    
|
"All talk to the effect that
historical conditions have not yet
'ripened' for socialism is the product of
ignorance or conscious deception. The
objective prerequisites for proletarian
revolution have not only 'ripened,' they
have begun to get somewhat rotten.... The
historical crisis of mankind is reduced to
the crisis of the revolutionary
leadership." |
Welcome! The Internationalist Group, section of the League for the Fourth International, fights for international socialist revolution, the conquest of power by the working class, led by its Leninist party, championing the cause of all the oppressed. After a decade and a half in which the ruling class trumpeted the supposed "death of communism," the imperialists are bogged down in losing wars of colonial occupation in the Near East while a global economic crisis shakes the foundations of the capitalist order. With mass unemployment, poverty and hunger ravaging the planet, once again there is talk of socialism and revolution. But as in the past, the key question is that of forging a vanguard to lead the struggle of the workers and the oppressed.
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The founding statement of the Internationalist Group is available on this site, as well as the LFI's declaration, Reforge the Fourth International, in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Tagalog.
For an All-Out Auto Strike to Shut Down the Big 3
Junk the Tiers – Top Pay Rate for All
As the union contracts with the Big 3 auto makers expired on September 14, the United Auto Workers (UAW) declared a (very) partial strike. Rather than shutting down all the major U.S. auto manufacturers, the union tops declared a walkout at only one plant each of Ford, GM and Stellantis/Chrysler. A key issue is the tiered wages system, in which new workers earn half or less the top pay rate of only $32 per hour, which is itself outrageously low, not enough for a family to live on. A UAW strike is a tremendous opportunity for labor to strike back at the head-on assault on the living standards of working people throughout the country. But instead of mobilizing the membership for a knock-down, drag-out battle with the auto bosses, the union tops are using pin-pricks to needle them. In addition, UAW leaders are looking for support from the Democrats, the same strikebreaking government party that banned a rail workers walkout last year. This “strategy” can never win. To abolish the tiers and defeat the mega-corporations, an all-out mobilization of the union ranks is needed, along with a political struggle for a class-struggle workers party to take on the capitalist politicians who do the auto bosses’ bidding. For an All-Out Auto Strike to Shut Down the Big 3 (14 September 2023)
Publication of the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth and of students from the Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York (click on masthead to go to Revolution index)
Imperialist War Criminals Meet at Hiroshima
Only Socialist Revolution Can Defeat U.S. Imperialism’s Drive To WWIII
This past May, the leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) leading imperialist powers, headed by U.S. president Biden, held a summit meeting, in Hiroshima, Japan. The NATO military alliance and its Asian allies grotesquely used the occasion to plan an escalation of imperialist proxy war in Ukraine and to send “a strong signal ... to Russia and China” from “the site of the first atomic bomb attack,” as Washington's official propaganda channel, Voice of America, menacingly put it. The United States remains the only country to have used atomic bombs in war. In 1945, its cold-blooded murder of hundreds of thousands at Hiroshima and Nagasaki sent the message that the atomic bomb was ready for use against the Soviets and all who might stand in the way of American imperialism’s drive for world domination. In 2023, the mad bombers in the White House and Pentagon are driving toward a thermonuclear Third World War. In this and other articles in this issue of Revolution, we draw out the connection between U.S. imperialism’s calculated mass murder then and the escalating threat it poses now. The key lesson: the only way to prevent the cataclysm is the revolutionary overthrow of this long outlived and deadly system, by the world’s working class. Imperialist War Criminals Meet at Hiroshima, Only Socialist Revolution Can Defeat U.S. Imperialism’s Drive To WWIII (September 2023)
A Review of Oppenheimer:
Socialism or Nuclear Armageddon
The film Oppenheimer was this summer’s biggest blockbuster. The fear of nuclear war is certainly one reason many have been flocking to see the film. Oppenheimer poses issues of great importance, notably the fact that the horrific weapon was not used to “save American lives,” as is still taught in the schools today. Japan was already defeated, as U.S. rulers knew. Instead, dropping the atomic bomb was a threat directed against the USSR: it was the first blast of the anti-Soviet Cold War. A central theme of Oppenheimer is the anti-communist witch hunt in the postwar United States. Kicked off by Democrats, this led to thousands of people losing jobs and passports, being blacklisted, censored and jailed. For the film’s director, as for so many liberals then and now, the problem with the red scare was that it unfairly besmirched those “innocent” of actually being communists. Yet genuinely communist revolutionaries – Trotskyists – are what is urgently needed to lead the struggle to overthrow the capitalist-imperialist rulers before they turn the planet into a ball of thermonuclear fire, and instead bring about a socialist world fit for all of humanity. Oppenheimer Review: Socialism or Nuclear Armageddon (September 2023)
From Portland, Oregon
Workers Solidarity Against the Anti-Trans Onslaught
Working-class militants brought a bold message to this year’s Pride march in Portland, Oregon: a striking banner reading “Defend Transgender People,” signed by and bearing the logo of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) Local 10. This labor defense of the rights of trans people is an example of what class-struggle unionism looks like, at a time when these rights are under major attack. The contingent was initiated by activists from the building trades, stage hands (IATSE) and other unions who are supporters of Class Struggle Workers – Portland (CSWP), who a few years earlier had initiated a union-sponsored “Hard Hats for Gay Rights” contingent. In numerous parts of the United States, racist groups are often prominent among those inciting anti-trans bigotry. Thus the fight to defend gay and trans rights must go together with mobilizing workers' power to stop racist and fascist terror. And it requires a break with all the capitalist parties to build a class-struggle workers party fighting for the emancipation of all. Portland: Workers Solidarity against the Anti-Trans Onslaught (September 2023)
Hands Off Students’ Rights – Abolish the Board of Trustees!
CUNY Administration Joins with Racist NY Post in McCarthyite Witch Hunt – Again
The witch-hunting spirit of Joseph McCarthy is alive and well in the administration of the City University of New York. With a decades-long record of attacks on CUNY students and faculty, the CUNY tops jumped on the bandwagon when the New York Post and Democratic machine politicians launched yet another lurid campaign. Their target: an immigrant student leader from the CUNY School of Law chosen by her classmates to give a commencement speech for the graduating class. The commencement made news when students turned their backs on New York’s pro-police Democratic mayor Eric Adams. But what most drew the ire of the witch hunters was when the speaker, Fatima Mohammed, referred to CUNY Law students’ defense of the Palestinian people and alluded to the renewed bombing of Gaza that Israel had launched that week. The day after the Post published its front-page smear, the CUNY Board of Trustees and chancellor outrageously accused her of hate speech! The CUNY Internationalist Clubs and Revolutionary Internationalist Youth defend Fatima Mohammed and the right of students to protest racism and repression, and call to abolish the administration and Board of Trustees, replacing them with elected councils of students, faculty and staff. CUNY Administration Joins with Racist NY Post in McCarthyite Witch Hunt – Again (September 2023)
SAG-AFTRA + WGA + IATSE + Teamsters = Power
Hollywood Strike: Stay Out Together to Win
No One Goes Back Until Everyone Goes Back!
As Hollywood screenwriters are into the fourth month of their strike and it’s been six weeks since the actors walked out, the studio bosses are hard-lining it, seeking to starve the strikers out. At a time when technological change (the dominance of streaming and introduction of artificial intelligence) poses an existential threat to both unions, it is necessary to escalate the struggle, starting with shutting down broadcast TV shows. Spirited picket lines of the two unions have kept up all summer, but this is not enough defeat the cartel of some of the largest corporations in the U.S. who run the entertainment industry. This should be one strike, and there should be a single union of all media workers. As the employers seek to pick off one union after another, it is urgent that the strikers refuse to return to work until the demands of all the unions are met. Hollywood Strike: Stay Out Together to Win (29 August 2023)Wall Street Puts the Screws to Hollywood (29 August 2023)Vote “NO” and Strike for $25 – Plus AC – NOW!
Next Up: Organize Amazon!
