIZA to twist of fate, the Left This time it is the SYRIZA government that is sending riot cops against anti-austerity get what the right couldn’t deliver. has become the enforcer demonstrators. Syntagma Square, Athens, July 15 while the Greek parliament was voting The showdown was not without drama. of an economic structure for Eurobankers’ austerity deal. Free all the arrested protesters! While riot police attacked anti-austerity pro- that has led to levels of unemployment once firebombs and clashes with the police by mean a further massive attack on workers’ testers in Syntagma (Constitution) Square unthinkable for a post-war social democratic a few anarchists. These tactics were just livelihoods – austerity with a vengeance. outside, inside the chamber a number of government with its own sovereign currency. as impotent against SYRIZA, since they While the government of SYRIZA and SYRIZA members of parliament criticized It has found ways to justify a youth jobless in no way challenge the capitalist order. ANEL (Greek Democrats), bourgeois popu- their own government’s motion. SYRIZA rate still running at 42% in Italy, 49% in Spain Thus there was no attempt to prevent the lists of left and right, knuckled under to the has 149 members of parliament, just shy of a and 50% in Greece. It has acquiesced in the bourgeois parliament from voting the fate- diktat of the Eurobankers, joining their flun- majority, but a quarter of them voted no (32) Long Slump of the past six years.” Agree- ful law. But although the Greek parliament keys of the domestic mini-Troika of New or abstained (6) in the crucial vote. Earlier ing, as Tsipras did, to have budget surpluses passed the measure with an ample majority, Democracy (ND), the Pan-Hellenic Socialist in the day, a majority of the party’s Central (before debt service) of 3.5% of the gross there is no guarantee that the Eurobankers Party (PASOK) and Potami, the battle is by Committee issued a statement calling the domestic product, said the Tory mouthpiece, will in fact agree to a new loan of another no means over. With the exception of the “agreement” a “disaster for our country and “is a formula for permanent depression…. It €82 billion (or more, according to the IMF Nazi-fascists of Golden Dawn (Chrysi Avgi, our people,” and requesting an immediate is a doomsday construct.” analysis kept secret during the Brussels or XA), who will now seek to profit from the meeting of the CC. This “statement of the There was opposition in the streets to “negotiations”) needed to service the €240 abject failure of SYRIZA, the entire pano- 109” cited the “proud OXI (NO) in the this attack on the vital interests of workers, billion already lent, 90% of which went to ply of Greek bourgeois parties has agreed referendum” held only ten days earlier in pensioners and large sectors of the middle “bail out” the commercial banks and almost to pay off the phony “Greek debt” and to which 61% of those voting rejected the prior classes. The ADEDY federation of public none ever went to Greece, on top of another enforce austerity policies of a ferocity never ultimatum by the European Central Bank, workers unions, led by a member of SYRI- €100 billion in emergency assistance to keep before experienced in a developed capitalist 1 European Commission and International ZA’s central committee, called a 24-hour Greek banks afloat. country. But facing this doomsday scenario Monetary Fund (the hated “Troika,” now eu- strike and a rally outside parliament during Various leftists in and around SYRIZA, which would spell its destruction, the orga- phemistically known as “the institutions”). the debate. ANTARSYA (Front of the Anti- including the Left Platform and AN- nized working class has not yet responded But it was all to no avail. Capitalist Left) joined ADEDY with more TARSYA, are now pushing for Greece to in force. Revolutionary Marxists would seek Neither the emphatic “NO” from the militant slogans, but basically pressuring default on the extortionate loans, take over to mobilize the proletariat to lead the fight Greek population nor the dissent in his the SYRIZA legislators and government the collapsed banking system and issue to resist, undermine and defeat the capital- own ranks deterred Tsipras. Relying on to vote “no.”. The PAME (All-Workers some form of scrip, adopt a parallel currency ist offensive which spells ruin for the large the votes of the conservative right, he got Militant Front) labor federation led by the or leave the euro zone altogether (“Grexit”) majority of the Greek population. As we parliament to say “YES” to a program that Communist Party (KKE) held a march of and issue a new currency, whether a revived wrote on the eve of the July 5 referendum: will sink Greece even further into the abyss. thousands of workers from Omonia Square drachma or some other denomination. Leav- There will now be more poverty, more mass to Syntagma, as well as marches in Thes- ing aside the complicated mechanics of such “The League for the Fourth International says that the only way to defeat the bank- firings, more cuts of the pensions of the saloniki and other cities, denouncing the an operation which requires considerable ers’ diktat and put an end to the devastat- poorest retirees, a sharp rise of taxes on the alliance of the Tsipras government which preparation, the way this would eventually ing austerity program of the Eurobosses country’s only functioning industry (tour- called for a “NO” in the referendum with work to revive the economy is by a drastic is by mobilizing the workers’ power on ism), and privatization of the country’s most the bourgeois “opposition” which called devaluation, making imports more expen- the road to a socialist revolution in Greece valuable assets. The shameful vote signifies for a “YES” now joining in support of a sive and exports cheaper. Yet Greece exports and throughout Europe. To stop the fi- the utter bankruptcy of SYRIZA, and of Third Memorandum to increase the profits very little that would become more com- nancial extortion, workers should occupy all those leftists who supported it, both in of capital by squeezing ever more sweat and petitive by devaluation, its manufacturing the banks and place them under control Greece and internationally. Even those in blood from the workers. industry having been largely destroyed since of elected workers commissions against SYRIZA who dissented, like the Left Plat- But these were basically ritual protests, adopting the euro in 2001, and is heavily the Eurobankers and the Greek capitalist form, are guilty of building a party that won “symbolic” blockades and limited strikes dependent on vital imports including food. government. Against the threat of priva- office running on a lie, that one could end of the sort Greece had experienced by the In any case, while it may become inevitable, tization, workers in the ports of Piraeus, austerity in the framework of the imperialist dozens in 2010-12, with no effect at all a “Grexit” under capitalism will inevitably Thessaloniki and the Greek islands should European Union. The bitter experience of on government actions. Likewise with the 1 The euro (€) is currently valued at about US$1.10. occupy the ports (and airports)and place Workers: Sink the Bankers’ Memorandum, Occupy the Banks and Ports! Build a Trotskyist Party to Fight for International Socialist Revolution! September-October 2015 9 ease among OXI supporters, some fearing that telephone surveys which leave out the large a “no” vote would mean exiting the euro as the percentage of workers and the poor who right wing argued, and many with questions don’t have a land line phone). Instead there about what Tsipras would do with a favorable was an unprecedented landslide 61% “OXI” vote, and why he was continuing the charade vote, with a majority for “no” in every of negotiations. Eleni, a fast food worker in single one of the 74 prefectures of Greece. Thessaloniki, commented in an interview: In working-class districts such as Piraeus Aris Messinis/AFP “There are lots of small-time bosses in B and historically leftist areas like Crete it Syriza, running a business with five to was well over 70%. Crowds poured into the ten workers, and probably not paying streets to celebrate. Tsipras emerged to hail them according to the law. Syriza, like the voters’ “brave choice” and to declare any governing party, wants to have that this proved that “even under the most the majority of the people on its side difficult circumstances, democracy cannot – bosses, workers, soldiers, police, be blackmailed.” But behind the scenes it retirees, everyone…. [T]hey have to was a completely different story. The Greek balance the interests of all these different leader’s reaction was consternation and he constituencies. This would make it hard decided to cave in to the creditors’ demands. for Syriza to do something very radical. “It’s funny for me and my boss to discuss There are now several accounts, all By forcing the closure of Greek banks, the European Central Bank set off Syriza, and agree. But that’s the point the consistent on the essentials. Whether panic buying, soon leading to shortages. Above: empty grocery shelves in battle is at right now. There is not a class Tsipras “never expected to win Sunday’s an Athens supermarket in early July. struggle against our bosses – the situation referendum on EMU [European Monetary them under workers control. Make public forced to renounce everything it said it stood this week is Syriza and all of us against Union] bail-out terms, let alone to preside health and public transportation perma- for. Already the cabinet has been reshuffled, the measures of the European Union. Of over a blazing national revolt against foreign nently free, under workers control. As for with the dissenting ministers shown the door. course, there are differences between control,” and instead planned to “put up a the unpayable foreign debt, the workers The Coalition of the (not-so) Radical Left workers and bosses, but for now we are good fight, accept honourable defeat” and let should repudiate (cancel) it entirely, as the will almost certainly split, and the reform- united on the referendum.” his successor do the dirty work, as Ambrose –“Life Under Austerity,” Jacobin, 12 July Russian workers did in October 1917. But ist leftists in it (Left Platform, Left Current, Evans Pritchard reported in the London Asked what voting “no” means to most that will take a revolution.” Red Network, KOE, DEA, etc.) may join Telegraph (6 July), he was certainly not people, Eleni said she is “not sure that the –“Greek Workers: Defeat the Bankers’ with others in and around ANTARSYA. But prepared to wage the all-out battle that was Diktat, Occupy the Banks and Ports!” majority of people like me – workers in my at most this would only be a new edition of posed. In an interview with the Australian (see page 8) sector – understand what it means.” Stathis SYRIZA on a slightly more leftist program, ABC (13 July), Varoufakis said that coming This program to mobilize workers Kouvelakis, a member of the Left Platform incapable of leading a struggle to overturn from the celebration in Syntagma Square, power in sharp class struggle is all the more reported on his experience campaigning for capitalism. For that requires forging a revo- “The moment I entered the prime ministerial urgent today, after the ignominious passage a “no” vote, saying that it was “tough within lutionary workers party on the Bolshevik office, I sensed immediately a certain sense of the Third (SYRIZA) Memorandum. The the railways” since “the workers knew that program of Lenin and Trotsky. of resignation…. an air of defeat, which was imperialist bankers have made excruciat- the Syriza government had already accepted completely at odds with what was happen- ingly clear that there is no measure that any OXI (NO) = NAI (YES): The the privatization of the railways.” He added: ing outside.” Since Tsipras was not willing government of a capitalist state can take to Saga of the Greek Referendum “But despite the varying contexts, in to use the “no” vote to fight the forces of stop the ruling-class war on the workers In the view of the central bankers and all these places, the discussion was austerity, and the latter wanted Varoufakis’ known as “austerity.” But the working class conservative politicians who run the show in around two different issues: why has the head, the Greek finance minister resigned. can take action independent of and against the European Union, things were going along government done so little so far, why has In the following hours, Tsipras formed the government to defend its vital interests fine in the drawn-out “negotiations” with the it been so timid? And also what are you a de facto coalition with the defeated par- going to do after the No victory? … and fend off the assault. There should be an upstart Greek government. The Eurogroup ties of the “yes” vote on the basis of their “So the questions were: what are your immediate drive to form workers councils of finance ministers had worn down their program. He called a meeting of leaders of plans? What are you going to do? Why in industrial areas and proletarian districts interlocutors by demanding detailed statis- the parliamentary parties except the fascist to undertake steps to ensure the survival of do you still talk about negotiations when tics, then rejecting every plan out of hand as for five and a half months we have seen XA, presided over by the right-wing presi- the population – not just soup kitchens but soon as it was submitted while disparaging this approach clearly fail? dent Pavlopoulos (installed by SYRIZA) seizing the networks of distribution of vital supposedly juvenile behavior in Athens. “I was in a very embarrassing situation, be- who had openly called for a “yes” vote. necessities (food, fuel, medications) – to The snooty social-democratic Dutch fin min cause, in my role as a Syriza spokesperson Except for the KKE, the leaders agreed to impose workers control of production and who heads the cabal, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, and central committee member, I couldn’t back the government in negotiating on the initiate workers defense guards against of- a would-be Tony Blair of the second com- give convincing answers to all this.” basis of the EU demands. The government ficial repression and fascist attacks, notably ing, would sneeringly put down his Greek –Sebastian Budgen and Stathis Kouvela- cobbled together yet another proposal agree- against immigrants. counterpart whenever Yanis Varoufakis tried kis, “Greece: The Struggle Continues,” ing to just about everything. This was then SYRIZA, as we have explained else- to talk about the economic disaster that EU Jacobin, 14 July rammed through parliament, with most of where, is not a workers party at all but a austerity policies had caused. Economist In fact, Tsipras had no intention of using SYRIZA’s Left Platform voting yes but a bourgeois nationalist populist formation like Varoufakis later remaked that he “might as a “no” vote to stand up to the EU bosses. few abstaining as a fig leaf. But even that PASOK, whose trajectory it has followed well have sung the Swedish national anthem” In our article on the eve of the July 5 capitulation was not enough for the Euro- and whose position on the Greek political for all the bankers cared. As an end of June referendum, noting that most of the left had bosses, who demanded total surrender, or chessboard it has now occupied. Like its deadline approached, the financiers issued a called for OXI, we said that while a “yes” “Grexit.” So after a marathon Euro-summit forerunner, it ran on a left-populist platform “take-it-or-leave-it” ultimatum. vote meant abject surrender to the dictates of lasting 27 hours and involving what one EU to get elected (although not as radical as PA- But just after midnight on June 27, Tsip- capital, a “no” vote could not “strike a blow official called extensive mental waterboard- SOK’s original program), then abandoned ras threw a spanner (monkey wrench) into against the austerity mongers” because “the ing” of the Greek premier, Tsipras groveled. it upon taking office. Virtually none of the the works by suddenly calling a referendum whole purpose of ‘voting NO,’ as Tsipras planks in SYRIZA’s September 2014 Thes- on whether to accept the Eurobankers’ “final himself says repeatedly, ‘means continuing The Sorry Fate of SYRIZA’s saloniki Program were implemented, not offer.” How dare this “demagogue” ask the the negotiation with better conditions for the Camp Followers even raising the minimum wage, and now people to decide such a “complicated” issue, Greek people’.” Moreover, the Greek leader It was not so long ago that the left in- what few minor steps were taken are being the imperialist media and politicians howled. had already agreed to “drastic tax increases, ternationally was enraptured with SYRIZA. rolled back. Alexis Tsipras performed his re- The “Troika” declared that the offer was no lower wages for public sector workers, Alexis Tsipras at 40 (he was born four days quired kolotoumba (somersault, or U-turn), longer on the table, then accused the Greek continued elimination of collective bargain- after the fall of the military dictatorship) and as the bourgeois pundits predicted. Voters prime minister of calling a vote on something ing, rampant privatizations and all the rest. his hip finance minister were seen as harbin- reportedly still give him high marks, for try- that didn’t exist. The cynical arguments from SYRIZA is using the referendum not only to gers of a promising new era. At the yearly ing hard and upholding Greek dignity, and Brussels were trumpeted in propaganda for bolster its maneuvering, but as a vote of con- “Left Forum” gab fest in New York City at still want him as prime minister because he a “NAI” (YES) vote that blanketed the air- fidence in its government.” What happened the end of May, representatives of almost the is “clean” unlike his corrupt predecessors. waves and almost all the papers. They were in the wake of the referendum fully confirms entire fake left groaned or laughed derisively But poor and working people will still be then repeated by correspondents interviewing our warnings and validates our refusal to call when the Internationalist Group made the ground into even deeper misery. people having their morning latte in trendy for a “no” vote. We told the unvarnished truth simple Marxist observation that SYRIZA Leftists in Greece and internationally cafes in the leafy northern suburbs of Athens. about Tsipras’ ploy rather than ceding to the and the government it leads are bourgeois. who deposited high hopes in SYRIZA, on In working-class areas that had borne the pressure of mass sentiment. In several workshops, the IG’s insistence the other hand, are despondent. For the first brunt of the austerity over the last five years, The almost universal expectation in that Europe’s capitalist rulers would never time in decades, a party not belonging to the however, opinion was overwhelmingly in the capitalist media was of a close vote, agree to end or even cut back on austerity “neoliberal” mainstream had been elected favor of “OXI,” to give the “big NO” to the based on public opinion surveys which was simply dismissed. Even so, many had a and could show what it could do. But now arrogant masters of Europe. systematically understate support for the hard time stomaching the sneering rejection SYRIZA has suffered a humiliating defeat, At the same time, there was plenty of un- left (in good part because they are based on of “ideology” by spokesmen for SYRIZA 10 The Internationalist and its aggressively anti-Marxist Spanish arguing on the terrain of reformism. It counterpart, Podemos. conflates the relatively simple operation of

