Correspondência Internacional N: 35

Nº 35 • October • December 2014 • IWU-FI

NO

to the imperialist bombings in Iraq and Syria!

Europe and the national question

Summary Presentation......................... 1 Venezuela Middle East Nº 35 • October • December 2014

Statement of the IWU–FI......................... 2 From Nasserism to political Islam.......... 7

Magazine of the UIT–FI

Israel gets bogged down in Gaza..........13

The Maduro government wears out while social unrest grows ......................35

Mexico Appeasement to transnational capital.39

International Wyorkers Unity – Fourth International

USA Rebellion against racism.........................42

International Coordination Offices Hipólito Yrigoyen 1115 Buenos Aires Argentina Telephones +54 11 4383 7733 +54 11 4383 4047

Europe The National question in Europe.........19 The Spanish monarchy and the Catalonian referendum...........................21

Debate Thomas Piketty and “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”............................44

Internet www.uit-ci.org Layout Isabel Sanchez Daniel Iglesias English Translation Daniel Iglesias

Global News China/Hong Kong: Students strike and demonstrations.........................................47 Scotland: The NO won, but…...............23 Leon Trotsky and the debate on national independence............................24 Turkey and the Outrage of Construction Workers............................26

Argentina Contribution Argentina: Ar$ 20 Brazil: R$ 5 USA: US$ 5 Rest of Latin America: US$ 2 Europe: € 5 Rest of the World: US$ 3

Signed articles do not necessarily reflect the position of the leadership of the IWU-FI but that of their authors.

End of happy days for Kirchnerism......29 No to the impeachment!........................33

Africa: Ebola, why are people dying?....47 Germany: Railworkers strike.................48 Spain: Great victory for right to abortion......................................................48 Ecuador: March against Correa’s plan.48

Inside Backcover A successful unification Congress

Backcover Solidarity with the militant Argentinian railworkers

Presentation This issue of International Correspondence is dedicated in large part to the Middle East conflict. We are witnessing a new imperialist aggression. The United States, with Obama at the helm, Great Britain and France are bombing Iraq and Syria. They do it under the disguise of a “coalition against ISIS” with Arab countries. Actually they are using ISIS and its aberrant actions in an attempt to end the Syrian revolution and the rebellion of the peoples in the region and in North Africa against oppressive regimes. The imperialist bombing has focused on Syria. Every day it is becoming increasingly clear the goal is not only ISIS, but that also other factions facing al-Assad’s regime have been the subject of the bombardments. For this reason there were marches in the liberated areas of Syria with banners who wonder “why are the American attacks coming now” or “why aren’t they against the regime?” The Syrian dictator have for some time been throwing barrels of explosive on the population. Over 200 thousand people have been killed since the start of the rebellion in 2011.

The Syrian people have been alone since day one. The United States, the European powers and the Arab countries are complicit in the massacres of al-Assad and have created all the conditions for the gro wth of ISIS. So this edition leads with a statement of our international current calling to the peoples of the world to say No to the imperialist bombings in Iraq and Syria and also to say No to ISIS and No to Bashar al-Assad and the US’s puppet regime in Iraq. We call to support the resistance of the peoples of the Middle East. We support the rebel Syrian people, the Kurdish people and the heroic resistance of the Palestinian people against the Zionist state of Israel.

We also dedicate an ample space to other ongoing struggles in other latitudes: the struggle for national question in Europe, workers’ strikes in Turkey and Argentina; the right to free abortion in the Spanish State or democratic freedoms in Hong Kong-China. §

Contacting us: Argentina: Izquierda Socialista: opinaellector@izquierdasocialista.org.ar — — Brazil: Corrente Socialista dos Trabalhadores: combatesocialista@gmail.com — Bolivia: ARP-LP: laprotestabolivia@gmail.com Chile: Movimiento Socialista de los Trabajadores mst_solidaridad@gmail.com — Colombia: Socialist Alternative: alternativasocialistauitci@hotmail.com — Mexico: POS-MAS posmas1980@gmail.com — Panama: Propuesta Socialista: propuestapanamauit@hotmail. com — Peru: Unios en la Lucha: unios_cc@hotmail.com – Spanish State: Lucha Internationalista: luchaint@telefonica. net; — Turkey: Workers Democracy Party: iscicephesi@gmail.com — United States: Socialist Core: socialistcore@gmail. com — Venezuela: Partido Socialismo y Libertad: usi_venezuela@yahoo.com Recomended Sites: www.uit-ci.org / www.nahuelmoreno.org / www.izquierdasocialista.org.ar (Argentina) / www.cstpsol. com (Brazil) / www.unios.tk (Peru) / www.laclase.info (Venezuela) / www.socialistcore.org (USA) / www.mst-solidaridad.cl (Chile) / www.linkezeitung.de (Germany) / www.luchainternacionalista.org (Spanish State) / www.iscicephesi.net (Turkey) / www.movimientoalsocialismo.org (Mexico) In Facebook: www.facebook.com/mst.solidaridad (Chile) / www.facebook.com/partidoobrerosocialista (Mexico)/ www. facebook.com/linternacionalista (Spanish State)/ www.facebook.com/idpgirisimi (Turkey)

Middle East

Statement of the IWU–FI

No to US attacks on Iraq and Syria!

Only the people can defeat ISIS and end with these hated regimes!

Since some weeks ago the government of the US, by order of Obama, has started a military intervention on Iraq bombing zones occupied by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) with the argument of “protecting US Citizens” and to develop “humanitarian actions” defending the Christian and Yazidi communities threatened by ISIS. Now Obama announces he would proceed with a possible bombing of Syria, in agreement with the dictator Bashar alAssad, with the same argument of “the battle against terrorism”.

We call on the peoples of the world to condemn this new imperialist 2

intervention. With this intervention, and the argument of “the battle against terrorism”, imperialism wants to deal in one fell swoop with the two central problems in the region: the sinking of the occupation regimen in Iraq with a huge popular rejection and the existence of an ongoing revolution in Syria. For imperialism the problem is not the atrocities of ISIS against minorities. While ISIS was — and still is— an instrument at the service of Bashar al-Assad’s regimen to face the revolution by the rear-guard, Obama not only has not said a thing about its methods but has also supplied them through Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The real motives for the imperialist attack have nothing to do with the fight against terrorism or the defence of the people of Iraq, Syria and their minorities. The US intervention has the aim of preserving the sinking occupation regime in Iraq and to sustain the murderous Syrian regime.

Behind these aims are the interests of the oil multinational and Israel stability.

Even more now when the Palestine people and its heroic resistance achieved a partial victory, after 50 days of genocidal military attacks by the Zionist state of Israel, backed by the US; after an enormous suffering, with over 2,140 Palestinians dead (including

Middle East 560 children) and 84 percent of them civilians. The permanent cease-fire agreement includes the reopening of the Rafah crossing, which means a significant attenuation of the blockade of the Gaza Strip. The Rafah crossing (connecting Gaza with Egypt) will be under control of the Palestinian National Authority, which now has a unified government between Fatah and Hamas. The agreement also accepts that Gaza fishermen can fish in a six mile zone (instead of the three miles they had been allowed until now).

There are issues still under discussion such as the rights of Palestine to have a port and an airport and the liberation of 100 Palestinian prisoners. However, nothing is assured, moreover with the complicit role of the Egyptian el-Sisi regime acting in the service of Israel and the USA. The fight continues to ensure the respect of the agreement and to demand the end of the Gaza Strip blockade.

This certainly is neither peace, nor the liberation of the Palestinian people, nor the end to Gaza prison, but it does show that they cannot break the resistance. This was why the Palestinian people celebrated and the Zionist government went into crisis with several ministers questioning the agreement.

Hence, the current and central dilemma in Syria and Iraq is not between ISIS or the US and its allies. The issue is stand by the Syrian revolution and the legitimate clash of the Iraqi people fighting against their corrupt and illegitimate government. It is to stand against the imperialist intervention and its bombardments, and next to the Iraqi, Syrian and Palestinian peoples.

The world biggest criminal is imperialism Obama, his partners of the EU, the Iraqi government and even the assassin Netanyahu, rate the reprehensible actions of ISIS as the “biggest threat to humanity”. Their cynicism is boundless.

In this way they want to cover up and justify their own crimes to the world.

This is said by those who 70 years ago dropped atomic bombs in Hiroshima

Cities and areas controlled by ISIS

and Nagasaki, killing 200,000 persons in one day, when the war was already over. The very same who killed over two million people in Vietnam; those who endorsed dictators like Pinochet or Videla or starve the people of the world with the adjustment plans of the IMF. The role of imperialism in relation to the Arab and Middle East peoples has been to colonize, to artificially divide the nations, to encourage religious struggles and civil wars to steal the oil and other natural resources. As part of this colonizing plan they installed the fictitious Zionist state of Israel, supporting it militarily and endorsing Israel’s repeated bombings to mass murder the people of the Gaza Strip.

The current situation of Iraq, its political and social debacle, its division between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds is the consequence of that policy and of the Bush headed invasion in 2003, which led to the current state of semi disintegration. The American invasion, with the false “humanitarian” argument of overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and his supposed “weapons of mass destruction” had the real aim of controlling the oil production and creating stability of “cemeteries” in the Middle East in order to sustain Israel.

The resistance of the Iraqi people and the repudiation of people all over the world finally made the American troops retreat in 2011 without achieving all those aims. They leave a Shiite proYankee Iraqi government, backed by the Iranian regime that represses the

Bombing Zones

Sunni people. Since then, there have been all kinds of popular revolts. For example, the brutal detention of Sunni leader Ahmed al-Alwani, in December 2013, in which two of his brothers were killed, lead to protests all over Al Anbar governorate, mainly in the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah. Imperialism has systematically violated the right of selfdetermination of the people, so we must condemn this new military intervention in Iraq and Syria. Nothing good can be expected from it.

ISIS must be defeated by the peoples of Iraq and Syria In Iraq, within the framework of the revolutionary process opened in North Africa and the Middle East by the Tunisian revolution of January 2011, massive protests against the Maliki government take place which are brutally repressed. The violence and sectarianism of the Iraqi occupation government (supported also by Iran) is the fuel that encourages ISIS. What imperialism wants to present today as an offensive by ISIS fanatics actually has a triple component: an ISIS group which has grown in Syria, Sunni popular sectors and the remnants of the Baath Party (Saddam Hussein’s party) which face the government in Bagdad.

Imperialism uses ISIS just as Bashar alAssad does, to hide the popular uprising and reduce everything to the “fight against terrorism”.

In Syria, in three years of war Bashar al-Assad has focused all its war 3

Middle East machine (including dynamite barrels and chemical weapons) against what really has worried him: the people’s revolution, while allowing the ISIS to consolidate its position as a fifth column in liberated areas. The first ISIS fighters came out of the jails that al-Assad opened at the beginning of the revolution to weaken it, and for three years he did not fire a single shot at ISIS. Time and time again imperialism (the US and also the EU) refused to arm the only group that faced ISIS: the Syrian Rebels. Instead, they allowed the regime to continue arming themselves to the teeth with the support of Iran and Russia. Blocking the Syrian rebels reinforced ISIS military and politically and now, attacking them, they will strengthen ISIS further as alleged “antiimperialist”.

For this reason our repudiation to the Yankees bombardments in Iraq and Syria does not mean we give any political support or of any kind to the so-called Islamic State (ISIS). It is a bourgeois Islamic organization with a dictatorial theocratic counterrevolutionary proposal, which seeks to establish a “Caliphate” in the region.

Their militias act with aberrant methods of ethnic cleansing in the service of this reactionary program. It is claimed that they are financed by the pro-US Sunni monarchist regime of Saudi Arabia, which means they are the creation of a strong ally of the US. Their main goal would be to interfere in the Syrian revolution to try to have a way out,

Kurdish women fighting ISIS in Iraq

given the possible fall of Bashar alAssad, with a dictatorial government allied to the Sunni oil bourgeoisie of Saudi Arabia, enemy of any change process. In the Syrian revolution they act confronting the Syrian rebels themselves to occupy territories. From Syria they moved to the central-eastern provinces of Iraq, with larger Sunni presence, taking the city of Mosul and others. In all these territories they applied atrocities as mass executions of opponents and the expulsion of religious minorities.

The imperative fight against ISIS must be supported by the arming of the Syrian rebel forces (Free Syrian Army and the Kurds) and by the support of Iraqi popular movements.

Against sectarian violence, for a joint struggle against the Iraqi occupation

ISIS plays a counter-revolutionary role 4

government and the assassin Bashar al-Assad. For the achievement of an independent solution of true national self-determination of the peoples where political, labour and religious rights of each community are respected. For us this must be framed within a socialist and workers solution.

For the national selfdetermination of the Kurdish people in Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran The Iraqi Kurds are also suffering the consequence of this complex conflict. Kurdish people are the largest people in the world without a state.

Nearly 30 million Kurds are dispersed in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. They share an identity, a language and culture of their own. But they are a nation historically oppressed and divided by various imperialisms (Ottoman, British, German and Yankee) and by the bourgeoisie of each country in the Middle East and Turkey, always preventing the existence of an independent Kurdistan, a single Kurdish state.

Our international current has always stood by the historical slogan of the right to national self-determination of the Kurdish people in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran, countries were Kurdish people are persecuted and repressed, especially in Turkey. It is estimated that there are about 15 million Kurds in

Middle East

The Kurdish militia, the pashmerga, facing ISIS

Turkey, 6 millions in Iraq, 4.5 millions in Iran and 1.5 millions in Syria. Some of the nationalist Kurdish leaders sought to compromise with imperialism and their respective governments to get some partial autonomy status.

One of those cases was taking place in Iraq, where after the fall of Saddam Hussein, American imperialism and its bourgeois Shiites allies, supported by the Iranian regime, gave partial autonomy to the Kurds in northern Iraq, for the support Kurdish bourgeois political forces of the PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) of Jalal Talabani and the KDP (Kurdistan Democratic Party) of Masoud Barzani gave to imperialist occupation. Nowadays Barzani is the president of the Iraqi Kurdistan, an autonomous region of Iraq. Since 2006 Barzani has supported and worked with the Iraqi national government installed by the United States, having its own armed militia: the Peshmerga. The Iraqi Kurdistan covers the most important area of oil production, which is why in recent years the area grew in the warmth of the oil multinational investments.

Moreover, Barzani has been a good partner of imperialism and of the Turkish regime of Erdogan, enemy of Kurdish people, to whom they sell oil and do business with.

The near disintegration of the Iraqi army in central-eastern Iraq because of the advanced position of ISIS militias,

led to the Kurdish military forces being the only forces able to confront ISIS, along the Iraqi army and since 8 August supported by US bombing.

As revolutionary socialist we support the right of Kurdish people to defend Kurdistan and its limited autonomy of any attack from ISIS. It is also fitting that the armed and popular Kurdish organizations defend themselves against the attacks of ISIS in Syria. And also they have the right to do so in their shelters in Iraqi Kurdistan if they were attacked by ISIS. But this does not justify endorsing the imperialist bombing. Kurdish people, their popular organizations and the peoples of the world must condemn the imperialist attack and strengthen themselves by fighting in an independent way against ISIS and for the unity and selfdetermination on Kurdish people in Iraq and the entire region.

We repudiate the bombardments and any kind of imperialist military intervention in Iraq and Syria We call on the peoples of the world to repudiate the ongoing military actions in Iraq and Syria. With the argument of “fighting against terrorism” and using the cruel practices of ISIS, the US and the EU, supported by Russia, Iran, Israel and now, with the approval of the dictator Bashar al-Assad, they want to attack the people of the

Middle East. With this same pretext they want to drown the revolt of the Syrian people. To the extent that the Syrian Foreign Minister “welcomed any attack, including by the United Kingdom and the United States with possible bombings” in his country to “fight ISIS”. He only requested to “coordinate” them (ABC.es, 25 August 2014). This means they are using the madness of ISIS and their Caliphate to applaud Obama’s bombing of rebel positions. That is, the Syrian regime removes its mask of being “anti-imperialist”, defended by the world reformist left and especially by Chavism, and now shows its true proimperialist and genocidal face.

The responsibility of the Iraq and Middle East crisis is the result of the criminal and genocidal actions of imperialism. But there is also a responsibility of the various Arab and non-Arab bourgeois leaders, who act against their people, allying themselves with imperialism and leaving alone the heroic Palestinian people who continue to give lessons in fighting spirit in the Gaza Strip. This selling out of both the old bourgeois Arab nationalism as well as the Islamic bourgeois forces and their regimes have given rise to the emergence of ultra-reactionary political groups like al-Qaeda, the Salafists and now ISIS. It is necessary for the revolutionary left in North Africa and the Middle East and the workers and popular sectors to unite and fight to build a new revolutionary socialist direction for the peoples of the region.

No to US attacks in Iraq and Syria!

Russia and Iran out of Syria!

Down with Bashar al-Assad’s regime!

Support for the popular movements against the occupation regime in Iraq!

Arms for the Syrian revolution to defeat the regime and ISIS! International Executive Committee of the International Workers Unity – Fourth International 29 August 2014 5

Middle East

A new imperialist aggression Obama and the United States are once again engaged in a new imperialist aggression in the Middle East. The bombardment launched on Iraq and Syria has two faces. On one the hand, it ratifies once more the role of gendarme of imperialism, but on the other hand, it shows the crisis in which they are caught up in the middle of a runaway lack of political and military control in the region.

Obama had assumed his government after the striking failures of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and promising, due to the popular rejection, new interventions would not be repeated. In May, in a speech at West Point Military Academy he had said that “War cannot be the only solution”.

The facts are showing that, under the pretext of ending ISIS, the shelling of Syria has as central goal ending the Syrian popular revolt and sustaining the dictator Bashar al-Assad. It is abundantly clear that the imperialist bombing in Syria are conducive to support the dictator and are agreed with the Syrian regime. While Obama says they act without “consulting or informing” Syria, the Syrian Foreign Minister and Bashar himself say the opposite. Bashar al-Assad has reacted with a statement by the official SANA news agency. Without specifically mentioning the bombing, the Syrian President stated that he supported “any international effort against terrorism”.

“With just one Tomahawk missile, the American army has reduced to ashes the headquarters o f D ae s h (acronym of the Islamic State) in Raqqa, which our aviation was intent on destroying for days”, welcomed the Chief Editor of a newspaper c lose to power (quoted by Benjamin Barthe: http://alencontre. org/). This is why Obama does not have it easy Iran and Russia, the chief allies of But the debacle of its allies in Iraq Bashar, are also more than lukewarm and the lack of control in Syria have with regard to disassociate themselves forced him to militarily intervene, from the bombing. Iranian President at the risk of failing again. For all Hassan Rohani complained that the that Obama has already open the attacks were launched without UN umbrella saying it will “last a long authorization or permission by the time” and searching for cover in his government of Assad, but he did not speech behind a “coalition” of countries condemn them directly. “against terrorism”. The coalition is On the first night more bombs comprised of Saudi Arabia, Bahrein, were dropped in Syria that all that United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, had been dropped in hundreds of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and the bombings over Iraq since August. It USA. To which are added France is impossible to explain that quantity and Great Britain that have been of bombs and missiles launched on conducting raids on Iraq. towns such as Raqqa, Aleppo only hit 6

the ISIS. It is false. That is why there is talk that in one day of bombing there were more than 120 dead and “surprisingly” they hit other “Islamic terrorists” groups not just to ISIS. Los Angeles Times quoted a video of the north western province of Idlib showing residents digging through the rubble of bombed houses with the voice in off of an anti-government activist describing “massive destruction of civilian homes as a result of attacks by the Western alliance”. The article explains that one out of five American missiles in the area had reached a residential neighbourhood in the village of Kfar Daryan, killing up to two dozen civilians, including children.

It already begins to be known of protest marches against the bombings in rebel areas of Syria.