Teamster-UPS Deal: No End to Poverty Pay
On July 25, a week before a strike deadline for which the union had been preparing with a lot of fanfare for more than a year, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), representing 340,000 United Parcel Service (UPS) drivers and warehouse workers, suddenly announced that it had reached a tentative agreement with the company, averting a strike. Teamsters leaders declared the deal “historic” and a game-changer. But after earlier highlighting that many part-timers (who are the majority of all UPS workers) are paid at or close to the minimum wage, the settlement only raised the starting wage to $21/hr., which is still poverty pay. It is also barely more than that at Amazon, which the IBT has vowed to unionize. Air conditioning in delivery vehicles will only be installed over years. UPS Teamsters should vote “no” on the contract and prepare to strike for $25 and AC now. But an all-out class battle must be waged politically, insisting on independence from the bosses’ state and breaking with all the bosses’ parties. Teamster-UPS Deal: No End to Poverty Pay (6 August 2023)
Courtesy of Democrats, Republicans, Hoffa Jr. and TDU Union-SuersFebruary 25: 10,000 Protest in the Port of Genova Against Arms to Ukraine
How Feds, Dems and Banks Whacked Teamster Pensions
Last December President Biden announced a nearly $36 billion grant to rescue the Teamsters’ Central States Pension Fund. It was clearly intended to counter worker discontent over the Democrats' strikebreaking legislation imposing a contract on rail workers. The fund’s financial troubles go back to its seizure by the feds, who turned management over to investment bank "professionals," who nearly bankrupted it. Teamsters for a Democratic Union bears a good part of the blame for this by appealing to the capitalist government to "clean up" the IBT. How Feds, Dems and Banks Whacked Teamster Pensions (6 August 2023)
Summer 2023: Mobilize Workers’ Power to Shut Down NATO Bases in Italy!
Italy: Workers Action Key to Defeating Imperialist
War Drive Against Russia, China
Fascist Meloni, Populists, Liberal “Democrats”: Warmongers, Strikebreakers One and All!
The imperialist war against Russia, ultimately aiming at restoring capitalist rule in China, continues to intensify. When in May the fascist puppet president of Ukraine Vlodymyr Zelensky visited the fascist prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, she reiterated that her government will continue to guarantee its military support for Kiev. On February 25, port workers in Genova organized a 10,000-strong demonstration calling to oppose “NATO’s war” and to block arms shipments to Ukraine. The Nucleo Internazionalista d’Italia and the League for the Fourth International call for defending Russia and China and defeating US/NATO imperialism. Most Italian left groups have turned “NATO socialists,” but there are others who lead militant rank-and-file unions that together with their allies are calling for a “third choice.” They falsely claim that Russia (a regional capitalist power) and China (a bureaucratically deformed workers state) are both imperialist. This is not the result of a scientific Marxist analysis, rather a blatant excuse for refusing to defend both countries from attack by the real imperialists, including Italy, united in the NATO military alliance! Italy: Workers Action Key to Defeating Imperialist War Drive Against Russia, China (June 27, 2023)What Is Revolutionary Defeatism? (27 June 2023)Esteban Volkov Fought to Uphold Trotsky’s Revolutionary Legacy
Defend the Chinese Workers State Against Imperialism and Counterrevolution (27 June 2023)
Italian Navy Heading to the Indo-Pacific (27 June 2023)
On June 16, Esteban Volkov, the grandson of Leon Trotsky, died at the age of 97. Esteban (Sieva) was living with his uncle, Trotsky's son Leon Sedov, who was killed in a Paris hospital by Stalinist agents; he himself barely escaped death when an assassination squad led by Stalinist muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros attacked the Trotsky home in Coyoacán, Mexico City, in May 1940; and three months later, he arrived home from school to see his grandfather mortally wounded by the assassin Ramón Mercader. Esteban Volkov dedicated his life to upholding the the legacy of Trotsky, who together with Lenin led the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. In particular, he turned the home in Coyoacán into a vibrant museum portraying the Bolshevik leader’s fight to carry forward the internationalist program of Red October. We reprint here the unusually objective obituary notice that appeared in the Washington Post, and a speech by Esteban at the Trotsky memorial from 2009. Esteban Volkov Fought to Uphold Trotsky’s Revolutionary Legacy (June 2023)
As Shippers Call for Biden to Intervene in Longshore Negotiations
ILWU: All Out on Juneteenth, And Stay Out to Win!
Fight for Workers Control of Safety and Technology!
By members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union
On Friday, June 2, the Port of Oakland, California shut down after a reported breakdown in contract negotiations betweeen the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the bosses’ Pacific Maritime Association (PMA). By Saturday a.m. nothing moved in the port, the hiring hall was empty. Also on June 2 and into the weekend there were reports of terminals shutting down in Los Angeles, Long Beach and Puget Sound. In Seattle, port bosses fired whole containership operation shifts, continuing these twice-daily mass firings day after day. “No contract, no work” used to be a principle for the union, says the leaflet by ILWU members reprinted here, but ILWU dock workers have been working without a contract for almost a year now. Meanwhile, jobs are threatened by PMA’s plans for wholesale automation in the ports. The leaflet calls for coordinated walkouts in all 29 West Coast ports NOW, and for the ILWU to call a coastwise strike demanding union control over job-killing technology. ILWU: All Out on Juneteenth, And Stay Out to Win! (7 June 2023)
Local 13 and 10 Show the Way Forward for ILWU!
ILWU: No Contract, No Work!
ILA Ranks: Don’t Work Diverted Cargo! Solidarity with ILWU!
By members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union
In early April, ILWU Local 13 longshore workers in the two busiest U.S. ports, Los Angeles and Long Beach (L.A./LB), shut down the docks over safety issues. These rank-and-file job actions reflect the anger of longshore workers up and down the Coast toward the employers' Pacific Maritime Association, which is clearly using stalling tactics in negotiations essentially over the key question of automation, which threatens to eliminate thousands of longshore jobs. Yet four days after meeting with President Joe Biden on the USS Iowa in San Pedro, in June 2022 the ILWU tops issued a joint statement with the PMA agreeing not to strike. ILWU: No Contract, No Work! (23 April 2023)
The Internationalist No. 69-70
Defend Russia & China Against U.S./NATO War Drive –
(January-May 2023)
click above or on image
for full list of articles
Defeat the Fascist-Infested Proxy Regime in Ukraine!
U.S. Imperialism Hurtling
Toward World War III
Only Socialist Revolution Can Stop It
For the past 15 months, world politics and economics have been overwhelmingly dominated by the war in Ukraine, the focal point of the imperialist onslaught against Russia, and China. As the fighting in Ukraine drags on with no end in sight, it has been marked by a continual escalation by the U.S. and NATO, pointing toward a Third World War. In this war, class-conscious workers have a side. The League for the Fourth International calls to defeat the blood-drenched imperialists and their fascist-infested proxy regime in Kiev, and for military defense of Russia, a regional capitalist power, and China, a bureaucratically deformed workers state, against the U.S./NATO war drive. Western rulers and media have waged a disinformation war of endless atrocity stories, but wall-to-wall media censorship and message control can only go so far, as the effects of the war on the population begin to bite. Until now, the imperialist powers have remained united, yet there is no significant leftist opposition to this war. In fact, most of the left has enlisted as auxiliary troops in the imperialist war. As events head pell-mell toward world war, we call for sharp political struggle against the “NATO socialists,” and for workers action to stop arms deliveries to Ukraine. The key is to forge a Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard to lead the exploited and oppressed in the struggle for international socialist revolution. U.S. Imperialism Hurtling Toward World War III (17 May 2023)
WGA Strike Is Taking on a Whole Industry
To Win the Strike, All Out to Shut Down Hollywood!
PICKET LINES MEAN DON’T CROSS!
A minute after midnight on May 2, over 11,000 Writers Guild of America (WGA) screen and television writers officially went on strike after attempting negotiations with major studios since March. It is the first strike in Hollywood since the 2007-08 WGA strike. At some points there have been pickets at 200 locations in Los Angeles, and picket lines have often been hundreds-strong. The writers were able to deal these blows to production with support from Teamsters, IATSE (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) and SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) members refusing to work and often joining strikers on the picket lines. But SAG-AFTRA bureaucrats in particular have been saying their members should cross strike lines and go to work. This is a betrayal. It is a basic labor principle that picket lines mean don't cross, period! The bottom line is the whole industry should be on strike, now! One out, all out! United strike action can KO the Hollywood cartel! To Win the Strike, All Out
to Shut Down Hollywood! (15 May 2023)
For Workers Action Against U.S. / NATO / AUKUS Imperialist Axis
Australia Spearheads Anti-China War Drive in the Pacific Islands
Ever since World War II, Australia has acted as deputy sheriff for the United States in the Pacific. With the formation of the trilateral Australia-U.K.-U.S. (AUKUS) military treaty in 2021 there has been a flood of warmongering rants from Western political/military leaders and media mouthpieces foreseeing war with China in the very near term, with the Australian military slated to act as a spearhead in the strategic Pacific Islands region. And following the threats has come action. In mid-March, Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese stood on the pier at the U.S. naval base in San Diego together with U.S. president Biden and British prime minister Sunak to announce a deal whereby Australia would buy nuclear-powered submarines whose only purpose would be to war on China. Meanwhile, the U.S. went ballistic over a security treaty between the Solomon Islands and Beijing, and is gearing up for a repeat of the WWII island-hopping war, this time against China. As Washington mandates Canberra to tighten its neocolonial control of the region, revolutionary Marxists fight for a workers government in Australia and for a voluntary socialist federation of the Pacific Islands. Australia Spearheads Anti-China War Drive in the Pacific Islands (May 2023)
Mobilize for an All-Out General Strike to Smash French Pension “Reform”
Against the Authoritarian Fifth Republic, Fight for a Workers Government!