Now many leftists are accusing Tsipras delinking an existing currency to another Reuters of betrayal. He certainly trampled on the OXI foreign currency with the extremely com- vote, agreeing to bailout terms worse than plex task of creating a new currency from that which Greek voters rejected in the July scratch. Even worse, WV echoes bourgeois referendum. He trampled underfoot SYRIZA’s liberal economists like Joseph Stiglitz and anti-austerity election campaign promises. Paul Krugman in prettifying what actually One can’t say that he betrayed his own prin- took place in Argentina. The currency peg ciples or that SYRIZA betrayed the working had generated a severe economic crisis and class, however, since he was committed to the desperate rulers in Argentina (which staying in the euro zone at all costs, and the had five presidents in the space of a week “Coalition of the Radical Left” is not a workers in 2001) had no choice in ending it. But the party but a bourgeois populist formation. In immediate aftermath was massive poverty fact the double-talk Tsipras engaged in during and millions of unemployed, who didn’t the referendum campaign was nothing new. In find work for years. The piqueteros block- article for Le Monde (31 May) he accused the ing highways were not striking workers but Eurocrats of in effect calling for “the complete jobless. The supposed fall in unemployment abolition of democracy in Europe.” But even was largely the result of lying official statis- as he talked of “a Europe of solidarity, equality tics, as in the U.S. today when the Obama and democracy,” he submitted a plan agreeing government puts it below 6% by simply Imperialist bankers’ diktat: IMF chief Christine Lagarde after “mental to raising the retirement age, proceed with eliminating long-term unemployed from waterboarding” of new Greek finance minister Tsakalokos at EU summit, July 12. privatizations, etc. the workforce (it’s actually around 23%). indirectly, but all the more surely. It does in check. SYRIZA became a mass party fol- As we noted in our previous article, Now the various leftists in and around this in two ways: by plain corruption of lowing the more than 30 general strikes, ex- virtually the entire left, in Greece and inter- SYRIZA, having been used and discarded officials, of which America is the classic plosive mass demonstrations and occupation nationally, jumped on the OXI bandwagon, “like a squeezed lemon,” are talking about example, and by an alliance between of city squares during 2010-12. It won office thereby helping Tsipras peddle the illusion forming a new party. Those still inside – the government and the stock exchange, in January after the ND-PASOK duopoly that he was valiantly resisting the EU tops. such as the DEA (International Workers which is effected all the more easily the which had ruled Greece for 40 years failed The one significant exception was the KKE Left, allied with the International Socialist higher the state debt mounts and the more to implement the bankers’ vicious auster- which called to oppose the austerity plans Organization in the U.S.) and the Commu- the joint-stock companies concentrate in ity regime due to popular resistance. The of both the EU and the Greek government. nist Tendency (part of Alan Woods’ Inter- their hands not only transport but also Eurobankers forced the election knowing The cheerleaders for a “NO” vote included national Marxist Tendency) – are calling on production itself, and themselves have SYRIZA might win, figuring that they could their own center in the stock exchange.” not only the left wing of SYRIZA, which is the leadership to call an immediate national oblige it to accomplish what ND-PASOK V.I. Lenin elaborated on this in The State now being unceremoniously booted out, but conference to discuss the bailout deal, which could not, or else force it into a Grexit so and Revolution (1917), where he noted: also its camp followers on the outside, nota- Tsipras will surely not do unless he is cer- painful that it would scare off populist leftist “At present, imperialism and the bly ANTARSYA. It even extended to small tain of crushing the opposition. Those on oppositions elsewhere in Europe. centrist outfits like the Trotskyist Group of the outside like ANTARSYA are angling to domination of the banks have ‘developed’ Unlike Euroleftists like SYRIZA, au- Greece (TGG), affiliated with the Internation- hook up with the Left Platform. But all this into an exceptional art both these methods thentic Trotskyists have opposed the impe- al Communist League (ICL). The TGG had would be is another “broad left” formation of upholding and giving effect to the omnipotence of wealth in democratic rialist European Union from the beginning. called on workers not to vote for SYRIZA in with a program for a “left government” of republics of all descriptions…. The vicious anti-worker austerity offensive January, instead advocating critical support to the capitalist state, that at most could be “Another reason why the omnipotence of of the EU may yet force Greece out of the the KKE. But now it shamefully placed itself condemned to repeat the disastrous SYRIZA ‘wealth’ is more certain in a democratic euro zone, but the League for the Fourth to the right of the Stalinists, who although experience, when what’s urgently needed is republic is that it does not depend on International fights to bring down the im- dyed in the wool reformists (and Greek to build as a Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard to defects in the political machinery or on perialist EU through Europe-wide socialist nationalists), stated the fact that Tsipras was break out of the capitalist straitjacket. the faulty political shell of capitalism. revolution. For this, the actions of workers using the referendum as a maneuver to push Imperialist Democracy and the A democratic republic is the best outside Greece are key in bringing down the through an attack on the workers. Dictatorship of Finance Capital possible political shell for capitalism, imperialist masters of Europe. This includes So how is the TGG/ICL call for a “no” and, therefore, once capital has gained In the wake of the Greek parliament vote not only the rulers of the Fourth Reich of vote in the July referendum working out for possession of this very best shell …, German imperialism, who have been the accepting the Eurobankers’ diktat, we hear a it establishes its power so securely, them? Not so good, it seems. Their statement hardliners in “disciplining” Greek work- lot about the “democratic deficit” of the Eu- so firmly, that no change of persons, claimed to give “no support to the Syriza ers, but also the “progressive” bourgeois ropean Union, where unelected bureaucrats institutions or parties in the bourgeois- government,” even as it was doing just democrats and social democrats in Italy and that. But according to Workers Vanguard override the will of millions of voters in elec- democratic republic can shake it.” tions. But liberal/social-democratic rhetoric What we have seen unfolding in Greece France who have played “soft cop” in the (10 July), “TGG comrades distributing at Greek bailout drama. But while there have the final ‘no’ rally were physically driven about “democracy” ignores the fact that from in the last five months is the clearest pos- the start, the EU has been an imperialist al- sible proof that imperialist “democracy” in been large “solidarity with Greece” demos out by pro-Syriza Greek nationalists who from London and Dublin to Paris and Berlin, understood clearly enough that our ‘no’ liance based on subjugation of the working reality is the rule of finance capital, which class. Born out of the Cold War, following the “no change of persons, institution or parties they seek to pressure their bourgeois rulers vote in the referendum was certainly not a rather than fighting to overthrow them. ‘yes’ vote for Syriza.” We, of course, oppose destruction of the bureaucratically degener- in the bourgeois-democratic republic can such thuggery on the left, but this incident ated Soviet Union and deformed workers shake.” A dramatic victory by SYRIZA in What we have seen these past months confirms that for many the “no” vote in the states of East Europe, the hard-nosed capital- the January elections, an unprecedented is a disaster that was foreseeable from the referendum was emphatically a “yes” vote ist ideologues and financiers took aim at the landslide for “NO” to the EU ultimatum in beginning. According to the rules of Greek for SYRIZA. The other notable aspect of the “welfare state.” These programs aimed at the July 5 referendum, and only a week later, tragedy laid out by Aristotle, the ultimate de- Workers Vanguard article is its support for a warding off off the post-WWII “communist the bankers emerge triumphant, ordering mise is not the result of unforeseen events or “Grexit,” which like its call for a “no” vote threat” in Europe were now seen as a drag on the Greek parliament to rubber-stamp the outside forces, but due to inherent features in the referendum, echoes the position of the profits. German finance minister Wolfgang dictated “Agreement” in 48 hours, which of the protagonists. For any Marxist it was SYRIZA left and its hangers-on. WV writes: Schäuble is today going after state-owned it dutifully does. And in this epoch of im- clear, already in the first act, that SYRIZA’s firms in Greece with the same scorched-earth perialist decay, the radical-left “democrats” vow to fight austerity was incompatible “The example of Argentina (or Iceland) tactics he used to dismantle the collectivized with its loyalty to the imperialist EU and graphically shows that Greece might be who serve as the instruments of the bankers economy of East Germany. much better off if it defaulted on its debts are systematically ripping up past gains of capitalism. What happened since was the and left the eurozone, reinstating its own But more generally, the underlying the working class, privatizing nationalized inevitable result of those fatal flaws, that currency. After Argentina pegged its peso issue is not a negation of some mythical industries such as railroads, postal services could only be overcome by the action of the to the U.S. dollar in 1991, its economy classless “democracy” but the fact that the and electrical power, and pulverizing social working class, independent of and against went into a deep recession and the country democratic trappings of the bourgeois state programs such as health insurance that date the “left” capitalist rulers. But Greek work- defaulted in 2001. In response, Argentina mask the rule of capital, and under imperial- back to the time of Count Otto von Bismarck. ers are not constrained to choose between stopped pegging its currency to the dol- ism, the dictatorship of finance capital. As The bourgeoisie often brings in popu- two disastrous courses, between the Scylla lar and the economy recovered. Average Friedrich Engels wrote in the concluding list parties or popular-front coalitions like of crashing on the shoals of the Eurobankers’ wages initially dropped 30 percent, but chapter of his work The Origin of the Fam- Salvador Allende’s Unidad Popular in Chile Memoranda and the Charybdis of drowning within a year unemployment fell and ily, Private Property and the State (1885), in times of crisis. PASOK was brought in in the whirlpool of a capitalist Grexit. In- wages rose.” under the parliamentary regime: after the fall of the military dictatorship in stead workers and revolutionaries in Greece So now the ICL is in the business of of- “the democratic republic no longer the mid-1970s, as the traditional bourgeois and throughout Europe must undertake the fering advice on how to handle the capitalist officially recognizes differences of parties couldn’t keep the masses energized fight to sweep away all the exploiters in a crisis within the framework of capitalism, property. Wealth here employs its power by the struggle against the colonels’ regime, socialist united states of Europe. n September-October 2015 11 “Radical Left” In Shock After SYRIZA Flip-Flop What Road for Greece: Perpetual Debt Peonage or Workers Revolution? AUGUST 12 – Following Greek prime min- – referring to the policies of U.S. president ister Alexis Tsipras’ July 12 surrender to the Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s Depres-

horrific austerity demands of the European sion.1 Yet this was to be financed by the Photos: Reuters Central Bank, the European Commission ECB, the leeches who had been sucking the and the International Monetary Fund, there lifeblood of Greek working people! As we has reportedly been a general mood of res- noted in our article “Greece: The SYRIZA ignation in the Greek population. On the Illusion Exploded” (Internationalist 39, other hand, among leftists in and around March-April 2015), it was clear from the the governing Coalition of the Radical Left outset that this “left” government would be (SYRIZA) there has been mounting anger. administering austerity. And internationally, we’ve seen disappoint- But this is not what a host of self- ment and confusion among the opportunist proclaimed socialists said at the time. In left which not so long ago was singing an article written as election returns came hosannas for Tsipras and SYRIZA. Resigna- in, the International Socialist Organization tion, anger, disappointment, confusion, but (ISO) in the U.S. gushed about “A New what’s lacking is a clear program for mili- Day for Greece” and declared, “SYRIZA tant class struggle against this unmitigated needs the support of workers and social disaster for Greek working people. movements across Europe and beyond” When the first round of “bailout” (Socialist Worker, 26 January). The ISO’s demands by the ECB/EC/IMF “Troika” Greek co-thinkers in the International Work- was presented to the Greek parliament on ers Left (DEA) headlined “Taking the first July 16, a quarter of the SYRIZA deputies step in a new direction,” calling the election refused to vote for their own government’s results “a landmark moment in the struggle bill. The measures increased the value added of the working class, the poor, the youth and tax (VAT, or sales tax) to a whopping 23% the left.” But the first step of the SYRIZA and slashed pensions, particularly for the prime minister was to form a coalition with poor. Next up are laws to gut workers’ col- the right-wing populist and militarist Greek lective bargaining rights, calling for massive Democrats (ANEL), who were given the privatization (particularly of the ports of ministry of defense. The very next day, the Piraeus and Thessaloniki) and further cuts embarrassed DEA issued a statement saying to social services. On the eve of the July that the deal with ANEL “jeopardizes the po- 5 referendum, Tsipras had called on the litical project for a government of the left.” Greek people not to give in to “blackmail.” But the DEA went along with it, But when 61% of the population voted for merely saying that “the role of SYRIZA as OXI (“no”), he turned around and did just a political party is irreplaceable.” It even that. The referendum was a cynical ploy by declared that, “The implementation of the Tsipras and SYRIZA to absolve themselves commitments made at Thessaloniki will be of responsibility. the first stop for the new government” (SW, The capitulation comes as a brutal 28 January). It took less than a month for shock to those on the left who had hailed that illusion to be exploded, when Greek Athens, July 15. Outside parliament anti-austerity protester is arrested by SYRIZA, which despite the social demo- finance minister Yanis Varoufakis signed the police (above) under orders of SYRIZA-led government, while inside Prime cratic, Stalinist, and other reformists in its February 20 statement with the Eurogroup Minister Alexis Tsipras votes in favor of anti-worker debt deal under orders ranks is actually a bourgeois populist party. agreeing to continue the austerity policies of the Eurobankers’ Troika. From the outset, SYRIZA only sought to negotiate Tsipras & Co. were elected in January on demanded by the Troika and abandoning “austerity lite.” Now it has rammed through brutal measures that rightist a promise to reject austerity, appealing to the “commitments” of the Thessaloniki governments couldn’t pass. “Radical leftists” are in shock, but they helped the resentment, anguish and exhaustion of program. Again the ISO and DEA grimaced, put SYRIZA into office a Greek working class that has been put describing this as “a clear retreat by the gov- ernment” (“Confronting the concessions to obliged to take part in new negotiations with austerity,” SW, 2 March), but didn’t actually the lenders” (SW, 10 July). through hell by European finance capital 1 Contrary to popular myth, the Depression do anything that would inconvenience Tsip- since 2010. The Thessaloniki Program wasn’t ended by FDR’s deficit financing poli- What a travesty! The political outlook (SYRIZA’s election platform) called for a cies in the 1930s but only by the imperialist ras, Varoufakis et al. Being an opportunist and gut-level instincts of anyone who could debt write-off and a “European New Deal” Second World War. requires a strong stomach, as they swallow say this, or stomach it, particularly as Greek one bitter dish after another. working people sink further into poverty, Then came the July 5 referendum, and is worlds removed from Leon Trotsky’s the same pattern was repeated. In the first elemental insistence that “We are not a gov- flush of the “OXI” landslide the DEA was AP ernment party; we are the party of irreconcil- jubilant, declaring that the coming days able opposition” (In Defense of Marxism). would be crucial for the “consolidation and So now we get handwringing over further development of this crucial election Tsipras’ capitulation, and even a hint of victory” (SW, 7 July). DEA leader Anto- contrition, along with pious hopes that nis Davanellos (who is also a member of “we find the strength to face a challenge SYRIZA’s Central Committee and Political of historic dimensions.” For “[t]his time, Secretariat) renewed his oath of fealty to his the Memorandum and the harsh austerity party and government, writing that the mas- policies come as a proposal from the gov- sive “no” vote had “given the government ernment led by SYRIZA – from the political and SYRIZA a clean slate to work from.” leadership that we, along with a very wide But just as happened after the January elec- section of the working class and popular tion, Tsipras immediately moved sharply to forces, actively supported” (Davanellos, the right, and the day after the referendum in a meeting of the Left Platform, SW, 30 issued a joint statement with the parties July). He adds, “another difficult question Police under SYRIZA’s command attack immigrants on the island of Kos, that said “yes” to the Eurobankers’ diktat. we face: How did we get here?” How you August 11, locking them in a stadium for 24 hours with little water and food Yet while calling this a “wrong step,” the got there, backers of the DEA, ISO, Left and tear-gassing them. Trotskyists demand asylum for refugees and full DEA leader endorsed “negotiating” with the Platform – and those who “critically” sup- citizenship rights for all immigrants. Organize workers defense guards Troika bloodsuckers, saying, “It is perfectly ported SYRIZA, hailing its election and/or against racist attacks, particularly by the fascist Golden Dawn! understandable that the government feels continued on page 18 12 The Internationalist Against the Eurobanker/SYRIZA Assault – Occupy the Banks and Ports For Workers Control of Production and Distribution, Form Workers Councils Greek Elections: For a Europe-Wide Workers Revolt Against Capitalist Austerity

