Friday, April 30, 2010

Draft Balance Sheet on CWGs relations with the LOICI 2002-2010



Communist Workers' Group trajectory

The CWG was formed in 1995 after we split from the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (LRCI) over that tendency refusing to condemn the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1994. We joined the LRCI as the Communist Left in 1992, despite our differences over political economy and the restoration of capitalism, in the belief that the LRCI was moving left in the 1980s. In 1994 we formed a minority faction in the LRCI around the tendency of the leadership to adapt to British social imperialism. We argued that the LRCI had formed a popular front with Yeltsin on the basis that bourgeois democracy was more progressive than the Stalinist bureaucratic regime. This was clearly an adaptation to British social imperialism. This was confirmed with the LRCI backed the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1994. We were bureaucratically expelled from the LRCI in 1995 (labelled a secret Proletarian Faction), and together with the Latin American sections of the LRCI, Workers’ Power Bolivia (POB) and Workers Power Peru (POP), formed the Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International (LCMRCI or CEMICOR in Spanish).

In the split document of the Proletarian Faction we traced the left centrist move of the LRCI in the late 1980s and its right centrist swing in response to capitalist restoration to the absence of the Fourth International as a revolutionary organisation. The LRCI began as a split from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1975 and its leadership was always centred on London in Workers’ Power (Britain). They never completely broke from its ‘3rd camp’ state capitalist position on the USSR. Bourgeois democracy was always more progressive than the Stalinist regimes, so bourgeois democracy was the route to the defence of workers property. The basic Cliffite position reflected the failure of the Fourth International under Trotsky to survive WW2 as a healthy international party. In the imperialist countries it adapted to imperialism (what we call imperio-centrism) and in the semi-colonial and colonial world it adapted to bourgeois nationalism (national Trotskyism). In the Imperialist countries the Trotskyists adapted to their respective imperialists and, after a brief period of disorientation during which the new workers states and onset of the post-war boom were assimilated, all then settled for Stalinism and democratic imperialism as objectively progressive forces to be tailed by international Trotskyism.

What made this liquidationist counter-revolution permanent after WW 2 was the imperio-centrist subordination of the colonial and semi-colonial sections in any attempt to re-found the collapsed International. Pushed from the left by the imperio-centrist Trotskyist sections, Stalinist and democratic imperialist forces would pressure imperialism to the left without any need for the independent action of semi-colonial Trotskyists. This isolated the Trotskyist sections in the colonial and semi-colonial countries where they oscillated between making popular fronts with the national bourgeoisies with illusions in democratic imperialism, and forming adventurist armed militias in isolation of the working class. When the nationalist militia overthrew Batista in 1959, the refusal of the US to deal with the insurrectionists forced them into the arms of the Soviet Union. This confirmed the liquidationist posture of post-war Trotskyism in tailing democratic imperialism and Stalinism. 

The CWG in 1995 concluded that any regroupment of healthy Trotskyist forces to build a new, Fifth International would have to take place initially in the semi-colonies, and in particular since the CEMICOR was based in Latin America, in the fight to overcome and defeat Latin American ‘national Trotskyism’.

Forming the Collective in 2002

Despite its existence as a propaganda fraction internationally that continued to take positions on all the major struggles and signed joint statements with other tendencies, the CEMICOR did not advance the struggle in Peru or Bolivia on the ground. Nevertheless we continued to recognise the potential of Latin American Trotskyism to break from national Trotskyism against the history of betrayals and liquidations by imperio-centrist Trotskyism that go back to WW2 and the role of the SWP (US) in Latin America and the Pabloites in Europe.

Thus we recognised the deficiencies of Morenoism were the product of the liquidation of the 4th International which led to attempts by Moreno to latch onto a number of equally degenerate imperio-centrist currents. Before we formed the Collective, the most recent lash up was the attempt by the imperio-centrist LRCI to fuse with the national Trotskyist PTS (Socialist Workers Party– a 1988 split from the Moreno MAS) following the loss of its Latin American sections, POB and POP who came with the CWG, to form the CEMICOR. CEMICOR's critique of the LRCI’s attempt at fusion with the PTS condemned this as a 'rotten bloc' but also recognised that despite its failure to break completely with Morenoism, the PTS was to the left of the LRCI.

The PTS broke with Moreno in 1988 on the question of the political revolution in Eastern Europe. Yet having rejected the illusion that democratic imperialism would save the workers states from Stalinism (the MAS position when it supported Solidarity in Poland), the PTS retained its illusions in a non-existent political revolution as an objective process. It was over this objectivist conception of the political revolution that the Trotskyist Workers Fraction (FPT) formed in the PTS and got expelled in 1998 to form the LOI-CI (Workers International League, Fourth International). The PTS like the LRCI responded to the historic defeat of restoration in East Europe and the USSR by blaming the workers – the so-called ‘crisis of subjectivity’ (for the LRCI the ‘reformist resetting) – while the FPT argued that a political revolution began but was defeated by the Stalinists in the absence of a revolutionary Fourth International. The FPT/LOI-CI blamed the ‘Menshevik centrists’ for betraying the political revolution and this ultimately led towards a re-assessment of the Fourth as ‘reformist’ for the whole post-war period. While the PTS retreated into tactical alliances with other splinters of Morenoism and a common Menshevik program, the LOI-CI took on itself the defence of Bolshevism – revolutionary Trotskyism and the Transitional Program. (Editorial, The Events of 1989. Rudolf Klement, 2000)

Thus the LOI-CI took another step toward a complete break with Morenoism as a form of national Trotskyism. At this time the CWG was unaware of the LOI-CI’s existence. We corresponded with and signed common declarations with several Argentinean and Brazilian groups while in CEMICOR, (notably the POR, the CIOS in Argentina, and the LBI and Trotskyist Fraction in Brazil up to 1999). This activity was largely literary since neither POB nor POP were active by this time. Lucha Marxista was never a member of CEMICOR nor participated in the discussions with these other groups. By 2000 CEMICOR had ceased to function even as a website. The first time that the LOI-CI came to our attention was when we helped form Salta Solidarity a Yahoo Group in 2001 with VB who was at that time a member of LOI-CI. We then entered into correspondence with it and subsequently with the Group Bolshevik (GB) and Lucha Marxista (LM).

The Collective was formed in December 2002 largely due to the efforts of the CWG to bring the LM and the GB together with the LOI-CI. In the heat of the 2001 uprising in Argentina, the LOI-CI was leading the fight for national congresses of employed and unemployed to expose the role of the fake Trotskyists in containing the mass mobilisations of the piqueteros. The members of the Collective had sufficient confidence in the LOI-CI’s determination to break completely from Morenoist zigzags between opportunism and ultra-leftism that they signed a document of 21 points. This confidence was justified as the interventions of the LOI-CI led to frequent threats of violence including firearms by the fake Trotskyist thugs. When a CWG comrade first visited Buenos Aires in December 2002, he was taken directly to the factory occupation at Brukman which was surrounded by the militant vanguard and all the Argentinean left. The LOI-CI fought to win a fraction in that factory in order to challenge the fake Trotskyist attempts to isolate and limit these struggles to legal cooperatives. To this day, the LOI-CI has a fraction in that and in many more ‘recovered’ and militant workplaces, including Zanon the poster child of the fake Trotskyists. Its main demand today remains that of a national congress of all the workers in struggle to unite and coordinate the militant vanguard of employed and unemployed. This program neither ignores the unions nor fetishizes them. It treats the unions as united fronts in which the revolutionary party has to build its cells on the basis of its program.