Opposition to Macron Still Boiling
But Banging on Pots Won’t Bring Him Down
Even after French president Macron rammed through his vicious pension “reform” without a vote, essentially enacting it by decree, working people have continued to mobilize against it. When the would-be “Jupiter-like” head of state gave a prime-time speech calling for “peace” and “unity,” tens of thousands took to the streets banging pots and pans in “casserolades” in order to drown him out. The youth have massively entered the fray, and weeks there were nightly clashes with the brutal riot cops. Yet all of this amounts to guerrilla warfare, unable to stop the assault on social security. Not only in France, decaying capitalism is destroying past gains of workers’ struggles, criminalizing immigrants and demanding sacrifice in the name of the U.S./NATO war drive against Russia and China. Against this all-sided attack, it is necessary to bring the power of the working class to bear, paralyzing the country, driving out Macron and bringing down the anti-democratic Fifth Republic while fighting for a workers government. The prospect of such revolutionary struggle strikes fear in the hearts of the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy, underscoring the urgent need to cohere the nucleus of a genuinely communist internationalist workers party to lead the struggle against imperialist war and the global war on working people. Opposition to Macron Still Boiling (30 April 2023)
France: Drive Out Macron, Fight for a Workers Government!
Forge a Leninist-Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers Party!
The forced passage of Emmanuel Macron's pension “reform” using Article 49.3 of the French Constitution of the semi-bonapartist Fifth Republic is not only the authoritarian act of a president who fancies himself “Jupiterian,” it is required by the capitalist system in full decay, which is systematically destroying the gains of past workers struggles. To defeat the assault of capital it is not enough to lead a defensive and purely “democratic” struggle, it is necessary to go on the offensive against capitalism. With two-thirds of the population of France opposed to the “reform” that threatens the lives and livelihoods of all workers, it is possible to defeat the Macron regime ... on the path of struggle for socialist revolution. France: Drive Out Macron, Fight for a Workers Government! (26 March 2023)
For International Workers Action to Free Mumia!
Bay Area ILWU Shuts Ports Demanding Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal
“An Injury to One Is an Injury to All – Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!” chanted union marchers on San Francisco’s Embarcadero on February 16. They were marching as International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 shut down Oakland and San Francisco ports to demand freedom for the former Black Panther and world-renowned radical journalist who has spent over four decades in Pennsylvania prisons on frame-up charges. With a Philadelphia judge denying motions filed by Mumia’s lawyers after “misplaced” boxes of evidence were found in the district attorney’s office, the dock shutdown underlines the need for widespread workers action in the U.S. and internationally to free Mumia. Bay Area ILWU Shuts Ports Demanding Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal (March 2023)
Judge Slams Door on Mumia Appeal (March 2023)South Africa: NUMSA Announces Campaign for Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal
On February 16, Irvin Jim, the general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), the largest union in South Africa and on the entire African continent, announces an international solidarity campaign demanding that former Black Panther, renowned journalist and champion of the oppressed Mumia Abu-Jamal be immediately released from prison in Pennsylvania where he has been locked up for 41 years (29 of them on Death Row) after being framed by the police. On March 10, NUMSA marched on the U.S. embassy in Pretoria calling to Free Mumia now! NUMSA Launches Campaign to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal (16 February 2023)
Announcement of Campaign by NUMSA General Secretary Irvin Jim (16 February)In Solidarity with Bay Area Dock Shutdown
NYC Teach-in: “Mumia’s Freedom Is Labor’s Cause”
In solidarity with the action of International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 stopping work and shutting down the ports of San Francisco and Oakland on February 16 to demand freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal, a labor-centered teach-in was held in New York City. A notable aspect of the NYC teach-in was the presence of several dozen trade-unionists. There were messages from the Bay Area docks, from Memphis and South Africa, along with presentations by trade-unionists, historians and activists in the campaign to free comrade Mumia from prison hell. The speaker from the Class Struggle Education Workers stressed that at every level it is the Democratic Party, its politicians and frame-up artists who have kept this powerful voice of the voiceless and champion of the oppressed behind bars. The highlight of the event came with messages from Mumia himself, saluting the initiative of the ILWU (longshore workers) in the U.S. and NUMSA (metal workers) in South Africa. Emphasizing the centrality of labor’s power, in a written message to union supporters Mumia stated: “When workers unite, the earth trembles and the heavens shake.” NYC Teach-in: “Mumia’s Freedom Is Labor’s Cause” (March 2023)
Call for NYC Black History Month Teach-InCops Murdered Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tortuguita in Atlanta,
An Injury to One Is an Injury to All, Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! (16 February 2023)
It Never Stops – Mobilize Workers’ Power Against Cop Terror
Under Biden and the Democrats,
Racist Police Terror Rages On
Solidarity with Bay Area ILWU Port Shutdown Demanding Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal!
On the evening of January 7, Tyre Nichols was savagely beaten to death by a half dozen police officers in Memphis, Tennessee. Less than two weeks after the Memphis Police Department’s execution of Tyre Nichols, Manuel Esteban Paez Terán (Tortuguita), was gunned down in a hail of police bullets during a military-style sweep of an activist encampment in suburban Atlanta, Georgia. The back-to-back police murders in Memphis and Atlanta are a brutal reminder that the plague of racist cop terror continues to hold black America in bondage. While Democrats try to keep the lid on with cynical talk of “police reform,” the police cannot be reformed, and whatever happens to the five killer cops (all black), there is no justice for the oppressed in the capitalist courts. It is up to the defenders of black rights and democratic rights, with the multiracial working class in the lead, to mobilize our power against that of the murderous capitalist state. Under Biden and the Democrats, Racist Police Terror Rages On (16 February 2022)
Memphis, Atlanta: Horror Show of Cop Terror (16 February 2023)For Class Struggle Against Militarism
Germany: War in the East
U.S. / NATO / European Union,
The Warmongers Are Here
German Imperialism Out of East Europe!
On this there is consensus among the rulers: the war in Ukraine represents a watershed in the history of post-war Germany. Or rather, pre-war Germany, for since 24 February 2022, the Federal Republic has unmistakably been in the midst of war. Imperialist capitalism, under its leading power, the United States, and its military alliance, NATO, is trying to inflict a bloody defeat on the capitalist regional power, Russia, on the battlefields of Ukraine. By joining the U.S./NATO war against Russia – and then China – Berlin seeks to assert Germany as the major military power, not just economic, in Europe. The war drive has led to repression all along the line, as anti-Russian hysteria is now being enforced by law. The German bourgeoisie intends to pass on the cost of inflation to the working class in Germany: “Freeze for Ukraine.” To defeat the warmongers and counter the threat of deindustrialization, Trotskyists fight for a Red Europe of workers councils. Germany: War in the East, The Warmongers Are Here (10 January 2023)
One and All, NATO Socialists and Pawns of German Imperialism
German Left in Lockstep in “Changed Times”
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) proclaimed a “Zeitenwende,” a changing of the times, in his 27 February 2022 government statement in the Bundestag (Germany's parliament), accusing Russia of waging a war of aggression against Ukraine that was “contrary to international law” and “cannot be justified by anything or anyone.” This brought applause not only from the parties in his red-yellow-green “traffic light coalition,” but also from the Christian Democrats, the Left Party (Die Linke) and some in the fascistic Alliance for Germany. As for the Left Party, we heard the same refrain as from the SPD, only with some knee-jerk misgivings about rearmament. So the parliament of German imperialism is marching with “great unity” into the proxy war of the U.S., EU and NATO against Russia. While the social-imperialists in the government (SPD), together with the Green warmongers, are pushing the war, those on standby (Die Linke) are “critically” (or uncritically) accompanying them. As for the rest of the left, its reformist politics and inveterate opportunism forbids them to say the essential: “the main enemy is at home.” No wonder, then, that it is right-wingers who lead anti-war protests. In the face of the dramatic collapse of the left, a tenacious programmatic struggle is needed to forge the core of an authentically Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard party of the working class. German Left in Lockstep in “Changed Times” (10 January 2023)
Biden, DSA’s AOC and “Squad” Vote to Ban Rail Strike
Democratic Party Strikebreakers Shackle Railroad Workers
Rip Up the Railway Labor Act with a Powerful Rail / Truck / Port Strike!