SEPTEMBER 23 – Just weeks tax funds to recapitalize them in after Greek prime minister Alexis Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters order to protect depositors. Tsipras signed new, crippling With its calls for “generous austerity measures into law, funding” of this and that, for a Greek working people faced “socially just and redistributive yet another election – the third taxation system,” etc., the LEA vote this year. The outcome of Program is a wish list of programs the September 20 ballot was to for a “government supported by return Tsipras’ SYRIZA (Coalition the power of the organized peo- of the Radical Left) to office, ple” based on the capitalist state. with only slightly fewer seats in Certainly, Popular Unity talks of parliament than before. But after “democracy everywhere, people’s being voted into office in January power,” of a “radical transforma- on an anti-austerity platform, tion of the state, the judiciary, and SYRIZA instead delivered the public administration,” of “a new, exact opposite. So this time it ran much more advanced democracy, as enforcers of the devastating conjoining representative with di- Memorandum dictated by the rect democracy,” and of course “a Eurobankers which promises new constituent assembly.” Many even deeper impoverishment. As pretty words tied up in a bow. But a result, rather than the euphoria who holds the guns? For all the of its earlier election victory, now Public sector workers strike in Athens as Parliament voted to adopt Eurobankers’ Third fantasizing about participatory there was only resignation. Memorandum of brutal austerity, July 15. democracy, actual state power – After Tsipras performed his dramatic before 61% of voters backed his call to vote to return to the “good SYRIZA” of yore. But the “special bodies of armed men” of the kolotoumba (somersault or U-turn) in July, for “OXI” (Greek for “No”), he made clear it was the “old SYRIZA” of the Thessaloniki police and army – is the instrument of capital abandoning all pretense of resisting the bank- that this was only an attempt to bargain for Program that formed a coalition with the until a socialist revolution overthrows its ers’ demands, the former Left Platform of slightly better surrender terms. clericalist-militarist right-wing bourgeois rule. About that, Popular Unity has nary a SYRIZA quit to form a new electoral coali- While the mass of OXI voters surely populists of ANEL (Greek Democrats). The word to say. tion, Popular Unity (LEA, for Laiki Enótita). thought they were voting against auster- leaders of the LEA were ministers in the LEA calls for “a great popular patriotic So immediately upon ramming approval of ity, they were being used. Any would-be capitalist government and spokesmen for front” that would be the continuation of the the third Memorandum through parliament in Marxist who didn’t see through the maneu- this bourgeois party that capitulated to the OXI vote in the July 5 referendum. This August, Tsipras called a snap election, hoping ver wasn’t paying attention. The League Eurobankers as early as February. They want standard-issue Stalinist call for a class- to undercut his leftist critics by forcing a vote for the Fourth International warned that to absolve themselves of responsibility, but collaborationist coalition foresees a “social before they had time to build up an electoral neither a “NAI” (Yes) nor an “OXI” vote the fact is that they hung on to their precious alliance of working people” with bourgeois apparatus. His ploy worked, as LEA got only would strike a blow against the European ministerial posts until Tsipras chucked them sectors such as “small and medium busi- 2.86% of the vote, below the 3% cutoff for financiers. We stressed that the referendum out on orders from the Troika. ness strata.” And not just in the abstract. representation in parliament. This could be was called to legitimize Tsipras’ next move Popular Unity, whose name is ostenta- After Popular Unity split from SYRIZA, it a devastating blow to Popular Unity which, on the Eurobankers’ chess board, and as tiously copied from the bourgeois popular- briefly had the third-largest parliamentary like SYRIZA, is essentially an electoral front a vote of confidence in the regime. What front Unidad Popular coalition government fraction (now it has none). During the three without an organized mass base. was necessary instead, we insisted, was of Salvador Allende in Chile during 1970- days when it had a mandate to try to form a The election was mainly between hard class struggle against the Troika and 73, is indeed a replay of the pre-referendum government, LEA leader Panagiotis Lafaza- SYRIZA, which despite its name is a bour- the SYRIZA government that had become SYRIZA before it scrapped its formal anti- nis appealed to employer groups, including geois populist party, and the rightist New its instrument (see “Greek Workers: Defeat austerity program. Where the LEA raises a the commerce confederation (ESSE) and Democracy (ND). There was little debate, as the Bankers’ Diktat, Occupy the Banks and few planks not in the watered-down 2014 the professionals’ and merchants’ associa- both are committed to carrying out the dras- Ports!” on page 8 of this issue). Thessaloniki Program, these are taken right tion (GSVEE), to join LEA in fighting the tic attacks on Greek working people ordered The Stalinist KKE (Communist Party out of the 2013 Political Resolution of the Memorandum (Iskra, 25 August). by the European Central Bank (ECB). But of Greece) correctly characterized the ref- First Congress of SYRIZA. Thus LEA The one real difference between SYRI- many middle-class voters were fed up with erendum as a ploy, and on this issue it was (2015) calls for “Nationalization of the ZA and LEA is the latter’s call to (prepare to) ND for getting Greece into this mess with to the left of every other ostensibly socialist banks and their operation under a regime break from the euro, “if necessary.” The KKE its corrupt, clientalist practices when it ran organization in Greece, who all enthusiasti- of social control.” The “original SYRIZA” accurately summed up the policy of Popular the country in a duopoly with PASOK (Pan- cally called for an “OXI” vote. However, (2013) demand was: “Set the banking sys- Unity as “a capitalist Greece with a national Hellenic Socialist Party, another bourgeois the KKE’s answer is not to mobilize real, tem under public ownership and control.” currency.” Dubbing the breakaway “SYRIZA populist outfit) for the last 40 years, so they hard-hitting workers’ actions to thwart the Both call for banks to service farmers and Mark II,” it added ironically that “the sequel voted for SYRIZA. Such capitalist parties capitalist assault, but speeches in parliament small and medium businesses. is usually worse than the original film.” masquerading as leftists (like Podemos in plus more ritual one-day strikes, which pose Nor is there anything socialist about Trotskyists have always opposed the Spain) are vehicles to bind the exhausted no real threat to the ruling class. While the calling for nationalization of the banks when European Union and its economic “rules” and bled working people to the vultures and Stalinists have become more cautious since the whole system is already bankrupt. Much embodied in the euro as a capitalist attack loan sharks of finance capital. 2012 about calling for a Greek exit from the of the assets of Greek banks (aside from on the working class. We call for workers That can require some subterfuge. So Eurozone (“Grexit”), recognizing that under emergency loans from the ECB) consist of struggle to bring down this imperialist alli- the SYRIZA tops engaged in a lot of theat- capitalism this would involve extreme pain government paper of dubious value. And ance from within and without. Greece may rics with the “Troika” of the ECB, the Eu- for Greek workers, their call to “disengage in fact, the leading banks are already effec- be forced to exit the euro and the EU to avoid ropean Commission (EC) and International with the EU” with “people’s power” is na- tively state-owned, since the government’s economic collapse. But while the bourgeois Monetary Fund (IMF). Perhaps they started tionalist popular-frontism. Hellenic Financial Stability Fund holds a economics professors of SYRIZA and LEA out believing their own election propaganda majority of the shares of the National Bank concoct economic policies for a “left” gov- that they could end austerity within the Popular Unity: SYRIZA 2 of Greece, Piraeus Bank and Alpha Bank, ernment of the capitalist state, we do not call European common currency, the euro, but In the aftermath of Tsipras’about-face, and is the biggest shareholder of Eurobank for Grexit under capitalism. In fact, a greatly that illusion soon went up in smoke. When it was clear to all that there would soon be Ergasias, while management is in the hands devalued drachma would drastically hit Tsipras called the July 5 referendum on the a major reordering of the Greek left. This is of the bankers.1 In fact, “nationalization” of workers’ living standards (by making imports ECB/EC/IMF “final offer,” it was a cynical now happening. Having split from SYRIZA, the banks would just amount to a transfer of more expensive) long before it makes Greek gambit to hide the fact that he had already the former Left Platform, now (with a few management, and funneling billions more in exports more competitive. Moreover, credi- given in to the Troika’s demands, and to shift additions) called Popular Unity (LEA), is 1 Hellenic Financial Stability Fund, Annual Re- tors could refuse to renegotiate the debt, and responsibility onto Greek workers. Even engaged in an opportunist maneuver seeking port 2014 (April 2015). bankers could simply refuse to accept a new September-October 2015 13 Greek currency for international payments. capitalism, talk of “workers control” will with a statement calling for “No Vote to nancial extortion, workers should occupy The hard reality is, inside the EU or amount to some kind of class collaboration. Syriza! No Vote to Popular Unity!” in the the banks and place them under control outside, with the euro or a new drachma, Their “transition” is divorced from September 20 election, along with an “Open of elected workers commissions against only socialist revolution will end capitalist struggle for socialist revolution. Moreover, Letter to the Greek Communist Party” the Eurobankers and the Greek capitalist austerity. Any leftist tendency that doesn’t the various “transitional programs” of the (Workers Vanguard, 18 September). They government. Against the threat of priva- understand and forthrightly say that isn’t fake Trotskyists are put forward as the pro- “call on the KKE to repudiate its position tization, workers in the ports of Piraeus, telling the truth to the working people of grams of one or another front. The DEA (In- on the July 5 referendum” as a precondi- Thessaloniki and the Greek islands should Greece, and all of Europe. ternational Workers Left, a dissident Cliffite tion for giving it critical support. This is occupy the ports (and airports) and place them under workers control. Make public group linked to the International Socialist fairly comical (a flea making demands on Opportunist Leftists in the health and public transportation perma- Organization in the U.S.) is part of the Red an elephant), but more importantly attacks nently free, under workers control. As for Shadow of SYRIZA, and Now Network, which was part of the Left Plat- the Communist party from the right. While LEA the unpayable foreign debt, the workers form, which was part of the Coalition of the the TGG joined the bulk of the opportunist should repudiate (cancel) it entirely, as the Of the groups standing to the left of Radical Left (SYRIZA). Trotsky’s program, Greek left in calling for a “NO” vote in Russian workers did in October 1917. But SYRIZA and Popular Unity, the largest is in contrast, was the founding document of Tsipras’ referendum, the KKE called for a that will take a revolution.” ANTARSYA (Front of the Anti-Capitalist the Fourth International and had as its cen- “double OXI,” with posters saying “NO” In the face of the impending catastrophe, it Left), which ran in an electoral coalition tral focus the need to build a revolutionary, to the Troika’s austerity plan and “NO” to is necessary to fight forworkers committees with the smaller EEK (Revolutionary Work- Bolshevik-Leninist party. The Greek left SYRIZA’s austerity plan. to control distribution of vital goods, and ers Party) in the recent election. But far from suffers from an acute case of “frontitis,” and So while the reformist Stalinists for for the formation of workers councils to offering a class alternative to SYRIZA I and much of its activity is bound up in squabbling their own reasons exposed the fraud of the challenge and bring down the rule of the II, ANTARSYA sought to form an electoral between the various pseudos. July 5 referendum, saying that even a “NO” bourgeoisie. vote would lead to more brutal austerity bloc with LEA, and only launched its own The Kolotoumba of the ICL The key is revolutionary leadership, and slate when it was rebuffed by Lafazanis & – which it did – the TGG/ICL argues that the task of the hour is to cohere the nucleus Another tendency which has recently Co., who insisted that it had to join Popular refusing to join the opportunists in follow- of an authentic Trotskyist party in Greece. put forward its own call for “committees Unity or no deal. (Several groups associated ing Tsipras’ call was “not just an error but In the late 1930s, Trotsky insisted on the composed of workers from different tenden- with ANTARSYA did go over to LEA.) a betrayal.” In fact, the position of these vital necessity of exposing the popular front cies” with a similar program to those of the After the fact, ANTARSYA “discovered” pseudo-Trotskyists is a betrayal of the Greek which served as a bulwark for the bourgeoisie ANTARSYA conglomerate is the Trotskyist that Popular Unity’s call for a “democratic, workers in the name of “national sover- against the struggle for workers revolution. Group of Greece (TGG), part of the Inter- patriotic, progressive” front didn’t have eignty,” and of the history of the Spartacist He wrote trenchantly about “the left centrists national Communist League (ICL) led by anything anti-capitalist about it. tendency that for several decades knew how [who] seek to present this question as a tacti- the Spartacist League in the U.S. (see “The A number of the groups in ANTARSYA to “swim against the stream.” The reason cal or even as a technical maneuver, so as to ICL on Greece: Goodbye Trotsky, Hello claim to be Trotskyist. A “Statement on the that today the TGG/ICL’s action program for be able to peddle their wares in the shadow Minimum Program,” on page 17 of this Upcoming Elections” by the OKDE-Sparta- Greece reads like it could have been written of the People’s Front.”3 Today, as at the time issue). Its cut-rate, minimum program has kos (International Communist Organization by various groups in ANTARSYA, is that it of the Spanish Civil War, or of the Chilean no mention of a workers government, revo- of Greece, part of the tendency of the heirs of has adapted to and increasingly adopted the popular front in the early 1970s, the struggle lutionary party or socialist revolution, or Ernest Mandel) noted correctly that Popular outlook of the these opportunists. in Greece has thrown into sharp relief the even a call for bringing down the SYRIZA Unity’s program was “the strategy of the In the September 20 vote, the correct counterposed strategies of bourgeois reform government (thereby tailoring its program Popular Front,” that it just wanted “a return to policy for class-conscious workers was not and proletarian revolution. to discontented SYRIZA supporters). the original SYRIZA and their electoral gov- only to oppose the parties of Eurobanker The SYRIZA debacle has exposed the In defending this left social-democratic ernmental tactic, plus the demand for national austerity (ND, PASOK, To Potami, ANEL, bankruptcy of all programs calling for a program at a September 2 forum on Greece currency,” and thus “political and electoral SYRIZA, etc.), but also to refuse to support “democratic” struggle against austerity.4 A held by the Grupo Internacionalista in collaboration with LEA is not possible.” Yet Popular Unity (LEA) as one more bourgeois genuine Trotskyist organization in Greece Mexico, an ICL spokesman argued that, in ANTARSYA, to which the OKDE-Spartakos populist formation that only offered a repeat must be built in struggle not only against the contrast to the League for the Fourth Inter- belongs, has long sought political collabora- of the SYRIZA debacle. Authentic Marxists bourgeois populists of SYRIZA and the LEA national’s calls for international socialist tion with SYRIZA, and now LEA, only to be insist that the bottom line for any form of but also by winning revolutionary-minded revolution, the key is to demand Grexit as constantly disappointed. political support is the fight for theindepen - militants and class-conscious workers from a fight for “national sovereignty.” “Greece Another component of ANTARSYA, dence of the working class from all capitalist the Communist Party and the various reform- today has less sovereignty than a semi- the SEK (Socialist Workers Party, part of the politicians, parties and alliances. Thus, in the ist and centrist groups that are currently reel- colonial country like Mexico,” he argued. tendency of the heirs of Tony Cliff) said it September vote, as in the January 25 election, ing under the impact of Tsipras’ July-August But Trotskyists fight against national op- was “hopeful that after the election we can the League for the Fourth International was capitulation and now the victory of the pro- pression, and for liberation from the yoke of unite [with Popular Unity] in fighting back” for critical support to candidates of the KKE, austerity parties in the September elections. imperialism, while the bourgeois nationalist against austerity. But the SEK limited itself on the grounds of its opposition to SYRIZA, At this time when their past policies have demand for “national sovereignty” is a call to supporting strikes by railway workers and LEA and the other bourgeois parties, while led to disaster, a serious reexamination going for the capitalist government to hold sway others, plus an “anti-capitalist transitional calling for internationalist workers action back to Marxist basics is required. over its territory (and thus is the battle cry programme put forward by Antarsya” of rather than the Stalinists’ nationalist and Only by confronting the capitalists of reactionary Ukrainian nationalists against “cancelling the entire debt, nationalising parliamentarist passivity. with workers power can the Greek working the revolt in Russian-speaking eastern the banks and big companies under work- While SYRIZA won the election, the class gain relief. That fight goes far beyond Ukraine today). Moreover, the cry of “na- ers’ control, banning lay-offs and breaking struggle in Greece is far from over. The Eu- a small eastern Mediterranean nation of 11 tional sovereignty” has been a hallmark of with and exiting from the euro and the EU.” robankers’ program of extreme austerity will million, especially as waves of refugees Greek nationalists, notably in insisting that The EEK similarly justifies its electoral inevitably fail once again: the returns from fleeing imperialist war and communalist Macedonia be called FYROM (Former participation under the ANTARSYA banner. privatizations will fall far short of their goals, slaughter sweep through Greece and up Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). While the assorted Mandelite, Cliffite and the mountain of debt will keep on grow- through the Balkans. Far from appeals to and other pseudo- and anti-Trotskyist cur- A second argument was put forward ing. Meanwhile, the draconian cuts threaten to Greek nationalism, revolutionaries raise the rents talk of transitional programs and op- by ICL supporters at their own forum on provoke an explosion of opposition, whether counterposed banner of uniting the workers position to popular frontism, their rhetoric is Greece in Mexico a week later, namely that from workers facing mass layoffs or petty- of Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Macedonia and devoid of revolutionary content. The laundry their program is really for a united front, and bourgeois sectors such as farmers or pharma- the entire region, together with the workers, list of demands consists of calls on the pres- that’s why it has no mention of a revolution- cists facing bankruptcy. What’s needed is a oppressed – and desperate refugees – from ent bourgeois rulers or some kind of “left ary party. But a united front is essentially a class-struggle program for workers action. In the crisis-gripped Near East and throughout government” to carry various measures while call to action, which is hardly the case with particular it is necessary to defend the right to the world. Genuine communists fight for the Trotskyist 1938 Transitional Program was a detailed nine-point program. And what asylum for all refugees and of full citizenship militant workers action from the Balkans a call for action by the workers movement “united front” is going to “expropriate the for all immigrants, while mobilizing workers to Spain, Italy, France and Germany, where against the capitalist state and leading to its banks” and “industrialize Greece”? That defense against the fascist Gold Dawn as it strike struggles have been mounting under 2 overthrow. Even when they add references can only be done by a government, and seeks to whip up racist hysteria. the Social Democratic/Christian Democratic to “workers control,” this is just an adorn- since they don’t call for a workers govern- As we wrote on the eve of the July Grand Coalition. Only Europe-wide socialist ment on the demand for nationalization. ment, this amounts to a call on the current referendum: revolution and the formation of Socialist Fed- bourgeois government. Moreover, in citing Real workers control is a form of dual power. “The first duty of revolutionary Marx- eration of the Balkans and a United Socialist Tacked on to calls for nationalization by an Argentina’s 2001 break with the dollar as an ists is to tell the truth to the masses. The States of Europe can end the brutal capitalist entrenched bourgeois government, rather example, the ICL is advising the capitalist League for the Fourth International says war on the workers. n than as part of a program to bring down government on how to administer its crisis. that the only way to defeat the bankers’ By calling for a “Grexit” under capitalism, 2 See the “Exchange on Transitional Demands” diktat and put an end to the devastating 3 See the quotations from Trotsky in the Inter- and “Not a ‘New New Deal,’ But a Transitional this reformist minimum program would austerity program of the Eurobosses is nationalist Group Readings pamphlet on The Program for Socialist Revolution” in The Inter- further impoverish Greek workers in the by mobilizing the workers’ power on the Popular Front: Roadblock to Revolution. nationalist No. 28, March-April 2009 for fur- name of “national sovereignty.” road to a socialist revolution in Greece 4 See “Greece: The Naked Rule of Finance Cap- ther discussion of this. The TGG/ICL have since followed up and throughout Europe. To stop the fi- ital,” on page xx. 14 The Internationalist ISO/Greek DEA: Theoretical Flim-Flam Greased the Skids to Sellout Capitalist “Left Government” vs. Revolutionary Workers Government During 2010-11, Greek working contrast, is part of the “Coalition of the