In this tangle of alliances was left out the nefarious role of the government in Turkey, old pro-Yankee ally, which did not join the “coalition” directly to have its hands free to let run the counterrevolutionary actions of ISIS against the Syrian Kurds. While the Syrian Kurdish militia, which in the revolution has taken several towns and cities near the Turkish border, resists ISIS in the city of Kobanê, thousands of Kurdish Syrian families fled to Turkey. Where they were greeted by the brutal repression of the Turkish military and police.

The popular demands managed to get the border open for the refugees. As a result on the 26 September there was a mobilization in Istanbul of over 5000 people called by unions and the left in support of the Kurdish resistance in Kobanê, in solidarity with refugees, and repudiating the repression of the Turkish government. This is the path to be taken to support the Kurdish resistance and the rebel Syrian people against al-Assad and ISIS, without giving any support to imperialist intervention. Nothing positive can be expected from this criminal action. §

Middle East

From Nasserism to political Islam By: Miguel Sorans The history of the Middle East and North Africa is a history of heroic struggles, of clashes between revolution and counterrevolution.

Immense processes against imperialism and Zionism. The conflict does not find a way out and it worsens. The root cause of this lack of solution is the combination of the historical failure of the various Arab and Islamic bourgeois leaderships and the no emergence of a revolutionary leadership that overcomes all barriers.

The Arab, Islamic and Middle Eastern peoples have 100 years of struggle, resisting the various

imperialisms. Struggling to survive, not be looted, destroyed their cultures and their rights as peoples and nations.

Facing Israel, the imperialist enclave.

With the current conflicts and wars, the confusion over the contradictions of its protagonists grows. The division between the peoples of the Middle East grows with apparent sectarian and religious conflicts. While the Arab and Islamic regimes confront their people, they never considered joining together to support the Palestinian people and defeat Israel. Only the role of imperialism and the long history of betrayals of the various bourgeois leaders of the region is what explain

the emergence of ultra-reactionary groups like ISIS.

The failure of Arab bourgeois nationalism The installation of the state of Israel in 1948, the resistance to the English and French presence in North Africa and the attempted penetration of the Americans in the Middle East, produced a revolutionary wave that ended in the triumph of various bourgeois nationalist regimes in region.

The central figure of this period (1948-1967) was Gamal Nassser, a colonel who represented the nationalist bourgeoisie of Egypt, and became 7

Middle East president in 1952, giving a military coup that overthrew the pro-British King Farouk. Nassser eliminates the monarchy, achieves the withdrawal of British troops and begins a land reform.

In his ascent stage he nationalized the Suez Canal (1956) and helped the guerrillas of the FLN in Algeria, so the Algerian people became independent from France (1962). He also faced the pro-Yankee Saudi monarchy in North Yemen, where an anti-monarchist revolution had started. With some differences, Nasserism had points of contact with Argentine Peronism or the movement headed by Lazaro Cardenas in Mexico, the difference with these was that Nasser became leader of the entire region. He launched the doctrine that he called “pan-Arabism”, asserting that the entire Arab world was a single nation dismembered by imperialism.

Other countries followed the path of Nasserism and became independent.

Bourgeois nationalist parties and leaders triumphed in Syria (with which Egypt joined for a short time to form the United Arab Republic), in Iraq and those who later triumphed in Algeria with Ben Bella, in Libya with Gaddafi or in Tunisia with Bourdiga, which in 1956 becomes independent of France.

Saddam Hussein in Iraq, as the current regime of Basher al-Assad were derived from those nationalist movements that also had the characteristic of being nonreligious, secular political currents.

In 1967 Israel, backed by the United States, launched a devastating attack called “the six-day war”, which struck a hard blow to Nasser, who died three years later. His successor, Anwar El Sadat, undertook an openly capitulating course to imperialism and of opening the country to foreign investment.

In 1978, Sadat commits the great betrayal signing with Israel the Camp David Accords, so named because it was signed at the country residence of the president of the USA who was then Carter. The accord meant diplomatic recognition to the state of Israel by Egypt. Until then no Arab government had recognized it. It was a capitulation 8

Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez canal in 1956

of such magnitude that the very own Arab League, with Saudi Arabia at the helm, expelled Egypt from its ranks.

Sadat died in 1981 riddled with bullets shot by Islamic officers of his army.

Mubarak was his successor.

Sadat first and Mubarak later were a clear expression of the failure of bourgeois Arab nationalism and its transformation into agents of imperialism, applying adjustments and repressing its people.

This was also the fate of nationalist movements in Algeria, Tunisia, Libya or Syria. Bourgeois nationalism again showed its limits and that it is no solution for the people as long as they do not break with capitalism.

Nasser’s dream of an “Arab unity” against imperialism and Israel, failed because each bourgeoisie was devoted to shore up its interests as a local bourgeoisie. They never wanted the unity of their people to confront Israel and imperialism. Many of these regimes and leaders (Gaddafi, Mubarak, Ben Ali) ended up falling hated by their people, in the revolutions of 2011.

Basher al-Assad is part of this same process.

The Iranian revolution and the rise of Islamic currents Given the failure of the Arab nationalist leaderships, the triumph of the Iranian revolution in 1979 caused a great impact in the Arab and Islamic masses of the region. With the

discredit of the traditional leaderships of the region, the Islamic Republic of Iran appeared as an alternative to the struggle against imperialism and Israel. While in 1979 Sadat signed the recognition of Israel, the regime that overthrew the Shah appeared as radical against the USA and Israel. From then on, Islamic movements in North Africa and the Middle East — such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas among Palestinians, among others — will grow in influence.

The new Islamic Republic, headed by the Ayatollah Khomeini not only was the result of the clash of the Shiite merchant class with the old Grand Bazaar pro-US monarchy, but also of great mass mobilizations which had as a major player Iranian working class.

Organs of dual power arose such as the shoras which were an Iranian version of workers councils attached to the Iranian revolutionary youth.

The bourgeois and reactionary leadership, based on the religious fundamentalism of the Ayatollahs’ regime, maintained for decades some political independence from imperialism. But at the same time it was launching a reactionary offensive in their country that was liquidating the dual power of the shoras and eliminated the democratic and revolutionary wing of the process. It will keep a harsh repression on the working people, on the left, women, national minorities

Middle East (Kurds, Arabs, etc.) curtailing freedoms.

Added to this was the increasingly treacherous role it played against the Arab peoples. As was the case of its support for the invading regime in Iraq (2003), endorsing the Iraqi Shiites collaborators of the Yankee invader.

Thus, it earned the hatred of millions of Iraqi Sunnis and other peoples of the region. While the USA calls them the “axis of evil”, they secretly agreed with imperialism to give their blessing to the repressors and the prime minister, the Shiite Maliki, who only resigned in 2014 amid the Iraq debacle.

This explains that finally, by the end of 2013, the negotiations and the US-Iran agreement were made public.

A new counter-revolutionary agreement that served to increase the isolation of the Syrian revolution, as Iran is, together with Russia, the mainstay of Bashar al-Assad. To the extent that the pro-Iranian Hezbollah of Lebanon started to militarily support with their militias the Syrian dictator.

Mass demonstration in Iran, 1979 the Revolution triumphs

All this was causing the Shiite bourgeois leadership of Iran to stop being a magnet for the people and the fighters of the region. Even broad sectors of the Iranian workers and youth began rebelling against the regime, as it happened in the mass mobilizations of 2008-09.

The hatred of imperialism and of its criminal aggressions (support for Israel, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, etc.) combined with repeated defections of the Arab and Islamic bourgeoisie, the nefarious role of Stalinism and the absence of a strong revolutionary left, has been the culture broth to

Artificial countries The situation of civil wars, imperialist interventions, poverty or social and cultural destruction in the Middle East and North Africa can only be explained by the role as predator of peoples of the various imperialisms and capitalism. What is known as the Arab and Islamic world was divided to the whim and convenience of the various imperialists throughout history in order to appropriate their wealth, especially oil. “Divide and rule” has been the watchword.

In the XV century the Turks conquered the region and established the Ottoman Empire. Already in the XIX century the French invaded Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. Italy took Libya and the British Egypt and Sudan. During World War I (19141918) prior to the collapse of the empire led by the Turks — allied to Germany —, European and American imperialists were devoted to the partitioning. Britain and France signed the secret Sykes-Picot agreement, by

which the English were left with Iraq, Jordan and Palestine and France with Syria and Lebanon. Remember that the famous Lawrence of Arabia was a British officer who led an Arab revolt against the Turks, in order to favour the English Crown. In 1917 British troops captured Baghdad and Jerusalem.

The imperialist bandits drew borders dictated by their interests and created countries, many artificial, or protectorates to control especially oil. In particular the creation of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia was only “founded “ as a country in 1932 by the warrior Ibn Saud, who puts his name to the country, supported by the Standard Oil of California, which defeated the Hashemites who controlled the region since the 1920s supported by the British. Since then reigns the unity Saudi – Standard Oil – Texaco.

In 1926 France invaded Syria and divided its territory creating the “independent republic” of Lebanon

reaching an agreement with the bourgeois of the Maronite Christian minority, the Druze, the Shiites and the Sunnis.

Artificial borders have led to many peoples to be left without their own land and oppressed in various countries.

A clear case is that of the Palestinian whose territory has been usurped since 1948 by Israel. Another case is that of the Kurds, who were never allowed to constitute a country. Only the popular masses and the workers will be able to lead the struggle for the unity and independence of the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East.§

9

Middle East make grow, as of the 1990s, the most varied reactionary Islamic fractions, many of them of terrorist action.

Theocratic and reactionary movements, of the most varied forms (from the Taliban of Afghanistan to the current ISIS, through Al Qaeda to al-Nusra Front of Syria) that apply aberrant methods against their own people, their opponents and women, generating

more division and confusion in the masses of the world in the fight against imperialism, the reactionary regimes in the region and Zionism.

The revolutions of 2011 and the issue of leadership The triumphant revolutions of North Africa and the Middle East opened a new revolutionary period

Yasser Arafat and the PLO Part of the process of struggle against imperialism and Israel was the emergence of the PLO in 1964.

But this was also a political leadership that kept yielding and deepening the crisis of leadership of the Palestinians and the Middle East.

Under the leadership of Arafat, in the 1970s, the PLO became the national, secular and nonracial organization of an exiled Palestinian people. It emerged as a mass movement of fighters who fought from the camps where they had taken refuge, in Jordan and later in Lebanon. The PLO fighters became not only the leadership of the Palestinians but of the masses in these countries.

Because of its great influence it had the opportunity in the 1970s, amid a wave of struggles, at the head of these peoples to take power, replacing the pro-imperialist governments of King Hussein in Jordan and in Lebanon.

But the leadership of Arafat opposed this, so as not to break with the Arab bourgeoisie which subsidized the PLO. This led to harsh defeats with its fighters expelled from Jordan and Lebanon by Arab governments’ troops backed by Israel.

In this framework urban terrorist methods grew, with misguided and desperate actions, which did not help at all the Palestinian cause and were used by Zionism.

Arafat and the PLO leadership ended up abandoning the historical slogans for a secular, democratic and non-racist Palestinian state, 10

and for the end of Israel. Finally, in September 1993, the PLO signed the Oslo Accords with the Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and the USA, of recognition of Israel and partial Palestinian autonomy in Gaza and the West Bank.

All this turn was weakening and making the PLO go into crisis. All this led, in the heat of the Intifada of 1987, to the emergence of a Palestinian opposition movement as Hamas, an Islamic current, which snatched part of its rank and file, controlling Gaza. Hamas was born opposing the Oslo Accords and vindicating the end of the state of Israel. Although in recent years it has been relativizing this claim. Unlike the slogan of a secular Palestine, Hamas wrongly demands installing a religious, theocratic Islamic state. §

Arafat did not break with the Arab bourgeoisie

in the region. They began in Tunisia (January) and spread like wildfire to Egypt, Libya and then Syria. They had echoes in Yemen and Bahrein but they ended up not being achieved. They were victory of democratic revolutions against dictatorial regimes that applied the plans of the multinationals and the IMF. It was what it became popularly known as the “Arab Spring”. The revolutionary mobilization of the masses overthrew the old dictatorships of the former bourgeois nationalist movements and leaders like Gaddafi, who in the course of time had become agents of imperialism.

They closed this cycle, but they also made it evident that political Islam, which had grown with the Iranian revolution, was no alternative. On the contrary, these bourgeois Islamic sectors did not support the start of the Arab revolution. The Muslim Brotherhood (MB), for example, in Egypt did not support it. They only adhered when they saw that their rank and file were going to Tahir Square and the fall of Mubarak was inevitable. The same happened with Tunisian Islamists. Iran never expressed support, and indeed, it opposed it because it feared that the revolution would reach its borders.

Hamas went as far as repressing the marches of the Palestinian people in support to the revolution of the Egyptian people.

This was a revolution that emerged from below, of the workers, youth and popular sectors. It had a high degree of spontaneity. It was against the regimes and all the old secular or religious bourgeois leaders.

For lack of a revolutionary socialist leadership they had no continuity towards a socialist revolution. These were unfinished revolutions. This absence also allowed bourgeois Islamic political leaderships (MB in Egypt and Ennahda in Tunisia) to take power by riding on the revolutions in order to freeze or divert them.

Nearly four years later, with all their inequalities, these processes are torn between the continuity of the revolution or a counterrevolution.

Middle East

The revolution in Tahir Square, Egypt, 2011

Again, as throughout the entire history of the Arab peoples and the Middle East, the big problem is the leadership. In this case the absence of a revolutionary socialist leadership to face and defeat the counter-revolution.

There is a counter-revolutionary counteroffensive underway. It was initiated by the dictatorship of Basher al-Assad with its attempt at mass

genocide. But after three years of civil war and massacres it has failed to end the Syrian revolution. Egypt joined with the military coup of 2013, which took advantage of the hatred of the masses against the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mursi, to install a repressive civilian-military government and ally of the USA and Israel.

The role of the former USRR Throughout this process the political line of bureaucracy of the Communist Party of the former USSR played a counterrevolutionary role. In 1948 it voted in favour of the creation of the state of Israel. Later its economic and military support to Nassserism as well as the regimes of Libya, Syria or Iraq was actually an endorsement of their bourgeois governments while these handcuffed the masses with their dictatorships. In this framework, the policy of Stalinism led the local Communist Parties to tailing the bourgeois, nationalist and religious leaderships.

In 1979, when the Ir anian revolution took place, the USSR government not only opposed but sought to counteract it invading Afghanistan to try to contain the Muslim rebellion that threatened to get into its southern republics.

This generated an Afghan resistance headed by an Islamic guerrilla, the

“mujahideen”, funded by the CIA. A mixture of religious fanatics and anticommunists. In 1989 they succeeded in driving out the Soviet army. From this process emerges the Taliban. Now the paradox is that this reactionary monstrosity, that sheltered Al Qaeda and which at the time was encouraged by the United States, ended up being the popular force fighting the “marines” invaders.

Current followers of the Soviet bureaucracy, the leaders of the Cuban CP and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV ), did not support the revolutions of 2011 and defended as “anti-imperialist” dictators like Gaddafi and Basher al-Assad.

Meanwhile, the head of the Russian capitalist regime, former member of the KGB, Vladimir Putin is economic and military support of the genocidal Basher al-Assad. §

Fearing the masses and new re v o l u t i o n s , t h e m o s t d i v e r s e protagonists have joined in this counteroffensive: Yankee Imperialism, the EU, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Egypt, with their diverse interests at stake. Russia, Iran and Venezuela support the Syrian dictatorship. Obama agrees with Iran and endorses the civilian-military government of el-Sisi in Egypt that represses its people and boycotts the Palestinian resistance. Iran endorses bombing in Iraq because it wants the rebellions to end and avoid getting a “spring” in its country. For the same reason, but apparently in the opposite side of the road, Saudi Arabia and Qatar with their Sunni monarchies let the Syrian opposition run, to whitewash their facade.

Despite this counter-offensive of imperialism and its allies and the blows they have produced, the revolutionary process has not yet been defeated. The peoples and workers continue fighting back. In Syria they are still fighting Bashar; in Egypt despite the military coup there have been new strikes and demonstrations and in Tunisia, which was the cradle of the revolution, the Tunisian labour movement remains intact and the most reactionary sectors have failed to generate either a coup like in Egypt or chaos as in Libya.

In Tunisia the Tunisian left and independent trade union sectors have a lot of weight. The UGTT remains a labour federation, with a reformist leadership in its majority but it remains a benchmark organization. In Egypt, there is April 6 Youth Movement, a leading actor of the fall of Mubarak, which does not support the dictatorship of General el-Sissi and it is persecuted for this reason; there are left Trotskyist sectors and independent unions. There is also the sector of heroic Syrian rebels who are not with the reactionary ISIS and fight against it. Alongside them there are thousands of fighters who are the basis to continue giving the strategic fight to achieve a revolutionary leadership that can channel the historical combativeness of the Arab peoples and the Middle East.§ 11

Middle East

Saudi Arabia and the oil monarchies Saudi Arabia has a population of over 29 million inhabitants. It is the biggest oil producer in the world; an ultrareactionary regime agent of the USA and partner of its multinationals. It is a monarchy with absolute powers which applies the Sharia, Islamic law, where, for example, women have restricted the right to work, cannot leave their homes alone, are not allowed to drive a vehicle and can only vote since 2011, and where all forms of political opposition are repressed.

Qatar is another absolute monarchy.

It was a tiny British protectorate until it agreed to its independence in 1971.

It has a population of around 2 million, but of these only 250,000 are Qatari; the majority of its inhabitants are foreigners who work and live there exploited on poverty wages. They are in large part construction workers who are building the stadiums for the 2022 World Cup. Qatar has the world’s third largest reserves of natural gas. Its sheikhs are such super millionaire oligarchy that they invest in building air-conditioned stadiums because temperatures reach 50°C. And they invest, for example,

millions of euros in Barcelona and Paris Saint Germain, among others football clubs.

The United Arab Emirates is composed of seven emirates: Dubai, Abu Dhabi, among them. It was a protectorate of the United Kingdom until 1971. It has 8,200,000 inhabitants. In addition to the luxury of hiring Maradona they also, for example, bought Manchester City, acquired in 2008 by Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the royal family of Abu Dhabi.

It is almost a certainty that both the sheiks of Saudi Arabia and the kingdom of Qatar would have facilitated financing ISIS. As now these very sheikhs integrate the “coalition” to fight ISIS, along with the USA, how can this apparent contradiction be explained?

It’s nothing new for these ultrareactionary monarchies, particularly Saudi Arabia, to use their monetary resources to finance various ideological groups to use for their purposes, which are to sustain their bourgeoisie family clans in power. But they have never changed the essence of being in the service of

imperialism and the counterrevolution.

The Saudis have funded at the time Arafat’s PLO. Are they, because of this, supporters of the Palestinians? No. In this way they sought to control its leadership, condition it and in turn, to get accolades with its people who hate Israel. In the 1980s they financed Iraq in the war against Iran which is the other rival oil bourgeoisie. And later they supported the Yankee invasion of Iraq. They financed, together with the CIA, the Afghan Islamic guerrillas in an anti-Communist crusade, in which took part Osama bin Laden, son of one of the wealthiest Saudi families. Now they do it with the Syrian rebels, especially with ISIS. By this means they put a counter-revolutionary wedge to divide and condition the rebels. The Saudis and Qatar invested in ISIS just for this purpose. §

Sunnis and Shiites The two main branches of Islam are the Sunnis and the Shiites. It is said that the schism arose after the death of Muhammad in 632, from disputes over the succession. Nowadays the Sunnis, who are considered the “orthodox” wing, constitute about 85 percent of Muslims.

It is estimated that they are nearly 1.5 billion worldwide.

There has always existed, as in other religions, a dispute of a religious nature, in this case concerning the interpretation of the Koran. Some attribute a religious origin to the current conflict as well as to previous wars or national confrontations.