Break with the Bosses’ Parties and Politicians – Build a Workers Party!
At the beginning of December, some 115,000 railroad workers were poised to walk off the job, tying up 40% of all U.S. freight, at the height of the holiday shopping season. A majority had voted against a Tentative Agreement that outrageously did not include even one paid sick day. A major labor battle was posed. Instead, Democrat Joe Biden, who proclaimed himself the “most pro-union president you’ve ever seen,” signed legislation passed by Democrats in both houses of Congress, imposing a presidentially dictated contract and banning a strike. This blatant strikebreaking sums up countless reasons why the capitalist Democratic Party is a noose around the neck of labor. This underlines why workers urgently need to break with all the bosses’ parties and build a class-struggle workers party to lead the battles of all the oppressed. Democratic Party Strikebreakers Shackle Railroad Workers (29 December 2022)
The Internationalist No. 67-68
Not Bourgeois Nationalism But International Proletarian Revolution
(May-October 2022)
click above or on image
for full list of articles
Defeat the Imperialist War Drive and U.S./NATO Proxy Regime in Ukraine
Defend Russia, China Against War-Crazed U.S. Rulers
The war between Russia and Ukraine has been waged with white-hot intensity for eight months, dominating world politics and economics, with no end in sight. U.S. and European imperialist leaders vow to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. For Moscow this poses an existential threat. From the beginning of the military operations, the League f or the Fourth International opposed the nationalist Russia-Ukraine war, as part of our overall struggle to defeat the imperialist war drive against Russia and China. But we foresaw that the the character of the war could change. This has now happened. As U.S. and NATO officials now determine battlefield strategy, supply the armament, control the use of advanced weapons and de facto have integrated Ukraine into NATO, the conflict has been turned into an imperialist “proxy war” against Russia. In this situation, proletarian revolutionaries’ call to defeat the imperialists’ war drive against Russia (a regional capitalist power) and China (a bureaucratically deformed workers state) means standing for the defeat of the U.S./NATO proxy regime in Ukraine, and for military defense of Russia, while giving no political support to the reactionary bourgeois nationalist Putin government. As mass discontent spreads over the consequences of the war and the imperialist anti-Russia sanctions, what is urgently needed is workers action leading to a struggle for international socialist revolution. Defeat the Imperialist War Drive and U.S./NATO Proxy Regime in Ukraine, Defend Russia, China Against War-Crazed U.S. Rulers (22 October 2022)
We Meet Dr. Strangelove Again in Washington (May 2022)As Racist Courts Again Block Appeal
Portland Painters Call for Workers Action to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
On October 26, a judge in Philadelphia rejected the request by Mumia Abu-Jamal for a new hearing on his case, based on evidence of prosecution misconduct and bias from materials that had been hidden in the District Attorney’s office. Mumia is the most prominent class-war prisoner in the United States, imprisoned for over four decades, on death row for almost 30 years, on frame-up charges of which he is entirely innocent. A week before this latest outrage in court, the Portland, Oregon, Local 10 of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades passed a resolution highlighting how Mumia Abu-Jamal was railroaded to jail, sentenced to death by a racist “hanging judge” at a rigged trial in 1982, and ever since prevented by the capitalist judicial system from proving his innocence. In the face of the stonewalling of the courts, the Portland Painters resolution should be a clarion call to workers and defenders of black and labor rights around the globe to spark workers action to free Mumia now. Portland Painters Call for Workers Action to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal (October 2022)
Message from Mumia: Workers of the World, Unite! (October 2022)Mobilize Workers Power Leading the Masses Against the Police/Military Regime!
Brazil: “Broad Front” Blocks Workers Mobilization Against Militarist Threat
For Socialist Revolution Against Deadly Capitalist Rule
In the first round of the Brazilian elections on October 2, the “broad front” slate of ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won 48% of valid votes, while ultra-rightist president Jair Bolsonaro got 42%. In the second-round runoff election, to be held on October 30, the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil, section of the League for the Fourth International, is again calling for a “no” vote against both of these bourgeois alternatives, and for working-class mobilization in the streets against the rightist militarist threat. As Bolsonaro threatens to refuse to recognize the election results, most of the left is supporting the candidacy of Lula, the historic leader of the Workers Party (PT) together with Geraldo Alckmin of the PSDB, the traditional party of the conservative right wing, as his vice president. But this bourgeois lash-up will not repeal the vicious anti-worker “reforms” rammed through by Bolsonaro’s bonapartist (police/military) regime and the preceding right-wing government. Some pseudo-Trotskyists called for voting for an independent candidate on the first round, but are now advocating a vote for Lula, and thus for the class-collaborationist coalition. The authentic Trotskyists of the LQB, in contrast, have consistently refused to vote for the PT when it runs (as it always does) in a popular-front coalition with bourgeois forces, seeking to administer the capitalist state. Our comrades call instead for a revolutionary workers party to fight for socialist revolution. Brazil: “Broad Front” Blocks Workers Mobilization Against Militarist Threat (October 2022)
Taiwan and Hong Kong Are Part of China – Imperialist Hands Off!
U.S. Anti-China War Provocations Over Taiwan
Defend China Against Imperialist Drive for Counterrevolution!
For Revolutionary Reunification of China – Expropriate the Capitalists
Late in the night of August 2, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and her Congressional entourage flew on U.S. military aircraft into the Chinese territory of Taiwan, explicitly flouting numerous warnings by the Chinese government against this provocative stunt. During her stay, Pelosi all but advocated Taiwanese independence, referring to the island as a “country.” Such talk points to war with China, which has insisted for 70 years that reunification with Taiwan is imperative. The fact that the island is a separate entity from the mainland is the result of the dismemberment of China by imperialism going back to the mid-19th century, and the imperialists’ continued use of Taiwan as a spearhead to restore capitalist rule in China. Pelosi's visit is only one part of an escalating U.S. imperialist war drive whose ultimate aim is to restore capitalist rule in the largest remaining bureaucratically deformed workers state. Trotskyists call to defeat the imperialist war drive against Russia and China, and to defend the remaining gains of the Chinese Revolution through proletarian political revolution to oust the bureaucracy, expropriate the capitalists and extend those gains to Hong Kong and Taiwan through revolutionary reunification. U.S. Anti-China War Provocations Over Taiwan (September 2022)
Not “One Country, Two Systems”Unpayable Debt, Food Shortages, Runaway Fuel Prices Hit Dozens of Countries
For Revolutionary Reunification of China
Reunification of Taiwan with the People’s Republic of China is the culmination of the drive to undo the imperialist dismembering of China going back to the mid-1800s. To win the masses of working people in Taiwan to reunification, it is necessary to combat the anti-communist Taiwanese nationalist/separatist ideology promoted by the imperialists and their flunkeys in the U.S. neocolonial government of Taiwan. But rather than nationalism or patriotism, what'x needed is to raise revolutionary class consciousness. Workers in Taiwan together with their comrades in mainland China have the power to expropriate the Taiwanese bourgeoisie and institute the soviet democracy of workers councils under authentic communist leadership, while extending the revolution internationally. For Revolutionary Reunification of China (September 2022)
Sri Lanka Economy Collapses, Masses Rise Up, President Flees, But Capitalist Crisis Remains
Forge a Trotskyist Party on a Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution
For the Right of Tamil Self-Determination! For a Socialist Federation of South Asia!