The main task of the Collective was to regroup healthy Trotskyist elements into a fraction to fight for an international conference on the road to building a new international. It was held that were possible programmatic differences could best be resolved by debate and common practice. This was a method of party building taken over from the PTS and we agreed with it. Unlike the LRCI it did not put up its program as an ultimatum or self-proclaim itself as the only revolutionary force on the planet. After 2002 there were numerous attempts at regroupment with other tendencies to build a new international party with an international centre. In 2003 the POB joined the Collective. Clearly, the LOI-CI was prepared to debate and work with the remnants of the CEMICOR tendency who had broken with Lora in 1985, and with the Group Bolshevik (GB) who had broken with Lambert.

Although a progressive break from the PTS, the LOICI was not yet a complete break with Moreno. It still held to the position that Moreno was in continuity with the healthy Fourth as against the Pabloites. The CWG using Jose Villa’s analysis was able to prove that Moreno had collaborated in the betrayal of the 1952 Bolivian revolution. The process of convincing the comrades took four years, from 2002 to 2006. As part of this critique of Moreno’s position on the popular front in Bolivia in 1952, the LOI-CI then went back to reconsider the legacy of Morenoism and drew the conclusion that both the International Committee (to be formed in 1953) and the International Secretariat (IS) were equally degenerate currents in 1952. To explain this it followed the trail back to the history of the 4th from its founding until after WW2. It arrived at the position that the 4th was liquidated during WW2 with the demise of its international centre. This was a big leap in the LOI-CI program as it clearly saw that the Fourth International as an organisation did not survive the collapse of a centralised leadership that enabled it to coordinate the theory and practice of a revolutionary international. Its new position for the re-founding of the 4th International on the basis of the 1938 Program was now much closer to the CWG 5thist position. In that way the LOI-CI was rejecting any revolutionary organisational continuity between Morenoism and Trotsky.

The 2004 Split in the Collective

Within a year tensions emerged in the Collective and it split in April 2004. In 2006 we wrote:

The Collective did not go beyond a fraternal federation and despite the high level of programmatic agreement, the BT [actually Group Bolshevik], LM and POB resented the influence of the LOI in the Collective and accused it of using its funds to create an Argentinean ‘mother’ party and sending its cadres to infiltrate their organisations. These resentments developed into open hostilities and personal attacks on the LOI leadership as Argentinean chauvinist and domineering. In April 2004 these tensions came to a head and a split occurred. Would a greater degree of democratic centralism have averted the split, or did the split represent an underlying difference over method and program? CWG thinks that the two are necessarily related. LM, BT [i.e. GB] and Germinal, and POP [actually POB], read the LOIs drive to regroupment as predatory and sought defence in their national organisations – in the case of BT [i.e. GB] its residual Franco imperio-centrism, and LM and POB their respective national Trotskyisms. These organisations had failed the test of revolutionary regroupment by means of a dynamic struggle against national chauvinism in both its imperialist and semi-colonial forms. They could not break with the root cause of the degeneration of post-war Trotskyism and formed a propaganda bloc, the Permanent Revolution Collective.

The 2004 split with GB/LM/POB was unnecessary with faults on both sides. The LM leadership was at fault to discipline a comrade for his programmatic differences. The LOICI was at fault in reacting so violently using the terms Stalinism and Polpotism rather than resolve the issue by fraternal methods. The basic principle at stake was the right within the Collective of a LM member to agree to the LOICI program. The LM leadership had the duty to allow the comrade to argue his positions in the Collective. The LOI-CI leadership had a duty to insist that this political difference be resolved within the Collective. Despite attempts by the CWG to resolve the dispute in this way the national Trotskyist habits on all sides led to a split.

As we have noted the comrades who formed the LOI-CI recognised the need to overcome the Morenoist history of national Trotskyism. National Trotskyism in a semi-colony is not the same as national Trotskyism in an imperialist country. In imperialist countries national Trotskyism results from the struggle of one or other imperialist power to liquidate Trotskyism into the social-chauvinist labour aristocracy and labour bureaucracy. We call this ‘imperio-centrism’ to distinguish it from national Trotskyism in the semi-colonies. In the semi-colonial countries national Trotskyism results from isolation from the global working class, especially in the imperialist countries, and the pressure within an oppressed nation is for revolutionaries to join the ‘patriotic bloc’ of classes, or its opposite, ultraleft adventurism or abstentionism, often zigzagging between both. Chauvinism here usually takes the form of the defence of the oppressed from imperialism e.g. anti-Yankee.

The split was tragic because it reflected the as yet incomplete break of both the LOI-CI and the LM and POB with national Trotskyism and national differences that overwhelmed the big leap the Collective had taken to create the conditions to overcome it. Both currents were suspicious of each other’s influence in the Collective, especially over Bolivia. This was expressed in the LM’s attempt to revive the CEMICOR in late 2003 in Bolivia excluding the LOI-CI comrade who accompanied CWG to Bolivia. This was regarded as a hostile act by the LOI-CI. Attempts by CWG to mediate on this question and over the question of RS failed as the two sides dug in. The CWG was left with the decision as to which side to take on the split. Ultimately we did so, on the basis that the LOI-CI was the only revolutionary force in the Collective that had come into existence as the result of a number of revolutionary breaks with national Trotskyism. We think this decision was principled at the time and continue to think so in the light of our experience in the years since.

Liaison Committee of 2004

After the split in the Collective in 2004, the method of the LOI-CI, and its Chilean fraternal group the POI-C (Workers International Party), supported by the CWG, was to continue regrouping by the method of forming Liaison committees for debate and common action. We did so briefly with the Argentinean POR (Revolutionary Workers Party), again under pressure from the CWG, and as a result won its Brazilian partner, the Trotskyist Fraction (FT-ex POR-Lora of Bolivia). The FT now adopted the LOI-CI position on that betrayal to break decisively with POR-Lora. We can say that Bolivia 1952 was the key to that conquest also. The LOI-CI, POI-CI, CWG and FT formed a Liaison Committee to work on other Brazilian groups notably the POM (Marxist Workers’ Party).

Thus our intervention was to fight for resolutions in support of the vanguard of the Bolivian miners against the COB (Bolivian Unions’ Confederation) betrayals, and the POR-Lora ultraleft adaption to Morales MAS, to break the rank and file from the labour bureaucracy that was behind Morales. Despite more than two years of debate and joint actions (e.g. intervention in Conlutas (unions affiliated in a “national co-ordination of struggle”) – note a left bureaucracy split from the CUT (Central Union of Workers) but serving to tie the rank and file to the left social democracy of PSOL (Party of Socialism & Liberty) we failed to win the POM but did recruit some militants to the Liaison Committee.

Leninist Trotskyist Fraction (FLT) formed in 2006

Meanwhile, the comrade who broke from the Lucha Marxista (LM), joined with the LOI-CI comrades to form a group in Bolivia around the mines and universities, and the embryo of a group in Peru. By 2006 the Liaison Committee was ready to take the next step and fuse at a higher level of democratic centralism including the LOI-CI, POI-CI, FT, and the Bolivian and Peruvian groups. This was the Leninist Trotskyist Fraction (FLT) based on a Declaration of 23 points, a call for an international congress of principled Trotskyist groups and other militant organisations, around a basic program of 23 points. We were prepared to meet and discuss with any groups that agreed with all or some of these points. Again, the program is not an ultimatum for discussion and joint action towards regroupment. 