people repeatedly went into the streets Eurokinissi Radical Left,” a kind of Left Bloc in to protest the brutal austerity imposed on the form of a party – that is, a capitalist them by governments of the Pan-Hellenic political formation subordinating osten- Socialist Party (PASOK) and New Democ- sible socialists (like the DEA) to outright racy (ND) on orders from the “Troika” bourgeois elements. As promoters of the 1 of imperialist financiers. More than 30 government party, whose election they one- and two-day general strikes, numer- loudly supported and trumpeted as a huge ous mass protests and occupation of city victory, they are responsible for the actions squares lasting months had zero effect. So of the Greek government in carrying out when SYRIZA2 campaigned in the 2012 the dictates of the imperialist bankers to elections calling for a “government of the impoverish the Greek masses. When we left” to replace the disastrous governments challenged ISO spokesman Todd Chretien of the center and right, its vote skyrocketed. on this at an April 23 forum in Brooklyn, In the 2013 elections for the (toothless) Eu- ISOers tried to absolve themselves by (a) ropean parliament, it was the largest party citing the Comintern Fourth Congress on in Greece. By 2014, it was evident that the the united front, and (b) saying that the “radical left” coalition could win next time DEA didn’t actually have anyone in the around. But gearing up ostensible socialists government. The latter is a distinction in and around this populist party for the without a difference: the DEA campaigned prospect of taking office in the capitalist for the government party in the elections state would take some doing. and indeed is part of SYRIZA, including The Greek cothinkers of the Interna- Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras lays down the law to SYRIZA Central its leadership, hence it bears responsibility tional Socialist Organization (ISO) in the Committtee, July 31, demanding that dissidents vote for brutal austerity. for its actions before the working class, U.S. did their part by invoking the Com- Opportunists cite Comintern Fourth Congress resolution on workers no matter what edifying criticisms they munist International for theoretical justifica- government to justify participation in SYRIZA, a bourgeois populist party, may voice. tion. Last fall, the International Workers Left as it administers capitalist goverenment. Trotskyists insist there can be no Beyond misrepresenting the Com- (DEA) published a volume of selected ma- workers government of a capitalist state. munist International’s tactic of the united terials translated from the Fourth Congress while the conditions for actual workers’ and political demands,” as Davanellos front – turning the call for joint actions (1922) of the Communist International, power did not yet exist.” claims. Rather it called for united actions while maintaining political independence edited by Canadian socialist John Riddell –“The Fourth Comintern Congress,” against the bourgeoisie together with social into a political alliance with reformist and under the title, Toward the United Front. International Socialist Review No. 95, democrats and other reformists and centrists. even bourgeois forces – these opportun- DEA leader Antonis Davanellos contributed Winter 2014-2015 The distinction is important. The ISR article ists justify being part of SYRIZA as it an introduction relating those documents to A “workers’ government” without “actual quoted above cites Trotsky’s March 1922 administers the capitalist state by citing the the current situation in Greece. “The essence workers’ power,” or even the conditions article “On the United Front,” yet nowhere Fourth Congress discussions on the work- of the united front policy was that the com- for it? Meaning? In plain text: some leftists in that article will the reader find a call for ers government. Several things should be munist parties, in a situation in which an and unionists sitting in the ministers’ seats political alliances with social democracy un- said about this. For starters, a “left govern- immediate struggle for power was not in the while the military and police – the core of der capitalism. On the contrary, in his report ment” of the bourgeois populist SYRIZA is cards,” he wrote, “must propose alliances state power – are controlled by capital. If on disputes in the French Communist Party, not identical to a government of reformist with Social Democratic parties – while it sounds like a recipe for disaster, that’s Trotsky argues emphatically against any workers parties. And it’s quite a stretch retaining [their] independence and right to because it is. political support for the social-democratic to call the governing coalition together criticize the limits of the reformists – for the Davanellos’ conclusion: “In our view, Dissidents who were allied with supposedly with the rightist Greek Democrats “left,” purposes of securing immediate economic the discussion on the Fourth Congress of “progressive”bourgeois parties – which in even in bourgeois electoral terms. But the and political demands.” the Comintern indicates a way to claim France went under the labels Radical, Re- fundamental betrayal by the DEA and its The purpose of this exercise was to victory.” Some “victory”! In reality, this publican Socialist and even Radical Social- mentors is in being part of a bourgeois party provide a “sophisticated” rationale for was “theoretical” rationalization for selling ist – in a Left Bloc (later called the Cartel and supporting its government based on the support for a bourgeois government and the masses the fool’s gold of a bourgeois des Gauches) against the ruling right-wing army, police, courts and overall repressive participation in the government party. Thus “left government” that would supposedly National Bloc. apparatus that is the core of the capitalist Davanellos writes: put an end to austerity, but in reality would Trotsky wrote that while “we can and state, whose job is to defend the exploit- “During the Fourth Congress, the debate end up selling out Greek workers to the must, in all suitable instances, propose ers against the exploited, no matter which on the united front was focused on the issue Eurobankers. to the Dissidents a specific form of joint party is in office. of the workers’ government, meaning the In part the ISO/DEA’s argument is aid to strikers, to locked-out workers, un- The social-democratic ISO and others possibility of a government supported based on distortions of the positions adopted employed, war invalids, etc., etc.,” such in its milieu have insistently pushed this line by the left-wing workers’ parties, arising by the Communist International, but it also “practical agreements” are only permis- ever since SYRIZA made its breakthrough in the context of capitalism, through a reflects weaknesses and confusion in the sible where they “must choose between into the electoral big time. An article on combination of massive struggles from Fourth Congress resolutions. As a rule, ca- the known interests of the bourgeoisie and “The debate on the workers’ government” below and a parliamentary crisis. pitulatory policies among ostensible social- the definite demands of the proletariat, to (International Socialist Review, June 2012) “Despite strong objections, the slogan for ists are not the result of misunderstanding support the latter in action” and “renounce by John Riddell was quite explicit, arguing a workers’ government was approved, programmatic texts but reflect opportunist their ties with the parties of the bourgeoisie, that the Comintern Fourth Congress (in its as ‘a result of the logic of [the] united appetites, a desire for popularity and influ- that is, the ‘Left Bloc’,” a forerunner of the front.’ It was approved as suitable for “Resolution on Tactics”) “sketches out the ence expressed in “get-rich-quick” schemes. Popular Front in the 1930s. Anyone who general propaganda everywhere, and conditions under which a workers’ govern- But understanding the lessons of past as an immediate political prospect in supported the class-collaborationist Left ment may actually exist within a capitalist those countries where the crisis of the revolutionary struggles and their strategic Bloc, or even called for “unification with state, for a transitional period, with positive bourgeois parties created the potential for codification can help genuine communists the reformists and Dissidents,” he insisted, results.” This is why Davanellos thanked the formation of a workers’ government, arm politically against terrible errors and “must be mercilessly ejected from our par- the ISO’s Haymarket Books “for its help in betrayals. So it is worth looking at the Co- ty.” The Comintern “Theses on the United publishing a book in Greek on the Fourth 1 European Central Bank (ECB), European mintern’s Fourth Congress discussion of the Front” (December 1921) likewise called to Congress of the Communist International Commission (EC) and International Monetary united front, and the workers government challenge the reformists to support “mass [Riddell’s Toward the United Front]…. Fund (IMF). slogan in particular. strikes” and “revolutionary demonstrations” 2 We thought that with our relationship to Greek acronym for Coalition of the Radical In the first place, the Fourth Congress but ruled out any support to the Left Bloc or SYRIZA, we were opening up a new path Left, which as we have shown is a bourgeois softness on those who refuse to break from populist party based on middle-class sectors did not advocate broad political “alliances for socialists, but with these documents, (see “What Is Syriza?” The Internationalist No. with Social Democratic parties … for the the social patriots. we realized that the path was begun some 39, March-April 2015. purpose of securing immediate economic The International Workers Left, in years ago.” September-October 2015 15 ist regimes like Nasser’s Egypt (by Livio to portray the popular-front governments in Maitan in 1965). Michael Pablo, who as France, Spain and elsewhere as represent- head of the Fourth International broke from ing some kind of workers and peasants Trotskyism by abandoning the struggle for governments. But in France this regime ty- an independent Leninist vanguard, declared ing the workers to their class enemy opened post-independence Algeria in 1962 under the way for the Nazi-allied Pétain regime. Ahmed Ben Bella’s National Liberation In Spain, even with the workers rising up Front a workers and peasants government in arms, the bourgeois governments of the … and became a top advisor to Ben Bella in popular front blocked the road to revolution charge of implementing “self-management.” and opened the way for the bloody Franco Others have used the term for budding dictatorship. In the 1970s, the Unidad Stalinist regimes, such as Mao Zedong’s Popular government of Salvador Allende China (Ernest Mandel in 1952) and Fidel in Chile awakened similar illusions, with Castro’s Cuba (Joseph Hansen in 1960) the same disastrous outcome, as his last as they became bureaucratically deformed defense minister, Augusto Pinochet, in- workers states. stalled a military junta, murdering tens of Basically every pseudo-Trotskyist who thousands.3 Yet DEA leader Davanellos wanted to tail after a regime would label it a explains the demise of the UP as due to workers (or workers and peasants) govern- lack of “a clear direction on the character ment. That doesn’t invalidate the slogan, of a left-wing government,” rather than the correctly used, which derived from the nature of the popular front as a coalition of experience of the Bolshevik Revolution of class collaboration chaining the workers to 1917. Leon Trotsky in the founding docu- a sector of the bourgeoisie. Leon Trotsky, ca. 1922. At time of the Fourth Congress and later, Trotsky ment of the Fourth International, known as At the time, the Spartacist League/U.S. insisted that call for a workers government must be to mobilize workers to the Transitional Program (1938), discussed (SL) warned that: “It is the most elementary break with the bourgeoisie. the demand for a workers and peasants duty for revolutionary Marxists to irrec- We have seen where that path leads: to record in office of the bourgeois populist government, and the misappropriation of oncilably oppose the Popular Front in the becoming accomplices and enforcers for the SYRIZA. But by presenting a potpourri this call by the Stalinized Comintern which election and to place absolutely no confi- bourgeoisie. What the elucubrations of the of numerous varieties of workers govern- gave it a very different content, capitalizing dence in it in power. Any ‘critical support’ ISO, DEA and Riddell on a “workers” or ments, and saying that Communists might on the confusionist resolution of the 1924 to the Allende coalition is class treason, “left” government of a capitalist state mean even support the “ostensible” variants, Fourth Congress. Since the ISO, DEA and paving the way for a bloody defeat for the in practice was shown on the night of July the resolution left plenty of room for op- Riddell make no mention of Trotsky’s most Chilean working people when domestic 15. As the deputies of the “Coalition of the portunist interpretations. extensive discussion of the slogan (and reaction, abetted by international imperi- Radical Left” voted for vicious measures of It’s noteworthy that in their “new since, like Stalin, they seek to counterpose alism, is ready” (“Chilean Popular Front,” capitalist austerity in the Greek parliament, study” of the workers government slogan, it to the dictatorship of the proletariat), Spartacist No. 19, November-December privatizing and impoverishing the masses the ISO, DEA and Riddell, all of whom we have reproduced it here (see box). As 1970). Chile had a very class-conscious on behalf of the Eurobankers, outside riot claim some relation to Trotskyism, pass Trotsky put it: working class, which by 1972 had set up police at the orders of the SYRIZA govern- over Leon Trotsky’s comments on it at the “The slogan, ‘workers’ and farmers’ cordones industriales (industrial belts), ment were brutally attacking anti-austerity time. In an article on “The Call for a Work- government,’ is thus acceptable to us which could have become the basis for worker and leftist demonstrators in Syn- ers Government in France” (November only in the sense that it had in 1917 with soviets. Yet they had been duped into be- tagma Square. Alexis Tsipras is not the only 1922), the Bolshevik leader warned about the Bolsheviks, i.e., as an anti-bourgeois lieving that a peaceful and “democratic” guilty party here, but also those who helped this “algebraic formula” that “a purely and anti-capitalist slogan, but in no case transition to socialism was possible. When put SYRIZA in office, and the working parliamentary meaning can be given to in that ‘democratic’ sense which later the the clock struck 12 for the Allende regime people who bought their bill of goods are it,” which would be “the most dangerous epigones gave it, transforming it from on 11 September 1973, the workers were a bridge to socialist revolution into the paying the check. imaginable ideologically.” Instead, he em- left both without arms and without a clear chief barrier upon its path.” phasized, “calling for a workers government revolutionary program. Trotsky: Only as a Bridge to Authentic Trotskyists insist there can in France … is a slogan for mobilizing the Marxists are notoriously exacting in Socialist Revolution be no “workers government” of a capital- masses of workers to break completely programmatic questions because a false ist state, which no matter what party is in At the same time as we expose the flim- from parliamentary combinations with the or even ambiguous interpretation can be office is an apparatus for enforcing the rule flam of the reformist pseudo-socialists, it bourgeoisie….” used to justify polices with terrible con- of capital. When at different times in 1917, must be said that the theses of the Fourth Likewise, in seeking doctrinal authori- sequences. In China in the mid-1920s, the Bolsheviks called on Mensheviks and Congress of the Communist International zation for their call for a “left government” Stalin called Chiang Kai-shek’s bourgeois Social Revolutionaries to take power, it on the workers government are deeply of the capitalist state, the modern-day nationalist Guomindang a “workers and was on the basis of their majority in the flawed and confusionist. They open the opportunists do not mention Trotsky’s peasants party” and ordered the Commu- soviets, to expose their refusal to break door that opportunists and revisionists can drumbeat rendition of what the struggle for nist Party to submit to its discipline, lead- with the bourgeoisie, and was combined drive through to carry out their distortion a workers government in France in 1934 ing straight to Chiang’s 1927 Shanghai with the call for “All power to the soviets!” of Marxism. At the 1922 Congress, Grigori would involve: massacre of Communists and revolution- Trotsky conjectured that some petty-bour- Zinoviev as chairman of the Comintern “…the creation and strengthening of ary workers. In 2015, pseudo-Trotskyists geois party might somehow, somewhere executive committee presented a sliding the workers’ militia; well-organized use the Fourth Congress discussions of a “go further than they wish along the road scale of different variants of “workers demonstrations driving the reactionary workers government to justify participa- to a break with the bourgeoisie” (a loop- government,” ranging from “ostensible/ bands from the streets; rotest strikes; tion in the SYRIZA “left government” hole that just about every opportunist in illusory” regimes such as a Labour Party and open campaign for the unification as this bourgeois populist party joins the the business has sought to use), but added government in England or Australia, or and enlargement of the trade union imperialist financiers in “waterboarding” that such a hypothetical “workers and a Social-Democratic government in Ger- ranks under the banner of resolute class Greek working people, further submerging peasants government” would be “merely many, to “genuine workers governments” struggle; stubborn, carefully calculated them in poverty. activity to win the army over to the a short episode on the road to the actual which could include a government of In Greece today, and since the mo- cause of the people; broader strikes; dictatorship of the proletariat.” The expe- workers and peasants in the Balkans, a ment the “Coalition of the Radical Left” more powerful demonstrations; the rience of the bourgeois party SYRIZA in government with Communist participa- took office, the struggle for a genuine general strike of toilers of town and office, however, has been a short episode tion or, finally, a “genuinely revolutionary workers government is not to support country; a general offensive against the reaffirming the dictatorship of finance proletarian Workers government” led by SYRIZA, or to present a new more leftist the Communist Party. Bonapartist government; for the work- capital. ers’ and peasants’ power.” version of it, but on the contrary, to wage There were sharp debates during For revolutionary Marxists, as the –“Whither France” (October 1934) intransigent struggle in defense of the the Congress over the slogan, with some crowning demand of a transitional pro- working people against the depredations A different historical period, to be sure, but insisting that a workers government can gram, a workers or workers and peasants of finance capital, and its administrators this is light years away from SYRIZA in only mean the dictatorship of the prole- government must be based on organs of in Athens. For genuine Leninists and Greece today. tariat, while others (notably Karl Radek) workers power (such as workers councils) Trotskyists, the struggle against capitalist argued that it is a “transition point.” The Over the years, various would-be Marx- opposed to the bourgeois state apparatus. austerity must lead to a workers govern- resolution did specify that a workers gov- ists have called a whole host of bourgeois And when Trotskyists call for it, it is to be- ment that is the opening of a Europe-wide ernment must have as its elementary tasks regimes workers, or workers and peasants gin the socialist revolution, to establish the socialist revolution. n arming the proletariat, disarming the bour- governments. The label has been applied dictatorship of the proletariat, not as some geoisie, workers control of production and to the post-WWII British Labour cabinet intermediate stage. 3 See the Internationalist Group Class Readings breaking counterrevolutionary resistance under Clement Atlee and Aneurin Bevan Trotsky noted that the Stalinists and volume on The Popular Front: Roadblock to – all of which are a far cry from the track and to “Third World” nationalist capital- social democrats in the 1930s falsely tried Revolution (May 2007). 