Since early this year, Sri Lanka has been rocked by the most severe economic, social and political crisis it has experienced since independence from Britain in 1948. After several years of rising income from a flourishing tourism industry, the bottom dropped out. By March, the island nation off the southern tip of India had run out of foreign exchange and by May it had formally defaulted. Daily life has become unbearable for the masses, unable to purchase basic goods. For the past five months, the country has been in almost constant upheaval, with massive protests, leading to the resignation and flight of the Rajapaksa family. Yet this has done nothing to alter the deep capitalist economic crisis, and now their successor is preparing to impose brutal austerity measures in conjunction with the International Monetary Fund. Sri Lanka was the first country to blow, but there are dozens of others saddled with unpayable debt, increasingly unable to pay for food and fuel. Revolutionaries call to intervene in the mass protests with transitional demands pointing to socialist revolution, the only answer to the present capitalist immiseration. Sri Lanka Economy Collapses, Masses Rise Up, President Flees, But Capitalist Crisis Remains (29 August 2022)
Democrats Push Gun Control, Tool of Racist Capitalist Repression
Gun Bans Won’t Stop Racist Mass Shootings
For Worker/Black/Latino Mobilization Against Cop Terror and Racist Attacks
Another year, another spate of grisly mass shootings in the not-so United States of America. May 14, Buffalo, New York – 10 people shot to death. May 24, Uvalde, Texas – 21 people killed. July 4, Highland Park, Illinois – 7 people gunned down. The now-routine spectacle of mass murder followed by calls for far-reaching gun control legislation has become a fixture of American culture. While professing concern for the deaths of black people in inner-city neighborhoods, liberals and reformist leftists are actually pandering to racist fears of white suburbanites and demagogic appeals to militarize the ghettos and barrios. This leaves the population defenseless, while trigger-happy cops, criminals and fascists are all heavily armed. The Second Amendment, upholding the “right of the people to keep and bear arms,” is a fundamental democratic right which we strongly defend. It is doubly important to working people and the oppressed, who are beset by a well-armed ruling class and its professional enforcers. The mass shootings were neither random nor inexplicable. In all three recent instances – Buffalo, Uvalde, Highland Park – racism fueled the homicides. Gun Bans Won’t Stop Racist Mass Shootings (15 August 2022)
Whatever Happened to “No Contract, No Work”?
ILWU: Prepare to Strike for Shorter Workweek, Union Control of Tech
Fight for 6-Hour Shifts x 5 = 30 Hours, No Loss in Pay
As the contract between the West Coast International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) was set to expire on July 1, the stage was set for a major showdown and the possibility of a big labor victory. Instead, the ILWU tops and marine bosses, under pressure from President Biden, announced that work would continue without a contract. Longshore workers are facing a major attack by capital, which are thirsting to automate the port unions out of existence. The ILWU should join with rail and port truckers, with solidarity action from East Coast dock workers, and backed by allies including teachers and students, to launch a strike for a shorter workweek with no loss in pay, and for union control of technology to ensure no job losses. ILWU: Prepare to Strike for Shorter Workweek, Union Control of Tech (8 August 2022)
Against PMA’s “Robo-Dock” Fantasy, Fight for Union Control of Technology (8 August 2022)Free Abortion on Demand –
Women’s Liberation Through Socialist Revolution
Supreme Court Cancels Right to Abortion:
Trigger for Ultra-Rightist Mobilization
On June 24, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision which for almost 50 years was the basis for women’s constitutional right to abortion. In response there was an outpouring of anger as tens of thousands went into the streets to protest around the country. Establishment abortion rights groups seek to channel the outrage into support for the Democratic Party. But voting for the Democrats will not restore the right to abortion, and any law they might pass would be struck down by the reactionary Court. While opportunist leftists sought to pressure the Democrats, Internationalist contingents participated in the protests denouncing the Democratic Party and calling for a revolutionary workers party. We emphasized that the anti-abortion crusade is rooted in racism. The fight over abortion rights and gay and trans rights is already a flashpoint for emboldened ultra-rightists and fascists, who now feel that the capitalist state has their back. In the post-Roe U.S., abortion clinics are threatened by vigilantes, bounty hunters, racists and fascists. We call to mobilize union power to defend the clinics and disperse anti-abortion bigots.The Bolshevik Revolution first legalized abortion on demand, and it will take a socialist revolution to achieve it today. Supreme Court Cancels Right to Abortion: Trigger for Ulltra-Rightist Mobilization (7 August 2022)
Racism and the Deadly Anti-Abortion Crusade (7 August 2022)?Todos parejos! Equal for All!
To Win Abortion Rights Fight, Pro-Democrat Marches Are a Dead End (13 May 2022)
Cabricanecos: Indigenous Immigrant Workers Fight Deadly Conditions in NYC
By Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas
Facing flagrant management abuse and a wave of retaliatory firings, a courageous campaign by 40 demolition/construction workers – mainly indigenous immigrants from Guatemala and Mexico – shines a spotlight on deadly dangerous conditions on the job faced by many thousands in the New York area and beyond. “We are human beings, but they use us up and then just throw us away,” a worker who suffered multiple injuries unloading heavy materials for Best Super Clean/ISK Group said, echoed by fellow campaign activists. Organized by the Laundry Workers Center (LWC), the campaign, presently focused on winning key improvements in job conditions and wages, is called “Cabricanecos,” because many of the workers are originally from the town of Cabricán in Guatemala. The Cabricanecos campaign is a link in a chain of struggles underlining both the need and the great potential for militant organizing among sectors of immigrant workers who are key to making the city run, at the same time as they are denied basic rights and treated as “undocumented” pariahs while often risking their lives due to intolerable working conditions. Cabricanecos: Indigenous Immigrant Workers Fight Deadly Conditions in NYC (10 July 2022)
Ohio Cops Fired 90 Bullets at Unarmed Black Man
Jayland Walker, Executed by Akron Police
The Racist Killer Cops Never Stop
Under Democrats or Republicans the Police Murder Machine Grinds On
Only Revolution Can Bring Justice!
On June 27, police in Akron, Ohio were in hot pursuit of a car driven by Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old black man, supposedly for unspecified equipment and traffic violations. When Walker bolted, running for his life, eight police officers discharged a fusillade of 90+ shots mere seconds after exiting their vehicles. When a crowd gathered outside city hall and police headquarters to protest after bodycam video footage was released on July 3, cops and state troopers arrested scores. An execution for a supposed traffic violation – such is the “justice” meted out by the racist police in capitalist America. In the summer of 2020, millions took to the streets to protest the racist police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Breonna Taylor in Louisville, and countless others. The killer cops keep on killing, but with Democrat Joe (shoot ’em in the leg) Biden in the White House and Democrats controlling Congress, protests this year and last against the unending police murder have been few in number and small in size. The Internationalist Group calls for worker action against racist police terror, emphasizing that only revolution can bring justice. Jayland Walker, Executed by Akron Police – The Racist Killer Cops Never Stop (7 July 2022)
UCLA Internationalist Club Statement of Class-Struggle Solidarity
Victory to the UC-AFT Strike – All Out to Win!
The Internationalist Club at the University of California at Los Angeles is helping mobilize students and workers in support of the November 17-18 University of California system-wide strike called by the UC-AFT. In addition to the unfair labor practices cited as the legal grounds for the walkout, the strike motivation flows from the desperate situation of lecturers and other campus workers who are essential to making the university run, but receive only poverty pay and lack job security. All sectors of the campus workforce need to unite in genuine solidarity. It's a basic principle: One out, all out. Picket lines mean don’t cross! And it is necessary to take on the Democratic Party, which is the boss that the UC-AFT is striking against. We say: On strike means shut it down. All classes should be stopped, and students brought out en masse to the pickets and rallies. Victory to the UC-AFT Strike – All Out to Win! (16 November 2021)
Defend Combative Immigrant Workers Against Repression
Italy: Draghi Government of Repression, Impoverishment and Death
Mobilize the Entire Working Class to Defeat All-Sided Attack!
No to Dead End of Reformism – Forge a Revolutionary Workers Party!