In 2008 we made several decisive 'offensives' to win over other groups. We had been in communication with the Japan Revolutionary Communist League -Revolutionary Marxist Faction (JRCL-RMF) of Japan since 2002 mainly sending letters of greeting to their yearly Antiwar Congress. By the end of 2008 we had exchanged a number of mutually critical letters in which they characterised us as ‘degenerate Trotskyists’ and we them as idealists and pacifists. For the moment the JRCL-RMF was out of the picture. Around the end of 2008 we made contact with Socialist Fight (SF) and arising out of its correspondence with the Workers International Vanguard League (WIVL) of South Africa. While initially informal discussion with SF was promising, the problem of their ‘socialist bi-state’ in Palestine was a major sticking point. This would later become the focus of the hysterical letters from the SCI to SF when it learned that SF was also talking to GB. When the SCI broke off any formal discussion with the SF, no members of the FLTI were allowed to continue with formal discussion.

On the related question of the FLT’s position on Palestine, it is clear that the 23 point document does not state that the Zionist state is also fascist. This is the position of the FLT majority, not the CWG. Like the tactics around social democracy, it was a difference within the FLT. Similarly, the agreed FLT position on Palestine self-determination is for a socialist Palestine. It is expressed as a “multi-ethnic, secular workers state with a workers and peasants’ government” within a “Middle East Federation of Socialist republics” in the 23 points which is somewhat confusing but a distinct advance on the Moreno stageist revolution in Palestine, and in CWG literature this is explained to mean a “socialist Palestine”.

Contact with the WIVL began with a discussion over Palestine at the time of the Israel attack on Gaza in 2008 and then moved on to the popular front in South Africa. The Triple Alliance is a formation of the African National Congress (ANC), a popular front party that includes bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements, along with the South African Communist Party (SACP), and the Confederation of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). The FLT was able to convince the WIVL comrades that the lessons of the popular front in Bolivia could be applied to South Africa. In the view of the FLT, after being convinced by the CWG, the WIVL was viewed as a ‘healthy’ current and moves were made towards fusion.

A senior cadre from LOI-CI visited South Africa during the elections in April to further our relationship. The WIVL entered into a pre-fusion agreement based on some of the 23 points and then after further discussion fused with the FLT at the July 2009 Congress to form the FLTI. During the congress differences emerged over a Trotskyist program in South Africa, especially around calling for a ‘black revolution’ (a Morenoist position rejected by the WIVL) and the WIVL’s preferred designation of wage labour as ‘slave labour’. But these differences were the basis for ongoing discussion and debate and practical common actions to test the program. It also became clear that the WIVL supported the majority FLTI position on the Zionist state as ‘fascist’.

FLTI founders on China


The one question that became a source of major difference was the character of China. The background to this is important because it leads to a number of developments that led ultimately to the recent crisis in the FLTI around not only China but to a rapid degeneration in method from a healthy fraction, despite its various origins in Morenoism, Spartacism, Loraism and Healyism, into an openly right centrist organisation making huge opportunist leaps covered with ultra-left phrases. This is to say that the healthy evolution of the FLT to break with national Trotskyism in Latin America, when confronted with the problem of entering into major offensives to fuse with large political formations in South Africa and Japan, as well as with the militant HWRS (Humanist Workers for Revolutionary Socialism – United States) with a long history of struggles against degenerated Trotskyism, failed the test, went rapidly into reverse, and all the underlying weaknesses of national Trotskyism re-emerged in the SCI (International secretariat of the FLTI).

In July 2008 a comrade of the CWG wrote a blog post on China, 'Is China the New US?'  This article was reproduced in the first English issue of the International Workers Organiser

The article stated that China was developing a capitalist economy that was approaching that of imperialism. While it argued that China was not yet imperialism, the implication was that it was only matter of time. “China may be on the road to displacing the US but will it be as an imperialist China or a socialist China?” Interestingly, no objection to the possibility of China becoming imperialist, or that this would be a break from Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, was raised by the leadership of the FLT. There was no accompanying editorial note to disclaim the position argued in this article. In October 2008 the same comrade wrote another blog article, 'Is Russia Imperialist?' arguing that Russia could be seen as an emerging imperialist based on the application of Lenin’s theory of imperialism.

In March 2009 at the plenary with the SCI, the CWG delegate argued that Russia and China were emerging as imperialist powers on the basis of net foreign direct investment showing an export of finance capital. This position was forcefully attacked by the main LOI-CI leader, CM, as not only factually incorrect (e.g. Gazprom was controlled by the German BASF) but also theoretically impossible since it would mean the development of the forces of production in the epoch of imperialism and the emergence of new imperialist powers where there were already too many. The CWG undertook to do more work to convince the FLT that not only a new imperialism possible, but that it was already the new reality in Russia. Meanwhile the US group Humanist Workers for Revolutionary Socialism (HWRS) had arrived at the conclusion that China was already an emerging imperialist power and approached the FLT to join on the basis of principled agreement with the 23 points document.

The Founding Congress of the FLTI met in Argentina in July 2009. Apart from the small Argentinean NRI (Revolutionary Internationalist Nucleus) and some individuals who also fused at this congress like MT of Brazil, the important groups that fused on the basis of the 23 points and resolutions passed at the congress were the WIVL and HWRS. Apart from other differences that became the basis of pre-congress discussion leading up to the next congress in December, the Congress agreed to make the differences of China the basis of a public ‘theoretical’ discussion. The HWRS presented several lengthy documents in support of its position on China as an emerging imperialist power. Majority and Minority Resolutions spelling out the two positions on China were passed and published in the International Workers Organiser New Series No 1.

At that point it was agreed that there was no pressing programmatic difference since the minority held that China still had a transitional dual character as semi-colony and emerging imperialist power, so that in the event of war with the US, defence of China was probable. But it was obvious from the majority arguments that they saw the minority position as a serious deviation from Marxism and a concession to US imperialism.

Japan Adventure

Thus the FLT having spent 6 years building the fraction, and initially reluctant to approach groups in other continents, was now making a huge leap to fuse with the WIVL and HWRS and projecting itself beyond its Latin American home base into South Africa and North America. Facing a potential crisis and split over China, instead of consolidating this rapid expansion and dealing with the question of China objectively, CM of the SCI made a decision in the middle of the Congress to do a 180 degree shift in our relations to the JRCL-RMF and launch an ‘offensive’ into Asia to make the Chinese revolution hand in hand with the ‘Japanese Trotskyists’. Up to that point we agreed that the JRCL-RMF were idealists and not Leninist- Trotskyists. Now, to prove that China was not imperialist CM would show that the FLTI and the JRCL-RMF could intervene together to make the Chinese revolution. Ironically the JRCL-RMF holds China to be a great power, though it rejects Lenin’s theory of imperialism as irrelevant in today’s ‘changed circumstances’. A leading LOI-CI cadre was selected to go and the trip rapidly planned. As well as being a delegate to the anti-war assembly, they would have discussions with the ranks and the leadership of the JRCL-RMF.

This mission proved to be the one that took the FLTI from a potentially healthy regrouping of Trotskyist groups across three continents, into the realm of fantasy and messianic megalomania. The whole FLTI was now hostage to this foolish venture. The SCI was elected on the basis of the existing LOI-CI leadership, with SM of the WIVL as ‘African Secretary’ and a co-opted member of the SCI. WIVL supported the Majority position on China and the Japanese adventure. The Japanese adventure was a clear indication that CM was out of control.