16 The Internationalist man finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble wants to push Greece out “to maintain The ICL on Greece: Goodbye Trotsky, capitalist profit,” but claims the ICL’s call for Grexit is different, that “it would create Hello Minimum Program more favorable conditions for the working class to struggle in its own interests.” How Over the last two decades, the Spartacist so? As wannabe advisors of a “pro-working League/U.S. and its International Communist people” bourgeois Greek government, the League have step-by-step abandoned key ICL argues that a “weakened currency programmatic positions of revolutionary makes exports more competitive.” Maybe, Trotskyism, capitulating to its Yankee impe- or maybe not, but it also makes imports rialist rulers: refusing to call for independence more expensive, and in any case will further for Puerto Rico (1998), dropping the call to impoverish Greek workers. defeat U.S. imperialism after the 9/11 attacks As with its “no” vote in the phony refer- (2001), supporting the post-earthquake U.S. endum, here also, the TGG/ICL places itself invasion of Haiti (2010). The latest installment to the right of the Stalinist Greek Communist in this downward spiral is dropping Lenin and Party (KKE), which at least recognizes that Trotsky’s call for a revolutionary workers there is no “alternative for the people in a government precisely when and where it is capitalist Greece of the drachma,” in which most urgently posed today. the only winners “would be some monopoly For some time now, the SL/ICL has groups in shipping, pharmaceuticals, energy rarely raised any transitional demands, and the arms trade” while “the needs of people while shrilly denouncing the Internationalist …will continue to be sacrificed on the altar of Group and League for the Fourth Interna- competitiveness of monopolies” (Rizopastis, tional for continuing to do so. But conditions Trotsky called the Transitional Program a “bridge between present demands 16 July). While the Stalinist reformists call for in Greece have reached the point that the and the socialist program of the revolution.” By leaving out any mention a “popular social alliance with other people’s ICL finally felt obliged to raise some im- of revolution or the overthrow of capitalism, the International Communist movements with an anti-monopoly orienta- mediate demands. In the July 5 referendum, League’s program for Greece is a “bridge to nowhere.” Above: the notorious tion,” genuine Trotskyists call for a struggle its Trotskyist Group of Greece (TGG) joined “bridge to nowhere” in Ketchikan, Alaska. against capital for transitional demands in the bulk of the left in heeding SYRIZA like those raised by Stalinists and social Compare the ICL/TGG’s call for “a govern- defense of the working people leading to leader Alexis Tsipras’ call for a “no” vote, democrats for struggle within the bounds of ment which will act in the interests of the workers revolution, whether Greece is under knowing full well that he intended to use capitalism, aiming to attract reformists with working people and be subordinated to them” the euro or the drachma. it as a bargaining ploy with the Troika, demands they can all agree on. to the appeal by Antonis Davanellos, the main Trotsky called to raise transitional and had already accepted almost all of the While raising some correct calls, in- spokesman of the DEA (International Work- demands in order to “help the masses in Eurobankers’ demands for draconian cuts of cluding for a number of demands we have ers Left, allied with the social-democratic the process of the daily struggle to find the Greek workers’ living standards.1 Following put forward in recent articles (workers de- ISO in the U.S.) at a Left Platform rally to bridge between present demands and the Tsipras’ surrender and the rubber stamping fense guards, shorter workweek with no loss cancel the debt, nationalize the banks, tax socialist program of the revolution.” Lacking of the Troika’s extortionate demands by in pay, workers control of food distribution), the rich and raise “the slogan of achieving a any call for revolution, the TGG program is the Greek parliament, the TGG issued an the ICL/TGG call to expropriate the banks government of the left – one that is account- a bridge to nowhere. Even with the caveat agitational July 17 leaflet titled “Enough!” and cancel the debt omits the crucial con- able to the workers and that determines its that the “battle cannot be won within a par- Yet this statement, which the ICL says dition that this be done by a revolutionary policies based on the needs of the people” liamentary framework” (which just about has been massively distributed, is a parody government. Nor does it advocate workers (Socialist Worker, 30 July). Sound familiar? every left group in and around SYRIZA of Trotsky’s call for a “system of transitional control of the banks. But a nationalized It’s notable that neither in the TGG says), the TGG/ICL leaflet does not call for demands, stemming from today’s conditions banking system (as the TGG called for last leaflet nor in the latestWV front-page article a government to overthrow capitalist rule. and from today’s consciousness of wide January) would, under a capitalist regime, is there a word of criticism of the numerous Having paid the price of admission by call- layers of the working class and unalterably still be an integral part of the capitalist sys- Greek “radical left” groups in the SYRIZA ing for a “no” vote in the July 5 referendum, leading to one final conclusion: the conquest tem, as we explained.2 orbit, even though they have been Tsipras’ the erstwhile Trotskyist centrists of the SL/ of power by the proletariat.” In fact, the Most notable, however, is the ICL/TGG (and the Eurobankers’) accomplices in push- ICL have joined the other denizens of the leaflet makes no mention of revolution, the leaflet’s exceedingly vague slogan for “a ing through the vicious austerity that the opportunist swamp. As for providing revolu- overthrow of capitalism, or the need for a government which will act in the interests right wing couldn’t enact. And no wonder, tionary leadership to workers, in Greece and revolutionary party. This is no accident, as of the working people and be subordinated since the call by the TGG in Greece now throughout Europe, for the ICL it’s goodbye according to the SL’s Workers Vanguard (7 to them.” What kind of beast is that? This sounds remarkably like the rest of the fake Lenin, and Trotsky. n August), the call to form “workers com- could well be a government of the capital- left. In reality, the ICL/ mittees of action” is intended to “mobilize ist state backed by unions and supposedly TGG, recognizing that larger forces” in “defensive struggle.” pledged to carry out pro-worker reforms. SYRIZA is about to split League for the Fourth International Thus it is a classic “minimum program” There is a long history to such mealy- and a reorganization of LFI, Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY 1 See our article, “Greek Workers: Defeat the mouthed formulations. We recall Andreu the Greek left is in the off- 10008, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected] Bankers’ Diktat, Occupy the Banks and Ports!” Nin’s talk of a government based on the ing, is trying to put a left on page 8 of this issue. CNT unions in Spain in the 1930s, the call veneer on the program of Internationalist Group/U.S. by Nahuel Moreno and his successors for the Left Platform and the Internationalist Group, Box 3321, Church Street “All power to the COB” labor federation ANTARSYA coalition of Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A. in Bolivia, and calls in the early ’70s for an “anti-capitalist” reformist E-mail: [email protected] SP-CP government in Chile based on the leftists. And like these op- New York Tel. (212) 460-0983 Fax: (212) 614-8711 CUT labor unions. By using the term work- portunists, it is demand- Portland Tel. (971) 282-7903 ers government to describe governments ing, “Greece should leave based on the existing bureaucratized labor the EU and the euro” Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil movement, they were counterposed to the under capitalism. Brazil: write to Caixa Postal 084027, CEP 27251- Bolsheviks’ call in 1917 for a workers and We already exposed 740, Volta Redonda, RJ, Brazil peasants government based on the soviets. the ICL’s claim that Ar- Rio de Janeiro: write to Caixa Postal 3982, CEP The workers and peasants councils born in gentina is a positive mod- 20001-974, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil the revolutionary upheaval 1917 in Russia el for Greece, pointing out E-mail: [email protected] were organs of dual power and a potential that millions of Argentine basis for a proletarian state, whereas the workers were thrown out LIVI/Deutschland labor bureaucracies are beholden to capi- of work for years follow- Germany: write to Postfach 80 97 21, 21007 Hamburg, 3 talism. But the ICL’s program is an elastic ing its 2001 devaluation. Germany call for what could amount to “left-wing” Now WV comes back by Posters in Piraeus, July 2. SYRIZA bourgeois governments. again praising the Argen- Grupo Internacionalista/México poster at bottom urges “OXI” (No) Indeed, it is remarkably like appeals tine experience, “while México: write to Apartado Postal 12-201, Admón. vote in referendum called by Tsipras from several Greek pseudo-Trotskyist groups initially harsh.” It even Postal Obrero Mundial, CP 03001, México D.F, México as bargaining ploy with the Troika. containing a laundry list of demands for all admits that hard-line Ger- E-mail: [email protected] Top poster of the KKE calls for a good things within the capitalist framework. 3 See “Greece: The Naked Tel. Mexico City: 55-3154-7361; Guadalajara: 33-1752- double “OXI” to the austerity plans 2 See “Centrists Waffle in Greece,” The Interna- Rule of Finance Capital,” The 6643; Oaxaca: 951-129-2086 of the Eurobankers and SYRIZA. tionalist No. 39, April-May 2015. Internationalist, on page 9. September-October 2015 17 nothing to block Tsipras and Varoufakis. As the U.S.’ Caribbean colony, is now facing the oligarchy inside Syriza, even before it Which Road?... for the Left Platform, its main spokesman, total devastation as a result of a debt crisis. came to power.” He argues that what has continued from page 12 Panagiotis Lafazanis, declared: “In case the Public education is being gutted in order to been defeated is not just Tsipras’ policies going along with its referendum maneuver agreement is voted, then we can do nothing” pay off Wall Street bankers. Water supplies but the strategy of “left-Europeanism.” But – is by endorsing this bourgeois party, its (Greek Reporter, 5 August). are threatened in the midst of a drought be- what does he propose in its place? policies and ploys, when what was called for The Greek working class has suffered cause of a lack of investment. Young people This Left Platform leader argues ab- was intransigent revolutionary opposition. a huge defeat with the savage new mea- are fleeing the island. Pension obligations surdly that the calamitous experience of Be assured, Tsipras couldn’t have done it sures against it, one which will reverberate are 99.3% unfunded. Interestingly, some the last half year confirms the idea “that a without you. throughout Europe and the world, and for of the same hedge fund vultures who have unitary government of radical left forces In a January 27 statement, the DEA had which ostensible socialists paved the way. bought up Greek bonds and properties at is a necessary and tested instrument for claimed “With the social movement at the What’s key is what is learned from it. A fire sale prices are also the main holders of approaching the question of power has forefront, we should open the way for the correspondent in Athens from the ISO’s Puerto Rican debt. Leading the pack is John been validated”! Since, as he spells out, the overthrow of austerity, once and for all.” Six Australian sister group, Socialist Alternative, Paulson, who made billions off of specula- SYRIZA tops made “a clear choice in favor months later, austerity has won out, and the writes: “The creditors hope that the ‘SYRIZA tion in subprime mortgages in the 2008 of continuity at the level of the repressive opportunists are scrambling for an explana- example’ now will show that the left says crash. Bourgeois liberals like economist mechanisms of the state,” he adds: “It is tion. But what credence can one give to their one thing and in office does another.” That is Paul Krugman are crowing that the crisis obviously one thing to be the government after-the-fact critique when they (“critically”) precisely what the opportunist left has done in Puerto Rico won’t be so bad because it and quite another to have power. The ques- went along with one sellout after another? in Greece! She goes on: “There are some still receives U.S. transfer payments such tion is whether we are able to use the first The fact that the “left” social democrats on the left who draw the old lessons about as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. to achieve the second, and if so how.” The of the ISO and DEA ended up in a capital- reform or revolution from Tsipras’s back- But that is little solace to laid-off teachers answer, as revolutionary Marxists who have ist party that is dutifully implementing the down: SYRIZA is reformist – what we need and jobless youth. done their homework could tell him, is that dictates of the imperialist financiers is the is a revolutionary party. This is a timeless The economic crisis is the result of a this “question” has been answered many result of their whole political trajectory and truth, but the road to a revolutionary party of systemic problem of capitalism, a falling rate times over – with the spilt blood of millions training in the political tendency founded by some weight inside the working class is not of profit, rather than particular policies (“neo- of workers. The bourgeoisie brings leftists Tony Cliff. At the dawn of the post-WWII as simple as drawing up the right program liberalism,” “financialization,” free trade into government not to promote “democ- Cold War, Cliff broke with Trotskyism, and distributing it among workers” (Collen agreements, etc.). European banks are hugely racy” but to do the dirty work for capital, declaring the USSR “state capitalist” and Bolger, “Turning resignation into resistance undercapitalized – even in Germany where paving the way for war, dictatorship and refusing to defend it against the imperial- in Greece,” Red Flag, 27 July). the capital of leading banks is as little as 3% brutal anti-worker austerity. ist West. This led Cliff & Co. to support Behold opportunism incarnate. Rather of outstanding loans – and thus vulnerable if What Kouvelakis is advocating is anti-Soviet reactionaries from CIA-backed than “Tsipras’s failed strategy,” Bolger debtors start defaulting. They’re hard-lining it another brand of bourgeois “left govern- Islamist mujahedin in Afghanistan, who wants “a clearer strategy to oppose auster- with Greece, whose debt is overwhelmingly ment” with different policies, namely “a systematically killed “communist” women ity” … but one which “cannot yet be purely held by official bodies, to send a message to new political project that will be class- teachers, to CIA-backed Catholic clerical- revolutionary.” The DEA, ISO, et al. would Spain and Italy, whose far larger debt is held based, democratic, and anti-Europeanist, ists like Solidarność in Poland, who led the have the workers shielded from a revolu- by commercial banks. Bankers are not that and in a first phase will take the form of a counterrevolution that impoverished work- tionary program, directing them instead to concerned about economic growth, since front [!], open to experimentation and to ers and denied women the right to abortion. what? Break with SYRIZA? “DEA activists they can make money during boom times or new organizational practice.” With a nod While deriding this as “ancient history argued, to walk out now cedes the ground to bust, but they are threatened by a bank run. to Antonio Gramsci, talking of a “‘war of for ortho-Trots,” the Cliffites keep tailing af- Tsipras.” So like Lafazanis, they seek to stay So companies are not investing and banks position’ strategy,” and citing his comrade ter one supposedly “progressive” bourgeois in SYRIZA. What then? Only vague hopes hold onto the euros doled out by the Euro- Eleni Portaliou, he declares the goal of this regime or ruler after another, enthusing over of a revival of the class struggle “if people pean Central Bank. There will be no return “project” to be “the reconstruction of this the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia in resist the implementation of the agreement.” to Keynesian deficit financing, and nothing ruined country…headed by the working 2006 and proclaiming “Yes We Can!” over But Greek workers already went through that short of the fear of revolution will get the classes and the popular bloc.” This is the Obama’s election as commander in chief experience five years ago, to no avail. It failed capitalists to end austerity. same populist drivel mouthed by Tsipras of U.S. imperialism in 2008. These profes- because the leaderships would not challenge Although Tsipras and SYRIZA promot- & Co. to justify their “political project” of sional tailists are always on the prowl look- capitalist rule. The “SYRIZA example” dem- ed illusions about getting the Eurofinanciers class collaboration. It is counterposed to the ing for a new “movement” to chase after, onstrated that talk of ending austerity in this to ease up on Greece, they were only trying fight of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky for and principles be damned! While they may deep-going capitalist crisis is an illusion. It to negotiate a kind of “austerity lite,” or “neo- the political independence of the working now try to use Trotsky for radical window- didn’t work under FDR in the 1930s, and it liberalism with a human face.” Even this was class from all wings of the bourgeoisie. The dressing, they are certainly alien to the dec- won’t happen in Europe today. impossible from the start, as Marxists warned only difference with the SYRIZA majority laration of the Fourth International’s founder Unless militants spark sharp class and EU leaders have made painfully clear. is the “anti-Europeanist” bent. Meaning? that it “uncompromisingly gives battle to all struggle pointing to workers revolution, and An honest revolutionary leadership would Kouvelakis warns of the danger of political groupings tied to the apron-strings unless they seek to build a revolutionary not have hoodwinked Greek working people Greece being turned “into a kind of Kosovo of the bourgeoisie” (Transitional Program). workers party to lead it, calls for resistance into thinking that an “honorable” deal with writ large, a country bound hand and foot Having backed Solidarność that closed will again go nowhere. the Eurobankers was possible, but neither in neocolonial chains and consigned to the the Gdansk shipyards, now Tony Cliff’s Revolutionary Program would it promote illusions in “going it alone.” status of an insignificant and ruined Balkan Exiting the euro and reverting to the drachma semi-protectorate.” But in talking of “libera- heirs are part of SYRIZA that is closing the Key Greek shipyards and privatizing the ports may eventually strengthen the Greek national tion of the country, and the Greek people, As we have emphasized repeatedly, the of Piraeus and Thessaloniki. That stark fact bourgeoisie, or not, but in the short run it will from the shackles of the eurozone,” and crisis in Greece is not a national problem but tells you a lot about whose class interests for certain mean austerity with a vengeance arguing for “regaining national sovereignty the focal point of a Europe-wide and world- they ultimately serve. But, of course, the for Greek workers. The only solution for as a prerequisite for exercising not even wide capitalist economic crisis that has Cliffites are not alone. The same could be the Greek and European working classes anticapitalist but democratic and progres- lasted since the Wall Street crash of 2008. said about a host of pseudo-lefts buzzing is revolution, workers revolution on a con- sive policies of the most elementary kind,” Europe and the U.S. are stuck in a depres- around SYRIZA. tinental scale. But that requires above all a Kouvelakis makes clear that he is calling for sion, much more pronounced in the former Keeping the proletariat in line at the revolutionary leadership – armed with an a “Grexit” under capitalism. While claim- where even official unemployment figures behest of their financier overlords is pre- internationalist Bolshevik program. And that ing not to support “some ‘popular frontist’ are everywhere in double digits, inflation cisely what opportunist leftists do best. It is what is lacking in Greece today. conception of trans-class unity with some has been replaced by deflation (falling is their raison d’être. The German Social The bankruptcy of Tsipras’ policies is spectral ‘national bourgeoisie’,” that is prices), poverty has risen to unprecedented Democrats (and their counterparts else- plain for all to see, and a split in SYRIZA precisely what the Left Platform is aiming levels (even above 20% in Germany) as where in Europe) did it when they voted for seems inevitable. Now attention is focus- at. Its focus on nationalizing the banks and social programs are slashed to the bone and war credits in 1914, and a new generation ing on the Left Platform, which made mild some industries would bolster a weak bour- economic growth is virtually non-existent. is doing it now. Whether directly voting for criticisms of the government line while do- geoisie that needs a strong state to compete Greece, with official unemployment over austerity or cheerleading for SYRIZA, their ing nothing to block it. The best articulated with imperialist rivals. 