Actually neither the current conflict in Iraq and Syria nor previous wars have had it. This is a political dispute for power between different bourgeois sectors of the Middle East to influence and control the oil, gas and natural resources to negotiate with imperialism and the multinationals in a better position. Imperialism has always used these rivalries and Israel, to 12

try to assert their dominance.

The Saudi monarchy has always appeared as the head of the Sunni bourgeoisie in the region. The Shiite Muslim community although it is a minority, has, since 1979, the weight of ruling Iran. A country with nearly 80 million people and huge reserves of hydrocarbons (fourth in oil reserves and first in gas at worldwide level).

Historically both regional oil powers confronted each other for the oil and its markets in the heat of the influence of imperialism. The clashes and disputes grew since the Iranian revolution. The Islamic Republic of Iran, dominated by the theocratic regime of the Shiite bourgeoisie emerged as a bourgeois regime with strong friction with US imperialism. It aspired to developed as a relatively independent bourgeoisie trying to impose its influence in other countries like Iraq or Lebanon. Saudi Arabia and its dictatorial regime feared

that a Shiite Islamic wave would cause a rebellion within its borders. So it allied itself to the Yankees in the 1980s to try to defeat the Iranian regime and financed, for example, Iraq when this launched a failed war against Iran. Or now, for this reason, it funded in part the ISIS in Syria to weaken Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Iran.

Although they have these disputes, now Iran and Saudi Arabia act to try to defeat the revolutionary wave of the “Arab Spring”. What neither the ayatollahs nor the sheikhs want is a “spring”, a popular rebellion within its borders leading to question their power.§

Palestine

The genocidal state of Israel could not crush the Palestinian resistance

Israel gets bogged down in Gaza Layla Nassar. Lucha Internacionalista.

The latest Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip left, after 51 days of bombing, over 2,100 Palestinians killed (more than 500 of them were children) to which every day are added some of the 10,300 wounded. The strip has been razed: 30,000 homes partially destroyed, hospitals, mosques, schools, factories and workshops reduced to rubble. But even when using the enormous depth of its war machine, the Zionist state failed to crush the Palestinian resistance. After launching on this small coastal territory, which is just over half the area of the city of Madrid, 20,000 tons of explosives, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu did not achieve any of the political and military objectives it had declared.

The offensive (the latest episode of Zionist barbarism in Gaza, after the attacks of 2006, 2008-2009 and 20012) erupted on 13 June after the bodies of three teenage settlers kidnapped in the West Bank were found, an action the Israeli government attributed to Hamas, although the Islamic resistance movement denies it. The Israeli army admitted that it knew that the three youth were dead since the first day but for weeks used the case as a pretext for a police operation on a large scale that arrested thousands of Palestinians, including Hamas leaders in the West Bank, and the President of Parliament. In East Jerusalem alone there were 770 arrests, the worst crackdown since the Second Intifada. The Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas — who in May had agreed to a unity government

with Hamas — put itself at the service of Israel and repressed the protests.

Netanhyau used the murder of the youth as pretext for the attack on Gaza.

The aim was to neutralize the armed resistance. But instead of succumbing to the military force and provoke with the deliberate killing of civilians a popular reaction against the fighters, the ground invasion resulted in 64 Israeli soldiers dead. The troops withdrew and continued the systematic and indiscriminate bombing of the 1.8 million Palestinians crammed into Gaza.

Netanyahu found that to eliminate the resistance supposed an unaffordable cost for Israelis: there were no major protests in Tel Aviv, but there was fear of Palestinian rockets and distrust in an army that no longer seemed almighty.

13

Palestine As Amir Oren, editorialist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, summarized: “Netanyahu and his colleagues put Israel in a conflict between the strongest army in the region and an organization of 10,000 fighters which is not just a defeat, it’s a wreck.”

Israel’s international image has taken another blow, with mass demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine worldwide, and the symbolic manifesto of 327 Holocaust survivors and their children against the Zionist attack. It also came to grief the image of omnipotent military power.

Besides distrusting the ability of its army, Zionism was unable to avoid

the criticisms within its bosom: 43 reservists and veterans of Unit 8200, one of the most important in espionage work, reported in an open letter that they had been ordered to collect personal data of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to use as blackmail and in the recruitment of collaborators.

The soldiers also denounced the settlements and the West Bank wall and the collective punishment to the population of Gaza and they refused to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories. The government’s reaction was furious.

The overwhelming Israeli military superiority, with all its technological development — which has again used

The Gaza Strip, only 40 km long and having 1.8 million inhabitants, is the largest open jail in the world.

The Oslo Accords and the Palestinian Authority

The failure of the reactionary utopia of the “two states”

In 1993 Yasser Arafat, head of the Organization for the Liberation of Palestine (PLO) signed the Oslo Accords with Israeli Prime Minister Y itzhak Rabin. The Palestinian leadership abandoned the armed struggle and recognized the state of Israel, abandoning the historical position of the struggle for a secular, democratic and non-racist state in its entire historical Palestinian territory. In exchange, Israel promised to create a Palestinian state within five years, next to Israel. Even then we denounced that peace with Israel was not possible and that Oslo was just a trap to divide and isolate the Palestinian people.

And where are we 21 years later?

Israel has deepened the occupation of the West Bank, with more than 400,000 settlers, whose political weight in institutions is also increasing and the construction of the wall, which annexes 20 percent of the territory to Israel. In addition, it has taken basic resources such as water and subjects Palestinian to all kinds of military checkpoints, restrictions on movement curfews and repression. There are over 5,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails (data of the operations for this 14

summer are not yet available). Gaza is under a criminal blockade and totally isolated from the West Bank, and Israel only withdrew settlers from there to bombard it every three years as it does now.

The five million Palestinian refugees cannot return. Only one of the points of the accord has been fulfilled: the creation of a Palestinian police under an “authority”, financed by the United States and the EU with Israeli advice, to impose internal repression. The Palestinian police have never faced the Israeli security forces: they only repress and imprison Palestinians protesting the effects of the occupation. The Palestinian Authorit y is an undemocratic, patronage and corrupt apparatus which also creates enormous confusion, because it gives the appearance of a conflict between two states, when what is at issue is the struggle of a people against an occupying state. And, with this “authority”, Israel gets rid of all obligations it should assume for the maintenance of the occupied.

Peace with Israel is not possible: it is a reactionary utopia. Because you cannot live with a racist and

expansionist state by its own definition, which is based only on the basis of unity against an internal enemy and where the military machine is the basis of the economy and institutions.

Israel needs the “war” to survive, and without it doesn’t make any sense.

This war machine will never accept or establish its own borders and recognize a Palestinian state beside it.

The only solution is the one proposed by the Palestinian resistance since its foundation: a Palestinian state in its entire historical territory, where, in a democratic framework, the children of the diaspora be able to return and Jews and other minorities who wish to be part of this project be respected.

It is very difficult because Israel is a strategic project of imperialism in a key region of the planet, but trying to live in “peace” at its side is a reactionary utopia. The peoples of the world must contribute to this struggle supporting the Palestinian resistance, demanding of their governments the rupture of relations and supporting all forms of boycott to Israel. § L.N.

Palestine

Despite all the hits received, the people of Gaza went out to celebrate the Israeli withdrawal

Gaza as a testing ground — did not lead them to victory in this unequal war. As with all anti-colonial struggles, the occupied have less to lose than the occupants and their resistance is greater.

The people of Gaza were willing to pay a high price to put an end the blockade asphyxiating them for seven years. Unlike the Israeli offensive of 2009, there were large demonstrations in the West Bank to denounce the aggression.

Netanyahu ended up signing a permanent cease-fire on 26 August, without consulting its partners in the far-right government, who denounced the agreement. Israel committed to open the border crossings and allow in reconstruction materials, to extend the approved fishing zone and to lift the barrier in which Gaza farmers are forbidden to enter. After a month of the ceasefire the demilitarization of Gaza, demanded by Israel, and the construction of the seaport and the airport, asked by the Palestinian delegation will be discussed. But despite the fact that Hamas wanted to sell the deal as a great victory, there are also dark clouds for the Palestinians.

The Rafah crossing, on the border with Egypt, is in the hands of the Palestinian Authority, i.e. under control of the most reliable allies of Israel: the Egypt of Marshal el-Sisi and Abu Mazen. In addition, Israel has violated almost all agreements, from the Oslo Accords to those of 2012 after the last offensive in Gaza, when they also pledged to partially relieve the blockade.

As we are told by trade unionists comrades of Gaza, the workers situation is desperate: there are no real signs of the opening of Rafah and the destruction of the miserable manufacturing sector has doubled unemployment, which already exceeded 40 percent before the offensive.

It only took a few days for Netanyahu to remember his longterm goal is not to reconquer Gaza, “disconnected” by Ariel Sharon in 2005, but rather to keep Gazans in the biggest prison in the world and to continue the colonization of the West Bank in order to enclose the Palestinians in Bantustans in the image of the South Africa of apartheid.

In early September he announced the annexation of 400 hectares in the West Bank to build new settlements, sparking a new wave of protests.

The agreement gives wings to Hamas, in a low due to its isolation after the coup in Egypt which overthrew the government of the Muslim Brotherhood. As The Washington Post reported in July, quoting sources in the White House, el-Sisi agreed with Israel to liquidate Hamas (as he did with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt) in exchange for the support of Netanyahu for Obama to keep intact military aid to Egypt following the coup. Now some of his ministers openly call to bomb Gaza to wipe out Hamas; and Egypt openly said it would negotiate on behalf of Israel with the Palestinian delegation. Unlike the last offensive of 2012 — when the government of the Muslim Brotherhood was

forced by popular pressure to send the prime minister to Gaza in full Israeli attack — now the Egypt of the counter-revolution, with hundreds of revolutionary activists in its jails, collaborates in the strangulation of the Palestinian people.

Until the beginning of the last Zionist aggression Hamas was also facing the discomfort of the Palestinian people for their management of the government in Gaza. So it accepted the government of Palestinian unity. The unity was hailed as a breakthrough by the Palestinian masses, but it was soon found that it did nothing to break the collaborationist line of the Palestinian Authority, but rather to bolster in power the political corpse of Abbas, who appears before his people as the head of a repressive apparatus in the service of Israel. As the activist against the Israeli occupation Sergio Yahni noted, “The only authority that keeps the Palestinian president is having been part of the mediators in Cairo.

It is not expected that the Palestinians population be willing to redeem what was achieved with such great sacrifice on the battlefield for a mess of pottage”.

The question now is what Hamas will do with its victory: strengthening resistance or joining the criminal order of Oslo. And whether Abbas will want to counteract it increasing his submission to Israel and the United States: for now he has already refused to sign the Rome Statute to denounce Israeli crimes before the International Criminal Court. Authentic unity and the only one that may be useful to the Palestinian people is another: the unity of the mobilizations in Gaza and the West Bank against Israeli genocide.

For the full and unconditional end to the Gaza blockade.

In defence of the right of resistance of the Palestinian people.

There is no possible peace with Israel: the policy of two states is a farce.

For a single, secular and nonracist Palestine in all its historical territory. § 15

Palestine

Fayez Elemare, Union of Independent Workers Committees (UIWC) of Gaza

“The war has stopped, but the blockade continues” Fayez Elemare is leader of the UIWC, union born in the heat of the second Intifada that demands class independence with respect to Hamas and al-Fatah. He has suffered with his wife and nine children the bombings in Gaza.

During the offensive he had to leave his home in northern Gaza due to the Israeli ground invasion.

On 20 September he spoke by telephone from Gaza in a rally held by Lucha Internationalista in Barcelona. We transcribe the conversation.

What is the situation of the workers in Gaza after the Israeli offensive?

There are over 2000 dead and thousands wounded. More than 15,000 homes were destroyed, and the few factories and workshops in Gaza have been razed. They have also bombed the fishermen’s boats.

The Israeli attacks were aimed at the civilian population and the precarious economy. It’s a scorched earth policy.

Now people do not know what to do or where to go. It is as if, after the war, we were all in a state of shock. For many, life has no meaning, because they have lost everything. We must start from zero again. But we know that we have you on our side and this gives us strength.

Is the ceasefire agreement being fulfilled?

No. T h e b o rd e r s h a ve n o t been opened nor are materials for reconstruction entering. Neither is the agreement to extend the fishing zone to six miles respected: six fishermen have 16

already been killed by shots fired by the Israeli navy. Gaza is worse than ever.

When we were bombarded there were demonstrations around the world, for which we are eternally grateful.

But now there is silence on Gaza and Israel is not obliged to fulfil what they promised. The war has stopped, but the blockade continues, and it is much worse than before. We can no longer continue thus. People have absolutely nothing!

Has Hamas been strengthened?

The majority of workers aim towards the resistance because that’s all they can do. It is the only way to have some support. In addition, Hamas democratically won the elections in 2006. We may have many ideological differences with them, but we denounced that this result was not respected. Now success belongs not to Hamas but to the resistance: people were surprised they had so much capacity to confront the Israeli offensive.

What has this offensive meant for Israel?

Israel has never been strong: it is nothing without the United States. If it were so strong it would not have to assassinate civilians. It is an occupying state and no occupation lasts forever.

The Gaza offensive has been for them a failure.

Will the reconstruction begin now?

We must reconstruct all this disaster, but what is happening in Palestine is not a question of humanitarian aid.

The problem is the occupation of a people. The Zionist state has not

Fayez Elemare

allowed the Palestinians to breathe for over 60 years. Now we need all the help of the world, but the question is the end of the occupation. The Palestinians will continue to fight to regain our freedom and our land.

What do you think about the role of general el-Sisi in Egypt?

We do not want to concern ourselves with what happens in other countries but we cannot accept that Egypt seek to bring the Palestinian resistance under its control. The Palestinians, we will continue to fight against the occupation.

How can we support the Palestinian struggle today?

All help is welcome. Also it would be good that you come to Gaza and to organize Gaza workers visits to your countries so they can tell what is happening. §

Palestine

The civilian population was the main target of Israel’s bombardments

It all started on a Friday 13 Sergio Yahni If the ceasefire agreed in Cairo between Israel and the Palestinian resistance is successful, this latest confrontation has come to an end without the State of Israel having managed to impose any of its stated political and military objectives during these 74 days.

On Friday 13 June, in the morning, the Israeli army went out to eradicate what is known in Israel as a terrorist threat. The night before, three Jewish teenagers had been kidnapped north of the city of Hebron. The police, the secret services and the prime minister accused Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, of being behind the kidnappings.

Actually, the youths had been killed immediately after kidnapping, and both the Israeli security services and the

Prime Minister were aware of this. But the kidnapping and murder was used as an excuse for a police and military operation intended to end Hamas.

The security services, the police and the army had orders to strike a political formation that had already recognized its defeat.

It had been just over two weeks since Hamas handed over the reins of the future of the Palestinian people into the hands of President Abbas, in the Palestinian unity pact. The military coup in Egypt and the defeat of the Muslim Brotherhood had reached the point of accepting the political and military supremacy of the Palestinian president. This demand was the only point in contention between the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas leadership since 2008. In exchange,

Hamas hoped its luck would improve in the next election. Of course they were quite optimistic given the way the political conditions in the region are developing.

In the following days, the Israeli army arrested some 530 Palestinians, including all Hamas leaders in the West Bank. Among those arrested were the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council and several deputies. Five Palestinians were killed during the military operation.

The Israeli offensive on Friday 13 June, 2014 radically changed the course of this process, transforming Hamas in the undisputed leadership of the Palestinian national resistance, and relegating Fatah and its leadership to be mere observers or assistants after 17

Palestine the expansion of the offensive on the Gaza Strip.

In Israel, the offensive had the full approval of the population and no political force represented in Parliament dared to hold the government accountable. Moreover, Prime Minister Netanyahu is the first Israeli leader who has carried out a military operation in the last 32 years without having to deal with mass demonstrations.

For its part, not only was Hamas in the worst possible political context, but its isolation was so hard it could not even count on the humanitarian sympathy of the past: the only humanitarian alternative proposed by both Europe and the Arab League was surrender.

For the first time since the days of fighting in the Warsaw ghetto, the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip, a guerrilla army, managed to face a regular army without rear-guard. But, contradicting all logic, the resistance did not succumb, on the contrary, after more than a month of fighting on the ground the Israeli land army was forced to withdraw from the Gaza Strip without having achieved any of its objectives. Weeks later, after the intensification of the bombings, Israel is forced to accept a ceasefire that is suited to the demands of Hamas.

According to the Israeli press, the Army estimates that to defeat the resistance would require a price that Israeli society is not willing to pay. A scenario of this type would involve the

sacrifice of hundreds of soldiers and a large number of Israeli soldiers falling into the hands of the resistance alive or dead. Moreover, to “clean” the Gaza Strip of its forces of resistance after its occupation would take at least five years.

Without giving rise to a proper debate in Cabinet, the Prime Minister avoided taking the Cairo agreements to a vote and it was only reported to ministers what Netanyahu decided. The Prime Minister’s team argues that the debate and vote in Cabinet were not legally necessary.

The agreement formulated by Egypt proposes that after a month of ceasefire the parties will discuss the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, as demanded by Israel, and the construction of an airport and a seaport, as demanded by the Palestinians.

Israel agreed to open the crossings and allow entry of the supplies needed for reconstruction, to extend the fishing zone from three to 12 nautical miles, and to remove the strip on the border with Israel, where Palestinians peasants are forbidden to enter.

Additionally, the restrictions on money transfers to Gaza have been cancelled, so that the salaries of the employees of the previous government, led by Hamas, can be paid.

Tony Blair, envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East and one of the signatories in the negotiations in Cairo, has stated that now is the time to

Netanyahu could not manage to impose any of his objectives 18

Sergio Yahni was born in Posadas, Misiones, Argentina. He has been living in Israel since he was a child.

His parents, members of the PST, went into exile in Israel during the military dictatorship. He is director of the Alternative Information Centre (AIC), a joint Palestinian-Israeli press organization. Sergio is active in Tarabut, an Arab-Israeli left front.

He became well known since as a soldier he refused to fight against the Palestinian people. As a result he was in jail several times.

focus on the long-term reconstruction of Gaza under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

“This plan would enable a better life for the civilian population in Gaza and the safety of the citizens of Israel”, said the former British Prime Minister, not realizing that the balance of power in Palestinian politics has changed. Very little matters the “security of Israel” to the Palestinian population and the only authority that keeps the Palestinian president is having been part of the mediators in Cairo. It is not expected that the Palestinians be willing to redeem what was achieved with sacrifice on the battlefield for a mess of pottage.

The Israeli military strategy assumes that the military pressure on the civilian population will lead to this demanding the guerrillas to surrender their weapons. Therefore, the civilian population was the main objective of the Israeli bombardments leading the army of Israel to failure. Similarly, intermediaries who do not understand that the Palestinian people decided to march for freedom, sovereignty and independence will fail.

From the journal Viento Sur, 28 August 2014.

Europe

In Scotland the mobilization has shown the national question remains alive

The national question in Europe Josep Lluis de Alcazar — Lucha Internacionalista The ongoing economic crisis acts as a powerful polarizer of the class struggle. Democratic issues unresolved by the bourgeoisie in its ascendant phase, now reappear with renewed energy. The national question in Europe is at the root of many of the internal tensions of the current states and is an essential component of the class struggle. It is necessary to return to the historical Marxist analysis to identify the differences between phenomena which may be similar but are qualitatively different, such as the remnants of colonial enclaves, the phenomena of segregation and the unresolved national issues

involving oppression, because revolutionary politics changes.

In Europe colonial enclaves as British Gibraltar in the Spanish state, or Spain’s enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa remain. The national problem is not that of the inhabitants of the enclaves but of the nation that had a part of its territory usurped.

The supposed right of selfdetermination of communities living in a colonial enclave reproduces the interests of the colonizing state; or does anyone think it is a coincidence that in all cases the majority of the inhabitants of these enclaves defend belonging to their colonizing country?