In the ongoing emergency of this second year of the coronavirus pandemic, the Italian bourgeoisie decided to dump the weak and unstable coalition government of the Democratic Party and Cinque Stelle (Five Stars) movement, replacing it with Mario Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank. The first shots of the Draghi government have been to increase repression against the workers movement, in particular against the S.I. Cobas “rank-and-file” union of mainly immigrant workers. Some of the most deeply exploited sectors of the working class have undertaken trade-union and solidarity actions, centered on logistics. The response of much of the ostensibly socialist left has been to form an Action Pact with political supporters of S.I. Cobas, a political coalition of heterogeneous forces based on a reformist 15-point political program. This program consists overwhelmingly of appeals for the capitalist government to take action, rather than for workers themselves to enforce their demands. What genuine communists must say to the masses in the harrowing coronavirus crisis is that the working class must establish its revolutionary class rule, seizing and collectivizing the means of production and organizing production to satisfy human need, not the profits of the few. This fight requires above all the forging of a revolutionary workers party. Italy: Draghi Government of Repression, Impoverishment and Death (26 April 2021)
Un folleto de Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas
(click on image to download pdf)
As the coronavirus pandemic erupted in the United States, the first epicenter was in the neighborhoods of New York City with the highest number of immigrants, where Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas (Class Struggle Immigrant Workers) has been active. Read the reports from TIC activists and teachers in Class Struggle Education Workers on the impact of this capitalist disaster, and the lessons to be drawn from it. Also reports from the strike of packinghouse workers in Yakima Valley, Washington. (In Spanish)
To order a print copy of the pamphlet, click here
For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!
Slavery and the Constitution: Origins of U.S. Capitalist “Democracy”
Long ago and far away in the B.C. (Before Coronavirus) era, bourgeois politics in the United States fixated briefly on impeachment. The Democrats leading the lower house of Congress did not, of course, impeach Donald Trump for his crimes against the oppressed, for example his vicious persecution of immigrants in the U.S. After all, the record deportations under the Democratic administration of “deporter-in-chief” Barack Obama paved the way for Trump. Trump was “brought up on charges by the wrong class for the wrong crimes,” we noted at the time. One generation after another is brought up with the mythology of the Constitution as an embodiment of “democracy” in general, to be worshiped alongside the “Founding Fathers.” Yet the authors of the Constitution understood very well that they represented not “the people” in general but the ruling class of planters and merchants, and wrote it to safeguard their interests, in particular to bolster and uphold the power of the slaveowners in the newly established American republic. The U.S. Constitution established a series of institutions that are strikingly anti-democratic. They remained so even after slavery’s abolition through the Civil War. Revolutionaries explain the need for a revolutionary workers party to lead a socialist revolution to overthrow the entire capitalist system. Slavery and the Constitution: Origins of U.S. Capitalist “Democracy” (August 2020)
PSL Targeted for Marches Against Cop Murder of Elijah McClain
Defend Denver Anti-Racist Protest Leaders!
On Thursday, September 17, police raids were carried out in Denver, Colorado against the organizers of protests denouncing the racist murder of Elijah McClain, a young black man, by police in suburban Aurora in August 2019. Six of the protest leaders were arrested, including four members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), which has played a leading role in the protests. They have outrageously been charged with multiple serious felonies, including the absurd charge of “kidnapping.” Following Trump’s failed attempt at imposing martial law in Washington, D.C. and the subsedquent the dispatch of federal agents to Portland, Oregon, and Kenosha, Wisconsin, the Denver arrests mark a new escalation of police-state measures that are a threat to the civil liberties of all. The Internationalist Group and Revolutionary Internationalist Youth denounce this ominous attack on the right to protest. We demand that the arrested activists be immediately released and that all charges against them be dropped. Defend Denver Anti-Racist Protest Leaders! (18 September 2020)
Elijah McClain (1996-2019) (August 2020)“We’re All in This Together.” You Think?
Top Ten Lies in the Time of Coronavirus and Mass Protests
By Charles Brover
U.S. capitalism is in the midst of a triple whammy crisis – economic, social, and public health. Inspiring massive protests against racism and cop terror not seen in their size and scope since the 1960s have set this nation’s cities aflame day after day, and have spread internationally. The historic protests are occurring against the backdrop of unconscionable government delay, deception, ignorant happy talk, and anti-scientific incompetence. Official public health malpractice has driven the confirmed death toll from COVID-19 to over 160,000. This plague is disproportionately ravaging black, Latino, and immigrant working class communities. For Marxist revolutionaries the racist system that is at the root of the oppression of black people in the U.S. (and elsewhere) is class-based capitalism. While the cities are in paroxysms of rage, grief and plague; while millions are fighting to save their livelihoods and their lives, the capitalist rulers, their politicians, and tamed pundits promote lies, damn lies, and even more murderous lies. Here are our top ten picks. Top Ten Lies in the Time of Coronavirus and Mass Protests (8 August 2020)
Millions of Undocumented Immigrants and Their Families Facing the Abyss
New York: We Demand Equal Treatment and Emergency Support for Excluded Workers!
Declaration of Class Struggle International Workers (TIC)
In the sixth month of the health crisis unleashed by the COVID-19 pademic, infections are spiking in much of the country while mass unemployment continues to grow and marches against racist police brutality continue. New storms of crisis are coming for the working class, and for immigrants in particular, beginning with a threatened wave of evictions. Nationally, undocumented immigrants are denied “stimulus” aid, unemployment benefits or any official support. In New York some 200,000 undocumented workers have lost their jobs or cannot find work, while over a million workers considered “essential,” a majority of them immigrants, receive poverty wages while running great risk of contracting the virus. Class Struggle International Workers demands that the state of New York include all workers, particularly the undocumented and those in the “gig economy,” among those eligible for unemployment benefits; that state and city governments make up for the exclusion of immigrants from federal support; and that rent be canceled and all residential evictions be prohibited during the pandemic. New York: We Demand Equal Treatment and Emergency Support for Excluded Workers! (11 August 2020)
Urgent: Protest Arrest of Leftists in Bolivia
The rightist de facto government of Bolivia that seized power in last month’s “civic-police-military” coup has carried out a new act of repression, arresting Carlos Cornejo, correspondent of leftist Internet publication La Izquierda Diario, and the artist Leonel Jurado, charging them with “sedition.” They were seized yesterday afternoon in the city of El Alto, where they were helping prepare an event in solidarity with families of the at least ten people killed in the police massacre against a protest at the Senkata gas plant there on November 19. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International demand the immediate liberation and dropping of all charges against Carlos Cornejo, Leonel Jurado and all victims of rightist repression in Bolivia! Urgent: Protest Arrest of Leftists in Bolivia (17 December 2019)
in Existential Crisis
An Internationalist Group Pamphlet
With the Bernie Sanders candidacy and the dramatic growth of the Democratic (Party) Socialists of America, the left reformists have been thrown into crisis.
This 84-page pamphlet features documents from oppositionists who fought inside left groups to uphold the revolutionary politics of Lenin and Trotsky.