Crisis of the FLTI

Then followed the SZ affair, that of the ‘bourgeois’ trade union activist SZ in the US. Around September of 2009, an HWRS comrade was talking to a long time labour activist SZ at a Bay Area rally, when the latter asked if HWRS knew of the history of the JRCL-RMF we were ‘fusing’ with, as it had "betrayed" the rail workers in the 1980s. Because the HWRS was new to the FLTI, and because the reports of the Japan trip were about the details of discussions and did not reveal any agreement to do more than exchange documents and read each other’s material, HWRS wrote to the SCI for further information. What happened then was alarming. SCI leaders wrote back condemning HWRS for talking to a bourgeois agent. In doing so, HWRS had revealed themselves to be in danger of Stalinism, i.e. using an enemy of the working class to make accusations against a revolutionary organisation. Not only did they characterise the informer as a bourgeois agent, he was a leader in the Peace and Freedom Party (PFP), which SCI characterised as an 'imperialist' party led by 'Stalinists'. If SZ had any questions about the JRCL-RMF he should demand an international moral tribunal to pass judgement. The SCI concluded that there could be no question of the FLTI questioning the JRCL-RMF as moral charge had come from a bourgeois agent.

There then followed a furious exchange about proletarian morality. The SCI said that the working class moral principle is against any bourgeois intervention in the working class. This applies equally to bourgeois agents such as Stalinists. Information from SZ cannot be used to question the political honour of a proletarian organisation. This is very convenient because anyone can be labelled a Stalinist (or bourgeois) and their political charges, right or wrong, ruled out of court. The HWRS and the CWG argued that for Trotsky moral and political questions cannot be separated. To do so avoids that fact that Stalinist (and bourgeois) morality serves class politics. The point was made forcefully that you cannot read any of the Dewey Commission without being hit over the head by this fact. Without conceding to our argument, but implicitly recognising the absurdity of its position, the SCI then claimed it has asked the JRCL-RMF to create a moral tribunal to pass judgement on its role in the 1980s privatisation of the railways in Japan. The leap into Japan had the SCI landing in a bed of hot coals with nothing but bluster and hysteria to cover its naked feet.

Already of course, the circularity of the SCI position was clear. The HWRS were being attacked as petty bourgeois academics in the Bay Area, unconscious Stalinists, and servants of Obama. By wanting to learn more about the JRCL history the HWRS was now morally on the outside of the working class and could not make any political criticisms of the SCI as supreme arbiters of proletarian morality. From that point on, the SCI began to scapegoat the HWRS, saying its fusion in the FLTI was premature, and that it was a bourgeois agent in the FLTI. Fed up with this slandering, HWRS responded with an analysis of the crisis that was breaking out in the FLTI with a critique of the method of the SCI as a subjective method reflecting its failure to complete the break with Morenoism. The recent events and attacks on the HWRS over the JRCL-RMF were to prevent the collapse of the Japanese adventure. The HWRS were attacked as Stalinists to remove them as critics of the Japanese adventure.

The CWG was involved in this as part of the minority, blocking with the HWRS on these questions. We wrote two critiques of the SCIs position on China showing that they did not see how China was lending support to the populist regimes in Latin America. First, the settlement of the Kraft fight in Argentina happened when the Maoist labour bureaucracy did a deal with the Kirchner regime enabled by a Chinese currency swap trade arrangement. We drew the LOI-CIs attention to China’s attempts to buy out Repsol RPF that would give it the dominant role in oil production in Argentina and an important source of tax revenue in funding social programs in the provinces. We pointed out that in Bolivia the comrades were deluding the miners’ vanguard if they did not explain how the Morales MAS was promising workers jobs from an industrialisation project bankrolled by China. When we criticised the Majority for claiming that the Tonghua struggle where workers killed a privatising manager was evidence of a pre-revolutionary situation in China, CWG was roundly condemned as ignoring the class struggle, suppressing information about strikes in China and India, and abandoning its revolutionary past in the FLT.

Minority Critique of SCI method

The CWG agrees with the HWRS analysis of the recent open degeneration in the FLTI leadership, in particular the SCI and SM of the WIVL as symptomatic of a method that could not meet the challenges of rapid expansion and a global crisis in which the changing role of China would force them to abandon historic schemas and dogmatic positions carried over from Morenoism. This reversion to old habits showed up at the FLTI founding congress in the call for a 'black republic' in South Africa (which the WIVL reject for obvious reasons), and in the concept of Zionism as ‘fascism’. In the end it was confirmed by the vitriolic, confused, contradictory, abusive content of the Majority’s document on China. It is a sad reflection on the limits to the fight of the LOI-CI and the WIVL to break with Morenoism facing the global crisis and the crisis of revolutionary leadership.

However, for the CWG, Morenoism is not a sufficient explanation of the crisis that blew up in the FLTI over China. It is but one expression of semi-colonial national Trotskyism. We argue that it is necessary to see that it (and the Healyite origins of the WIVL) as responses of semi-colonial national Trotskyism to imperialism and the servile pro-imperialist national bourgeoisies. As we have pointed out national Trotskyism was formed in the post-war period of the ascendancy of US imperialism as the world hegemonic power. It was the other side of the coin of ‘imperio-centrist’ Trotskyism that adapted to the chauvinism of the labour aristocracy and bureaucracies in the imperialist countries. The CWG developed the critique of imperio-centrist Trotskyism to account for the exclusion of the semi-colonial sections from the Fourth International and the betrayal of the national revolutions in Indo-China, Bolivia and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). This led to the collapse of the 4th International after the war and the isolation of national Trotskyist currents torn between ultra-leftism and opportunism. 

Historically, the labour movement in Latin America and South Africa has been mainly oppressed by US and British imperialism respectively. With the decline of British imperialism the hegemonic US remains the No 1 enemy as it is driven militarily to protect is spheres of interest from its rivals. Thus while the FLTI majority recognise that the Bolivarians, Stalinists, Castroists and fake Trotskyists try to sell imperialism as a policy that can be democratic and progressive they cannot conceive of the main imperialist enemy today being other than the US. Therefore appeals to democratic imperialism can only be to the Democrats in the US, in particular Obama, (or the EU imperialists). Once Obama is exposed as a ‘bomber’ and no different to Bush (Republicrats!) then there is an objective revolutionary situation at hand and only those who defend Obama as a democratic imperialist block the road to revolution. This is why the Majority turned on the Minority as Obama-ists.

However, what the Majority doesn’t see is that now Obama’s ‘democratic’ credentials have been exposed to the most advanced anti-imperialist workers his place is being taken by China and Hu Jintao. That is why increasingly the popular fronts of the national bourgeoisies, like the Bolivarians in Latin America, the ANC in South Africa, and ZANU-PF/MDC regime in Zimbabwe, along with other national bourgeois regimes, are turning to China to rescue them from US imperialism, painting China in the role of a progressive capitalism, or even socialism. So that rather than an all out fight against all imperialist countries, workers are being called on to put their faith in some form of ‘market socialism’ in China. The almost universal collapse of imperio-centrist Trotskyism into Menshevik cheerleaders for the Bolivarians, and under this influence, pulls behind almost all semi-colonial Trotskyism which remains dominated by degenerated currents, creates a situation in which semi-colonial Trotskyism reproduces its classic form of zigzagging between ultra-leftism and opportunism, sometimes combining both.

This means that the FLTI under its current leadership will remain trapped in a national Trotskyist method. It will be trapped in an objectivist schema of an objective/subjective struggle against US imperialism in which the FLTI acts to expose the agents of US imperialism in the workers movement as ‘stalinoid’. Yet trapped in this schema it cannot see that the working class is not listening to Obama’s siren song, but to the Bolivarian’s siren song of Chinese imperialism as a form ‘21st century socialism’. The SCI says Chavez’ 5th international is a Stalin-Laval agreement. But what the SCI overlooks is that in the original Stalin-Laval agreement, Stalin made an agreement with ‘democratic’ imperialism to fight ‘fascist’ imperialism. This is exactly how the Bolivarian/Castroist/Maoist/fake Trotskyists see it; China is the ‘democratic’ imperialism'/'progressive alternative' ranged against the US as the ‘fascist’ imperialism. The FLTI majority is in danger of being no more than the 5th wheel on Chavez' ‘5th International’. 