It is the very process of forming an enclave that determines our position: they are strategic military occupations accompanied by mass relocation of settlers from the metropolis, around and under the custody of the occupation army, which in some cases even displace the indigenous population. And, just as we pose for the return of the Malvinas to Argentina, we demand for Ceuta and Melilla their return to Morocco, and the return of British Gibraltar to the Spanish State.

It is also the policy towards the north of Ireland. Ireland was a British colony and after the struggle for independence Great Britain kept the northern part of the island. The struggle 19

Europe for the reunification of Ireland excludes the right of self-determination in “Northern Ireland” (one of the centres of the Good Friday Agreement), because with it we are recognizing the legality of colonization. The British policy in order to maintain the occupation was to move settlers (most of them poor people from Scotland and northern England) who were given Irish lands.

It is enough to see the symbolism of the Unionists and the Orange Order recalling in their marches every year the defeat of the Irish King James II in 1690. We demand British withdrawal and Irish reunification.

Something similar happens in Crimea. Russian control of the peninsula was formed around the base of Sevastopol, a base created in 1783, which today houses the Black Sea Fleet with ships, submarines and aircraft.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union the fleet was largely in the hands of Russia, which paid rent to Ukraine.

We are against the Russian annexation of Crimea.

The oppressed nations: Scotland, Catalunya ...

Another issue are the oppressed nations as Euskadi (Basque Country), Catalonia, Scotland, Kurdistan... These are nations which were subjected in states controlled by another nation. It is not the case of Padania claimed by the Lega Nord per l’Nazionale della Padania [North League for the Independence of Padania] of Umberto Bossi, a bourgeois reactionary movement that invents a national problem to deepen the differences with the more impoverished south. It would be similar to the Bolivian Media Luna [Crescent] movement against the indigenous majority of the population. Against this policy of division and confrontation, the denunciation must be permanent.

For the oppressed nations, our starting point is the one that Lenin defined: “The proletariat cannot evade the question that is particularly ‘unpleasant’ for the imperialist bourgeoisie, namely, the question of the frontiers of a state that is based on 20

national oppression. The proletariat cannot but fight against the forcible retention of the oppressed nations within the boundaries of a given state, and this is exactly what the struggle for the right of self-determination means.

The proletariat must demand the right of political secession for the colonies and for the nations that ‘its own’ nation oppresses. Unless it does this, proletarian internationalism will remain a meaningless phrase; mutual confidence and class solidarity between the workers of the oppressing and oppressed nations will be impossible; the hypocrisy of the reformist and Kautskyan advocates of self-determination who maintain silence about the nations which are oppressed by ‘their’ nation and forcibly retained within ‘their’ state will remain unexposed” (V.I. Lenin: “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination”, January-February 1916, Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 22, Moscow, Progress Publishers, p. 143156).

The leadership of nationalist movements, whether petty bourgeois or bourgeois, try to reconcile their class interests with the democratic demands of the people, but when the situation is tense they are bourgeois before being nationalists, not taking the fight for the national self-determination right to the end.

But we do not define our position according to one or another leadership, but in relation to the needs of the working class and other popular sectors.

It is necessary to put the struggle of oppressed nation under the leadership of the proletariat, independently of the nationalist bourgeoisie, and promote a consistent struggle that combines the right to self-determination and the satisfaction of the needs of the popular classes (work, health, education, housing...). We reject the abstract appeals for workers unity against the right of peoples to selfdetermination, because they respond to the interests of the state. Lenin wrote: “In the internationalist education of the workers of the oppressor countries, emphasis must necessarily he laid

on their advocating freedom for the oppressed countries to secede and their fighting for it. Without this there can be no internationalism. It is our right and duty to treat every SocialDemocrat of an oppressor nation who fails to conduct such propaganda as a scoundrel and an imperialist” (V.I. Lenin: “The Discussion On SelfDetermination Summed Up”, July 1916, Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 22, Moscow, Progress Publishers, p. 320360).

The revival of the struggle for national rights In the former Soviet Union Stalinism raised again a prison of peoples. The Bolsheviks had been respectful of the right of national self-determination.

The bureaucracy not only meant that the bureaucratic caste rose above and oppressed the working class but also a new / old Pan-Russian centralism was reimposed to the rest of the nations that made up the union of socialist republics. Later, these same methods of national oppression were to extend into Eastern Europe.

A revival of the struggle for national rights came with the end of the Stalinist regime, which led to the outbreak of tensions accumulated and fuelled by the bureaucracy over decades. From the Baltic republics to the Caucasus, facing the Pan-Russian oppression and exploding into war and massacres such as Chechnya, the conflict with Georgia, and now Ukraine. In the former Yugoslavia, in Eastern Europe, the outbursts against Serbian oppression were repeated: the war in Bosnia was the bloodiest example, with methods of ethnic cleansing by the Serbs, who came to perpetrate genocides like Srebrenica.

With the economic crisis the national question becomes important in the west, within the European Union. The economic policy of austerity that unloads the crisis on the popular sectors, accompanied by a recentralization of States to plunder the resources to service debt payments while the regimes are increasingly taking Bonapartist traits. Cut backs

Europe and repression are the components instigating the resurgence of national problems. A few years ago it would have been unthinkable the Scottish referendum and its outcome: the movement for Yes — even though it was headed by Salmond, a bourgeois sector — found an echo in popular sectors

that linked the national independence claim with the rejection of London’s social cuts policies. Also a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable the leap in the Catalonian demonstrations for independence.

In all these cases we have been defending the right of self-determination

of nations, while at the same time we fight for the actual unity of the class in both the oppressed and the oppressor nations, convinced, as Marx said, that “a people that oppresses another cannot be free” and that the federations to which we aspire will only be socialist if they are of free peoples. §

The Spanish monarchy and the Catalonian referendum Josep Lluis del Alcazar Four demonstrations in three years, with over one million people each for a total population of seven million, express the decision of the Catalan people to break with the monarchical state. The Catalan bourgeoisie that controls the Catalan government is pushed by the force of this movement towards a confrontation with the monarchical state, which denies the right of Catalunya to decide its future. The outcome of this confrontation is the fate of the monarchy. The keys to this outcome are in the arrival on scene of the Catalan working class and the reaction which may occur between workers and other peoples of the rest of the state against the regime.

Upon the death of the dictator in 1975, the mass movement was in full swing, especially the working class, and that situation pushed towards the break with the hated regime. But the Spanish Communist Party (SCP) and the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (Spanish: Partido Socialista Obrero Español – PSOE) betrayed the desire for freedom of workers and peoples, and agreed on a reform of the regime accepting the monarchy of Juan Carlos I, whom Franco had appointed as his successor. Pending democratic issues as the separation of church and

state, the issue of land reform against large landowners, justice against the crimes of Francoism, the right to self-determination, the Monarchy or Republic debate, were silenced. The Basque and Catalan bourgeoisies also participated in the covenant.

The national question was one of the cornerstones of the Constitution. The unity of the homeland was consecrated and the right to self-determination prevented. Establishing a “one size fits all” which culminated in a multitude of autonomous communities, amongst which nations were dilute. The PSOE defended until 1977 the right of selfdetermination, as well as the Republic, and both were dropped at the same time when it became monarchical. In 1982, under the PSOE government of Felipe González, the regime stabilized.

Without the leaderships of the SCP and PSOE, the General Workers Union (UGT) and Workers Commissions (CCOO), the regime would not have stabilized. They were essential to roll back workers’ struggle (the Moncloa Pacts), and also to isolate the resistance of the peoples (especially the Basque) In this division we workers and peoples lost, and a regime that was based on centralism and the support of big business settled. However, it remained open the conflict in Euskal Herria (Basque Country) with the struggle

of the Basque left which mobilized en masse, rejecting the Constitution and monarchical institutions.

Throughout the second government of the Popular Party (PP) of Aznar (2000-2004), he advanced a decisive process of political and economic recentralization of the state, to empty of content the autonomous power.

This brought to an extreme the tension with the Basque bourgeoisie (Ibarretxe Plan), including the threat of the central government to suspend the autonomy and process the Basque president.

The PP lost the elections of 2004 and the PSOE tried to mediate between the state and the peripheral bourgeoisies launching a reform of the autonomies. The litmus test was the Catalan autonomic reform so it could then address the Basque reform, while it gained time to put an end to ETA. After multiple cuts, the Statute of Autonomy was finally approved by the Catalan regional parliament, by the Congress of Deputies and ratified by referendum. But the Constitutional Court scandalously took four years to resolve, did so by declaring unconstitutional good part of the text.

The mobilization overwhelms the Catalan government The reaction to the Constitutional Court ruling was swift with the 21

Europe

September 11. Resounding march for the independence of Catalonia

demonstration on 10 July, 2010 of a million people in Barcelona, to the cry of “we are a nation, we decide”. They no longer shout for more autonomy, but for independence.

The PP won the elections of 2011, the Rajoy government — now with the arguments of the crisis — resumes the recentralization plan of Aznar. The policy of extreme austerity generates more arguments to break the state, although the Catalan government also implements cuts. The Catalan bourgeoisie calls in July 2012 for a Fiscal Pact to shield contingencies. But before Rajoy may answer with a no, a new mobilization (September 2012) with another long million protesters, demand no longer a fiscal Covenant but Catalunya a new state in Europe. The government of the Catalan bourgeoisie was trapped between Madrid’s refusal and the mass movement, and had no choice but to ride the movement.

Nevertheless, this does not prevent it from losing voting intentions towards pro-independence options.

It is in this process that a new mass demonstration in September 2013, the so-called Catalan Way, pushes the Catalan government to call a referendum to decide their future on 9 November 2014. A new element enters the scene in May 2014 with the European elections: the crisis in the political pillars of the regime (bipartisanship), the loss of five million votes between the PP and the PSOE and that together they do 22

not even reach 50 percent of the vote.

It precipitates a crisis of the regime, which appears corroded by corruption scandals and under minimum popular acceptance. Rapidly Juan Carlos I abdicates and cedes the throne to his son Philip VI. Spontaneously the largest demonstrations of the transition against the monarchy take place throughout the state, even though they do not have continuity and with the PP and PSOE agreement the succession closes immediately.

The movement continued in Catalunya, the demonstration of September 2014 surpasses in massivity the preceding ones and closes with a challenge to the Catalan Government: “We have not come this far to turn back and cower”; “Mr. President, put the polls”. The Catalan government convened the consultation for 9 November. The central government, with the support of the PSOE, resorts to the Constitutional Court. This prohibits it. On the basis of this scenario the crisis in Catalunya is served with early elections, but it is most likely that an independence party will win them and worsen the tension. What will happen then?

But there will be no right of selfdetermination without the Catalan working class massively taking up this demand. An important part of the Catalan working class comes from the rest of the Spanish state and does not have Catalan as their mother tongue.

They see this process from a distance; they do not feel for independence and less when the Catalan bourgeoisie waves the consultation with one hand with the other hand applies austerity, with cuts in public services. Neither are they fooled by attempts to mobilize against the independence orchestrated by the PP with sectors of the Catalan PSOE (which is split), who were a complete failure. Revolutionary politics should particularly address the working class, because it is necessary to weld an alliance with the Catalan popular classes, taking the defence of the right of self-determination, but marching independent of the Catalan bourgeoisie, and giving no respite to the workers’ struggle for jobs, in defence of wages, health care and public education.

It is essential that the right to self-determination be not seen from the other peoples of the state and from workers as a problem of the Catalans, but of all against the common enemy which is the Monarchy. We must demand from all the left in the state which claims to defend the consultation, to actively organize solidarity. At stake is the possibility of ending the monarchy bequeathed to us by Franco and establishing a new framework for relations between the peoples of the Spanish state.

The unity that workers need cannot be based on impositions. We are internationalists, we do not make the constitution of a state in Catalunya a goal in itself, but the defence of the right of self-determination leads to breaking with the monarchy. We defend a Catalan Republic and a close and supportive relationship of workers and peoples, in equal footing, towards a federation of republics. We want a Catalan Republic that provides decent work, housing, public services. So we have to take action against capitalism and the EU: starting by not paying the public debt, nationalizing the banks and putting these resources to work in an emergency plan against unemployment. That is, that advances towards socialism. §

Europe

Scotland

The NO won, but…

Miguel Lamas The headlines speak of the big “sigh of relief” in the City of London.

The NO to independence vote in Scotland won with 54 percent to 46 percent of the YES vote. But something is breaking in Great Britain and also in Europe.

Paradoxically, despite the triumph of No, the British conservative government of David Cameron is in crisis. The very fact the referendum was held is a spectacular demonstration of the crisis of the British Empire. And it also shows the crisis of the European Union and of capitalist Europe in general, where there are many claims to independence linked to the struggle against the capitalist adjustment. The most immediate example is Catalonia.

Given the scare about the possible triumph of Yes, Cameron went to Scotland and promised, in essence, that he was not going to implement the unpopular adjustment that punishes the rest of the UK. Certainly he did not say those words. But all the same everyone understood. To achieve the NO, Cameron went to Scotland with the support for an increased public spending level above what the other territories are allowed (the Labour Party also committed to the same thing). But this promise is repudiated by much of the Conservative Party. Minister Claire Perry, one of the leaders of the discontented conservatives denounced as unfair that other regions should pay the Prime Minister’s “goodie bag” (Reported by Marcelo Cantelmi, Clarin, 20 September 2014).

What does this “increase in public spending” mean for the Scottish people?

For example, keeping free medicine and university education. In Scotland, as a result of the struggle of the students,

“university fees” (of up to £750 or of energy, including the oil from the US1200 per month) that rule in the North Sea. The pro-independence rest of Britain are not applied and program of the SNP was fully limited, which is making it almost impossible contemplated staying in NATO and for the children of the working class maintaining sterling as currency and to access university. That is one of the the British Queen as Head of State for causes measured by the newspaper The Scotland.

Guardian when it determined that Independence on a capitalist about 60 percent of those under the age foundation and in addition within the of 34 in Scotland are in favour of the framework of NATO and the monarchy break (M. Cantelmi, Clarín). The YES obviously cannot be the actual solution to independence won in Glasgow with to prevent the capitalist adjustment 53 percent and in another three of the against the Scottish people.

32 electoral districts: Dundee, North Furthermore the result of the Lanarkshire and West Dunbartonshire, referendum does not settle the conflict and in Inverclyde the percentage by any means. The Conservative difference was only 0.16 for the “NO”. government or its possible Labour These five regions have a large workers successor in London will break its population. promises to the Scots and try to return to While the Labour Party supported the fray with the unpopular adjustment t h e N O , t h e re w a s a R a d i c a l and everything will be proposed again.

Independence Campaign, conducted The workers and the left in Scotland by unionists, social activists and leftist have a great battle ahead, to defend parties, including the Scottish Socialist their rights, free education and health, Party (SSP), the Communist Party decent work, housing and for that of Scotland (CPS) and the Scottish to break with the imperialist British Republican Socialist Movement monarchy; for a fundamental change, (SRSM), proposing a break with the for the expropriation of bankers and monarchy and NATO, as well as the the oil companies, retaking the socialist nationalization of oil in the North Sea. traditions of Scotland, joining in this The Scottish government and its fight to the English, Welsh, and Irish party, the Scottish National Party workers. § (SNP), supported the YES, expressing the national median and petty bourgeoisie of Scotland (while the bankers, multinationals and oil companies were for NO). Scotland is one of the richest regions of Britain and produces, for The conflict is still alive example 90 percent 23

Europe

Leon Trotsky and the debate on national independence Mercedes Petit In the ranks of revolutionary Marxism there have been numerous discussions on both the support of the right to national selfdetermination and directly to the fight for independence. Lenin is a reference on the subject (see p. 20). Trotsky also positioned himself numerous times, not only for the right to self-determination but directly to the independence of oppressed nationalities, even when they were led by the bourgeoisie, arguing against sectarian positions.

These antecedents help to give context to the Scottish referendum on 18 September.

Both the IWL and the PTS did not give any type of support for the Scottish YES In the referendum on Scottish independence there were different p o s i t i o n s a m o n g s t Tr o t s k y i s t organizations. The position of the International Workers League (IWL, also known by its Spanish initials as LIT) was expressed in an article by Margaret McAdam of the International Socialist League of England (www.litci. org/en/index.php?option=com_conte nt&view=article&id=2548:independ ence-referendum-the-scottish-peoplewill-decide&catid=32:britain&Item id=67). As for cover, or to confuse the reader, positioning begins by saying that “The ISL and the International Workers League defend unconditionally the right to self-determination for all 24

oppressed peoples, and that means their right to independence if such is the will of the majority of the people”.

Suppose that a Scottish worker reads up there and asked them: “then, do you think well of my decision to vote YES?” The article responds: “We are against the creation of pseudo independence [...], the secession posed for Scotland represents a step backward [...] The left are substituting support for a nationalist struggle for the united struggle of the working class against austerity, and imperialism and shows are [sic] far they have travelled from a perspective of revolutionary class struggle [...]

Together with the demand for the right to self-determination, we defend the Free Union of Socialist British States as an aim to be achieved in the struggle for the world socialist revolution.”

It would be unfair to say that they are supporting the NO vote, but the above is clearly a call to not vote for YES. If the Scottish worker, maybe a

little confused, looks for some other answer in the IWL, he may find Felipe Alegria of Corriente Roja [Red Current] (IWL, Spain). Alegria will tell him not to underestimate “the negative effects it can have on the unity of the British working class” a triumph of YES. With the triumph of the NO vote, it is clearer rejection of the IWL to the right to independence of the Scots.

Before the referendum, in that opening sentence for cover, they said they defended it “if such is the will of the majority of the people”. Now they must tell workers and pro-independence popular sectors to lower their standards for another 300 years, because they do not have the “will of the majority”, but of only 46 percent!

The Party of Socialist Workers (PTS) of Argentina agrees with the IWL in the position anti YES. In an article by Alejandra Rios (www. ft-ci.org/18-de-septiembre-la-pruebadecisiva-8389?lang=es, 16 September, 2014), after harshly criticizing the NO campaign, she also does so with the YES campaign. Although she makes several correct observations, her focus is to define “the limits of the pro-independence movement”.

The article acknowledges that “the YES campaign is an expression of dissatisfaction of broad sectors”, but it concludes with the rejection of the YES, as “the victory of YES will imply for the Scottish workers the continuity of a neoliberal agenda and attacks, but from Edinburgh instead of London”.

Europe It would be nothing more than Marxist dogmatism to pretend that you cannot disagree with Trotsky, or to even say the opposite. But we demand, if they do, that it be made explicit and substantiated it. Regarding the referendum in Scotland, we believe very valid Trotsky’s teachings regarding the defence of the independence of Catalonia. The anti-YES positions of the IWL and the Argentinian PTS fall into generalities of abstract propaganda and sectarianism.

Why to vote YES?

Demonstrations for independence are growing in Barcelona

We should reject the YES because it would be “a commitment to the Scottish National Party (SNP) and it does not represent a class solution to the problems affecting the Scottish workers.

The aspirations of the Scottish workers and the oppressed class are not under a Scotland which remains controlled by monopolies and subordinate to the monarchy, the interests of the ruling class and big finance. If a capitalist Great Britain is not an actual solution, neither is a capitalist Scotland under the reign of Elisabeth II, the pound Stirling and NATO”. Her general denunciations even when some are correct, make the gross mistake of putting an equal sign between the rule of the dominant English monarchy and the Scottish oppressed nation, because both are “capitalists”. It can be summed up as “neither Edinburgh nor London”, along with a few generalities against capitalism. Both the PTS and the IWL end up strengthening the ranks of NO sponsored by the monarchical imperialism which oppresses Scotland.

Trotsky and national independence In the XX century an independence struggle was not specifically raised in Scotland. But there were many experiences that allow us to keep track of Trotsky’s polemics against the sectarians regarding the national question. In the 1930s Trotsky referred numerous

times to the right to national selfdetermination, and more specifically to the struggle for the independence of Catalonia, although it was headed by the bourgeoisie.