To order a print copy of the pamphlet, click here
Socialist Action’s “Solidarity with Solidarity”
How Fake Trotskyists Carried the Bags for Imperialism
While the reformist left in the United States is in profound crisis, tripping over each other as they chase after the Democratic (Party) Socialists of America, Socialist Action has remained relatively stationary and appears more red in comparison with those social democrats who are now being devoured by their own opportunism. In reality, SA’s program is pink social democracy. At every key juncture where defense of the degenerated/deformed workers states has been posed point-blank, Socialist Action has lined up with imperialism, from Poland in 1981 to the USSR in 1991 and continuing today. Poland was a key episode in the imperialist drive against the Soviet bloc, which led to capitalist restoration whose devastating consequences continue to be felt around the world. Today SA denounces China as imperialist and North Korea as capitalist while genuine Trotskyists defend them against imperialist threats and attack. And it’s not just words. When the chips were down, these fake-Trotskyists hailed their comrades’ direct and concrete role in delivering vital CIA-financed equipment to counterrevolutionary Polish Solidarno??. Read the details here. How Fake Trotskyists Carried the Bags for Imperialism (April 2019)
“American Apartheid” by Design
A Review of Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
By Charles Brover, Class Struggle Education Workers
After more than a decade of hard struggle and the passage of laws in the mid-1960s against official Jim Crow segregation, the civil rights movement suddenly stopped. What was termed de facto segregation was deemed off-limits, or at least had to be left for another day. Rothstein’s book conclusively proves that rigid residential segregation and discrimination against African American, Latino and Asian minorities was always de jure, officially sanctioned. This has had a devastating effect on everything from school integration to murderous police repression. But while laying out key elements of the structural foundation of black oppression in the U.S., The Color of Law fails to go to their root in the system of racist American capitalism. In the United States in 2016 there were 2.3 million evictions: 6,300 a day, four every minute. And with over 3.5 million homeless people in the country, there are 19 million unoccupied dwellings. This powerful essay from Class Struggle Education Workers demonstrates that it will take nothing short of a socialist revolution to solve the housing question. “American Apartheid” by Design (21 November 2018)
While “Democratic Socialist” Ocasio-Cortez Chimes In
Bipartisan War Criminals Celebrate War Hawk John McCain
U.S. imperialism lost one of its most vocal and active warmongers on August 25 – Arizona Republican senator John McCain. Universally praised by ruling-class politicians as a “war hero” and “maverick,” McCain’s funeral at the National Cathedral was attended by some of the most infamous mass murderers of this and the last century, from Henry Kissinger to former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Far from being a “war hero,” a “man of honor” or paragon of “human decency,” Senator John McCain was a war criminal who bombed civilians. He was shot down over North Vietnam on a bombing run against a civilian factory. But McCain’s most valuable service to U.S. imperialism was as an inveterate war hawk in Congress. From Afghanistan to Iraq to Ukraine, Libya and Syria, he beat the drums for murderous imperialist intervention. What’s striking about McCain’s war crimes and endless warmongering is that in virtually all cases, he was joined or supported by Democratic politicians. And, notably, among those praising McCain was Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) superstar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Her eulogy was consciously paying the price of admission to the bipartisan imperialist club of the U.S. Congress. Bipartisan War Criminals Celebrate War Hawk John McCain (September 2018)
As The Boss, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Blames Black Community for Violence
Chicago: Democrat-Led Cops Continue Racist Killing Spree
For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution
On July 14, Chicago police gunned down yet another black person, Harith Augustus, a barber. “Snoop” Augustus, known as a peaceful man, was stopped on the pretext of exhibiting the “characteristics of an armed person,” and was shot dead even though he had a valid gun license. For the police in this rigidly segregated city, and throughout this country founded on the bedrock of slavery, it is always open season on black people. And on Latinos, immigrants, Native Americans … the list goes on. Moreover, in Chicago and almost every other big city, Democrats are the bosses of the racist killer cops. This is all coming to a head in the upcoming trial of killer cop Jason Van Dyke for the murder of Laquan McDonald in October 2014. And Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel, running for a third term, is stoking racist reaction by blaming lax “morals” in the black community for the violence engendered by rampant poverty, unemployment and brutal police occupation. Yet some of the same themes are echoed in protests, where instead of denouncing racist police repression the focus is on opposition to “gun violence” in general. Talk of “reforming” the police or controlling guns only serves to divert protest away from a revolutionary perspective and to strengthen the repressive agencies of the capitalist state, while leading protesters into the dead-end of bourgeois pressure politics. The stark fact is that there is no solution to war, poverty and racist repression under capitalism. Chicago: Democrat-Led Cops Continue Racist Killing Spree (August 2018)
An Internationalist Group Pamphlet
(click on image to download pdf)
A 70-page pamphlet analyzing the organizational and political history of the Democratic (Party) Socialists of America. Includes articles on:
The ABCs of the DSA (August 2017)
Imperialist Social Democracy
vs. Black Liberation (December 2017)
The Real Heritage of Michael Harrington's DSA
“Democratic Socialism” in the Service of U.S. Imperialism (February 2018)
DSA Debacle Over Cop “Union” Organizer (September 2017)
DSA Dodges Debate: “Socialism: What It Is (and Isn’t)” (January 2018)
Bernie Sanders and the Pressure Politics of the Opportunist Left (June 2015)
No, Bernie Sanders Is Not a Socialist (March 2016)
Yesterday’s “Obama Socialists,” Today’s Bernie Boosters (December 2015)
James P. Cannon on “Third Parties”
To order a print copy of the pamphlet, click here
Bourgeois Populism and Social-Democratic Reformism: A Dead End
Italy: Anti-Immigrant Election Hysteria
The campaign for the March 4 Italian elections has been dominated by vile xenophobic anti-immigrant chauvinism. All the competing bourgeois parties and coalitions attack the bogeyman of “illegal immigration.” The racist Lega (ex-Nord) rails about the “invasion of aliens, drug pushers, delinquents and illegals,” raising slogans such as “Italians first! Now or never! Stop the invasion!” With the populist Cinque Stelle (Five Star) movement running first in the opinion polls, its historic leader, Beppe Grillo, recently called for immediately deporting all “illegals.” The strategy of the Democratic Party government has been to put itself at the head of the anti-immigrant hysteria by aggressively extending the sway of Italian imperialism in the Mediterranean, Libya and to the south. This imperialist drive to the south is accompanied by a campaign of all-sided racist repression against immigrants and refugee seekers in Italy. What the domesticated left is counterposing to the three main bourgeois coalitions of Forza Italia/Lega, Cinque Stelle and the PD with its various appendages of homeless bourgeois politicians, is a mixture of bourgeois populism and social-democratic reformism. in the present climate of anti-immigrant hysteria and fascist attacks, what is needed are mass mobilizations bringing out the power of the working class to stop the fascists. Above all, we must forge a genuinely Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard. Italy: Anti-Immigrant Election Hysteria (24 February 2018)
(italiano) Elezioni del 4 Marzo: Isteria anti-immigrati (24 febbraio 2018)Boston: Let Siham Byah Come Home! No Deportations!
By Class Struggle Education League
On January 27, hundreds of defenders of immigrant rights from many leftist organizations, labor unions, churches and sanctuary networks rallied in Boston to protest the deportation of Siham Byah. A prominent Occupy Boston activist and single mother, Byah was grabbed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) police last November 7, torn from her son, beaten in a local jail, driven to Virginia and then deported to Morocco. The Class Struggle Education League, based in Lowell, Mass. and New Hampshire participated in the protest, emphasizing the importance of mobilizing the power of workers action to stop the I.C.E. deportation machine. It also noted the parallel to the struggle against slave-catchers under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, a battle which came to a head in Boston and set the stage for the U.S. Civil War. The CSEL is undertaking joint work with the Internationalist Group. Boston: Let Siham Byah Come Home! No Deportations! (4 February 2018)
Guess Who’s Bernie Sanders’ Foreign Policy Go-To Guy, and What Power Bishop Is His Vatican Fixer
But, of course, one and the same Jeffrey Sachs who designed the post-counterrevolution “shock treatment” in Poland. Also in Bolivia where it led to tens of thousands of workers fired and brutal anti-union repression. In preparation for the no-photo-op pope-meet-and-greet, Bernie and Jeffrey dined with Cardinal óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras, “the pope’s right-hand man and one of the Vatican’s top power players.” This is the same cardinal who helped engineer (together with Hillary Clinton) the 2009 Honduran coup, and before that covered up for bloody massacres and “disappearances” in the 1980s. But then, Pope Francis himself is a veteran of Argentina’s 1970s dirty war. Guess Who's Bernie Sanders’ Foreign Policy Go-To Guy, and His Power Bishop Vatican Fixer (17 April 2016)
A Question of Whose Class Interests Prevail
Flint Water Crisis: Capitalism Is Poisoning Us
The residents of Flint, Michigan have been living a nightmare ever since in early 2014 the city’s state-appointed “emergency manager” and the governor’s office decided to switch the water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River. As a result, the population has been subjected to lead poisoning, particularly affecting the very young and elderly. The levels of contamination are astronomical. For almost two years Republican state authorities and Democratic federal officials refused to do anything about complaints. Now an emergency has been proclaimed, but the water is still undrinkable. Meanwhile, the same “emergency manager” has been overseeing Detroit schools as they descend further into the abyss. The emergency has been created by decaying capitalism: industrial pollution, closing factories and a bipartisan attack on teachers and public education. The dictatorial managers must be kicked out, but changing parties will change nothing. The bottom-line issue is which class is in power. Capitalism is literally poisoning our futures. Flint Water Crisis: Capitalism Is Poisoning Us (3 March 2016)