In sum what we are dealing with here is the crisis of Marxism, caused by the collapse and liquidation of the 4th International, expressed as the isolation and pressure on semi-colonial Trotskyism which traps it into national Trotskyism torn between the popular front and ultra-left adventurism. The LOI-CI making a break from Morenoism only got so far before being ambushed by a global crisis and the crisis of leadership. The FLTI leadership speaks of this as the race between the revolution and counter-revolution. In this race there is always the temptation to take the short cut to win over left moving forces. The risk is that in making such bold leaps in the absence of a revolutionary international, the venture comes to grief as an adventure. This is what has happened with the FLTI. There is no objective process of revolutionary subjectivity with which the FLTI only has to keep up in order to construct a new international. There are deeply ingrained non-Marxist deviations inside even the most healthy of Trotskyists which results from the liquidation of the international and the loss of dialectics. Dialectics is only possible with the healthy grounding of the international in every corner of the globe in every country and region. Without that, program becomes a frozen corpse and it can neither guide nor learn from events. The question of China has exploded this dead program and opened the road to the return to Marxism, and with it a new revolutionary international.

Overcoming the Crisis of Marxism


The revolutionary program is only as good as the revolutionary party and its Marxist method of uniting theory and practice. National Trotskyism is the reverse side of the coin of imperio-centrist Trotskyism that liquidated the 4th International. National Trotskyism is the deformed Marxism that results from the isolation of Trotskyism in semi-colonial countries. There is no way to overcome this short of building a revolutionary international that can unite theory and practice in the revolutionary program. The FLTI majority program is frozen in a dogmatic Trotskyism and Leninism and turned into an historic schema that can only disarm it in practice. It is necessary to develop Marxism as a dialectical method capable of grasping the complex concrete reality of today. The Minority has begun to do this with its analysis of the emergence of imperialism out of the special conditions of restored capitalism in the worker states. In grasping this multifaceted reality we can advance with a program that is capable of acting as a guide to practice in a world where China’s emergence opens up the prospect of inter-imperialist rivalry, wars, revolutions and counterrevolutions. In our various documents we have explained how the world situation is altered by the emergence of China as an imperialist power. The 23 points that are the basis of the FLT and the FLTI have to be recast in the light of China’s transformation. The severity of the crisis, the mechanisms for making the workers pay for the crisis, the popular front, the Bolivarian project, Palestine, Cuba, the national question, are all now refractions of the global imperialist rivalry now including China. But while such a dialectical method can be defended, unless it becomes a living Marxism embodied in the unity of theory and practice of an international party, it will necessarily degenerate. In the process of building a revolutionary international we need to be on guard against both national Trotskyism and imperio-centrism.

Forward to the revolutionary Marxist international!

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Correspondence between IRL Zimbabwe and former FLTI Minority over China



 We publish the exchange of letters between the Zimbabwe Revolutionary Internationalist League which broke away from the International Socialist Tendency recently to enter into fusion talks with the FLTI.  The IRL comrades wrote to us questioning our split from the FLTI and we responded.

Letter from IRL comrades

Dear Comrades of the HWRS and CWG


Hullo there comrades, we hope you don’t need an introduction from us but we have found it important to remind you to read our struggle within the IST and our subsequent disengagement with it to understand where we have come from and where we are going.

We wish to reiterate the point that through our fights were initially more administrative, a closer look at our perspectives and programmes proved that the differences between us and the IST were actually over policies.

It is such programs you are advocating that sees us parting ways with the reformist IST that is, the Labour Party in America. We view your policies as anything but a weapon to strangle the struggle of the workers to bourgeoisie democracy. The struggle in the ISOZ started as far back as 2000, the fight in particular was over the character of the party we wish to build. A Popular front or a a true Revolutionary Independent Workers Party with whose majority of members are the working class and other oppressed groups lead by the proletariat.

The conclusion, which we still defend, is for a Revolutionary Independent Workers party, however, the entryism into MDC amounts to urinating on one the most fundermantal principles. Our active participation in WSF (World Social Forum) another extension of capitalist imperialism set on foot to divert the working class from fighting the real enemy, the call for workers to participate in the deflected process of the constitution making process current underway in Zimbabwe, the use of bourgeois courts to resolve conflicts amongst workers organisations evidently proves the trust in which the IST has in bourgeois machinery and their institutions. This amounts to building illusions in the oppressed class that elections will led them to socialism, that capitalism can be peacefully transformed to socialism.

Important is the approach of IST on international socialism. In Zimbabwe we never, as known to us, discussed the historic struggles of our class brothers across the world. That is to say we were just a national "reformist Leninist Trotskyist" current, the left part of the MDC in Zimbabwe. We were never involved in discussions pertaining to the construction of the organisation; never did the Tendency say a word about the exploitation and starvation of African people who are reduced to destitution in their own country - in a continent with abundant resources. No resolution was democratically debated or voted on. If the practice in Zimbabwe is a reflection of the organisation of the IST then the proper term for it is international bureaucratic centrist, to repeat your description of the SCI.

Therefore, we are very anxious for more information about the activities of the FLTI, an international current with which we are in the process of affiliating. We have to avoid a repeat of, in the case of HRS, " joining" to then immediately "split". Your example is of a temporary affiliation, like a marriage of convenience, or else you did not know enought about the ‘treacherous’ program of the FLTI. Or perhaps you had the view that the majority of the leadership of FLTI had yet to renounce their ‘Morenite’ program.

We are not convinced that the split is over the different views on China, and if this is the sprimary reason then in our view it doesn’t warrant a split. Difference are expected in a healthy organisation, differences promote debate and positive development of the organisation. This China issue alone doesn’t amount to fundermental programmatic differences/issue of principle, Remember we are supposed to see things differently to enrich and come up with a well thought out perspective or analyisis of the situation. Hence the debate on China to us is very important and educative. Still more important the debate is not over China alone but it’s a description of the world situation today, so to study or understand China a lot of factors are at play, more importantly its historical background, its current economic (who owns what) and political conditions (its military supreriority and influence / areas of influence).

Therefore the debate was quite excellent in a revolutionary sense, besides, the world working class is keenly following the debate. The working class is not interested in the name calling part of the discussion but are enthusiastically waiting the conclusion of the China position. Therefore your unexpected and untimely split does nothing more than confusing the very constituency we intend to inform/equip, you abandon them to the mess of the bourgeoisie thesis. After your split any discussions between FLTI and yourself are deemed factional fights before the eyes of the working class. If we (IRG-FI) were in your shoes we could hold on the split until after a disagreement endorsed, in this instant case, with the impending FLTI congress. If we were in your shoes we would vigorously and tirelessly bring more new evidence proving that China is indeed becoming or is an imperialist country. Remember the debate is not bilateral that is, it is not between certain individuals within FLTI but is for the whole movement and the whole world working class.

But your letter dated 2 March 2010 tells that the differences are more than just the China question, this is the hidden information we are anxiously seeking otherwise you need more than that to convince that your split was justified before the eyes of the worlds workers.

After carefully examining the contents of your letter, we are seeking clarifications or more particulars to the following issues; what is your program and the FLTI program and tactics towards Nancy Pelosi. Did you put forward your proposed policy for discussion and what was the response of other affiliates members of the FLTI and the SCI?