Recently a left nationalist organization disseminated in Barcelona the first translation into Catalan of a text that dispels any doubt about the categorical position of Trotsky. In April 1934, as the clashes that would lead to civil war were becoming deeper, a strong conflict between the Generalitat of Catalunya and the central government took place. Trotsky, in an undated letter addressed to the International Secretariat in July-September, called on his followers to make a political turn to help the Catalan proletariat to “show to the Catalan masses we have a sincere interest in the defence of Catalan independence. It is here where it will start the decisive step to win the leadership of the struggle of all layers [...] the proletariat cannot, in the current situation, proclaim by itself the independence of Catalunya. But it can and should call with all its might for independence and to demand it of the petty bourgeois government of Esquerra. It must respond to delaying tactics by calling to elections. We need a government that represents and directs the actual fighting will of the masses”. 1

Following this tradition and these teachings we have taken a position on the referendum for independence in Scotland, very distinct from the SNP, the Scottish bourgeois party which headed the YES. On page 23 the close triumph of the NO is analysed. Days before, on the 18 September, in an article by Simon Rodriguez Porras (PSL of Venezuela, section of the IWU-FI) it was said: “[...] The independence of a Scottish state within the orbit of the European Union [...] does not guarantee that workers will be safe from the plans of adjustment [...] But it certainly creates better conditions [...] to defend the social gains and fight for new gains. [...] We believe that European workers and left organizations should support the vote for independence in Scotland. [...] The elaboration by the Scottish workers of a program of their own much more advanced, linking the question of independence to other democratic rights that are now denied

by British rule, and which includes the unity of action and solidarity of class with Welsh, English and Irish workers in pursuit of the same objectives and against the Crown. This class solidarity and the organizational forms through which it may be expressed, for us would be inscribed in the strategic perspective of the abolition of capitalism and the construction of a Federation of Socialist Republics in the British Isles” (www. laclase.info and El Socialista No. 276, 10 September 2014). §

1 Published in French: “Le conflit catalan et les tâches du prolétariat (été 1934)”, Leon Trotsky Œuvres, Vol. 4, Paris, 1979.

25

Turkey

Istanbul, trade union concentration in support of construction workers

Turkey and the outrage of construction Workers Esat Engin, IDP (Workers Democracy Party) Workplace accidents and deaths of workers have become part of daily events in Turkey.

Previously it was the massacre of 301 miners in Soma. Now 10 construction workers in Istanbul are dead. The responsibility for this falls on the Erdogan government and its collusion with the bosses.

Thousands of construction workers took to the streets to protest in Istanbul and other cities, sparking a new wave of struggles.

On 6th of September, Istanbul woke up to the news of another “occupational accident” or murder as we would like to put it: 10 construction workers were declared dead due to the crashing of the elevator in the construction area, from the 32th floor. Poor working conditions, subcontracting and the disregard of 26

security, namely the bourgeois pursuit of maximum profit is responsible of the work-related murder of these 10 construction workers.

This particular workplace, like many others, belongs to a pro-government employer that had been reinforced by the own hands of the government of president Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) that chose to turn a blind eye to the crimes and violations of these employers and companies themselves. Similar to the massacre of 301 workers in Soma, the “cause” of the deaths was the disregard of maintenance of the elevators that were out of order.

The workplace deaths are increasingly becoming a part of the daily live events in Turkey; they even skip the headlines of the newspapers.

This one was broadly heard just because the number of dead was quite high and in this instance it happened in the centre of the city, drawing more attention. The mass reaction grew immensely despite the police terror which also indicates that the outrage of people has reached an uncontrollable level. The state does everything to hinder the resistance; looks after the predators and confronts the victims with violence. Only the violence and aggressive attitude of the government is not enough to stop the mobilizations because the masses are fed up and they have a strong desire for a humane wage and working conditions.

The pursuit of profit increases labour deaths The AKP government sets the construction, energy and mining

Turkey Why do these accidents occur in these rising sectors that are most profitable for the bourgeoisie? The answer is because these companies work and build the constructions gambling on the lives of the workers. For the maximization of profit, the workers are asked to work more intensely. While the bourgeoisie has the biggest share of profits, for the workers the only option is either to work or die.

Turkey: the champion of work related deaths

In Soma 300 miners died

industries as the leading sectors of Turkey, those shaping the market. It is also clear these companies have benefits from the state; lands and the contracts

given to these companies are the most important financial resource of the AKP government.

Turkey, which has been praised for being neoliberal and having successfully engaged the country in the capitalist world order, has the most successful pride chart in the whole world: it is the first in Europe and the third in the world on the death rates on occupational accidents. The AKP government has got richer and richer with the pile of dead it has been stepping over.

The AKP government and the 24 January Decisions The decisions of 24 Januar y [1980], followed by the military coup of 12 September [1980] paved the way to the neoliberal attacks against the workers’ rights. While removing the workers organisations from the political arena, the military government also reorganized the work life through new labour acts. The AKP government has been the most loyal practitioner of this political plan. The so called economic growth of the AKP government relies on the measures taken during the military coup d’état and of the 24 January Decisions. This counter revolutionary attack pulled the working class one step backwards into losing its acquired rights.

The rights of the public workers had been crushed over with an intense wave of privatization. The workers were condemned to work in the most merciless conditions in order to cut all costs; they lost their

rights to unionize and worked for subcontracting companies in precarious conditions. Flexible working hours became widespread and social security was swept down. The name of this neoliberal program was polished, and this process of social plundering was called “economic growth”.

The 12 year rule of the AKP government has been more than enough to transform Turkey into a cheap labour heaven to maximize the profits of the bosses. The AKP government displayed tremendous effort to split the working class into religious sects, sexual and cultural identities in order to annihilate any possibility of organization. The revolutionary trade unions were supressed and banned, pro-government unions replaced them.

As a result, only 10 percent of the 27 million strong workforce are able to take advantage of the trade union rights, and this percentage is quickly

shrinking.

The AKP government still wants to devour all the remaining rights of the working class and its neoliberal program needs the continuation of the attacks for minimizing costs.

Even though hundreds and thousands of workers have lost their lives and subcontract work has increased sixfold, the AKP government is still eager to cut more of the social services and rights.

Putting an end to these workrelated murders is nearly impossible unless these demands are met: security controls should be made by workers themselves; all trade unions should become independent labour organizations free from the manipulations of the government; subcontracting should be made illegal and working hours and conditions should be regulated! § 27

Turkey During the 12 year rule of AKP government 12,236 workers died in occupational accidents. This means 1076 people per year. In the year 2013, 59 of them were children and 294 construction workers; in total at least 1235 people were murdered. Fınally, in the construction sector, in the last five years 1754 people, most of them subcontracted workers, were killed and 1940 were permanently injured.

The numbers of dead and injured show the actual “pride chart” of the AKP government that brags about the economic growth. With the AKP government, people started to work for low wages and illegally under a state that supported the mentality of subcontracting and flexible working hours. Occupational safety has been ignored; workers live and work in inhumane conditions that do not allow them to organize; this all boils down to more murders and raising profits.

These are not accidents, but murders for which everybody are responsible including the inspectors, ministers and the prime minister.

Why are these employers or companies not scared, why do they still go on being so greedy? They are not scared because even though there seem to be certain acts that secure workers’ rights, the final judgements are never in behalf of the workers. Workers on the other hand hesitate to fight for their rights because the courts always take side with the employer or the company, or they do not have enough economic resources to sustain themselves. The workers are left unorganized, and those unionised are not combative.

The outrage of the construction workers and a new wave of struggle In another construction yard belonging to Torunlar Construction the day after the incident, three thousand workers marched to the streets spontaneously without any political or union leadership. The murder of 10 workers in Torunlar Construction had triggered the many other yards that have similar working conditions; 28

The Workers Democracy Party (IDP), Turkish section of the IWU–FI in the workers demonstrations

the rage against the merciless working conditions united them in the streets.

Unpaid social security, cuts from the monthly wages, injuries, polluted drinking water; these reasons were more than enough to rebel.

Thousands of workers blocked the streets with barricades, and filled the streets with their resounding demands. The employers had to come to terms with the workers; they feared the workers rage and were anxious about the possibility this struggle could expand and spread to other construction yards.

The struggle of TEMA can be read as a continuation of the ongoing and rapidly increasing workers strikes and resistance. Mainly in Istanbul, Izmit, Düzce, Izmir, Eskisehir and many other cities some resistance sparkled and there are still some that continue. These strikes and resistance could be a sign of a new stage in the working class movement.

Despite the high cost of living, the wages are constantly decreasing and the workers cannot tolerate these working conditions any longer. The harsh living conditions push

and radicalize the workers towards the struggle and they reconcile on the desperate need of organization.

Today there was other news of workers resistances in construction yards in Maltepe. Also in Halkalı the employers took one step back towards the demands of the workers; which also shows how they are aware that the situation could grow bigger.

The most vital question is the one regarding the role of the socialists.

How are we supposed to react to these resistances? Would we struggle for the foundation of a united union and mass movement, or would we chase certain movements regarding identity politics?

For us the answer is clear: The necessity is creating a unified combative working class front, and working for the mass mobilizations! §

Argentina

View of the general strike on 28 August, Constitution Train and bus Terminal, Buenos Aires, just like on a holiday.

The end of happy days for Kirchnerism Juan Carlos Giordano • Izquierda Socialista Argentina is in recession. The economy is bleeding to pay a fraudulent foreign debt under the “homeland or vultures” doublespeak. On 28 August, the second general strike of the year was rook place. Cristina Kirchner denounces a “destituting” outbreak.

We continue along the period of the greatest crisis of government in its 12 years. We must demand from the trade union federations a new 36-hour general strike and a plan of action, applying to the crisis and a worker and popular economic plan.

Still a long way to go to the presidential elections of 2015, but for the government, it is an eternity. Its days are spent in the midst of a major economic crisis, workers claims and

the political wear of a ruling Peronism which is in its “end of cycle”.

The government cannot give concessions as years ago. The time of the fat cows is over. It is forced to deepen the adjustment. The “tail wind” (essentially due to the rising price of soybeans), has switched to “headwind” (grain prices are down, predicting a loss of US$ 4 to 5 billion for 2015).

The world capitalist crisis hits, essentially affecting employment.

The decline in industrial activity and consumption is manifest. Automobile and auto parts multinationals already have 15,000 suspensions or dismissals.

Meatworks and shops are closing, and construction shrank with more than 20,000 layoffs in the sector. Last year 400,000 jobs were lost. The recipe is the

same as elsewhere, led by the bosses and with government complicity: the crisis is to be paid the workers.

The famous “model of redistribution of wealth” is leaking everywhere. Wages continue to decline due to the fierce price hike. Inflation went from 7 percent per year when she took office in 2003, to a projected 40 percent for 2014. The government is devaluing the peso, with the consequent cuts in wages. The official dollar is at $ 8.40 and over $ 15 on the parallel or “blue” market. The average wage is around 5,400 pesos, while the family basket over 11,000 pesos. Pensions are indigent, like social plans, and the gap between rich and poor increased.

The foreign debt increasingly squeezes government coffers (see “The 29

Argentina The government wants to “arrive well”

Cristina Kirchner and her double discourse

government that paid the most”). Cristina came saying we are “getting rid of the debt”. But that snowball again jumped and keeps growing since the dictatorship to now, despite having already been paid several times over in the past 40 years.

Successful general strike The workers and popular rise, beyond its inequalities, continues to be expressed. On 28 August the second general strike of the year took place.

The previous one, on 10 April, had also been important. Now it didn’t have the support of the UTA (Bus Drivers Union). However, although buses circulated, they did so almost empty. A public holiday day was lived.

In many industrial parks, such as in the northern suburbs, the stoppage was higher than in the previous one. In the country the measure was also felt, although with inequalities. The strike became another political statement of the labour movement against the government, connecting with the need to face layoffs, wage tax paid for work (Income Tax), wage loss and the adjustment. Faced with an official CGT (General Confederation of Labour) which did not stop (automotive, metallurgical and other guilds), and an opposition CGT (led by Moyano) that launched it bureaucratically, the strike was organized from one week to the next.

Prior to the strike, there were harsh conflicts in automotive and auto parts factories. As in Gestamp (Spanish 30

auto parts factory) that fired dozens of activists and delegates and in Lear (Yankee auto parts factory) which did the same, it was achieved the return of the delegates, to whom the SMATA (Auto Workers Union) bureaucracy — with the support of the bosses and the government — revoked their mandate.

American owned printers Donnelley closed leaving 400 families on the street, but it was put to work by its workers through a cooperative which demands the nationalisation under workers’ management. Also stopped the teachers nucleated in the “militant Sutebas” (nine teachers trade union sectional branches in Buenos Aires province, ripped from the Kirchnerist bureaucracy). They did it for the first time against all sectors of the bureaucracy, with a very high adherence where the opposition leads. The opposition teachers’ provincial plenary emerged as focus of coordination.

Now the fight for continuity, with a national plan of struggle, begins.

For a new 36-hour general strike with mobilization to Plaza de Mayo.

Although opposition leaders only aim to call for a march, it cannot be ruled out further national measures in the coming months because of the anger from below and the forced rearrangement of a bureaucracy who postulates itself as a replacement in a future anti-Kirchner government and tries to close spaces to the militant trade unionism that although embryonic, is still developing.

This was stated long ago by Cristina Kirchner. She attempts to gain ground redoubling her doublespeak.

In recent months she clung to the campaign “homeland or vultures” that has given her some circumstantial returns, showing herself as facing the bondholders who did not enter into the debt swap. Meanwhile in the labour movement she preaches not to ask for salary increases because you have to take care of your job. Even so, she could not avoid the general strike, nor curb popular anger. Sixty percent of voters disapprove of her management. The negative image of the president grew to 43 percent, going back the 7 points she had won with the confrontation to judge Griesa’s ruling.

The Kirchnerist presidential candidates are in a bad place. There are seven K-applicants. This division has forced the president’s son, Maximo Kirchner, to be first-speaker in a rally of the group La Campora. A novice in politics, who had never spoken in public and had been taking care of his parents voluptuous business in Patagonia, requested to let her mother present herself as candidate in the upcoming elections. Something impossible, as the Constitution prevents it. To be able to go for re-election she would need a two-thirds vote of parliament, something the government does not have following the loss of four million votes in the legislative elections of 2013. Showing the weakness of a government repudiated from above (there is friction with industrial sectors who were cashing in a virtuous bosses “model” through huge subsidies, now in decline), and from below, due to a growing social discontent.

The government has been punctuated by events of great national scope. Vice President Amado Boudou has a record in cases of corruption. He grabbed the former printers Cicconne (which prints banknotes with Evita’s face and the ballots of the Front for Victory) through a shell company and forged

Argentina information to appropriate cars and properties. A judge threatened to serve a search warrant on Casa Rosada if she was not given information on proven calls of drug traffickers to government officials. A Gendarmerie chief threw himself on a car — pretending to be hit — to stop a caravan in support of Lear’s laid-off.

The government is bogged down by the “anti-pickets” law (a regulation of social protest) in an attempt to provide legal cover for a repression that it applies more strongly in the struggles, criminalizing social protest, persecuting fighters, as the Sarmiento railworkers (see following pages) and attacking the deputies of the Left Front for supporting the struggles.

For broad bands began to be clear that this decade was won by big business. The fight with the vultures is to negotiate and pay. And that “human rights” ended with Lt. Gen. Milani, military involved in the 1976coup, as army chief.

Where is the country going?

This question is becoming a major concern. All indications so far are that we are going —although in a turbulent way — towards elections in 2015, amid the deepening economic and social crisis. The government is supported by imperialism, the multinationals, bankers and the Vatican via Pope Francis. And politicians and bureaucrats of the bosses’ opposition wish it “to arrive well”.

A n o t h e r p o s s i b i l i t y, v e r y hypothetical, is that the frictions with business sectors which have been supporting the government can get exacerbated and that, due to the shrinking of the cake, they let go of her hand. This could push the official union bureaucracy to face the government and for a course of change to open, as for example, early elections. Or for a situation similar to the June 2013 days in Brazil to take place, through a strong popular expression for wages, against rising rates (which increased up to 500 percent in Buenos Aires) or another

Lear, a hard fight against dismissals and the union bureaucracy

social issue that put officialdom into a tightening situation.

Knowing this, the government takes advantage to denounce a campaign of destabilization against her, taking hold of statements by the bureaucrat Luis Barrionuevo who predicted an “outburst” by the end of the year. Word which, coming from this government (as it has already done at other times, just as its Latin American counterparts, denouncing the “right”, the unofficial media and anyone who criticizes it, as being with the “vultures”), is to try to stop the struggles, pursue fighters and conceal its capitalist adjustmtent.

In this context, all candidates are in electoral campaign mode. The masses see 2015 far away. Apathy and rejection of these politicians, so far removed from their needs, are the prime feelings. All agree (government and opposition) to endorse layoffs, debt payments, privatization and looting of natural resources. Everybody wants to rule, with more or less emphasis, for big business and imperialism.

Revolutionary socialists, we are against the government. In the same way that we are against Scioli, Massa, Macri, Sanz, Alfonsín, Binner, Carrio and Solanas. The fact that everyone is touring the country to gather votes in the midst of crisis and one year out of the presidential elections, shows the weakness of traditional apparatuses

which crackled with the Argentinazo are far from recovered.

For a fundamental solution The fighters and the revolutionary left we must raise a workers’ and popular program to face the crisis. In addition to fighting for the most pressing demands of the working class (wage increases, prohibiting dismissals and suspensions, nationalization of any company which closes or fired, cancellation of the tax on wages), we must raise non-payment of the foreign debt, demanding it be taken up by-Moyano’s CGT and Micheli’s CTA. All debt is vulture. Money for wages, jobs, health, education and housing, not for the usurious debt.

For the nationalization of banking and foreign trade. For a YPF (Argentina’s oil company) 100 percent state-owned.

For the nationalization of oil and gas.

Renationalisation of all privatized companies under management of workers and users. Putting all the levers of the economy at the service of the working people.

We must fight for a new union and political leadership of the workers movement. Postulating the Militant Trade Union Gathering (ESC), that called for a national plenary on 25 October. Adding organizations without sectarianism or self-proclamation.

Betting on genuine coordination while respecting the identity and strength of each organization. With “Perro” 31

Argentina Santillan (city of Jujuy municipal workers); “Pollo” Sobrero and the body of delegates of Sarmiento Railway line and the Western Branch of the Railway Union, along with other valuable leaders.

Meanwhile, a recent poll gives the Left Front 5.9 percentage in the 2015 presidential ballot. Percentage that

exceeds the 1,200,000 votes obtained last year. Showing the strip turning left is growing. A vote radicalized for a fundamental solution for the country.

Izquierda Socialista (Socialist Left) calls to keep strengthening the unity of the left achieved with the Workers and Left Front (FIT). Presenting a workers and socialist alternative in the struggles and

in the elections to capitalize in 2015 on the millions breaking with the old parties. Raising high the standards of class independence embodied in the program of the Left Front against all the bosses and centre-left variants which have already failed. §

Foreign debt crisis

The government that paid the most The debt remains the big cancer that flared up again. The judgment of the American judge Grisea accepting the demand by one percent of the bondholders (“vulture funds”) that did not enter the swaps in 2005 and 2010, threw everything up into the air.

The official campaign “homeland or vultures” is a cover for the decision to continue paying an unlawful, fraudulent and unpayable debt. The Yankee ruling is a despicable act of colonialism in the XXI century. But it was Kirchner who willingly submitted to the imperialist courts when he renegotiated debt just after assuming.

With the verse that “we are paying down our debt”, Nestor Kirchner first and Cristina Fernandez later led the country to believe that it is becoming independent of the dictates of imperialist capitalism. Quite the contrary.