The State of Pennsylvania Seeks to Bar His Lawyer
The Frame-Up of Corey Walker
By Charles Brover
Corey Walker was arrested in July 1996 on a bogus murder charge from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He has been behind bars ever since. Evidence of his innocence was withheld. He is the victim of prosecutorial misconduct and incompetent legal representation. Lorenzo Johnson, who was arrested in the same case, also remains in prison even though a federal appeals court recognized the insufficiency of the evidence against him, but was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court. Now the state is trying to deny Walker the attorney of his choice, Rachel Wolkenstein, who has defended Mumia Abu-Jamal. Pennsylvania authorities will stop at nothing to cover up lying and manufacture of evidence, coercion of witnesses and suppression of evidence of innocence by police and prosecutors. This requires silencing Corey Walker and short-circuiting his legal appeal. In seeking to disqualify Wolkenstein from representing him, the state attorney general's office cites her political views that the judicial system is an organ of racist oppression that must be overthrown by socialist revolution. This witch-hunting attack and the continued incarceration of Walker and Johnson go to the heart of Jim Crow “justice system.” Free Corey Walker and Lorenzo Johnson! The Frame-Up of Corey Walker (4 February 2016)
Jim Crow Justice and the Capitalist State (4 February 2016)Occupation of Hundreds of Schools Blocks Threatened Closures
Whose Life Is On the Line? Cop Stats (4 February 2016)
Bad Apples, Broken Windows, and Other Myths About the Police (4 February 2016)
Student Revolt Shakes S?o Paulo, Brazil
By Class Struggle Workers/UFT
For the last three weeks, the city of S?o Paulo, Brazil has been convulsed by a combative upheaval of high school students protesting the state government’s plan to close 92 schools and order hundreds of thousands of students to change schools. When the state governor tried to ram through this plan without consultation, students responded by occupying almost 200 schools. Then, when military police began clearing out occupied schools this week, students took chairs and tables and set up class in busy intersections and highways. The students, backed by teachers, also refused to take high-stakes test. After several days, the governor backed down. This is a dramatic example of how the international capitalist offensive against public education should be fought – by mass action in the streets, bringing out students, teachers, parents and mobilizing the power of the working class. Student Revolt Shakes S?o Paulo, Brazil (4 December 2015)
The Haitian Revolution and U.S. Imperialism
July 28 marks the 100th anniversary of the first U.S. invasion of Haiti in 1915, under Democratic president Woodrow Wilson. This led to an occupation of 19 years, as well as occupations of the Dominican Republic next door, of Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras and Veracruz, Mexico, and followed the 1898 U.S. invasion and occupation of Cuba, Puerto Rico and Philippines. But the occupations didn't stop there. In 1994, Democrat Bill Clinton invaded Haiti a second time, and in 2004 Republican George Bush II invaded a third time. Haiti today continues under imperialist occupation, this time outsourced to a United Nations “peacekeeping” force. As proletarian internationalist opponents of imperialism, on this centenary we republish articles from Workers Vanguard when it was the voice of revolutionary Trotskyism on the 1915-34 U.S. occupation, and a two-part series on Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution that led to the first black republic in history, as well as sparking slave revolts throughout the Caribbean and in the United States. (30 July 2015)
Yankee Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934Protest the Police Lynching of Sandra Bland
Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, Part 1
Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, Part 2
On July 10, Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old African American activist and education worker, was driving from Illinois to her new job at the historically black Prairie View A&M University in Texas, her alma mater. Sandra was pulled over by a Texas Ranger, supposedly for changing lanes without signalling. The trooper abusively demanded she get out of the car, theatening to use a Taser electric shock on her. After having her head slammed on the ground, Sandra was arrested for supposed “assault on a public servant,” for insisting on her rights. Three days later, she was found dead in her cell in Waller County, Texas. The authorities claim she committed suicide. We say the police are guilty. Sandra was lynched by the cops. On July 22, hundreds gathered in New York City's Union Square to protest the police murder of Sandra Bland. Class Struggle Education Workers, CUNY Internationalist Clubs and the Internationalist Group joined in. Protest the Police Lynching of Sandra Bland (22 July 2015) (video)
NYC May Day 2015
The Internationalist Group, CUNY Internationalist Clubs and Class Struggle Education workers had a spirited contingent in the May Day march in New York City. Leading the contingent was a group with red flags with the hammer, sickle and 4 of the Fourth International. Then came a banner made by the Hunter Internationalist Club, proclaiming:“Ayotzinapa-Ferguson-NYC, Smash the Racist Capitalist State, Workers to Power. Signs emphasized the call to Defend Black Baltimore following the occupation of the city by the National Guard to squelch the upheaval over the police murder of Freddie Gray, and to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, who faces execution in prison by deliberate medical neglect. Also highlighted was the call for workers action against police terror, noting the historic action by ILWU Local 10 that shut down the port of Oakland on May Day and marched on City Hall calling to stop police terror.NYC May Day 2015 video (9 May 2015)Sunset Park Fights Back Against Police Attack
NYC May Day 2015 photos (6 May 2015)
NYC May Day 2011 video
NYC May Day 2010 video
It’s been only two months since Eric Garner was chokeholded to death in Staten Island by the racist cops, and barely a month and a half since the police murder of 17-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. But despite the national outcry and a thousands-strong march in New York in late August, two incidents in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn show once again the face of racist police violence under liberal Democratic NYC mayor Bill de Blasio. The first involved a heavy?duty arrest of a vendor after a festival in the park; in the second, a cop slammed a pregnant woman on the pavement on her abdomen and her son and husband were arrested. The residents of this heavily immigrant neighborhood feel singled out for aggressive enforcement under NYPD chief William Bratton’s “broken windows” strategy of massive arrests for minor infractions. On Saturday, September 27, some 300 people came out to protest against the brutal police siege. While many called for Bratton’s resignation, racist cop terror is endemic in capitalist America. To put a stop to it will require nothing less than workers revolution. Sunset Park Fights Back Against Police Attack (28 September 2014)
Defend North Korea and China Against Imperialism and Counterrevolution
U.S. War Provocations Push Korea to the Brink
For the Revolutionary Reunification of Korea, North and South!
Over the last month and a half, the United States and South Korea have engaged in an escalating series of military provocations against North Korea. Simultaneous “war games” have simulated a nuclear aerial bombing of the North, a ground invasion from the South, annihilation of the leadership and the “insertion” of tens of thousands of U.S. troops searching for nukes. While the imperialist media are, as usual, strenuously demonizing the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and playing up blustering statements coming out of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, the Pentagon has been laying the basis for a military strike against the North. The whole operation is part of detailed plan elaborated by the Obama administration, dubbed “the playbook,” for U.S. shows of force. But this is no football game. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International defend North Korea, a bureaucratically deformed workers state, against the war provocations, economic blockade and any attack by U.S. imperialism and its South Korean junior partners, no matter how it starts. We also defend North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons, its main deterrent against a war by the power which laid waste to the North in the Korean War. U.S. War Provocations Push Korea to the Brink (13 April 2013)
The founding statement of the League for the Fourth International
La Declaración de la Liga por la IV Internacional se encuentra aquí en espa?ol.
La Déclaration de la Ligue pour la Quatrième Internationale se retrouve ici en fran?ais.
A Declara??o da Liga pela Quarta Internacional é disponível aqui no português.
Deklarasyon ng Liga para sa Ika-Apat na Internasyonal.
Introducing
The InternationalistEl Internacionalista
es el órgano en espa?ol de la Liga por la IV Internacional.Vanguarda Operária
é o jornal da Liga Quarta-Internacionalista
do Brasil.Liga für die Vierte Internationale
Artikel und Erkl?rungen der LIVI auf Deutsch.Contact us at the following addresses:
U.S.A.
To contact the League for the Fourth International write to: Internationalist Group, Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY, 10008, U.S.A. Tel (212) 460-0983. Fax (212) 614-8711
E-mail: internationalistgroup@msn.comBRAZIL
To contact the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil write to: Caixa Postal 084027, CEP 27251-970, Volta Redonda, RJ, Brazil
Caixa Postal 3982, CEP 20010-974, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
E-mail: lqb1996@yahoo.com.br
GERMANY
To contact the Internationalistische Gruppe in Germany, write to: Postfach 80 07 21, 21007 Hamburg, Germany
E-mail: permanenterevolution@posteo.de
ITALY
To contact the Nucleo Internazionalista d’Italia, write to: Anna Chiaraluce, C.P. N. 78, Ufficio Postale San Sisto, 06132 Perugia (PG), Italy
E-mail: it_internazionalista@yahoo.com
MEXICO
To contact the Grupo Internacionalista/México write to: Apartado Postal 12-201, Admón. Postal Obrero Mundial, CP 03001, Mexico D.F, Mexico
E-mail: grupointernacionalista@yahoo.com.mx
We would like to hear from you. If you are interested in learning more about the Internationalist Group and the League for the Fourth International, contact us at: internationalistgroup@msn.com