We have since requested the constitution of the FLTI to verify the allegations; failure to convene meetings of the IEC, change of membership of the SCI. However, we comradely, request you to brief us the efforts made to address this anomaly including the reasons put forward as to why the SCI failed to produce the IWO that carries both the Minority and Majority positions on China. We received both positions ( Minority and Majority) just after your 1st Congress, we also get a hard copy of the positions in English in December 2009 though off course it was available in Spanish as early as Septemeber 2009. The other information we have is that the delay in publishing the document was your fault as you were responsible for the layout and translating of the document. Besides the documents were readily available on the websites of many affiliates of the FLTI including your site as well.

Notwithstanding the above, and if the allegation is genuinely over the bureaucratic centralism of the SCI, then the impending congress or an extraordinary congress, if it was so urgent, to deal with these important issues, was important for the life of an organisation particularly a revolutionary one like the FLTI. We are raisng this because as it is (after your split) no one is there to defend or push your otherwise progressive arguments and concerns. The rank and file is left asking whether your issues where genuine or were simply motives to divide with ultimate goal of liquidating the FLTI.

However, we believe your program was not the FLTI program, you opportunistically signed all resolutions so to work with as an enemy (workers' enemy) within. Thus our conclusion in the absence of further information that we found you guilty of intending to destroy the organisation from within but decided to dump your imposible task prematurely. You are not alone, there are many fake lefts. My own non-governmental organisation (MONGOs) was created and funded by imperialism to defeat the agenda of the working class. Many out of desperation resort to fascist methods to silence the revolutionary wave; you are decendants of Stalin.

We were following closely the deliberation of your founding congress in Buenos Aires in July 2009 and the agreements thereto agreed. We even at the initial agreed with your position that China is becoming an imperialist force basing our arguments on the activities of China mostly in Africa. But further analyisis proved the opposite – that China is just fronting America. The conclusion we reached is China is just a semi-colony of America and the other super powers. But still we will have changed our position if you or anyone had provided concrete evidence not intellectual facts, that China is an imperialist country. You are learned intellectuals, but we won't respect you when you say Israel is a nation.

The other question is over your call for a Labour Party in America, you defended this reformist mandra by raising it as a tactic. However you failed to advise the reader of the ultimate goal of your tactic. Are the conditions in USA not ripe to call for the formation of an independent workers organisation and independent working class party? We all know the history and role of labour parties across the whole world. Do you wish to conquer the program of the conquest of power by the workers through this two stage approach. Whether you call it a transitional program or what we don’t think given the phase we are in - the phase of capitalist decay – any serious, true revolutionary socialist can make a call for the formation of a labour party even as a slogan, especially given the well documented treacherous character and their limited objectives.

In this epoch of imperialism decay where we are witnessing the formation of Anti-Capitalist parties internationally as a possible replacement to the discredited Popular Front partties, your call amounts to supporting further attacks on the masses. Your call in our view is a call for the working class to donate their remaining energy of life to their exploiters. With that call you are found guilty as an accomplice of murder – oppressing the already oppressed poor majority. One can term it ultra-leftist or secretarian to denounce the call for a Labour Party in USA today, but our only question is if the "consciousness of the working class in USA remained the same" as the those of the 1930s - can capitalism still give crumbs to the labour bureaucracy. If they have changed, we guess it could change only for worse, recent developments prove so - global financial crisis, attacks of the immigrant workers etc. Thus this makes the call for a Revolutionary Workers party an urgent one and a correct program. We must not forget the USA workers will be inspired by events that are taking place across the world and today they are watching with so much interest the developments in Greece, Mdagascar etc. Instead you must call for the American workers (natives and immigrants) to support the struggles i Greece and to defeat their own imperialist government and national bourgeoisie.

It is from these fights (class fights) they are likely to decide the kind of party they wish to build. The condition of the worker today (internationally) proves that the only party the workers will support, after several defeats due to sellouts by their leaders, is a independent party of workers, lead by the workers. Workers internationally are questioning their loyalty to these Popular front parties who are persuing anti-poor policies. In Zimbabwe, the Movement for Democratic Change, another project of Britain and USA has lost credibility and is now resorting to fascist methods to scare and silence opposition.

My dear comrades we demand you to burn that program as it serves to promote the continued exisitence of imperialism. Why should the workers be used to save the decaying system of capitalism. Instead the workers must form their own party, they should occupy themselves not with a hopeless effort to save the bankkrupt capitalist structures. We must, on the contrary, with all our strength, accelerate the process of liberation of the masses. There is no longer any path back to a peaceful democracy. Events are leading inevitably and irresistibly to a conflict between the proletariat and imperialism.

Anywhere these are other discussions which we believe are nowhere nearer the split issue as they are current, besides we found that in contrary you were instead during the 1st Congress of the FLTI you presented a program of class independence which was subsequently adopted as FLTI program – you sharply shifted from this otherwise your own program. You left us confused, please guide us accordingly we are in wilderness of darkness its only a clarification by yourself that can help us here – which one is your (the program you are presenting to the working class - proletariat program) program the 1st or the latter(the one you are advocating now). You are not only confusing the rank and file of your fraction but the whole rank and file of other currents who were/ are in posession of the resolutions of the 1st Congress of the FLTI. You seemed to renouncing the same policies you signed as your resolutions at the 1st Congress, you changed your position on China more than once, we hope you won’t change it again this time.

We are not accusing you to be in consipiracy with Socialist Fight, but nevertheless we request you to comment on the contents of his letter in particular its characterisation of the SWP as an organisation rooted in the working class organisation. Particulary we request you to comment on the program of the FLTI which you still sincerely and faithfully abide to. Do you still believe in that or those resolutions reached and conquered at the 1st Congress of the FLTI - what is really your interpretation of these resolutions. We are aware you have publicly declared your defense of the 23 points but you seemed to already have breached one of those resolutions by calling for a Labour Party in USA. Yes tactics can change varying with particularities but not policies or programmes. Here in our view you have changed not the tactic but the strategy.

Disciplined comrades could not split for such an issue before exhausting all channels of addressing such, what you did amounts to disregarding the importance of the congress the supreme/decision/policy making organ of the organisation, constituted by the rank and file of the movement - that is pure bureaucratisation - do the members of your organisations really participated and agreed in these debates that lead to your split. Do they really endorse a split, we are very much interested to receive exchange of notes of this issue. We are requesting all this because we do not want to be associated with another (International Socialist Tendency) IST.

We have send our delegate to Argentina to study the activities of FLTI. We are in constant touch with him, but his observation detailed in the report we are using as the basis of this letter, shows shocking contradiction with the issues you raised. Apart from different positions on China, all other accusations according to the report supported by some materials prove your allegations as unfounded. The only issue left is to have a copy of the constitution and found how meetings are held, but still your claim is of no importance given that you did not request a meeting of the IEC after the 1st Congress, even for procedural sake. Besides according to the report we found that were it not for the delay in exchanging position papers on China the 2nd Congress could have held in December 2009. Surely with such a spirit one wonders where really are these so-called bureaucratic motives hidden.

Our delegate has attended five meetings so far, in fact, his diary is full of meetings with workers in the industrial areas. He reported that everything is done democratically with comrades voting on every item or resolution. He reported that because the Congress date is approaching cells are busy discussing proposals from different cells including those from other fractions of or affiliate members of FLTI. Cells are freely pushng their own position without pressure from anyone. He reported that he attended National Council meetings of the LOI-CI another fraction of FLTI in that meeting he witnessed independence of thought. Comrades agree or disagree and every member is free to defend or push for his idea or position without any hinderance or victimisation as was the case with ISOZ. If our comrade (reliable) is telling the truth, as we believe he is, what could be the objective of comrade G, who labelled the FLTI as movement without any roots in the working class.