In 2000 a federal judge found as illegitimate the foreign debt and referred to Parliament the political decision to take. Subsequently, the popular rebellion of the Argentinazo in 2001 imposed the non-payment. Instead of using this precedent to stop sending millions of dollars to international “creditors”, Kirchner did the opposite. He legalized older titles through swaps (legitimizing unpaid debt), paying cash to this day with money of the retirees (Anses), the Central Bank reserves (reduced from 50 to 28 billion dollars), and other state coffers.

Shortly after this government assuming, 145 billion dollars were owed. The government paid 190 billion, and now it still owes 250 billion dollars, according to its own figures. Combined 32

with other items that the government does not count, the current debt stands at 320 billion. With the risk that if all bondholders were to go to trial, the total debt would have a staggering increase of between 120 and 500 billion. The snowball is far away from “melting” as predicted by Economy Minister Axel Kicillof.

The government compensated Repsol with six billion and promised a full payment to the Paris Club (imperialist governments) of 10 billion.

It believed that by doing good behaviour it would “captivate” the multinationals and bankers to come and “invest”. But since the world began, and capitalism is imperialism, those who are saved are the ruling classes, not dependent countries like ours.

The only investments that “come” are for the looting, as those of Barrick; Chevron or Chinese capital associated with the imperialist multinationals.

On the one hand the government is bleeding the country paying the debt and the other hand aspires to investments coming. A total nonsense.

The government is bursting with the slogan “Argentina pays 100 percent”.

Because of paying, we are going towards a bigger crisis. All of this to the accompaniment of the bosses’ opposition of Scioli, Massa, Macri and the UNEN of Binner-UCR, who criticize, but “accompany” timely payments. And Mercosur and Unasur, displayed by Cristina, Dilma, Evo Morales, Chavism and Correa as forums of “Latin American integration”, while they accompany the Argentinian plan to negotiate to pay.

The UN has ruled by majority (with the vote against of the United States, England, Germany and Japan, among others) to accompany renegotiations of “sovereign debt”. Not to leave in the hands of the Griesas the management of debt payments, but to take it “institutionally” seeking a supranational authority to impose and force adjustment plans to continue paying.

Latin American governments never called their peoples to stand up to suspend payments through a front of debtor countries. If that money had gone to jobs, wages, pensions, health, education, housing and transportation, our countries would be “a power”. If in addition to ignoring the payments there had been taken liberating measures — breaking the economic and political ties that bind us to imperialism— as expropriating multinational and nationalizing banking and foreign trade, we would have advanced on the way to the second and definitive independence.

Our party fights for a workers government and for socialism to impose this solution. Meanwhile, we call to battle for the non-payment.

JCG

Argentina

The Sarmiento railway workers headed a great unitary march to Plaza de Mayo

No to the impeachment!

Once again the government attacks militant railway workers of the Sarmiento line headed by leader Ruben “Pollo” [“Chicken’] Sobrero. It is part of the criminalization of protest that grows with the government of “human rights”.

Transport Minister and one of the pre-candidates to president by the Front for Victory of Cristina Kirchner, Florencio Randazzo, filed a criminal complaint and initiated a request for trade union impeachment (removal of union protection, prelude to the dismissal) against delegates of the Sarmiento railway.

Without any evidence, he accused Monica Schlotthauer, Edgardo Reynoso, Luis Clutet and Ruben Maldonado and cleaner Julio Kapelinsky, for allegedly

“attacking” against trains, showing pictures with litter in a wagon and a video where you can see the comrades board one of them. There was no damage or destruction. Much less an attack, in the own words of the Antiterrorist Act. The minister announced the attack on the same day of the successful general strike of the opposition CGT on 28 August. The railway workers had joined unanimously this strike in a mass meeting of 800 comrades.

The government accuses them of not “caring for the trains”, new formations bought from the Chinese dictatorship, very costly, to the detriment of domestic industry. The government is in the middle of a campaign showing a “railway revolution” to cover the slaughter of

Rail workers are already standing up They are driving a major national and international campaign in repudiation. They received support from important unions and political organizations in many countries (see next page). In Argentina they were supported by Hugo Moyano (opposition CGT), Pablo Micheli (CTA), the University Federation of Argentina (F UA), University Federation of Buenos Aires (FUBA); MPs, legislators and human rights organizations. The campaign was approved at a new and massive railworkers assembly, which approved a unity march to Plaza de Mayo which was held on September 17 under the slogan “if they touch one,

they touch us all”. With a major presence throughout the spectrum of trade union, social, bodies of delegates, factory committees, union branches and left parties. Relatives of the massacre of Once were also present. This showed the strength of the rank and file to defend its leaders, if necessary to vote for a strike if the government does not retreat.

It is necessar y to continue promoting the campaign in defence of the comrades to stop this new attack aimed against the leaders who fight against the adjustment of the government, the bosses and the trade union bureaucracy. §

Once, the clash of a runaway formation against a station that caused 52 deaths and more than 800 passengers injured.

All the blame resides in the stripping of the railway reported by the delegates.

The government attacks union leaders who are example of struggle and union democracy, not only in the railway, but for the entire workforce. Sobrero was already accused of “burning trains” and the accusation was dismissed. All previous cases fell, without evidence, to the rail and popular repudiation.

Sobrero and delegates of the Sarmiento and Western Great Buenos Aires Branch of the Railway Union — conquered by the Burgundy opposition slate against the murderer bureaucrat Jose Pedraza, who is imprisoned after killing the youth Mariano Ferreyra — are a benchmark of militant trade unionism. And a national point of reference of the Militant Trade Union Gathering (ESC) of Atlanta, antibureaucratic organization which emerged some months ago in a plenary where 2,500 leaders from across the country gave impetus to this experience which acts as a centre of coordination against the union bureaucracy. The Sarmiento railway workers are also those who are fighting for the re-nationalization of the entire rail system under management of workers and users.

The persecution of the railway workers is part of a witch hunt against all those who organize themselves and challenge the government. Currently, more than 6,000 social activists are being processed. § 33

Argentina

International pronouncements The campaign pronouncements had great national and international participation. In Argentina, added their repudiation: CGT-Moyano, CTA (Micheli), the FUA; parliamentarians as Claudio Lozano, Margarita Stolbizer (UNEN), Nestor Pitrola (PO), Nicholas Del Caño (PTS), Angelica Lagunas (Socialist Left), among others, and a long list of personalities, union leaders and fighters of all currents. Here we highlight the international support, which includes railway unions of Germany and Spain.

Germany: Claus Weselsky, president Train Drivers’ Union (GDL); KRD; Bolivia: Jaime Solares Quintanilla (COB); Juan Fernando Rojas (councillor Copacabana); Eliseo Mamani Bautista (Pachakuti teachers); Gualberto Arenas Zambrana (Sec. Gral.

PT); Mario Martinez (Exec. Sec. PT, Huanuni miner); Gonzalo Sanjines Portugal (ARP–La Protesta); María Lohman (SomossurCochabamba); Juan Acosta (former Exec. Sec. COB Beni); Vladi Mendoza Majun (Urban Teachers Fed., Cochabamba); Humberto Balderrama (Exec. Sec. UMSA); Brazil: Luciana Genro (PSOL presidential candidate); Tarcisio Motto (candidate PSOL Río Janeiro); Babá (leader PSOL/CST); Pedro Rosa, (senator candidate Río Janeiro CST/PSOL); National Association of Independent Unions UNIDOS PRA LUTAR; Wellington Cabral, (Chemical Union Sao Jose dos Campos, Sao Paulo); Neide Solimoes (National Exec. Condef ); SINTSEP/PA: Silvia Leticia Luz (Sec. Gral.); Aguinaldo Barbosa, Gerson Lima, Alimar Barreiros, María Consolacao, Luiz S. Botelho, Eduardo Pimentel; Raimundo Gilberto André Tavares; Joyce Cordeiro; Wendel Bezerra y Raimundo Brito (Directors); Miriam Sodré and Carlos Alberto (Sintepp/ Belem); Andrea C. Solimoes and Joao Santiago (Dir. ADUFPA); SINDTIFES: Katia Rozangela (Gral. Coord.); Afonso Modesto, Eduardo Magno and Zila Camarão (Directors); Jose E. Almeida and Virgilio Moura (President and VP Asconpa); Same Parafita and Irlei B. Araújo (Directors ASCONPA); SD Passinho and CB Quadros (Directors Addmipa); Marcio Amaral (Member CIPA-Viacao Forte); Rosana Oliveira (President Assesmub); Ana C. Chagas (VP CRESS); Spanish State: Railway Union of the Inter Trade Union Confederation; El Prat de Llobregat (Barcelona); Spanish CGT Angel Bosqued Sec. Int. Relations (www.cgt.org.es); Teachers Union CGTCatalunya (María Esther del Alcázar y Fabregat-Org. Secretary); CGT– Catalunya (Permanent Confed. Secretariat–Barcelona (Ermengol Gassiot Ballbe, Sec. Gen. CGT of Catalunya); trade union current “For a turn to the left” –CCOO-Girona; Libertarian Women of the CGT–Catalunya; Lucha Internacionalista (LI); United States: Brian Jones, vice-gov. candidate for NYC, Green Party; France: Internationalist Socialist Group (GSI); Jean-L. Davier (Exec.Com. FAPT); Griselda Michel-Whitford (Bureau of Education); Pedro Carrasquedo (Exec.Com. Culture); Serge Vinet (Sec. Gral. Bassin Trade Union); Pascal Descamps (Teachers Union delegate); Safia Amghar (Educ.Dep.); Abdallah Amghar (Educ.

Dep.); Michel Gagliano (Chem. S. Etienne); Antoine Albizzati, Daniel Closson, Danielle Gautier, Tony Kabbaj, Claude Monnier y Chantal Urbaniak (CGT); Agnes Simon (CGT FERC-Sup); Marion Paris (Commerce Employees Union); Grégory Marchand, Loic Geffrotin, Yasmina Abbou, Mekki Karmous, Melissa Poncet, Veronique Vital and Cyrielle Lelay (CGT Educ.); Simon Carret (Solidaires CCFR CSL); Alexandro Boustamante (Students Solididarity); Stéphanie Marchand (Education Union); Daniel Petri; Ashley Arguello; Thomas Blaison; Frey Blandine; Farah Chalabi; Mathieu Chapot; Gabriel Chauvet; Clementine Coedes; Giséle Darras; Jean-Charbel Fakoury; Amine Fennane; Séléne Mallet; Mélanie Martin; Aurélie Métivier; Vincent Nicolas; Maitena 34

Plumain; Juliette Thuilier; Michelle Whitford; Julien Flambeaux; Raoul Guzman (Internationalist Socialist Group); Mathieu Demaret; Alexandre Zucal; Alexandre Gourmelon; Hugues Montano; Emeric Tellier; Bastien Borie; Ilonka Siegel; Marie Rasmussen; Eduardo Galvez; Alexia Vandaél (CGT Col. Liberté); Frey Rémy (CE SPACSCGT); Charmoillaux Julie (CGT); La Commune; GS Démosphère; Wladimir Susanj, Pierre-Yves Chiron, Isabelle Foucher, Robert Ducrot, Guy Bernard, Hubert Gauthier, Dimitri Douillot, Eric Desrues, Pierre Pilard, Patricia Ducrot and Patricia Certain (CGT Archives); Chile: Rainier Ríos (MST); Mario Mendoza Bravo, Director Secretary Municipal Workers Federation, Metropolitan region, Luis Mesina, president Confederation of Banking Union, Marcel Claude, former president candidate (TALM), Jorge Guiñez, president Phys. Ed. Students Centre; Greece: OKDE; Honduras: Igor Calvo (member FNRP); Panamá: Priscila Vázquez (leader Social SecurityWorkers); Iraida Cano (Finance Sec. Employee Asociation of Social Security Credit Union–AECSS); poetess and short story writer Indira Moreno (director Cultural Magazine “Panamá Vive”); Virgilio Arauz (leader Party of the Workers of de Panama–PTP); Diógenes Sánchez (Teachers Association of the Republic of Panama); Carlos Peralta (National Association of Nursing Assistants Practitioners and Technicians); Alejandro John (Secretary General SITRAFCOREBGASCELIS; Aurelio Robles (Socialist Alternative Movement); Peru: Hugo Blanco (peasant leader); Enrique Fernandez Chacón (former MP and leader of Uníos en la Lucha); Mexico: Jesus Torres Nuño (Pres. Admin. Council of Western Democratic workers); Enrique Gomez Delgado (POS/MAS); Leda Silva Victoria (Collective SNTE); Jose Luis Vega (Workers of Foreign Sec.); Diana Sánchez Juarez (Workers and Professionals Foreign Relations); Armando Jiménez Leyte (Public Transport Union, D.F.); Marcos Vargas Cuevas (Autonomous Metropolitan University Union); José Manuel Pérez Vázquez (Pensioners of Electricians Union); Juan José Gómez Beristáin (Electricians); Benito Belmont Ponce (Prosec.

Alianza Tranviarios); Juan Manuel Soto Martínez (Public Relation Workers Pascual); Cecilia Juárez Coello (National Housing Institue Union); Esmeralda Medina Castañeda (Social Attorney); Turkey: DSK (Turkish Trade Union Confederation); Sedat Durel (Sec. Gral. Telecom Workers); Sungur Savran (President PRT); Cihan Yılmaz (political prisoner of Park Gezi rebellion); Sadi Ozansu (President İKP– Workers Brotherhood Party); Ali Ekber Binici (Chief Karadolap neighbourhood); Çayan Dursun (former chief Istambul branch Motorised Transport Workers Union); Mete Emre Öğütmen (IDP); Venezuela: Marcela Maspero, Elpidio Rojas, Edgard Jiménez and Ulice Rodríguez (Unete); Orlando Chirino (CCURA-PSL); José Bodas (Sec. Gral. Oil Workers Federation); Miguel Hernández (PSL); Orlando Chirinos (President National Alliance of Cement Workers); Aldo Torres (Exec. Sec. Fetraelec– Electrical Workers Union); Pedro Peña (Pres. Construction Workers Union of Lara); Tomas Flores (United Federation of Bolivarian Unions, Carabobo); Pedro Briceño (Electrical Power Workers Union of Barquisimeto Credit Union); Rolando Gaitán (Professors Association); Mario Manjarret (Director.

Piovesan Union); Wilfredo Querales (Org. Sec. Sintramerca Union); José González (delegate Electricians Union);Reinaldo Sánchez; Raúl González; Rafael González (Revolutionary Workers Union); Alberto Domínguez; Roberto Yépez (Workers Opposition); Oswal González and Jorge Ventura (Topo Obrero); María Emma Figueredo; Edgar Silva (HR Commission) Carlos Díaz Peña; Josefa Contreras and Néstor Cortez (Red Flag); Miguel Devies (Simon Rodríguez Magisterial Movement); Eduardo Caridad (Social Director); Felix Saavedra (Asisoagrop); (more signatures follow). §

Venezuela

Even the state supermarket, PDVAL, has shortages

Venezuela: The Maduro government wears out while social unrest grows Miguel Angel Hernández* As a well-known comedian said, we Venezuelans have become into voyeurs of bags. Indeed, workers, their wives and the entire people walk in the streets of the country seeing all packages people carry in their hands and asking: “madam, where did you get flour” or where to find oil, toilet paper or any other the products disappeared from the markets.

In Venezuela the daily life of workers is a true calamity. Inflation in the first eight months already reaches 40 percent. A major public health crisis, with epidemics of dengue and Chicungunya. Serious problems of shortage that force Venezuelans to

wander from place to place, trying to complete their daily diet products. The electricity crisis continues, especially in the provinces of the interior. The government has ensured electrical power supply in Caracas, knowing it would be a potentially explosive crisis in the capital.

Now, a wave of layoffs has unleashed in different sectors, especially in the automotive, which recently convened a 24-hour strike. Suspensions of workers, by which full shifts in factories are sent home paying them reduced wages, violating collective agreements, all of these with the consent of the government through the Labour Inspectorate, which support these

abuses as part of agreements between the government of Maduro and the bosses.

Meanwhile the workers of Sidor steel mill remain at the forefront of the confrontation of the government austerity plan. However, the strike begins to sag, the product of the pressures of the government and the Chavist union bureaucracy to impose the contract. Three workers were arrested by SEBIN (Bolivarian Intelligence Service) and there would be about 300 qualifications for dismissal. * General Secretary, Partido Socialismo y Libertad (Socialism and Liberty Party — PSL).. @UcvMiguelangel, miguelaha2014@ yahoo.com 35

Venezuela The origin of the evils: a severe economic crisis The crisis has its genesis in the global crisis of capitalism, with the own specific characteristics of our country.

It is not a question of a supposed “economic war”, or of smuggling, which are the arguments behind which lurks the government to hide the failure of its economic model of class collaboration. However, it is true that the entrepreneurs and traders take advantage of the shortage to speculate and increase prices. But neither is it faults in the “model”, as claimed by the bosses and the majority of their economists who reduce the crisis to internal failures ignoring the external.

Strictly speaking, there is a combination of impact of the global crisis and failure of an economic policy that has only benefited importers, banks, and some sectors such as telecommunications and oil. The inner core of the economic crisis in Venezuela is determined by a brutal fall of the country’s productive capacity, which has been increasingly dependent on oil exports and imports.

Today for every US$ 100 entering the country for exports, 96 come from oil.

Venezuela in the last century has been a mono-producing country (petroleum) and unproductive industrially. Already in 1999, when Hugo Chavez assumed power, for each US$ 100, 68 came from oil exports. This situation has worsened in the last 15 years. This is compounded because the country is now a net importer of petroleum products such as gasoline, due to operational failures and particularly PDVSA refineries.

Moreover, in the last decade the growth in imports has been much higher than the growth of exports and internal and foreign debts have grown significantly. The total public debt in 2013 stood at more than 115 billion dollars, an increase of 9.9 percent compared to 2012, while foreign debt stood at 44.8 billion dollars.

In the 2012 election year, with Chavez already ill, and given the wear that had already been showing in his management, the government increased 36

Workers assembly at Sidor’s Gate 3

public spending excessively, spending large amounts of money in the electoral campaign, the Great Mission Venezuela Housing and imports, which in 2012 came to over US$ 56 billion in order to guarantee enough votes to stay in power.

This combination of factors has generated a relative shortage of foreign currency (dollars), a very serious situation for a country highly dependent on imports. When the international reserves of dollars fall, it becomes difficult to obtain foreign products and supplies needed for production. This, coupled with the pressures of the business sector for increases in regulated prices, and an increase of over 70 percent in the money supply (the amount of bolivars in circulation), the product of unbridled money printing by the Venezuelan Central Bank, without support in the production, explains the scarcity of consumer products that last March was 28 percent (latest official figure available), and high inflation, which in 2013 ended at 56.2 percent.

This relative scarcity of foreign currency prevents to cope with the commitments. There are not enough dollars to import raw materials, or pay debts or buy other inputs. As already mentioned, international reserves are

falling. Meanwhile the government continues to devalue the bolivar thereby increasingly affecting the wages of workers. We are in an environment of stagflation (recession with high inflation).

The government opted for an adjustment plan against the workers As a result, the Maduro government deepens the adjustment to unload the crisis on the shoulders of the workers. Price increases continue.

The most recent are milk, corn, rice, and personal care products. Transport fares and electricity bills went up.

Meanwhile, the increase in gasoline and a new devaluation, very sensitive measures that the government will soon implement, are delayed. For now they seek consensus with the bourgeoisie and the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), and a politically more suitable time to implement them. The adjustment of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) government has been applied in small doses on the basis of an agreement with the businesses grouped in Fedecamaras and Empreven (umbrella organizations of the so-called Bolivarian bourgeoisie).

In an interview with Jorge Roig, president of Fedecamaras, published in

Venezuela the newspaper El Universal, the head of the bosses said that relations with the government are better today than in the past. He is delighted the prices of several regulated products have been revised, he vindicates Sicad II (one of the mechanisms for granting official dollars), and thus the devaluation executed by the government, and he brazenly recognizes that job tenure and qualifications of dismissal have become more flexible.