25% and 50+% for youth while the economy task for the bosses is to deceive the work- expression of its policies comes from Stathis Exiting the Eurozone won’t wipe out is collapsing, is only the most extreme case ing class and would-be leftists, chaining Kouvelakis, professor of political theory the imperialist debt, and the Eurobankers are of a general condition.2 That is a key reason them to bourgeois coalitions and parties. at King’s College London and member of sure to make the whole process as painful why the Eurobankers are digging in their Now, writes Paul D’Amato of the ISO, SYRIZA’s central committee. Writing for as possible. What’s needed, as the League heels in refusing debt relief and why they SYRIZA “can no longer be a party of anti- Jacobin (3 August), Kouvelakis describes for the Fourth International has repeatedly insist on “reforms” intended to drive down austerity resistance.” Instead, “That task the Greek left as being in “post-traumatic stated, is a revolutionary mobilization of the wages and benefits and drive up profits. will fall to the Left Platform of SYRIZA shock.” He even admits that he “bear[s] Greek working class, seizing banks, ports, And not only in Europe. Puerto Rico, and to Greece’s radical left” (SW, 23 July). part of that collective responsibility” for airports, and key industries and imposing Translated: SYRIZA is dead, long live the 2 Official unemployment in Spain is 22% of the the disaster, and notes that “there have been workers control, organizing workers defense new SYRIZA! But these same forces did workforce, and 44% of young workers. enclaves providing bridges with sectors of guards to crush the Nazi-fascists of Golden 18 The Internationalist Dawn and appeal to the ranks of the conscript clusion today – when the bankruptcy of bourgeois parties) to na- army, and organizing workers councils with capitalism is starkly staring humanity in the tionalize the banks hardly Mural and photograph by Cacao Rocks delegates recallable at any time. This would face – are no friends of the working people. represents any kind of lay the basis for a new state power, a workers They may claim to be the most modern (or “rupture” with capital- state, led by a Leninist-Trotskyist communist postmodern) “Marxists” of the day, but they ism. Banks nationalized party built on the program of international are recycling age-old reformist recipes that by the SYRIZA-ANEL socialist revolution. have produced a chain of defeats worldwide. government will act like This points to the other key factor in the The brutality of the German imperialist any other capitalist banks. Greek debacle: the failure of the workers onslaught against Greece has shocked many For their part, the movement elsewhere in Europe to rise up all over Europe. Imperialist rivalries are reviv- sinister “Golden Dawn” in defense of their class sisters and brothers ing: French rulers are getting nervous about (Chrysi Avgi, or XA) Na- under fire from the Eurobankers who are plans for Siemens to take over Alstom. Span- zis have called for a “no” bashing labor throughout the continent. Yes, ish and Italian bankers worry if they could be vote, clearly hoping to pick there were protests, some fairly large, but next. EU countries that have not entered the up the pieces if SYRIZA these were largely Sunday parades rather euro are having second thoughts. The Greek fails, using this to fuel than attempts to block the functioning of disaster may yet set off explosions elsewhere. their vicious anti-immi- the imperialist machinery. Why could Eu- Schäuble and Merkel may have won the battle grant, anti-working-class rogroup finance ministers meet in peace? in Greece only to lose the war for a German- drive. What’s needed is Where were the strike actions shutting down dominated Festung Europa (Fortress Europe). a militant, mass worker- Athens street mural: “Then they used tanks. Now transportation in Paris, Berlin, Milano and The fight is not over, but the road to asocialist immigrant mobilization to they use banks.” Brussels? As for Spain, the left has been united states of Europe will be through a fight crush the fascist threat. on the other hand, only wants a better deal tailing SYRIZA’s confreres of Podemos, to bring down the European Union of capi- The main force to refuse to join the within the confines of the imperialist EU. viscerally anti-communist bourgeois popu- tal. If Greek and European workers are “not regime’s call for a “no” vote in the referen- And his finance minister Varoufakis is a lists who have let the Brussels bureaucrats ready,” the task of a revolutionary vanguard dum is the Greek Communist Party (KKE), Keynesian bourgeois economist who wants and Frankfurt bankers know that they have is to prepare the way. n which remains a sizeable force in the work- to “save European capitalism” from itself. learned the “SYRIZA lesson” and will be ers movement. The KKE and its trade-union What has happened in Greece is not oh-so reasonable and “responsible” in office. Referendum... affiliate, PAME, held a large demonstration an isolated national event, supposedly due For all the talk of “resistance” to auster- continued from page 8 of thousands of workers on July 2 saying to “lazy Greek workers” (who work longer ity, the European left and labor movement has step towards a better deal that we aim to be “No to the proposal of the EU-IMF-ECB, hours for lower wages than any other West been no more ready to challenge the dictates of signed immediately after Sunday’s result” No to the proposal of the government.” It European country). Everyone is watch- finance capital than were Tsipras, Varoufakis (July 1 TV speech). Even if Varoufakis could is encouraging workers to place a flyer with ing Greece, workers and capitalists alike, … or the Left Platform. That is why every miraculously convince the other European those slogans in the ballot box, or to write because it is the focal point of the world one of the struggles over the past dozen years finance ministers to agree to Athens’ pro- “no” over both choices, essentially to cast a capitalist crisis. Throughout Europe in the against youth wages, pension cuts, slashing posal of last May, it would be an unmitigated spoiled ballot. The KKE’s answer is entirely last two decades there have been militant social programs and mass unemployment and disaster for Greek working people. They parliamentary, as it has been throughout the struggles against the capitalist offensive. inequality have gone down to defeat. would be immediately hit with drastic tax euro debt crisis: some big demonstrations Battles over pensions and reduced youth The attempt to end, or simply to miti- increases, lower wages for public sector and one- or even two-day “general strikes” wages in France. Occupation of the squares gate, austerity and debt peonage within the workers, continued elimination of collective as a pressure tactic, but nothing that would in Spain, Portugal and Greece. “General framework of the European Union has been bargaining, rampant privatizations and all challenge the capitalist system or state. And strikes” all over the continent. Even in Ger- proved to be an illusion. No less illusory is the rest. SYRIZA is using the referendum second, as dyed-in-the-wool Stalinists and many, railroad engineers have been striking. the idea that this can be accomplished by not only to bolster its maneuvering, but as a nationalists the KKE calls to “disengage But they have all failed, because the leader- exiting the Eurozone and even the EU while vote of confidence in its government. with the EU” with “people’s power” (noth- ship limited their struggle to purely defen- capital rules. The same policies are being The bulk of the Greek left has joined ing about socialism, of course). sive battles within the limits of capitalism. enforced by governments the world over, the call for a “NO” vote, as one would ex- Revolutionary Marxists, supporters of The capitalists will never agree to from Mexico and Brazil to South Africa, pect since most are either part of SYRIZA, the program of Lenin and Trotsky, politi- massive debt reduction or elimination of in response to the global economic crisis, including its leftist components (Left Plat- cally oppose all of the competing bourgeois austerity because the survival of their system while millions of refugees brave death to form, Red Network), or give critical sup- forces, the ECB-EC-IMF Eurobankers, is ultimately at stake. They are not worried escape war and hunger. The only way out port to it from the outside like the smaller their Greek flunkeys of the mini-troika ND- about Greece itself, but the rest of the con- of this hecatomb is through international ANTARSYA (Front of the Anti-Capitalist PASOK-Potami, and the SYRIZA-ANEL tinent. Greek debt of €320 billion is held by revolutionary struggle against the capital- Left) coalition. Even the small Trotskyist government. We call instead on the workers governmental institutions. The five times ist system that produced the crisis. The Group of Greece (part of the International to take action to prevent the present or a larger Spanish debt and much larger yet experience of 2011, when popular struggles Communist League led by the Spartacist future Greek government from carrying out Italian debt is held by private banks, which quickly leapt across the Mediterranean – League/U.S.) is calling for a “no” vote. The further austerity policies and to unleash a could go under. Despite the phony “stress from Tunisia and Egypt to Portugal, Spain TGG spices this up by saying “down with proletarian counteroffensive with measures tests,” all the European banks are effectively and Greece – shows the potential. But they the EU” and “no support to the SYRIZA that challenge capitalist rule. Whatever the bankrupt, and what the bankers fear is that were all defeated. The experience of Greece government” (July 1 leaflet) when in fact outcome of the Sunday referendum, it will if Greece can get out from under their heel, in 2015 demonstrates anew that a genuinely the vote is precisely a vote to politically not decide this battle. Since the troika is Spain and Italy will be next. So all attempts revolutionary leadership is indispensable. support the SYRIZA government, which out to punish Greece for electing SYRIZA, to negotiate the way out of crushing debt The workers of Greece and Europe insists that it will stay in the imperialist would-be regime-changers may not stop at and debilitating austerity are doomed to fail. have the power to break the chains of im- European Union, and the euro, no matter financial blackmail and doomsday talk. In If SYRIZA succeeds in implement- perialism and liberate themselves. But they what. Curiously the TGG says that “A ‘yes’ the face of an attempt to topple the govern- ing a new program of attacks on working must understand that there is no peaceful, vote would be a victory for the imperialist ment, if the struggle goes to pitched battles people – which will hardly be “austerity gradual, parliamentary transition to social- rulers and the Greek bourgeoisie.” But pre- in the streets, Trotskyists must take their light” –the leftists who aided it, including ism. The capitalist state cannot be reformed viously the TGG/ICL held that SYRIZA is place fighting against the coup-makers. But in the referendum ploy, will have criminally to serve the exploited and oppressed. After a bourgeois party. even then, we will be fighting for a work- sabotaged this chance at unleashing revolu- browbeating Tsipras in order to intimidate A somewhat larger centrist group, ers government, not the bourgeois populist tionary struggle throughout the continent. anyone in Europe who dares resist, the vi- the EEK (Revolutionary Workers Party), SYRIZA-ANEL. They will have aided German finance min- cious Eurobankers want to asset-strip the likewise calls for a “no” vote while add- A potentially revolutionary situation ister Schäuble in either burning the “left” country in order to pay off the German and ing down with the EU, cancel the debt, may be opening in Greece. The multifac- or in turning it into the obedient servant French banks, just like corporate raiders etc., but barely criticizes SYRIZA (July 28 eted Greek left is facing a decisive test. By of the bankocracy, in either case betraying in any leveraged buyout. The results of statement). Some groups, such as the Com- hitching their cart to the SYRIZA horse, Greek poor and working people. Instead of elections and referendums are dismissed, munist Tendency of SYRIZA (linked to the many leftists, including would-be socialists presenting a revolutionary opposition to the as the oligarchs of capital show that there International Marxist Tendency led by Alan and communists, have sought to cash in on bourgeois populist regime, they have acted will be no democracy for their wage slaves, Woods), call for voting “no” while urging its popularity. But the reason that millions as opportunist camp followers. But if the any more than there was for the slaves of SYRIZA to nationalize the banks, cancel the voted for the supposedly “radical left” co- most conscious militants in Greece draw the ancient Athens. debt and carry out “anti-capitalist” measures alition is that they could no longer take the lessons of the events of these past months Greece may be forced out of the euro supposedly constituting a “socialist rupture” grinding austerity which had reduced the and undertake the struggle to forge the and the EU simply to avoid collapse. But with the “economic power of the Troika and country to penury, with 27% official unem- nucleus of a genuinely communist, Leninist- victory over these loan sharks in Armani of capital within the country.” But calling for ployment, over 50% youth unemployment, Trotskyist workers party, then it can serve to suits can only be won by a Europe-wide a bourgeois party (of which these supposed large numbers of young professionals forced spark a proletarian, revolutionary response workers revolt that becomes a revolution. Marxists are a part, contradicting Marx’s to emigrate and sharply increased suicides that can turn the slogan of a socialist united Supposed radicals who sneer at this con- insistence on workers independence from all as desperate people saw no way out. Tsipras states of Europe into a reality. n

September-October 2015 19 Newspaper of the Internationalist Clubs at the Revolution City University of New York A Year After Police Murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson CUNY Internationalist Speakout Against Racist Repression Internationalist photo

Speakout called by Hunter Internationalist Club on September 2 brought out dozens of students, workers to protest racist police terror. By CUNY Internationalist Clubs Down.” In addition to Sandra Bland, signs lution Can Bring Justice!” – a chant the tity politics,” stressing the importance of featured names and faces of many others Internationalist Club has brought to protests mobilizing the enormous potential power “A year since Ferguson, racist terror targeted by racist repression and police throughout the recent period – the crowd of the working class in the fight against continues,” declared the call for a Speak- violence, among them Eric Garner, Mike took up the call, and the feeling in the air oppression. As examples pointing to this, Out Against Racist Repression that CUNY Brown, Tamir Rice, Rekia Boyd, Samuel was electric. they cited this year’s May Day, when the Internationalists organized outside Hunter DuBose and Amadou Diallo. Other carefully Parents of the 43 abducted Ayotzi- dock workers union (ILWU Local 10) shut College on September 2. Approximately made posters showed faces and names of napa students sent a special statement to down the port of Oakland, California and 80 students and workers participated in transgender women, mainly African Ameri- the Hunter rally. Police and army troops marched on City Hall to protest police the protest, which highlighted the case can and Latina, who have been murdered “disappeared” their sons in the southern terror, and union activists marched in Port- of Sandra Bland, whose death in police this year, including London Chanel, Taja state of Guerrero on the night of September land, Oregon in the “Labor Against Racist custody embodies this ongoing repression. Gabrielle DeJesus and Ashton O’Hara. Plac- 26-27, 2014. The parents, who had just ad- Police Murder” contingent. Pulled over by a police officer in Prairie ards declared solidarity with the abducted dressed a mass meeting on their struggle Many speakers at the Hunter protest View, Texas, the African American educa- teachers college students of Ayotzinapa, organized by the Grupo Internacionalista addressed the inseparable connection be- tion worker and activist refused to bend to Mexico; upheld the defense of immigrant at the National Autonomous University tween capitalism and racism in the United intimidation and was violently arrested. rights in the face of Donald Trump’s hate of Mexico, sent “greetings to the struggle States. A rally organizer emphasized that Three days later, she was found hanged in campaign and Barack Obama’s record- of the teachers, students and workers of racial oppression is “fundamental to the her holding cell. Authorities attempted to level deportations; and stated opposition to CUNY...in their fight against the privati- nature of this capitalist state, born in the pass it off as suicide, but Bland’s family has Democrats, Republicans and all capitalist zation of education and against the racist blood of black slaves and the genocide of denounced the attempted cover-up, noting politicians. Internationalist speakers called murders orchestrated by the same bour- native peoples.” her excitement over getting a new job at her for building a revolutionary workers party, geoisie that at the international level has “That is its legacy in the United States alma mater as well as her well-known activ- linking this to appeals to “uproot racism” carried out [these] attacks. From Ferguson of America: human lives in exchange for ism against police brutality. Having stopped and achieve women’s liberation through to Ayotzinapa, it’s the same struggle!” profit. The police were not created to protect and jailed Sandra Bland for “driving while socialist revolution. At the Speak-Out, an immigrant worker human lives, but to enforce this ruthless back,” lynch-law terror cut short her life on from Mexico linked the message of inter- equation, to act as the armed fist of the capi- July 13, 2015. Students, immigrant workers and nationalism to the recent 75th anniversary talist state. The origins of modern-day police Participants in the Hunter Speak-Out adjunct professors spoke with fervor and of Leon Trotsky’s assassination in Mexico forces lie in the slave patrols of the South. held placards and enthusiastically joined in clarity on the topic of racist repression. City. “Trotsky told us that the revolution The first uniformed police force was estab- chants like “From Ferguson to New York, One new Club member, speaking from her must be international, because the capital- lished in 1783 in Charleston, South Carolina Stop Racist Terror” and “Sandra Bland, personal experiences, said: ist system extends its claws internationally. to control the local slave population.” Michael Brown – Shut the Whole System “The thing that scares me the most is In the country I come from, the oppressed In his classic State and Revolution, she that it’s coming from the people are living on the border with that noted, Lenin defines the state as an organ of NYPD, from people we’re monster. They have a wall against us, but class rule that “legalizes and perpetuates op- told are there to protect us. we must build a bridge uniting the working pression.” She stressed: “We can’t afford to But they’re not, they’re class of all countries to defeat imperialism indulge in illusions of pressuring capitalist against us, and they kill us and the ‘national’ bourgeoisie.” That is the politicians to the left”; any real fight against every single day. And we only way to eradicate racism and all forms poverty, war and racism means breaking have to watch them kill us of oppression, he said. from “subjugation to the Democratic Party,”

Internationalist photo on YouTube and on Face- book every single day, and Workers from the taxi and food indus- whether its candidate be Hillary Clinton there’s no justice! Hearing tries (including the Hunter cafeteria) par- or Bernie Sanders. “We need a revolution. [Eric Garner] say ‘I can’t ticipated in the Speak-Out, together with That’s the only way we’re going to end this breathe’ eleven times, and low-paid adjuncts and others who spoke racist violence.” still nothing. You all watch about the need to link labor struggles to The Internationalist Clubs are active at them die. No justice.” the fight against racism. Several speakers Hunter, the Graduate Center and elsewhere Protesters at rally read letter of solidarity from When she ended her demarcated the contrast between revolu- in the CUNY system. For more information, parents of 43 kidnapped Ayotzinapa students. speech with “Only Revo- tionary class politics and liberal “iden- write: [email protected].