If our delegate has within such small time already attended more than five meetings (with workers in industrial zones) with his calendar still full during the whole period of his stay, then our conclusion is simple – comrade G (of Socialist Fight) is serving the enemy of the working class – capitalist imperialism. Honestly the comrade is our class enemy, this won’t surprise us within this epoch of capitalist decaying there are many petty bourgeois intellectuals who are desperately and patiently queing for crumbs, which though are hard to come by, to defeat the cause of the working class- Judas Iscariot.

In this phase when it obviously clear that the working class is marching to conquer power by force – we are frightened of characters like comrade G - because the era we are entering is the era of disappearance and elimination, we hope comrade G is not send to do the dirty work of his bankrupt master. Capitalism was declared bankrupt sometime long ago but the activities of these so-called progressive intellectuals/ researchers are bent on propelling the structures of imperialism of course for a few crumbs. We know they are many of you scattered in every location, your work is to intellectualise the struggle of the working class, to you a 'revolutionary' slogan is your program. We need honest revolutionaries, international revolutionaries in practice not in theory or in word.

Everywhere comrades we must not drop the red flag, the flag for the the total emmancipation of the working class, the flag for the total independent self activity of the working class who are the suffering majority, diverted by these trival issues. The real debate is how could the working class in Greece, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, USA etc come out victorious. What is the best tactic to defeat/smash fake-Trotskyists mushroomed in every country where they are supported institutionally directly or indirectly by their national bourgeois or some ‘radical’ non-governmental organisations. We hope our fellow comrade G is not caught in this web.

Nevertheless, the concerns you raised- though unfounded according to the information before us- help to enrich the organisation of the FLTI. It demands that the FLTI revisit its criteria when joining with any other currents. We don’t think the challenge is anywhere near negative but is more positive. Its a neccesary phase in the construction of a serious movement, you need challenges (up and downs) for you to see clearly or interrogate your future and your past - though one can not invite such situations. This is how one can come up with a well thought well researched program with correct strategy, and even changing those tactics will be simple as they will be informed by a well knighted program of action. Only that our comrades of the HWRS and CWG disappear before concluding the debate, even if the debate continues, it no longer commands the same significance as it was if it was carried as a collective group.

Well we wish you good luck in your endevour. Your program is an IST program perhaps you are one of many other little groups of the IST paid to support its opportunist petty-bourgeois policies.

Down with petty bourgeois mentality!

For the formation of International Revolutionary party!

Ady

Political Committee
Revolutionary Internationalist League-FI (Fourth International) Zimbabwe (Ex-ISOZ)

18 / 03 / 10

Build a fighting Socialist Alternative


Reply to IRL Comrades

Dear Comrades,

Thank you for writing to us. We have kept our reply brief. 

We are not interested in responding to provocations. Calling us stalinists and splitters is designed to muddy the waters around the question of China. The quality of debate from the SCI/ISC on China was poor (personal attacks, slander and distortion of our statements) and a minimal amount of Marxist debate - which we believe we countered sufficiently. No new Marxist issues were raised in the screeds of Majority slander we received just before Conference was due - so we had no confidence of any useful debate at conference.

Lets focus on China. You say that initially you thought we may be correct on China, but on reflection decided the majority was correct.

We take it you are now convinced that China is a semi-colony and that its role in Africa is one of acting as the agent of Anglo/US imperialism.

Lets look at this position.
First, you expect us to believe that the US is increasing its political, military and ideological intervention in Africa to provide backup for China's growing investment and financing of oil and other deals.

Why should China need such a big US build-up in Africa in order to pursue its investments? In the cases where China has built strong relations with the national bourgeosie eg DRC, Sudan, Angola, Zimbabwe, the regimes do not need AFRICOM to ensure the success of China.

But perhaps, these regimes need to be protected from workers rising up in revolutions against China's exploitation. Yet in reality, these regimes are being pressured by AFRICOM to reject China in favour of Anglo/US and other imperialist deals. Why would the US do that if China was its proxy in Africa?

So here we have factual evidence that AFRICOM is not designed to protect the US 'proxy' China, but rather to undermine and block China's growth as an imperialist rival.

In fact the ideological and political stand of the US in Africa is to warn and condemn those doing deals with China. China is blamed for genocide in Sudan. It is accused of doing deals with dictators. The US is trying its utmost to target China
as authoritarian and undemocratic, and a supporter of dictators and terrorists. It would not do this if it controls China as a semi-colony, but it would and is because China is becoming its big rival.

Let us look more closely at Zimbabwe where this position is particularly clear.

Zimbabwe is a clear case of a semi-colony  forced to break with Anglo-US imperialism leading to a major internal crisis which it is now turning to China to solve. ZANU/MDC are looking to China as the alternative to Anglo/US finance capital. You must be aware of the recent trip that Tsvangirai made to the West where he failed to raise money, only to then say that he had the money from China. Thus the regime can present China to workers as a progressive alternative to Anglo-US imperialism to draw the masses into a new popular front which we analyise in our document on Chavez 5th international.  

But even if we consider for the moment that China is a proxy of US imperialism, how do we explain China's accumulation of capital? When a semi-colony serves imperialism, its surplus value is extracted as super profits. The national bourgeoisie gets a small share of the surplus as the junior partners of imperialism.

Imperialism never allows a semi-colonial ruling class to get rich and become the creditor of the imperialist country unless they are minor allies like the oil rich Gulf States. Semi-colonial corporates cannot compete with US multinationals (eg oil and gas in Africa) since the US monopolises the super-profits for its own MNCs.

It therefore contradicts the ABCs of Marxism to say that China is a semi-colony and a proxy for the US. A Marxist would then ask the question: what is China
?

Our answer is the Marxist answer. Despite its heavy reliance on imperialist Foreign Direct Investment, The Chinese ruling class has managed to retain its independence of US, Japanese etc imperialism, and accumulate enough capital to export its own finance capital. There is only one Marxist category for such a country - imperialism.

Once we understand this, it is easy to explain China's growing role in the world and its long-term threat to Anglo/US imperialism. Its size and growth make it the major long-term rival of US imperialism. Both in terms of huge demand for vital raw materials and also in terms of competition for spheres of interest.

That is why for us the question of China is decisive for our relations with the FLTI. We cannot stay in a tendency that would be on the other side in a war between China and the US. It is obvious that the major factor shaping the international situation today is the growing inter-imperialist rivalry between the US bloc and the China/Russia bloc. To ignore that is to be blind and workers do not need to be led by the blind. We hope that you open your eyes.
Regarding the activities of FLTI / LOI-CI and apparent democracy -
CWG were also impressed with the rank and file involvement within the LOI-CI in our first meetings.  Unfortunately we were not able to be with the LOI-CI for enough time / nor did we have enough Spanish language skill to observe fully. However the real test of democracy is when a position is in opposition to the leadership. The rights to self-determination of the indigenous Mapuche people was an issue which rank n file members raised and were abused/ridiculed for raising - at an earlier Liaison Committee conference in 2006. 

Have you received all minority statements? Listed below
Revolutionary Greetings
Al and Dave for CWG
 Joint Letter from HWRS and CWG-NZ Announcing the Split
Internal Debate Documents Preceding the Split
The Labor Party in the US and the Subjective Sectarian (Feb. 2010) - statement to clarify of our position
Is China Imperialist? (December 2009)
The Truth Is Concrete (PDF) (December 2009)
Minority Resolution on China from the July 2009 IFLT Congress
Why Israel Is Not Fascist (submitted by HWRS to the IFLT) (Summer 2009)
Resolutions adopted by the IFLT Congress, Buenos Aires, July 2009
Additional resolutions were printed in International Workers Organizer No. 1 (part 1) and in International Workers Organizer No. 1 (part 2). These publications are no longer available on this website.