These statements highlight the iron pact between the government and the bosses. How does this deal go through?

The government is gradually increasing the prices of essential goods, especially food, that in one year increased by 91 percent. The bosses bring pressure, demanding from the government

increases with the argument that production is not profitable. Then the government increases prices.

Nevertheless, employers continue to press saying that the increases are not enough, threatening more shortages.

And thus the vicious circle of inflation continues.

The other aspect of the agreement is the flexibility of the existing job security in the country. The sugar mills in state hands have already prepared 800 layoffs, which will be settled soon; over 1500 qualifications of dismissal in the automotive sector; another 13 in Sidor and about 100 being prepared in Venalum, state aluminium company.

This happens in numerous public and private companies.

Another expression of the agreements with the bosses is the suspensions of workers who are sent home with half salary and the violation of contractual terms, all with the approval of the Labour Inspectorate. It is also expressed in the refusal to discuss the collective agreement or in imposing them at their convenience, as in the case of Sidor.

The government, in alliance with the bosses, launches an adjustment plan, whose costs are being paid by the working people, while it agrees with the Chinese government to establish special economic zones with all kinds of advantages for the multinationals, sends signals to imperialism, meeting in New York with the World Jewish Council and religiously paying the foreign debt. Between October and

The strike of Sidor against the adjustment plan The strike at Sidor, involving some 14,000 workers, and maintained with comings and goings since about 10 months ago, has not been formally raised by the union. The government has tried to impose its policy through Jose Melendez, who heads the current Union Alliance. Melendez was militant of Marea Socialista [Socialist Tide] linked to the Argentine MST. This current of the PSUV was forced to distance itself from their leader, who was the architect of the government’s attempt to impose the contract under the table, without consulting the union leadership, or subject to its approval in an assembly of the workers.

Today, the conflict is in a kind of stalemate. The strike has not been raised by the union, but many areas of the steelworks are paralysed by lack of supplies and raw materials to produce, and in other areas the workers keep the strike. The government with the pressure of the National Guard and SEBIN (political intelligence body of the State) forced the workers

get back to work in the area Slabs, very important in the structure of the company.

In an assembly of Sidor, Jose Bodas, oilworkers and Moreover, the C-CURA leader, expresses his solidarity government arrested a contract not endorsed in assembly by three workers accusing them of wanting to hold the workers.

In this context it is framed our up the company with weapons. These policy to convene a rally of solidarity workers belong to the current of Jose where all trade union currents, without Luis Hernandez, linked to Chavism and the union president, who has distinction of political and ideological remained at the head of the conflict, positions, with special involvement of due to the pressure from the workers the classist sectors in Sidor and the rank and file, who are ready to continue trade unions of the basic industries the strike and in frank rupture with in Guayana (iron, aluminium, power, the government of Maduro. It has etc.), in order to surround the conflict also introduced 13 qualifications of and the struggle of the Sidor workers dismissal to as many workers, all linked for their contract with solidarity of class. Understanding that a victory to the current of Hernandez.

Our party through C-CURA has would strengthen the struggles of been taking up strongly the support of workers in Venezuela, and it would be the strike, and the support for classist a blow to the government’s attempt to sectors which in the different areas of implement its adjustment plan. § the company keep up their resistance to the attempt of the government to pass 37

Venezuela November, it is expected that the Venezuelan government will cancel US$ 7.132 billion to the imperialist banks, servicing the debt, equivalent to 47.6 percent of the country’s imports between January and May this year.

What is cer tain is that the adjustment will continue, with further deterioration of wages and rising prices.

The government will continue its policy of criminalizing protest, with the goal of disciplining the labour and popular movement, using the argument of “destabilization of the right” in order to implement the adjustment plan.

But this is a double-edged sword that is increasing social protest.

Winds of negotiation with the bourgeois opposition In this context, the attempts at dialogue and negotiation with the bourgeois opposition grouped in the MUD again reopened. A clear evidence of this has been the release of Ivan

Simonovis, one of the police chiefs who led the repression against the people during the 2002 proimperialist coup.

Simonovis received the benefit to serve the sentence at home. This case was very symbolic because the bourgeois opposition made of him one of their standards, and the main requirement of the government to initiate dialogue.

All the opposition grouped in the MUD welcomed the measure. The daily newspapers echoed the same and placed it as a positive message towards restoring the negotiating table with the government of Maduro.

Henry Ramos Allup, secretary general of Democratic Action, a member of the MUD and historical party of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, linked the measure with the negotiations they are holding with representatives of the government party for the appointment of new members of the National Electoral Council and the Supreme Court of Justice. All of this behind the

Trade Union and Popular Gathering in Lara In Barquisimeto, Lara state, on 12 and 13 September, met a dozen trade unions and social organizations of the state as well as the Classist, Unitary, Revolutionary and Autonomous Current (C-CURA), the National Union of Workers (UNETE) headed

by Marcela Maspero, the National Alliance Cement Workers (Antracem), and workers from Guayana and other regions.

They repudiated the official economic policy that aims to unload the full weight of the crisis on working people by means of successive currency devaluations, increases in food prices.

The gathering also denounced the wave of layoffs and the criminalization of social protest.

Among the major agreements of the gathering was the realization of a national rally of solidarity with the workers of Sidor, on strike in defence of their right to democratically decide 38

their collective agreement and to reject the government’s moves. It was also agreed the realization of a regional mobilization in Lara state in solidarity with Orlando Chirinos and Osmary Escalona, union leaders dismissed for defending the rights of workers, as well as in support for workers’ struggles that are currently being waged in the region. Similarly, a concentration will take place in front of the embassy of Argentina in support of the Argentine railway workers.

With a view to give continuity to the effort of performing unitary actions of national character, it was agreed to hold a national meeting of workers in Caracas, which would address the feasibility of a national strike against the government’s economic measures and a workers and popular solution to the crisis. §

backs of the victims of the April 2002 coup.

The foregoing connects with the bridge launched by the new general secretary of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), former Colombian President Ernesto Samper, who let it be known of his interest in talking with President Maduro, in order to re-establish dialogue between the opposition and the Venezuelan government. And more recently it also connects with Pope Francis’ statements, who pleaded for dialogue between the government and the opposition in a rally for peace, which was attended by representatives of different religions and the Minister of Interior and Justice, Miguel Rodriguez Torres. All this is part of the search, on the part of the government, of the consensus needed to implement the hardest part of the adjustment, i.e., the devaluation and the increase in gasoline prices.

For an action and mobilization plan against the adjustment In the above context, the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSL) and its union current C-CURA, have been posing the need for workers and popular communities to mobilize and fight in the streets against the austerity plan implemented by the government in agreement with Fedecamaras and the Bolivarian bourgeoisie. Proposing the need for regional trade union meetings to discuss action and mobilization plans, in the prospect of going towards a big national meeting to vote on an Alternative Worker and Popular Plan which starts with the demand of general wage increases, minimum wage equal to the basic basket and adjusted every three months according to inflation, ceasing of the redundancies, immediate reenlistment of the affected workers, in defence of collective agreements and against the criminalization of protest.

All with the strategic goal of organizing workers in struggle, and of joining forces to call a national strike against government policy which attempts to unload the costs of the crisis on the working people. §

Mexico

Mexico: The counter reforms of Peña Nieto

Appeasement to transnational capital Francisco Retama, member Executive Committee POS-MAS President Peña Nieto boasts of his 11 “reforms”, of which the most notable are energy, education, telecommunications and, of course, labour reforms, carried out in just two years in office. These are reforms designed to suit the interests of the big capitalists and the political caste that serves them.

Both the labour reform, as well as the badly named education reform are made to snatch rights of workers in general and particularly of the education workers, more flexible forms of recruitment, to hinder or even cancel the possibility of achieving stability in employment, and also cheaper and easier to fire.

The telecommunications reform responded to pressures from no other than the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim. But ultimately it served to preserve the enormous power of the television duopoly formed by Televisa and TV Azteca, giving away a small part of the pie, concessions to another two national television networks.

A truly historical reversal: the oil privatization In 1938, a powerful mobilization of oil workers culminated in a strike across the country, forcing the President Lazaro Cardenas to decree the expropriation of the oil industry which was a business in the hands of big oil

in the United States and Great Britain.

The private participation in exploration and production of oil and gas was prohibited at constitutional level, creating the State-owned Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX).

The “reform” imposed by Peña Nieto and the parties in Congress gave way to private participation in those activities reserved to the Mexican state.

With secondary laws passed a few months later, the change was regulated and what had not happened for 76 years in Mexico legalized.

Capitalists may participate in oil revenues, getting cash payments from the Mexican government or receiving a share of the oil extracted. They can 39

Mexico The counter Reform will mainly benefit the large transnationals, because according to the government’s own argument, they are the only ones with the capital necessary to carry out the exploration and exploitation of deepwater wells, with technology PEMEX does not have, because for decades it was undercapitalized, as it had imposed a tax system which imposed more than 30 percent of its net income to fund current spending of public finances, while large corporations have benefited from exemptions under the pretext of being generating jobs, indeed extremely precarious.

Once again, the nefarious role of also use the geological studies made by the labour movement leaderships Peña Nieto saving … the transnationals

PEMEX, which will be provided for free. In addition, they are not required to pay taxes while their investments have not been 100 percent recovered and can deduct the expenses incurred in exploration until they have achieved the expected profits.

Peasants may be dispossessed of their lands, for oil and gas activities, with the creation of the monster of “temporary occupation”, with which the land susceptible to be explored and exploited may be occupied without having a time limit to return the properties to their original owners. They will only have to pay a compensation, which will be assessed by the government.

Several opinion polls confirm the overwhelming rejection of the population. However, a hit of these proportions, just like with the other reforms, could only be possible by the treachery of the leaderships of the main trade unions in Mexico, which function as appendages of the capitalist state.

The Oil Workers Union of the Mexican Republic (STPRM) is subordinate to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI); its leader, Carlos Romero Deschamps follows verbatim the presidential dictates, while benefiting economically.

Neither the STPRM nor the General Union of Mexican Electrical Workers

Electricity also privatised The other energ y industr y nationalized in the 1960s was electricity. Although in this case, the re-privatization began in 1992, when then-President Carlos Salinas, promoted a constitutional “reform” which allowed power generation to companies to self-supply, inclusive of allowing the sale of surplus.

Now there will be no limits, because individuals can generate electricity exclusively to sell, and they may also market its distribution. The Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) will act only as a manager of the activities 40

of individuals.

The immediate precedent was the brutal offensive unleashed against the Mexican Electricians Union (SME), which represents workers in the nowdefunct Light and Power Company, which was responsible for distribution and marketing of electricity in the centre of the country. They had no qualms about making it disappear through an illegal decree, in order to destroy any stronghold of resistance to their privatization plans, putting all SME electricians, from one day to the next, on the street. §

(SUTERM) lifted a finger to prevent the privatization reform.

But we could not really expect anything from these traitors. Instead, the emblematic figures of false Mexican left, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano (son of Lazaro Cárdenas) kept making speeches that supposedly were positioned in sharp opposition to privatization. They had the possibility of convening a massive nationwide mobilization to reject the government’s plans, but the political organization of Cardenas, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) preferred to be an “institutional” opposition and limited itself to simply vote against it in Congress, but of demonstrations they would not even speak.

Meanwhile, Lopez Obrador, who broke with the PRD to form a new party, the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), did everything necessary to deactivate the mobilization. In mass meetings in the city of Mexico, most of the attendees were clamouring for the call for a national strike to stop the onslaught of the PRI and Peña. However, he ruled it out absolutely; instead, he promoted “peaceful resistance” and summoned a few hundred to a harmless siege to the Senate on the day the delivery of national wealth was passed.

Amidst the government offensive, the party of Lopez Obrador was granted registration as a national political party to participate in the next elections, receiving an annual budget of 100 million pesos [US$ 7.4 million].

Neither other organizations which claim to be “independent”, as the National Union of Workers, mobilized as demanded by the situation. Their leaders chose to privilege their good relationship with the government and the bosses. Others, such as the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE), were suffering from the demobilization caused by the defeat suffered when the educational reform approved. The CNTE was the only organization with national strength that opposed with strong mobilizations

Mexico the farce of reform in the education sector, which imposes a setback to their working conditions, but it also stood alone as neither MORENA nor the PRD mobilized in support.

It is urgent to build a new leadership for the workers New assaults against the workers have been announced. Now they want to impose a “reform” of the public health care system. It was also announced the construction of a new international airport in Mexico City, on land which is communally owned by peasants and could be taken away, thanks to an illegal change of land use, and the land required for the airport

could be sold, in a multimillion dollar project to be financed largely with public money and that individuals will be able to exploit through concessions.

Ejido [common land] owners in the town of San Salvador Atenco, who in 2001 stopped with their mobilization a similar project promoted by then President Vicente Fox, have already warned they will not allow the dispossession of their lands; but they cannot stop the government alone. It requires building a new leadership of the workers in Mexico, able to channel the discontent and of translating into mobilization the disapproval suffered by the Government of Peña Nieto.

Environmental disaster In recent weeks we have seen the worst environmental disaster in the history of Mexico, when they were spilled millions of litres of toxic substances in the waters of the Sonora River, which runs through the state of the same name in the north.

Responsible for such an atrocity was Grupo Mexico, owned by mining entrepreneur German Larrea, which unleashed a brutal offensive against the Metallurgical Mining Union, achieving the declaration of illegality of the strike held by the miners of Section 65 in Cananea, bringing

back in operation the largest copper producer in Mexico and the third in the world, responsible for the spill.

Not only was Larrea not punished for this crime, he will be rewarded with the counter-reforms, because as he is holder of mining exploration permits, he may use this permits to also exploit gas and oil, if it is found that this it is feasible in the land today exploited for mining. If this were not enough, in the bidding for the new TV networks he participates bidding to obtain a licence from the communications industry. §

Luz Mercedes Acosta, after washing her face, due to the intense heat, with waters of the Sonora River

The “reforms” have not brought economic growth; Mexico still remains among the countries with lower growth expectations, barely exceeding two percent of its gross domestic product.

There are no new jobs and the jobs that are being created are precarious, with low wages and minimal or no benefits.

Foreign investments promised by the government do not come; in fact it was just announced that they declined by 50 percent over the previous year.

According to official figures half of Mexicans live in poverty.

The bosses and Peña Nieto are preparing to face the social unrest, creating new repressive bodies such as the recently announced National Gendarmerie, or criminalising social protest, imprisoning fighters as the leader of the Yaqui tribe, Mario Luna, who has led protests against the ecocide caused by Grupo Mexico, or youth convicted for the mobilizations in Mexico City against the Peña Nieto’s assumption of power in 2012 and other youth activities in 2013.

The workers we must also prepare to resist and, eventually, to reverse the reforms imposed. In this road, the work to build a new Central of Workers driven by the Mexican Electricians Union (SME), Tramway Workers Alliance of Mexico (ATM), the cooperative of tyre workers Western Democratic Workers, several university, education and, in Mexico City, transportation unions, is an effort to which organizations that pride themselves on being independent and combative should join.

It must be built from below, with workers’ democracy, classism and independence, with internationalism, to put aside the rotten Mexican “unionism” and erect a new one, really combative and committed to the struggle for social revolution, which is the only Mexican solution to the decadent capitalism for the working people, youth, women and oppressed sectors. In that effort, the forces of Workers-Socialist Party – Movement Towards Socialism (POS–MAS), Mexican section of the IWU–FI, are committed. § 41

USA

United States: after Michael Brown’s murder

Rebellion against racism Miguel Lamas On August 8, in Ferguson, St. Louis, Missouri, a white police officer killed, with six bullets, 18-year-old African American Michael Brown, while he was holding his hands up. The fact, not new in the United States, triggered huge demonstrations of repudiation throughout the country. In a context of growing inequality and social tension racism reappears and also the enormous social outrage keeps growing (and not just among blacks).

Each year hundreds of African Americans and “Latinos” (migrants or children of Mexican and other Latin Americans) are killed by the police in the United States. Almost all murders go unpunished. When cases come to court, judges always accept as valid the police story, even if it is totally absurd.

And it is not only murder, statistically three of every four black males will at some time go to jail (seven times more likely than a white male).

In the case of Brown, who was unarmed when he was killed, the white cop, Darren Wilson, said the teen attacked him (the cop was inside the patrol car) to get his gun. More than a month after the police murderer had not been arrested or even charged. He was given a leave of absence with pay!

Ferguson is a poor neighbourhood of St. Luis, of 21,000 inhabitants, mostly black. The area was militarized against the protests. The police let dogs loose on the protesters, gassed them, shot them with rubber bullets, jailed journalists and banned helicopter flights so the media could not film the repression.

Marty Baron, Executive Editor of the Washington Post, described the situation as “totally unjustified violation 42

Hands up was the symbol of the protests

of freedom of the press”. Protesters came out with signs saying “I am a man” and “I am a woman”, echoing those carried by black Memphis sanitation workers in 1968.

In Dallas, 1000 km away from Ferguson, one of the demonstrations was headed by 30 black men and women armed with guns, in open face.

They told the press that it was to defend protesters from the police.

“There are thousands of Fergusons” Police brutality is getting worse. In recent years the police was militarized, equipped by the Pentagon with armoured vehicles, machine guns, war planes and helicopters, with the argument of the “fight against terrorism”.

“Emily Woo Yamasaki, a Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) activist in Harlem, says NYPD raids on multiple housing projects and mass arrests in Harlem this past June were carried out like a military

invasion, terrorizing and brutalizing residents of all ages” (FSP Statement).

“There are thousands of Fergusons in the United States,” says Ray Lewis, a former white cop retired eight years ago.

“The whole system is corrupt. Black people know that because they’ve been victims of it all their lives”, explains this white man who worked for 24 years in the Philadelphia Police. He has embraced political activism — he joined the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York in 2011 in full uniform — came to this suburb of Saint Louis to denounce the militarization of police equipment and privatization of prisons”(quoted by El Pais, Montevideo).

Obama and the broken dreams of Martin Luther King Keeping black and “brown” (Latinos) in oppression, discrimination and unemployment has a functionality for capital. Thus they divide workers, lower wages for everyone, including whites, and lay the blame of the

USA

Holocaust Survivor arrested for her solidarity Hedy Epstein, Jewish, 90-yearold survivor of the Nazi holocaust and long-time activist for Palestinian rights, was arrested by police in St. Louis while demonstrating. She told reporters: "It's the same kind

of violence I've seen when I was in the Israeli-occupied Palestine."

Meanwhile, Palestinian organizations in Gaza and the West Bank have signed a statement of solidarity with the protesters in Ferguson.

capitalist crisis on blacks and Latinos (who, say the white, “take away our jobs”, “rob us “...).

On 4 April 1968 Martin Luther King, the great black pacifist leader, was assassinated. Five years before his death in 1963 he made a famous speech “I have a dream”, in which he said he dreamed that one day the United States would have freedom, justice and racial equality and that blacks and whites would live as brothers. Since then a

formidable mass movement of African Americans has won rights, many laws changed and now there is even a black president, Obama. But, it was revealed that racism and racial oppression are derived directly from capitalism. Even with a black president, white and black police continue to kill blacks and Obama calls for “peace” while giving guns to the police to keep killing blacks.

The result of the enormous struggle of blacks for civil rights has been

reduced today to the rise of a small black elite co-opted by the system (Obama is the best representative), but the majority of African Americans are equal to or worse than 50 years ago.

The dream of Martin Luther King peace cannot be achieved in a capitalist, imperialist, and increasingly militarized country. As warned by Malcolm X, the other great black leader, who also was killed, “You cannot have capitalism without racism”. §

The social crisis The great recession, capitalist crisis, which lasted between 2007 and 2009, damaged with particular severity the minorities. The poverty rate among blacks is 28.1 percent, among whites 12 percent; unemployment rate is 11.4 percent for blacks and 5.3 percent for whites (El País, Madrid, 24 August, 2014).