20 The Internationalist Commons Baroness Boothroyd under the Corbynmania... Press Association headline, “The Trots have a gun to Labour’s continued from page 7 head. And so the fight begins again.” Now strike, who fear nothing so much as the the prestige paper of Australian press tycoon consequences of a victorious strike, Rupert Murdoch, whose tabloid property must inevitably direct all their efforts to The Sun was a big backer of Blair’s New keeping the strike within the scope of a Labour, is discovering a conspiracy of semi-political semi-strike, i.e., to deprive “Trotskyite and other hard-left groups who it of its power. are disbanding as official political parties “We must face matters: the main efforts in a move that will allow them to infiltrate of the official leaders of the Labour Labour” (Sunday Times, 27 September). We Party and of a considerable number of are surely in for a new round of “reds under official trade union leaders will not be the beds” (if not in them) scandal-mongering directed toward paralyzing the bourgeois from the Tory press. state by means of the strike, but towards They have already singled out Corbyn’s paralyzing the general strike with the aid chief of staff, Simon Fletcher, a supporter of of the bourgeois state. The government, Socialist Action who became Mayor Ken through its most diehard conservatives, Livingstone’s right-hand man. But then, undoubtedly wants to provoke a civil war Alastair Darling, Tony Blair’s top aide, was on a small scale so as to be in a position of the same denomination, which entered to resort to measures of terror even before Striking miners clash with police near Dover, Kent, April 1984. Miners were the Labour Party back in the mid-1980s. The the struggle develops, and thus suppress betrayed by Labour Party and TUC tops, while Labour left them hanging. blatantly pro-imperialist social-democratic the movement.” leadership. The rise of “Bennism” during –L.D. Trotsky, “Problems of the British Bevan hated the crimes of capitalism, Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) has but was a reformist his whole life, following the Thatcher years was a result of most of formally appealed to the Electoral Commis- Labor Movement” (6 May 1926) the British left fulsomely supporting him – Although, and precisely because, striking the disastrous popular front path of alliances sion to deregister as a political party in order with bourgeois forces in the 1930s and sup- ignoring how when he was in the Wilson to enable supporters to enter the post-Corbyn workers fought militantly, after little government their hero helped craft the laws more than a week a terrified TUC General porting Churchill in the 1940s. He played Labour Party, which still maintains the witch- a key role in supporting the government in Thatcher was now using in her devastat- hunting ban on membership in other political Council, led by Labour lefts, ignominiously ing anti-labor assault. The Social Contract called off the strike. 1944 as British troops oversaw the massacre groups that was used to purge the Militant of leftist demonstrators in Athens, Greece. of Labour reformism not only restricted tendency in 1982. It seems a couple other The Labour Left: A Pressure His dream was not for a revolution but for wages in a time of raging inflation but also small leftist groups have also deregistered. Valve for Letting Off Steam a Labour Party government. When he got imposed limits of all kinds on strikes. It laid But beyond this, there was almost uni- the ground for the vicious anti-union bill Writing at the end of 1925 Trotsky it, Labour proceeded to administer British versal, unmitigated celebration of Corbyn’s Corbyn is fighting against today. summed up the role of the British Labour capitalism and imperialism. He offered ver- victory throughout the British left: Many a rule and law from the days of lefts of the day: “The left wingers reflect the bal criticism at times, but no alternative for The Socialist Appeal (SAp) group and the Wilson-Callaghan regime was invoked discontent of the British working class…. workers. In practice, the Bevanites served its International Marxist Tendency, led by by Thatcher during the great miners strike They transform the political helplessness to reconcile would-be socialists to support- Alan Woods, has continued the policy of of 1984-85. The strike was defeated for lack of the awakening masses into an ideological ing British imperialism – drenched in blood entrism in the Labour Party of Ted Grant’s of a revolutionary leadership. The miners maze. They constitute an expression of the from Egypt to South Africa, from the Indian Militant tendency going back to the 1960s. fought with great courage but needed a solid forward move, but also act as a brake on subcontinent to the Caribbean – and defus- The SAp declared: “The astonishing victory nationwide strike to win. National Union of it” (Ibid.). He noted that the lefts act “as a ing working-class unrest. This has always of Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership Mineworkers (NUM) leader Arthur Scargill kind of safety-valve for the radical moods been the role of the Labour left. represents a political earthquake of monu- and the strikers were unsupported – or out- of the masses.” One might say the same of In 1964, Labour came to power again. mental proportions” (Socialist Appeal, 12 right opposed – by legions of right-wing the Corbyn “movement” today, which is Prime minister Harold Wilson, a Bevanite no September). A few days later, SAp launched Labour Party pols and TUC bureaucrats. barely reformist politically and only seems longer, dispatched British troops to North- the Labour Young Socialists (recalling the The only way to have won that key class radical by comparison with the openly ern Ireland to fight the IRA. After a stint similarly named Labour Party youth group battle, as authentic Trotskyists advocated anti-working-class New Labour crowd who in opposition, he returned as Labour prime led by Militant in the 1970s) and a campaign at that time, was to extend it, breaking with shamelessly imitate the Tories. minister in 1974 when the Tory government to “Defend Corbyn – Fight for Socialism.” the Labour/TUC traitors and demanding The Labour Party was founded as a break of Edward Heath was toppled by a miners The Socialist Party in England and that transport, rail and dock unions go out from the bourgeois Liberal Party, and unlike strike. Over the next five years, Labour gov- Wales (SPEW) and its Committee for a on strike in a fighting “triple alliance” to the formally Marxist parties of the Second ernments, despite right-wing plotting against Workers International, led by Peter Taaffe, prepare the way for a general strike.1 International which turned to the right, was Wilson, remained reliable Cold Warriors, abandoned Militant’s entrism in the early reformist from the start. Its founding leader while waging a war on the working class at Yet during the strike, Scargill remained 1990s. Now they write: “Corbyn’s leadership Keir Hardie was a lay preacher and a follower home. Amidst a world capitalist crisis follow- loyal to Labour. Neither he nor Labour left victory – A new era for the 99%.” SPEW had of populist Henry George and social democrat ing the defeat of U.S. imperialism in Vietnam, Benn did anything to challenge the despi- a little problem, as it had labeled the Labour William Morris. The British ruling class pre- profits in Britain’s mining and manufacturing cable violence-baiting Neil Kinnock for party Party an out-and-out bourgeois party. It got fers Tory governments, but in troubled times economy were declining. Wilson and his suc- leadership. Had NUM leaders spearheaded a around that sticky wicket by declaring that they are satisfied that Labour will protect their cessor James Callaghan pressured the trade breakaway from Labour at that time, it could “This is a new party in the process of forma- interests. In WWI, Labour leaders joined the unions to accept wage controls. have looked to the 140,000 striking miners as tion” (The Socialist, 17 September). But cabinet of Lloyd George, and in WWII Win- Through this “Social Contract,” the a base and capitalized on the widespread sym- its “What we stand for” blurb still calls for ston Churchill and the Tories led a coalition Labour government helped drive real wages pathy and solidarity among workers to provide “Trade unions to disaffiliate from the Labour government with right-wing Labour Party down in Britain, until the workers exploded a powerful pole of class struggle nationwide. Party” (The Socialist, 24 September). leaders Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin, who in the strike wave that began in the “winter But only a decade later did Scargill break to The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) were key allies in keeping industrial peace and of discontent” of 1978-79. From the per- form the Socialist Labour Party, which had are the heirs of Tony Cliff, who broke with preserving Britain’s colonies. spective of the bosses, Labour had done its at most a marginal existence and a tepid pro- Trotskyism in the late 1940s declaring the After the war, Labour won a landslide job. To put down the workers now a fero- gram. The reformist Bennite Labour lefts were Soviet Union “state capitalist” and refusing electoral victory and Attlee became prime cious frontal assault was needed. This would ultimately committed to the bourgeois order, to defend it during the Korean War from minister, with Bevin as foreign secretary in be led by Margaret Thatcher, as the leader of and thus time and again have contributed to 1950 on. Belatedly climbing aboard the the anti-Soviet Cold War, as Britain played a new Tory government beginning in 1979. the defeat of workers’ struggles. Corbyn bandwagon, the SWP was jubilant: a key role in smashing leftist guerrillas in The workers fought “Iron Lady” Thatcher The Spectre of Trotskyism “Seize the time! Let’s kick out the Tories” Greece and Malaya. Labour left Aneurin tooth and nail, and might have toppled her and “A new hope” (Socialist Worker, 19 As the Corbyn revolt was getting “Nye” Bevan as minister of health oversaw government early on – but the bourgeoisie September). Its paper is now filled with underway, the Sunday Times (23 August) the construction of low-cost housing and led whipped up a patriotic frenzy around the people declaring they are joining the La- published an article by the former Labour the creation of the National Health Service, Falklands/Malvinas conflict with Argentina. bour Party to support Corbyn after the SWP NEC member and Speaker of the House of As Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition, earlier (at its Marxism 2015 conference) the longest-lasting and most popular of the 1 Labour Party’s “welfare state” creations. Labour participated to the hilt in this frenzy. See “Road, rail, docks: Strike with the min- discouraged people from doing so. ers!” Workers Hammer No. 66, January 1985, Labour leftist Tony Benn had been a Socialist Resistance (SR), the British Bevan, a union organizer from a Welsh min- and “British Miners: Spread the Strike and heirs of Ernest Mandel and affiliate of the ing family, was the first hero of the Labour minister (of industry and then energy) in the Win!” Workers Vanguard No. 372, 8 February lefts, several of whom (including future cabinets of Wilson and Callaghan. Reflect- 1985, published by the British and U.S. sec- International Secretariat that masquerades prime minister Harold Wilson) resigned ing the workers’ discontent, Benn moved tions of the international Spartacist tendency as the Fourth International, headlined (In- from the cabinet when Britain joined the further to the left, and closely contested when it embodied the program of revolutionary ternational Viewpoint, 14 September): “Jez U.S. imperialist slaughter in Korea in 1951. right-winger Denis Healey for Labour Party Trotskyism. [Jeremy] we did – A political earthquake.”

September-October 2015 21 Labour’s famous Clause IV calling for public zado expulsiones en masa en el pasado. En ownership of industry. 1999, decenas de miles fueron deportados a Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters be- Haití en apenas dos semanas. Los autobuses lieve, sincerely in many cases, in the reforms recorrían las calles de Santo Domingo, la they extol. The growing mass discontent that capital dominicana, para pescar a cualquiera his election reflects is real. Possibilities may que “parezca haitiano”, incluidos cientos open up to win some partial reforms, but de dominicanos de piel oscura. Aunque las only through hard struggle against the capi- autoridades dominicanas afirman que las talists, their state and their labor lieutenants. deportaciones habían sido suspendidas a lo Jeremy Corbyn as Lenin?! Reformist British left (in this case Socialist Appeal) The Labour Party remains a bourgeois largo del año pasado, éstas se han incremen- goes gaga for new Labour leader. workers party, and a Corbyn government, tado notablemente en el principal puente SR proclaimed: “Socialist Resistance enthu- this formula could cover a call by any Brit- should he survive the all-sided attacks that fronterizo en el norte, alcanzando las 6,700 en siastically welcomes the election of Jeremy ish opportunist left group for a Labour Party have only begun, would be a capitalist los primeros cuatro meses del año, triplicando Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party.” government led by Corbyn. government. Major class battles require así la tasa de 2014. Hasta el momento, unos Alliance for Workers Liberty found- Lo and behold, a few weeks later, the revolutionary leadership. As Trotsky wrote 53 mil dominicanos se han visto despojados er-leader Sean Matgamna crowed: “The SL/B came out with a leaflet titled “Jeremy following the failure of the 1926 general de su ciudadanía, y aunque supuestamente trade unions and the working class have Corbyn: Tony Blair’s nightmare!” (12 Au- strike: “Without a party … the proletarian esto fue revertido más tarde, aún no reciben retaken the Labour Party!” (“Organize gust) which is a veritable encomium to the revolution cannot conquer.” n credenciales de identidad, de modo que po- Labour’s newcomers, remake the Party,” Labour left leader. It declares that “Corbyn drían ser detenidos y expulsados. Solidarity, 16 September). opposes NATO and is for Britain out of this Dominicana... Entretanto, como siempre ocurre cuando As for the various left alliances, accord- imperialist military alliance,” even though sigue de la página 24 las autoridades dominicanas desencadenan ing to the Weekly Worker (24 September) he was already and predictably backtracking recho a ciudadanía a todos los que nacen en una andanada represiva antihaitiana, se han of the Communist Party of Great Britain on this issue. It proclaims him “a principled el país (jus soli), la República Dominicana intensificado el racismo y los brutales ata- (CPGB), people have left Left Unity to join and honest representative of the left wing of se suma a Chile bajo la dictadura pinoche- ques, linchamientos y pogromos contra los the Labour Party and it will debate its future old Labour in the tradition of Nye Bevan, tista al basar la ciudadanía en una “ley de haitianos. El 10 de febrero, un haitiano, Hen- existence at an upcoming conference. The Michael Foot and Tony Benn.” The ICL’s sangre” (jus sanguinis), según la cual, ésta ry Claude Jean (conocido como “Tulile”), CPGB-supported Labour Party Marxists is main claim is that “While the demands no ha de otorgarse a los hijos de los “extran- de 35 años, de oficio lustrador de calzado, encouraging leftists to join Labour and fight posed by the Corbyn campaign are sup- jeros”. Y al excluir a un grupo en particular fue encontrado colgado de un árbol en el to democratize the party, as is, of course, portable, they cannot be achieved through del otorgamiento de la ciudadanía, la RD se parque Santiago. Un día antes, una pandilla the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy. old Labour parliamentarism,” and require suma también al Tercer Reich alemán, cuyas de dominicanos enmascarados que blandían And so on, and so forth. the overthrow of capitalism and socialist infames Leyes de Núremberg despojaron machetes se reunió en Santiago para pisotear This virtual unanimity of the British revolution. de ciudadanía a los judíos. Estas leyes y y quemar una bandera haitiana, exigiendo (not-so) “far left” reflects the fact that the This is hardly critical support in the decretos de estilo nazi “desnacionalizan” deportaciones en masa. Han circulado vi- entire milieu, even groups that had totally Leninist sense of exposing the bankruptcy a más de medio millón de dominicanos, deos en Internet de un ataque multitudinario written off the Labour as any kind of work- of the reformists. Instead it is fulsome sup- además de que azuzan la persecución de realizado el 8 de abril en la ciudad de Moca ers party, is deeply imbued with Labourism port with a fig leaf saying Corbyn doesn’t otro medio millón de inmigrantes nacidos que expulsó a 300 haitianos. Las imágenes as a tradition supposedly encompassing the go far enough. And it is based on prettifying, en Haití y que son un componente clave de muestran a jóvenes golpeando mujeres, entire workers movement. The chumminess i.e., falsifying, Corbyn’s actual program. la fuerza laboral dominicana. Todo defensor irrumpiendo en hogares y rompiéndolo todo, and numerous alliances, coalitions and po- It would take a revolution to renationalize de los derechos democráticos debe exigir con la complicidad de la Policía Nacional. litical blocs between the various groups un- the railways? “People’s quantitative eas- la inmediata abrogación de la racista ley de En medio de esta histeria antihaitiana derline the fact that their reformist programs ing” can’t be accomplished without the nacionalidad de la República Dominicana. galopante, mientras se aproxima el plazo are virtually indistinguishable. So it’s no overthrow of capitalism? Nonsense. Hav- Bajo estas grotescas leyes y decretos, del 17 de junio, miles de dominicanos accident that they will all be back together in ing abandoned revolutionary Trotskyism, todo “extranjero” que no cuente con los pa- indocumentados buscan registrarse, ¡como Corbyn’s Labour Party, constantly maneu- the ICL and SL/B have become “critical” peles requeridos será objeto de deportación extranjeros! para evitar ser deportados. Pero vering for position on various bodies. Rather Corbynistas. inmediata. No debe caber la menor duda de aunque largas filas se han formado afuera de than a revolutionary opposition, they will Authentic Trotskyists warn, as Trotsky que el gobierno dominicano está preparándo- las oficinas de registro, sólo unos cuantos become (as some already are) an organic did in 1926 and as British Trotskyists did se para deportaciones en masa, en una escala han sido admitidos. Ha habido airadas pro- part of this “imperialist workers party.” in 1944-46, that the Labour lefts reflect the industrial. Ya ha contratado una flota de au- testas a diario en Santo Domingo, que han A particular mention should be made radicalization of the working masses in or- tobuses capaz de deportar a 2 mil personas sido dispersadas con gas lacrimógeno por la of the peculiar and spectacularly opportun- der to block it from revolutionary struggle. diarias. Se ha firmado un acuerdo formal con policía. Se aseguró al Sindicato de Trabaja- ist stance taken by the Spartacist League/ In the particular circumstances of Britain, el Ejército Dominicano para que realice estas dores Cañeros de los Bateyes emitir unos 10 Britain (SL/B), section of the International they substitute for a class-collaborationist tareas, además de establecer instalaciones de mil permisos para quienes reciben pensiones Communist League (ICL). Historically, popular front. As large numbers of work- detención en la zona fronteriza. tras