Other IFLT Documents
International Socialists (IS) Factional Struggle in Zimbabwe (October-November 2009) (updated December 2009)
Emergency appeal to all the fighting workers organizations! from the Editorial Board of Democracia Obrera (publication of the LOI(CI), Argentina) (September 16, 2009)
Open letter to South African union members from the Workers International Vanguard League (South Africa) (September 8, 2009)
Message of solidarity with unionized rank and file South African soldiers from the Workers International Vanguard League (South Africa) (August 27, 2009)
Message of solidarity to BART workers from the Workers International Vanguard League (South Africa) (August 20, 2009)
Letter from IFLT to JRCL on the occasion of its 47th International Antiwar Assembly (July 31, 2009)
In Defense of Proletarian Principles and Morality (IFLT Statement on LIT attack on Brazilian Comrades, October 2008)
Dossier on ELAC (Fall 2008)

FOR AN ALL-OUT STRIKE TO FIGHT UNION-BUSTING!


The Oakland Board of Education is determined to bust the OEA, no matter what it takes, and no matter how much it hurts our children’s education. Through its unprecedented move of abruptly shutting down negotiations and imposing its chosen terms on the teachers, the Board has not only declared war on the union, but also has shown that it is committed to destroying the quality of education for the children of Oakland. The Board is supposed to put our children first. Instead, it has revealed its true role, which is to help carry out the overall effort to cut public education and other social services to the bone.

If the Board succeeds in imposing forced concessions in Oakland , this trend will set the standard across the nation. Once the employer has imposes conditions without a signed contract the union is for all practical purposes busted, and can no longer function as a fighting union! Unless the members stand firm and fight for their contract, the OEA will become a mere shell. Like too many other unions, it will be reduced to the role of a messenger to bring the bad news to its members, with a sad face and the old sorry excuse: “Aw, shucks, that’s the best we could do; we all know times are hard.”

ACROSS THE NATION IT’S THE SAME STORY



The ruling class keeps working class parents and teachers isolated district from district, and many teachers’ union leaders have fallen into the trap, keeping their district in isolation and fighting their battles purely on the local level. We have fallen into the habit of negotiating separately, with all the districts treating education like a local issue. So when each district claims it’s broke, it appears as a local issue and the punditry and media hacks point to declining enrollment, changing demographics, bloated benefit packages, or expensive consultants to reinforce the lie that Oakland’s problems are different from Richmond’s, San Francisco’s, Detroit’s, Washington D.C.’s or Newark’s.
We know better! Our district is not the only place where public education is under attack. Budget cuts, union-busting, and privatization are widespread across the nation, fueled by the aftermath of the worldwide economic crisis. From Oakland and Richmond to New Orleans , Detroit , Chicago , and Rhode Island , public education is under attack, and the unions are being challenged for their very survival.
Local responses to this nationwide situation are popping up across the country; for example, students in New Jersey plan a statewide strike next week. But the crisis of education is not local. The root of the problem goes way deeper than that. From the puppets in the White House all the way down to the local school boards, all the legislators and other government officials are doing the bidding of those who hired them, and they know damn well it’s not the working folk. We are told to seek solutions only from district school boards, local governments, and states. But to be effective and save public education from privatization, each community’s response must be part of a national movement! This strike is not only for our own survival and to save education in Oakland , but is part of the defense of unions and the fight to stop the Democratic Party drive to privatize education across the nation.
We know damn well that if the ruling class wanted our youth educated, working class schools would be flourishing, because they would be getting the quality and quantity of support the military-industrial complex counts on every year. If Obama had any faith in the public school system, his daughters would be attending D.C.’s finest.
But Obama cannot and does not intend to salvage the education system that working class youth depend on. Just like Bush before him, he is acting as the good CEO for imperialism, and putting the needs of US corporations far ahead of the education of working class youth. Posing as a great reformer, he has offered us a new program – RACE FOR THE SLOP – under which chronically underfunded districts in economically destroyed communities try to prove their worthiness to stay alive in a “fair competition” to meet standards set without regard to the special educational needs of young people inner city, poor, and multicultural school districts. Meanwhile, class size rules are being ignored, and the quality of education diminishes, and teachers’ wages are being driven so low that talented, experienced educators are being forced out of their chosen profession.
The recent firing of an entire school staff in Rhode Island was the opening salvo in an attack on public workers the likes of which has not been seen since Obama’s mentor Ronald Reagan destroyed PATCO.
Be clear, brothers and sisters: this president is leading a war against the unions and the working class. As part of this effort, Obama and his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, are leading the drive to destroy public education through privatization of public universities and promotion of charter schools.

The effect of this effort is already starting to show. The UC system is no longer accessible to the average working class student. The chronically starved schools have such high dropout rates that many of our young workers will never be ready for higher education and will remain functionally illiterate. And to put the final nail in their coffin, adult education is being slashed in district after district, giving the most oppressed no way to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”



HOW TO WIN BACK OUR EDUCATION

But we CAN fight back! Teachers, workers, parents, and students are not powerless! Last week, in Orange County , the Capistrano Unified School District had a one-day strike over a 10% pay cut that was respected by two-thirds of the parents and students. In order to call an effective halt to the cuts in public education, however, we will need to do more than hold educational pickets prior to school, visit Sacramento to lobby the paid stooges of the ruling class, and organize day of action protests like those on March 4, Even one-day strikes will not be enough. Unless the ruling class feels the real power of labor through full-on, determined, indefinite strike actions that cut across district and state lines and unite educators, workers, students, and parents, public education will be starved into submission to the privatizing drive.

Even slowing the attacks on working people or winning a decent contract in Oakland will not be possible until workers achieve a much higher level of self-organization and political independence. The Democrats count on the Union leaders to deliver our membership into the often tried and failed political task of supporting another millionaire for the next open office; in our case our unions will push for Jerry Brown and the Democrats as the executioner of choice. To maintain their political control, the Democrats will try to put our movement back to sleep and keep union members from generalizing the fight-back across localities, and from acting politically by running working class candidates under labor’s banner. To fight back effectively, rank-and-file union members must take control back from the current leadership and forge a new, politically independent militant workers’ movement.

To win a fair contract, the OEA will have to take a number of steps: 1) escalate the strike action from one day to an extended strike until demands are met and a contract is signed; 2) break out of localism and link our struggle with that of others across the state and nation who are fighting privatization; 3) work to spark a Bay Area wide, statewide and ultimately nationwide strike for education; and 4) defeat Taft-Hartley and other reactionary anti-labor laws through action, not legislation. As long as our labor leaders accept anti-labor legislation that tells us when we can and cannot strike, labor cannot win Only when the ruling class has its back to the wall because we as workers exert our power on the picket line and in the streets as we unite and smash the anti-labor laws. This is how we will get decent wages, benefits and provide quality education for the youth.  This will also be a big step in breaking with the Democrats and building a fighting labor party.

FIRST STEP: ALL OUT ON APRIL 29!
THEN: TURN THE ONE DAY STRIKE INTO AN ONGOING STRIKE TILL WE WIN!
SMASH TAFT-HARTLEY! STRIKE ACROSS DISTRICT, COUNTY & STATE LINES!
BUILD FOR A GENERAL STRIKE BY ALL TEACHERS AND STUDENTS IN SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES THROUGHOUT THE BAY AREA AND CALIFORNIA !

Humanist Workers for Revolutionary Socialism

April 27, 2010