Bearing in mind that unemployment rates are tricky in the United States, because they measure those who never

work, not even once a week. And also because those not seeking work (many because they feel they will never find one), who are millions, are not taken into account in the statistics.

While the country officially exited recession and the unemployment rate fell, Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University and author of “Average is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation” indicates that the jobs

created are precarious and underpaid.

“About 60 percent of the jobs lost during the downturn were mid-wage occupations, and 73 percent of the jobs that have been added during the recovery have been low-wage jobs, defined as those of US$ 13.52 an hour or less”, says Cowen. This, with the cost of living in America, means misery. In other words, a huge increase in worker exploitation and misery is the balance to the alleged “ending” of the crisis. §

Three of every four black youths will become prisoners Jurist Michelle Alexander in her book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” provides the most documented denunciation of how the largest prison system in the world — no country surpasses the USA in incarceration rate — discriminates blacks to the point of creating a new form of racial segregation. “The United States”, writes Alexander, “imprisons a larger percentage of its

black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. In Washington, D.C., our nation’s capital, it is estimated that three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison.”

These men will live apart from society and will see their rights limit even once they are released from prison, according to Alexander (El País, Madrid, 24 August 2014). § 43

Debate

Thomas Piketty and “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”

The “new Marx”?

Jose Castillo

With profuse statistics, the author demonstrates the ferocious increases in concentration of wealth and in inequality. Thus he confirms that capitalism cannot offer but more misery and social degradation. However, the conclusions of Piketty are far from serving the struggle of the working class.

The economic crisis of capitalism continues at full steam, and as a side result, come “in fashion” certain authors who produced bestsellers speaking directly of it (as in the case of Paul Krugman’s book “End this depression now!”) or referring to its consequences, as Piketty does with wealth inequality.

This is not a new phenomenon: already at the beginning of this century, in the midst of the rebellions of 2001, Naomi Klein had appeared with her record sales for “No Logo”.

The acute crisis opened in 2007, the struggles that followed (Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, the Outraged Movement, general strikes in Greece 44

and the rest of Europe struggles in Latin America and Turkey, etc.) generated an “eager public”, tens of thousands of youth and workers who wondered what had happened and what was the solution. It was no coincidence that in these years, sales of Karl Marx’s Capital rose astronomically.

That is the context in which, in early 2014, appears this book by Thomas Piketty, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, which quickly placed at the head of the list of bestsellers of New York Times and Amazon. Le Monde even headlines with “the research that is revolutionizing the global economic debate”. He is quoted by the media of the economic establishment (the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times devote furious criticism and try unsuccessfully to refute his statistics). It is spoken of in the IMF and the World Bank. There will be some who call Piketty “the new Marx”. But Piketty is not a Marxist; he is not even someone clearly of the left: he is a French social democrat linked to the more liberal

sectors of the party of current president, Hollande.

What is it all about?

Let us Piketty himself talk in the introduction of his book: “The distribution of wealth is one of today’s most widely discussed and controversial issues. But what do we really know about its evolution over the long term? Do the dynamics of private capital accumulation inevitably lead to the concentration of wealth in ever fewer hands, as Karl Marx believed in the nineteenth century?

Or do the balancing forces of growth, competition, and technological progress lead in later stages of development to reduced inequality and greater harmony among the classes, as Simon Kuznets thought in the twentieth century?”

We acknowledge that the question is certainly central. “Let us translate it”: was Marx right in predicting that capitalism could only offer misery, more exploitation and degradation?

Or he was wrong, and capitalism, in the long run, is capable of generating

Debate more wealth for all, as claimed by the economists apologists of the system?

Piketty accepts Marx was right with an impressive empirical research. This is most striking: despite being a nonMarxist economist, his study led him to recognize that capitalism creates more poverty and inequality in the midst of one of the worst crises in history. Most of its nearly 700 pages are devoted to showing that, except for an exceptional period in the mid-twentieth century, during the course of two centuries inequality has increased substantially.

A shocking fact is that, since the 1970s, the dynamic is leading to the differences between social classes to increasingly resemble those of the more sordid moments of capitalist exploitation in the nineteenth century.

Examples abound: in the United States between 1977 and 2007, the richest 10 percent of the country went from appropriating 30-35 percent of the total income to 45-50 percent. The disparity in pay between average workers and executives was approximately 30:1 in 1970; today it is above 300:1 (and in some cases, such as in MacDonald, reaches 1200:1). In 2013, the best remunerated 25 fund managers were paid 21 billion, or twice the accumulated income of 150,000 preschool teachers in the United States. The book is packed with data demonstrating as the working class “loses” and inequality increases.

What is the solution?

Piketty’s empirical data is irrefutable.

It is, without doubt, an extremely useful material to illustrate the ferocious consequences of imperialist capitalism in general and the current crisis in particular. But Piketty is far, very far, from being “the Marx of the twentyfirst century”. His theoretical analyses are weak, do not escape conventional economic theory and do not help to understand the origin of the current capitalist crisis (see “A critique from Marxist economic theory viewpoint”).

We do not agree with the solution he proposes. According to Piketty, the solution would be to place a tax of

Who is Thomas Piketty?

Thomas Piketty (born in 1971) is a French economist, professor at the School of High Studies in Social Sciences (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, EHESS) and director of the Paris School of Economics (which he helped create in 2006). Specialist on inequalities in wealth and income distribution, in 2003 he was a member of the Board of Research Centre “The Left in Europe”, with Michel Rocard and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, of the right wing of the French Socialist Party. Piketty worked for the presidential candidacy of Strauss-Kahn, who failed after the sexual harassment scandal that led to the then General Director of the IMF to withdraw. From that moment, Piketty became economic adviser of Ségolène Royal, the pre-candidate 80% on income above a million dollars annually. It is the old and faded program of “humanizing capital” or giving it “a human face”. A minimum measure which would not solve the problem: would “pulling down” the cash money taken by year stop the capitalists from super-exploiting workers? Would the looting and pillaging of natural resources by the large transnational be deterred? Would scams generated by speculative bubbles, which generate landslides as 2007 with hundreds of millions of workers harmed, disappear?

Would foreign debt problems end?

for the French presidency of the Socialist Party, who eventually ended up defeated by Michel Hollande.

However, in March 2012, he signed with 42 other intellectuals, his support to the presidential candidacy of Michel Hollande. He is currently a columnist for Libération, where he continues to support the current policies of the French Socialist Party in government, even in their current plans for further “pro-market” adjustments.

In English: Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Harvard University Press, March 2014 (translation by Arthur Goldhammer).

French original: Le Capital au XXIe siècle, Editions du Seuil, March 2014.

Not at all: almost 20 years ago, an old economist had also proposed to resolve the crisis with “tax” remedies. It was called the “Tobin tax”, in tribute to its author.

It is because these “special tax proposals”, besides not solving anything essential, suffer from a previous problem: who’s going to carry them forward? Piketty has an answer for this: it is to “convince” the rulers of the imperialist countries. To that end, he has met up with Obama. Utopian and unrealistic pose.

45

Debate Revolutionary socialists we are convinced that this imperialist capitalist system offers only more misery and exploitation. And that, correspondingly, it will continue to increase inequalities between bosses and workers, while at the same time sending millions into marginalization.

We welcome the technical data of Piketty as statistically it serves to reinforce our arguments. But, at the same time, we firmly assert that the only solution passes through the struggle and mobilization of the working class around the world, of all the exploited peoples, of the oppressed sectors. They (and not Obama, the European Union,

the Pope or international technical bodies) are the only ones who can impose another solution, another future for humanity: the government of the working class, expropriating capital and ending with exploitation, to start building a new socialist world. In this we are committed. §

A critique from the Marxist economic theory viewpoint Piketty’s “theoretical justification” about the historical trend of increasing inequality is weak, and does not escape the canons of bourgeois economists.

To Piketty, everything could be explained from a couple of equations which, in a simplified way, claim that the rate of profit (or profit) is systematically higher than the rate of growth of the economies. Thus, the “capital” would appropriate larger portions of the product every year.

And we say “capital” because for the author, following the parameters of economic orthodoxy, it is a factor of production (i.e. like machines, factories, even land), which thus, in a depersonalized way, earns “profits” or “gains” based on productivity.

To Piketty, at the same time there are not workers, but “labour factor of production” which, based on its productivity, receives a salary commensurate to it.

For the author of “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” then there is nothing to criticize in the utopian harmonies justificatory and beautifying of capitalism designed by bourgeois economic theory, where each would receive “his due” as a function of contribution in terms of productivity. The problem would be exclusively the intrusion of political and institutional problems that distort this harmony. And this could be solved, as he proposes, with 46

appropriate tax measures.

Piketty is not the “Marx of the twenty-first century”.

The real Marx, already in the nineteenth century, had called economists who used these categories as “vulgar” and “mere apologists of capitalism”. Instead he put things in place, explaining economics from the social classes, where workers in exchange for a wage that ensures their mere reproduction are exploited by capitalists, owners of the means of production who appropriate the surplus value — the part of the working day not paid to workers. That surplus value subsequently assumes the form of profit, income or interest, and may even be “redistributed” among different factions of the propertied class.

Here it is, for Marx, the key to explaining the increase of social inequality: the exploitation of the working class by the bosses. In the class struggle, particularly in the search for super-exploitation of the workers and their resistance, is the dynamic that can grow or shrink that gap. All of it in an unequal battle, where the capitalists, as owners of the means of production, will take the upper hand as long as they are not expropriated.

Piketty ’s work obser ves and documents the increasing social polarization and wealth differences between the classes in the last forty years, but he fails to detect its origin: the fierce implementation of an economic counter-revolution against the workers, with which imperialist capitalism tries to get out of its crisis through qualitatively increasing the super-exploitation of the workingclass and the plundering of the semi-colonial countries. And, much less does he detect the contradictory dynamics of the resistance of the working classes and peoples to prevent the capitalists from unloading the burden of the crisis on their backs.

JC

Global News

China/Hong Kong

Students strike and demonstrations of thousands for free elections In the last week of September, thousands of protesters took to the streets in Hong Kong to repudiate the dictatorship of China and demanding free elections on the island. University students in Hong Kong took the first step going out on strike in protest against the decision of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), adopted in late August, which denied the people of Hong Kong the full right to universal suffrage and requiring that candidates for Chief Executive be pre-approved by a selection committee of 1200 people.

One of them explained how even after the end of British colonial rule in 1997, the political system of Hong Kong is a copy of the colonial system and still at the service of the oligarchs.

Students boycott classes in a total of 26 centres of higher education in Hong Kong. In a meeting convened by the Hong Kong Federation of Students, thousands of students held banners with slogans such as “Self-determination for Hong Kong”, “Against colonization and selection from above”, “If we do not speak and express our anger, we will be silently removed” and “Representative government is not enough, we must also protect the livelihoods of the people”.

Hi g h s c h o o l s t u d e n t s w e re preparing to join them, true to the motto of “boycott classes, not study”.

On 29 September Hong Kong Police repressed with tear gas and pepper spray the demonstrators who kept the protests. But the government finally

Thousands in the streets of Hong Kong challenging the dictatorship of the Communist Party

withdrew the police. The teachers’ union announced a general strike to join the protests of Occupy Central — the movement which seeks to block the financial district — and the students announced that the protests will continue. At press time, thousands of protesters were concentrated preparing to resist eviction orders. And they also demanded the resignation of the Chief

Africa

Ebola: why are people dying without remedy?

Executive.

Ebola was detected in Africa almost 30 years and only now is in the news.

The world is frightened when it learns that it is an epidemic that, for now, has no choice but to fight it. How can this be?

Simply because until now. it had not been a disease which had come to the imperialist countries. Until now it was a “disease of the poor” Africans. For this reason no US or European research laboratory has been investigating. It did not promise them huge profits.

The same thing happened over three decades ago with AIDS. While it was an “African” disease, no one addressed it.

But when it came to the United States and Europe, everything changed. But it was too late for hundreds of thousands who died without remedy. Today AIDS

is controllable and the mortality rate is low.

The epidemic of Ebola virus has already killed 3,000 people in Africa and threatens to expand throughout the world. It is estimated that if the disease continues to spread as until now in January there could be between half a million and 1.4 million infected. At least half of them would die without remedy.

Argentine journalist Gustavo Sierra makes a chilling report on the unpredictability of Ebola: “There is an even greater disadvantage. The only medicine that proved effective so far to contain the virus is a supplement called Zmapp which was developed by a small pharmaceutical in Texas with just nine employees and depends on a new crop, in March, of some specific tobacco plants to develop new doses.

Large labs were never interested so far in developing a vaccine which would not have given them a huge profit”.

This is completed with the statement by the Director of WHO (World Health Organization) who announced that by year’s end there would be vaccines which are being studied by companies Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) and Genetic NewLine, but only for medical staff and contacts of the patients, nothing in mass for the population (data from Clarin, Argentina, 28 September 2014). In short, the situation will remain serious.

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Global News

Germany

Railworkers strike Train services were paralysed in Germany, in early September, for a preventive strike by train drivers and staff out of the consortium Deutsche Bahn (German Railway).

The strikes affected for three hours travellers and users of those services, which are of high demand because Germany, along with Switzerland, is the most decentralized country in Europe.

Many people travel each day to another city to go to work. The German population is well distributed throughout the national territory.

The engine drivers union rejected the offer put to them by Deutsche Bahn.

Passengers and users could recover the money they had paid for their tickets, but nothing could prevent delays of several hours.

Long queues formed in front of the Information counters of Deutsche Bahn througout the country to ask for travel alternatives.

The leader of the GDL union, Claus Weselsky said in Berlin’s Central Station at the beginning of the strike that there would be one to two new preventive strikes if the company does not have an acceptable offer.

Spain

Great victory for the right to abortion Mariano Rajoy, president of the government of the Popular Party (PP), announced on 16 September the withdrawal of its ultra-reactionary “preliminary draft Organic Law of Protection of the conceived and the Rights of the pregnant”. Despite enormous pressure from the Catholic Church and the extreme right of the PP, he could not achieve the necessary consensus within his own party.

Drafted by Justice Minister Ruiz Gallardón, Rajoy launched last year a reactionary counter- reform regarding the law passed in 2010, driven by the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE). This law, which had broad popular support, put Spain in tune and at the forefront of other 48

European countries to give the full and free right for the up to 14-week pregnant woman to have a legal, free abortion and in public institutions, without any requirement. It included minors over 16 years, with the only requirement of informing the parents (without their consent).

In 2014, hundreds of thousands of women and men across the country mobilized to defend the law of 2010.

There was also a massive mobilization of the Catholic right to support the reactionary project of suppression of the right to abortion; it was so Neanderthallike that it even forbade the abortion in case of foetus malformation or infeasibility. In December 2013 it was approved by Cabinet.

In the framework of the social discontent that shakes Spain as the economic crisis is not resolved, the PP government has not had sufficient strength to comply with the mandate of the church and the right and had to pull back almost completely. Rajoy said: “I think I made the most sensible decision” and withdrew the project. He will only aspire to reform the current rules, in force since 2010, to ensure that a child of 16 and 17 requires parental consent to terminate her pregnancy. The author of the project, minister Gallardón, who had called it the most important of his career, had to resign.

Ecuador

Popular march against Correa’s plan A important march of unions, student centres and indigenous groups in downtown Quito, showed that the

relationship b e t w e e n Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa and the popular sectors which hitherto had suppor ted him began to crack.

The march was led by the United Workers Front (FUT), the largest labour union federation of Ecuador, and was aimed to reject several labour reforms promoted by the government.

Correa accused the organizers of destabilizing and of responding to the interests of the right. To counter the protest, he called at the same time and in the same place a pro-Government march to support his management.

This is the first action in which unions, indigenous people, doctors and students participated together. They were joined by a series of controversial government projects, especially the new Labour Code, which eliminates a number of employee benefits, including cuts to the right to strike and to trade union organization. These initiatives of Correa include the indefinite re-election of authorities, which would allow the president to stay in power after 2017, when his term ends.

“In the draft Labour Organization Code, job security and the right to strike are not guaranteed, and the message we want to send is that we want stability and respect for labour rights”, said Jose Villavicencio, president of the National Union of workers (UNT).

The march paraded through several areas of downtown Quito, and different columns joined as they marched. The protest, which was replicated in other cities, also brought together indigenous people who reject a law that took away the management of water in their territories; workers of foreign telephone companies to whom the government cut their benefits in favour of the State, and students who oppose the hike in transport fares (data by Clarín, Argentina, 18 September 2014).

Successful Unification Congress During the 31 July, 1, 2 and 3 August the Unification Congress of the IWU–FI (International Workers Unity – Fourth International) was held in Buenos Aires. After years of divisions we managed to take a step in joining the revolutionaries. The unity with the comrades of Lucha Internacionalista [Internationalist Fight] of the Spanish state, İşçi Demokrasisi Partisi [Workers Democracy Party] in Turkey, and Partido Obrero Socialista (Socialist Workers Party) of Mexico gives rise to a new IWU–FI, more strengthened, to support the struggles of the world and find more unity.

Fourteen countries of Latin America, Europe, USA and Australia were represented. An extensive agenda was discussed on the world situation, the Palestinian resistance, the Syrian revolution, Europe, Venezuela, Argentina and tasks and campaigns to develop in the next period.

The congress unfolded amid the reunion of old and new comrades who continue the legacy left us by Nahuel Moreno. The presentations and discussions were made in different languages: Turkish, English, German, Portuguese and Spanish. With a team of translators who were very supportive.

It is also noteworthy that many of the delegates were participating for the first time at a conference where the focus was unity and not divisions or factional fights.

Having achieved this unity after years of isolation and crisis of our Morenist current as well as of the whole Trotskyist movement is very important because it may open a different trend. We know that this is still a small step. We reject any expression of self-proclamation and sectarianism. We know we are still far

from the reconstruction of the Fourth International founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938. But we frame this unification in the strategic goal of seeking its reconstruction. We know that this must be the product of the progress in the construction of revolutionary parties in each country and of new unifications with other groups and revolutionary movements. We are open to it.

In this sense, we contributed our own experience. Our unity rested upon a principled political agreement. Firstly, about the most outstanding facts of the class struggle, as were the revolution in North Africa and the Middle East which began in Tunisia in 2011, in the support of the Syrian revolution against the dictator Al-Assad and of the Palestinian people. Secondly, facing the misconception of “Socialism of the XXI Century”, that the Chavist current heads, with its double discourse at the service of ruling against the working people.

These central agreements are not minor. Because, lamentably, we could not achieve them with other currents that claim to be revolutionary socialist. With these agreements, we achieved unity with a fraternal working method and relations. We prioritize

the discussion of the central themes of the struggles of the world and we discuss how to proceed. Thus we debate agreements and differences. We do not have all the problems solved, but we are confident that we can be, together, better able to respond to the new challenges of reality.

The IWU–FI leaves the unification congress strengthened. All our parties and groups intend to comply with the central objectives that the congress voted. The number one task for each of the sections is to intervene in the reality of their countries to promote the people’s and workers’ struggles and build the revolutionary party. Precisely the congress was held at a time when large demonstrations and rallies of solidarity with the Palestinian people were taking place, and also major labour, popular and youth struggles in the world. In all of them, the workers and youth are clamouring for new political and trade union alternatives against the capitalist governments and the union bureaucracy of all kind and colour.

The central task of IWU–FI is to help overcome this lack of revolutionary leadership. §

ARGENTINA

In defence of the militant railworkers

International Solidarity In Argentine embassies and consulates in Europe and the American continent took place activities repudiating the attempt of impeachment of the Sarmiento railworkers with delegations of union and left leaders. In the United States, a delegation attended the Argentine Consulate in New York.

Venezuela

Mexico

France

Spanish State

Chile

Brazil