trabajar durante décadas en los campos the SL/B was sharply counterposed to the ers and youth move to the left, fed up with El general que encabeza el departa- de caña de azúcar, pero únicamente 2,900 Labourite left. Shortly after expelling ICL decades of wage cuts, destruction of union mento de migración anunció que “a partir personas han recibido la aprobación, puesto cadres who went on to found the League gains, dismantling of social services, and del jueves” (18 de junio) equipos de esa que la mayoría carece incluso de documen- for the Fourth International, the SL/B gave endless imperialist war, communists must institución acompañados por miembros tos haitianos, y de éstos sólo un pequeño critical support to a candidate of Arthur explain that the Labour lefts are no alter- del ejército “recorrerán las zonas urbanas número ha recibido documentos. Entretanto, Scargill’s nascent SLP in a by-election in native, that their actual program, far from con amplia presencia de inmigrantes para unas 49 mil personas viven en los bateyes Yorkshire. This was a perfectly correct tactic pointing toward revolution, is an attempt to detener y deportar a quienes no se hayan de los ingenios azucareros. toward a break to the left from Tony Blair’s head it off by hoodwinking the masses. And registrado en el programa” (El Nacional, El gobierno de la República Dominica- New Labour. But rather than offering criti- the leftists now flocking to Corbyn’s banner 16 de junio). Sus agentes han sido “capa- na es tristemente célebre por sus continuos cal support as Lenin advocated, “as a rope are aiding that swindle. citados” para “detener en la calle a quienes ataques racistas y xenófobos en contra de la supports a hanged man,” the SL/B did so in A revolutionary opposition, both outside por su apariencia puedan ser extranjeros población haitiana. Esto se retrotrae a la masa- perfectly opportunist fashion, distributing and inside the Labour Party, would underline sin permiso de residencia”. El Nacional cre de “perejil”2 de 1937 lanzada por el títere the SLP’s propaganda rather than their own. that fighting austerity and regenerating the añade que aunque unas 250 mil personas de EE.UU., el generalísimo Rafael Leónidas Recently, the ICL has taken another British economy can only be accomplished se han registrado para legalizar su estatus, Trujillo, El Chivo. Más de 30 mil haitianos y sharp turn to the right, notably over Greece, through workers revolution laying the basis sólo unos cuantos cientos han recibido un dominicanos de piel oscura fueron masacrados where it followed SYRIZA prime minister for international socialist planning. It would permiso temporal de residencia, y “muchos entre el 2 y el 8 de octubre de ese año, en lo que Alexis Tsipras’ call for a “no” vote in a July stress that the haughty British ruling class is de los inmigrantes, especialmente aquellos en Haití es denominado como “Río Masacre”.3 referendum that prepared the way for the armed and dangerous and will use that force que han vivido por décadas en República Trujillo encabezaba a la Guardia Nacional, imposition of vicious austerity measures. to smash resistance unless it is checked and Dominicana, no cuentan con ningún tipo establecida por las autoridades de ocupación It followed up with an action program that defeated by a greater power, of a mobilized de identificación”, de modo que no pueden norteamericanas, y el gobierno de EE.UU. makes no mention of socialism, revolution working class armed with a class-struggle inscribirse.1 or even bringing down the SYRIZA govern- program and led by a Leninist-Trotskyist Las autoridades dominicanas han reali- 2 Los soldados ordenaban a los detenidos pro- ment, and rather than calling for a workers party prepared to sweep away the cops, nunciar la palabra “perejil”, lo que muchos 1 government substituted the formula of “a goons, strikebreakers and court orders, as Desde la aprobación de la ley migratoria de francófonos y hablantes de kreyòl encuentran government which will act in the interests of well as the Labour leaders, left and right, 2004, los hospitales dominicanos se han re- difícil. Quienquiera que no pudiera hacerlo husado rutinariamente a emitir partidas de “correctamente” era matado en el acto. the working people and be subordinated to who are the biggest obstacle to victory. For 3 2 nacimiento para los bebés que han nacido de Para un relato de los crímenes perpetrados por them.” Even with the caveat that this could the workers to take power, they must bring padres indocumentados. Sin éstas, los niños no linchadores en contra de los haitianos, véase not be won in a parliamentary framework, down the dictatorship of capital. In no way pueden ser inscritos en el registro civil, y sin “¡Alto a la persecución de trabajadores haitia- 2 See “The ICL on Greece: Goodbye Trotsky, can that be done by the thoroughly parliamen- documentos de identidad no pueden asistir a la nos en la República Dominicana!” en el suple- Hello Minimum Program,” on page 17. tarist Labour Party, even if it resuscitates Old escuela. mento de El Internacionalista, enero de 2006. 22 The Internationalist haitiana a la ciudadanía. Además, participa en Costera para que impida que “balseros” un bloque electoral con el PLD. Narciso Isa escapen, además de mantener a Haití bajo Conde, dirigente de Izquierda Revolucionaria la ocupación de las tropas mercenarias de (remanente del antiguo Partido Comunista la ONU (la MINUSTAH) desde 2004 y de Dominicano), emitió un pronunciamiento en haber invadido al país tras el terremoto de contra de las leyes excluyentes, pero la mayor 2010 para impedir disturbios. parte de la izquierda ha estado vergonzosa- Después de que el tribunal dominicano mente ausente de la lucha contra este ataque emitiera su sentencia, hubo varias protestas virulentamente racista contra el sector más en Nueva York en 2013 para exigir que ésta vulnerable de los trabajadores dominicanos. fuera revertida. En 2008, el Grupo Interna- Aunque debilitados, hay aún varias cionalista ayudó a iniciar y organizar una federaciones sindicales en la República Domi- manifestación para reunir a izquierdistas y nicana (CASC, CNTD, CNUS), que aunque activistas sindicales dominicanos, haitianos ocasionalmente convocan huelgas nacionales y norteamericanos para protestar contra el contra la política económica del gobierno del racista trato que reciben los haitianos el al Photos: 7dias.com.do PLD, no se han unido a los trabajadores domi- República Dominicana. Tales protestas, sin nicanos de ascendencia haitiana de la Unión de embargo, no son suficientes.5 Lo que hace Trabajadores Cañeros de los Bateyes (UTC). falta es un programa de lucha de clases que Cuando la UTC se ha manifestado para exigir busque movilizar el poder de la clase obrera seguro médico, para extender e incrementar en ambas mitades de la isla de Quisqueya Union of Sugar Cane Workers (UTC) demonstrating outside police las pensiones y ahora para obtener documen- en defensa de los haitianos y de sus hijos, headquarters in Santo Domingo, May 25, demanding papers. Signs say “Cane tos legales, lo ha hecho sola. El Movimiento así como aquí en Nueva York, donde viven Workers Trapped, Unable to Regularize” and “We Are Cane Workers, We Only de Trabajadores Independientes (MTI) se más de 100 mil haitianos y más de 600 mil Have ID From the Sugar Mills.” Below: even with Haitian identity documents, ha manifestado a favor de los derechos para dominicanos. retired sugar cane worker unable to obtain papers to prevent deportation. los dominicanos de origen haitiano, pero el La “Sentencia 168/13”, la ley de nacio- instalado como la nueva marioneta Primero de Mayo, el día internacional de la nalidad de 2004 y todas las demás, no son dominicana de EE.UU., y las políticas clase obrera, y en reciente notas acerca de una más que trozos de papel que pueden tritu- racistas continuaron durante sus siete posible huelga general, este asunto candente rarse. Lo que se requiere es una clase obrera períodos como presidente. no fue mencionado. Eventuales acciones de con conciencia de clase que luche contra La actual “desnacionalización” solidaridad de los sindicatos dominicanos el veneno chovinista del nacionalismo. El de los dominicanos de ascendencia contra las deportaciones en masa en Haití Grupo Internacionalista y la Liga por la IV haitiana ha sido realizada bajo las generarían una tormenta política en el país, Internacional proclaman, como se dice en el presidencias de Leonel Fernández y pero el programa internacionalista que hace Manifiesto Comunista, que los trabajadores Danilo Medina, ambos del Partido de falta para librar la combativa lucha de clases no tienen patria. Hacemos un llamado a la la Liberación Dominicana (PLD). No que se necesita es anatema para los actuales unidad en lucha de los trabajadores haitianos, obstante, está basada en la ley migrato- falsos dirigentes procapitalistas del movi- dominicanos y norteamericanos en contra del ria de 2004 aprobada bajo el gobierno miento obrero. capitalismo y sus racistas gobernantes. efectivamente condonó la masacre incluso al de Hipólito Mejía del Partido Revolucionario El clamor internacional en contra de ¡Alto a las expulsiones de haitianos de la acordar pagar unos miserables 525,000 dólares Dominicano (PRD), que clasificaba a los re- la xenófoba “Sentencia 168/13” ha sido República Dominicana! de indemnización. Pero de los supuestos 30 sidentes indocumentados como “en tránsito”. muy fuerte, incluso entre organizaciones ¡Defender a los haitianos en la República dólares que correspondían a cada víctima, los Cuando una de los afectados, Juliana Deguis imperialistas como las Naciones Unidas, la Dominicana contra la violencia y la sobrevivientes únicamente recibieron dos cen- Pierre, presentó una apelación judicial, el Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos persecución! tavos cada uno. El racista decreto migratorio Tribunal Constitucional emitió una sentencia y “organizaciones no gubernamentales” ¡Abajo las racistas leyes antihaitianas de “Sentencia 168/13” es tan sólo la continuación el 23 de septiembre de 2013 a favor de la ley proimperialistas como Amnistía Interna- la RD! de estos ataques que tienen como blanco a los racista, y la hizo retroactiva para que se apli- cional. Esto, por supuesto, no tendrá ningún ¡Abajo los intentos de privar de derechos a dominicanos de ascendencia haitiana, esta vez cara a quienquiera cuyos ancestros hubieran efecto. El imperialismo norteamericano está los dominicanos de origen haitiano! por medios “legales”. ingresado a la República Dominicana en los tan preocupado por el espectro de un éxodo ¡Plenos derechos de ciudadanía para todos Durante décadas, los haitianos han últimos 84 años (¡!). Cientos de miles de do- masivo desde Haití (cuya pobreza es resul- los que residen en República Dominicana provisto fuerza de trabajo muy barata a la minicanos fueron así declarados “en tránsito”, tado directo de la política norteamericana, … y en EE.UU.! n burguesía dominicana. No sólo se ocupan aunque hubieran nacido y vivido en la RD dese al destrucción del cultivo de arroz 5 Véase “Protesta en Nueva York contra la de las durísimas labores de corte de caña de toda su vida. hasta la superexplotación de los trabajadores persecución de trabajadores haitianos en la azúcar en la zafra, en condiciones cercanas De la ley migratoria de 2004 en ade- haitianos en los talleres de constura) que ha República Dominicana”, suplemento de El In- a la esclavitud, sino que los trabajadores lante, estamos presenciando una verdadera destacado permanentemente a la Guardia ternacionalista, agosto de 2008. haitianos también constituyen el núcleo de “limpieza étnica en el Caribe”, como lo la fuerza de trabajo en el sector de la cons- expresó en el título de un artículo4 Sonia trucción civil en la República Dominicana, Pierre, la difunta presidente del Movimiento incluyendo la construcción del metro de de Mujeres Dominico-Haitianas (MUDHA). The Santo Domingo. Los haitianos, lo mismo Aunque no fuera nada radical (fue galardo- Internationalist que sus hijos nacidos en la República Domi- nada dos veces por el gobierno imperialista nicana, son parte integral de la clase obrera de EE.UU.), la dirigente del MUDH recibió A Journal of Revolutionary Marxism for the dominicana. Pero debido a la histeria racista constantes amenazas de muerte por su de- Reforging of the Fourth International azuzada por las autoridades, son constante- fensa de dominicanos de origen haitiana. mente hostigados, perseguidos y atacados. Pierre murió en diciembre de 2011 de un Publication of the Internationalist Group, Los bateyes donde viven carecen casi siem- infarto debido a la hipertensión en medio section of the League for the Fourth International pre de la más elemental infraestructura de de una feroz campaña de odio y persecución agua potable y electricidad, y ahí son presa en su contra orquestado por el gobierno, Annual subscription US$10 for five issues. fácil para las bandas de linchadores. medios de comunicación y sectores empre- Name______Ya desde la dictadura trujillista, la polí- sariales. El mundialmente famoso escritor tica oficial del gobierno ha sido de condenar dominicano Junot Díaz también ha sido sa- Address______todo lo haitiano como malo, que deben ser tanizado y tildado de “traidor” por repudiar ______Apt. #_____Tel.(___)______erradicado. La masacre de 1937 desencadenó la infame Sentencia 168/13. un proceso de “blanqueamiento” de la pobla- Mientras los partidos gobernantes City______State/Province______ción dominicana. Después de que Trujillo burgueses de la República Dominicana, la fuera asesinado en 1961 (con la complicidad policía y el ejército están metidos hasta el Postal Code/Zip______Country______de la CIA, una vez que el gobierno demócrata cuello en la racista persecución de domini- de Kennedy había llegado a la conclusión canos de origen haitiano, la izquierda y el Make checks/money orders payable to Mundial Publications and mail to: de que El Chivo se había convertido en un movimiento obrero dominicanos han hecho Mundial Publications lastre), EE.UU. invadió al país por segunda Box 3321, Church Street Station poco o nada para combatirla. El Partido de New York, NY 10008 U.S.A. vez, en 1965, esta vez bajo el demócrata los Trabajadores Dominicanos criticó suave- Lyndon Johnson, para impedir que la Repú- mente la sentencia de 2013, pero no apoya el Write the Internationalist Group at the above address, or contact: blica Dominicana “se volviera comunista”. derecho de los dominicanos de ascendencia Tel (212) 460-0983 Fax (212) 614-8711 Joaquín Balaguer, quien durante largo tiempo 4 Sonia Pierre, “Depuración étnica en el Ca- E-mail: [email protected] fuera un cercano colaborador de Trujillo, fue ribe,” El Nuevo Diario, 23 de mayo de 2009. September-October 2015 23 El Internacionalista septiembre-octubre de 2015 ¡Abajo la racista ley dominicana de nacionalidad! ¡Solidaridad obrera haitiano-dominicana! ¡Alto a la expulsión de haitianos de la República Dominicana! El siguiente artículo es una versión sistas) participaron en ampliada del volante del Grupo Interna- la protesta llamando a cionalista que fue distribuido en la protesta favor de acción obrera Nehemías Alvino/Diario Libre Nehemías Alvino/Diario realizada en Nueva York el 15 de junio, contra las deportacio- descrita a continuación. nes y los ataques racis- NUEVA YORK, 16 de JUNIO – A partir de tas, exigiendo también esta semana, el gobierno de la República plenos derechos de Dominicana pretende iniciar la expulsión ciudadanía para todos en masa de haitianos y dominicanos de los que residen en la ascendencia haitiana. El desastre humani- República Dominica- tario que se aproxima ha sido virtualmente na. En contra de los ignorado por la prensa norteamericana e racistas defensores de internacional. Sobre la base de una racista la antihaitiana “domini- ley de nacionalidad, cientos de miles de canidad”, llamamos por dominicanos han sido despojados de su ciu- una revolución obre- dadanía y corren el riesgo de ser detenidos ra en toda Quisqueya en la calle, en sus centros de trabajo o en sus (Hispaniola). La clave casas en los terriblemente pobres bateyes en radica en la solidaridad que habitan, para ser arrojados al otro lado obrera haitiano-domi- de la frontera con Haití. Muchos han pasado nicana, y ahí donde toda su vida en la República Dominicana, ésta puede originarse es no hablan kreyòl ni tienen parientes en el precisamente la ciudad país vecino. Son ahora oficialmente des- de Nueva York, donde nacionalizados, despojados de ciudadanía cientos de miles de in- Policía dominicana reprime dominicanos haitianos que intentaron registrarse para poder de cualquier país, y no tienen derechos en migrantes dominicanos evitar la deportación y permanecer (temporalmente) en el país en donde muchos de ellos ningún lugar. y haitianos carecen por nacieron. Se anunció el inicio de deportaciones masivas para el 18 de junio al vencer el plazo Una protesta de emergencia fue rea- igual de derechos en para la registración. Cientos de miles de personas serán afectados. lizada el 15 de junio frente al consulado virtud de las racistas leyes migratorias nor- ma de importación de trabajadores haitianos de hecho oficializa la eliminación de su dominicano en Nueva York. El Grupo Inter- teamericanas. para realizar las labores más duras en la Re- ciudadanía (¡!). nacionalista, los Clubes Internacionalistas Además, señalamos que las tensiones pública Dominicana, careciendo de derecho, En lugar de apelar a políticos nortea- de CUNY y los Class Struggle Education entre dominicanos y haitianos son azuzadas fue iniciado cuando ambos países se encon- mericanos y al gobierno de Obama –que Workers (trabajadores de la educación cla- por el imperialismo norteamericano. El siste- traban bajo la ocupación norteamericana, que deporta a más de 400 mil personas al año, comenzó hace un siglo. incluidos miles de haitianos y dominicanos– Por añadidura, la policía para que presione a los administradores fronteriza dominicana, de su semicolonia dominicana, exigimos el Cuerpo Especializado el fin inmediato de las deportaciones, la de Seguridad Fronteri- liberación de todos los que se encuentran za (CESFRONT), fue en las cárceles y campos de concentración establecida por incita- migratorios y plenos derechos para todos ción de Washington en los inmigrantes en EE.UU. también. 2006, como parte de su El 17 de junio se cumple el plazo para empeño para militarizar registrarse en el Programa de Identificación las fronteras norteame- y Documentación de Inmigrantes Haitianos

El Internacionalista ricanas, y sus elementos (PIDIH) y en el Programa Nacional de han sido entrenados por Regularización de Extranjeros (PNRE). la Patrulla Fronteriza Estos dos programas fueron establecidos norteamericana. El año para implementar la Sentencia TC168-13 pasado, el vicepresi- del Tribunal Constitucional dominicano y dente de EE.UU., Joe la subsecuente Ley No. 169-14 que decretó Biden, durante una vi- que toda persona nacida en la República Do- sita a Santo Domingo, minicana cuyos padres, abuelos, bisabuelos grotescamente alabó la o progenitores previos hayan migrado al país ley dominicana de na- sin documentos desde 1929, serían despo- cionalidad al decir que jados de su ciudadanía. En la práctica, esta constituye un “sólido agresión racista se aplicará exclusivamente paso” que daría “una a los dominicanos de ascendencia haitiana. Contingente internacionalista en la protesta frente al Consulado Dominicano en Nueva York, vía hacia la ciudadanía” En contravención de las normas que en el 15 de junio, para repudiar la racista ley de nacionalidad dominicana y exigir que cesen las a la población de ascen- todo el continente americano proveen el de- deportaciones, tanto en República Dominicana como en Estados Unidos. dencia haitiana, cuando sigue en la página 22 ¡En EE.UU. y en RD: ¡Plenos derechos de ciudadanía para todos! ¡Movilización obrera contra las deportaciones y los ataques racistas!