Class Struggle 92
Brief Stuff
NZ’s semi-colonial ‘sovereignty’
NZ is a semi-colony fawning over China for money and the US
for protection without seeing that it is being used by both
against its major imperialist rival. While John Key pays over
$100m protection money to Warner Bros he also holds out his
hand to China for economic salvation. But the US is master of
NZ. Key invites the SAS troops to tell him if they want to
volunteer for further deployment in Afghanistan. They say
yes. Key signs the US mafia deal, the Wellington Declaration
to enlist as US deputy dog in South Pacific (Deputy to US
Marshall Australia that is) to help ring-fence China. The NZ
capitalist class finds it easy to sign away the livelihoods and
lives of its workers in return for a few crumbs from the table
of the US and China.
So while NZ gets nothing substantial in return - far from the
billions that Key brags will flow into the NZ economy -
http://www.kiwipolitico.com/2010/11/small-feels-large-but-
only-to-the-small/ the local class of bourgeois parasites get a
few free trips, and the bank balance boosted by their plan to
privatise the remaining public assets.
What is NZ really joining. The US is building an Asian
extention of NATO
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/southeast-asia-
west-completes-plans-for-asian-nato/
The Pacific thrust of the US is to surround China.
http://redrave.blogspot.com/2010/08/us-china-military-
rivalry-threatens.html
That is why the US is now pushing the TPPA [Pacific
Partnership Agreement] disguised as a free-trade agreement
and building defence alliances to ring-fence Chinese and
Russia expansionism in Asia-Pacific. The TPPA is just a pretext
for the US to reinforce its allies in the Pacific against the
reality that China has stolen several marches in its influence
in the region. Gordon Campbell takes a left Social Democrat
line which sees this as conscious NACT sellout of kiwi
sovereignty.
http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2010/11/15/gordon-
campbell-key%E2%80%99s-illusory-free-trade-gains/
But left liberal realist Pablo sees this correctly as weak the NZ
Banararepublic speaking.
http://www.kiwipolitico.com/2010/10/bananazelandia/
Against the NZ Labourite left who are really the only
defenders of the NZ ‘sovereignty’ myth, realists of left, right
and centre recognise NZs semi-colonial dependence on
Australian mini-imperialism mediating its subservience to US
imperialism. Aussie has virtually re-colonised NZ so that it is
now basically a servile state of Australia without the provision
made in 1901 to join the Federation.
Sadly the CWG revolutionary realists are alone in recognising
the looming power of China as not some aberrant market
socialist monster, coming down to breath fire on the Greens,
but a newly emerging capitalist imperialism. The game being
played in the Pacific is not one of NZ benefitting from its
relations with China or the US as a sovereign equal, but rather
its increasingly insignificant role as a pawn of both giants, and
its trans-Tasman big brother. NZ’s future is therefore in the
hands of its working class will have to take the lead in the
Nov 2010-Jan 2011
fight for NZ’s independence of imperialism by making a
socialist revolution.
NACTs pushing Privatisation
Key has nailed the NACTs privatisation plans to the election
year mast. Flogging off 49% of the energy SOEs to ‘mums and
dads’ at the same time as he is about to concede to the TPPA
that they have no preference over US pension funds. Already
we have Whanau Ora as a model for privatised welfare but
that is not profitable except for the Maori Party which is
happy to get a few multi-million dollar contracts to run family
welfare and privatised prisons as the price for betraying its
working class voters. Coming next to a school near you are
plans to privatise education after nearly 30 years of pre-
market research; follow the British and sell off schools.
Allowing Auckland Grammar to reject NCEA in a state school
is welcomed by the NACTs. Then health minister, Razor Ryall
is already going round the country sacking elected Health
officials who oppose his cuts that are shifting health spending
from the diseases of the poor to the health of the rich!
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1011/S00278/eight-dhb-
chairs-to-be-stood-down.htm
Labour’s and Green’s critiques of this are weak. Labour
promises to restore some of the cuts. Labour will timidly
impose a tiny surcharge on incomes over $120k that will not
even pay for cutting GST on food. The Greens are a bit better
proposing a capital gains tax on all income apart from the
family home.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1011/S00278/eight-dhb-
chairs-to-be-stood-down.htm
Green Social Democracy has no answer to the attacks of the
NACTs to make NZ workers pay for their capitalist crisis.
Capitalism in crisis cannot be managed by redistributing
income from rich to poor, as the rich have all the money and
the power and will not voluntarily hand it over. We are for a
Workers Socialist Party that will expropriate the wealth of the
parasitic capitalist class and then redistribute it as unpaid
back wages to all workers including those forced into self-
employment to cut their wages and screw up their
exploitation. (see New Left Party? In this issue)
From Welfare to Forced Labour
The Nazis had a slogan ‘work makes you free’ to signify the
higher duty that forced labour was to serve in the realm of
freedom. i.e. Nazi Germany. For Marx and Engels the realm
of freedom is only attained when wage slavery is ended and
the free exchange of labour realised in a socialist society.
Like the Nazis who misappropriated the realm of freedom to
smash the struggle for socialism and the Hayekian free market
fundamentalists who glorify ‘free labour’ against the socialist
‘road to serfdom’, the NACT razor gang on welfare also
assume that forced labour for beneficiaries is the road to
freedom. (Channelling Paula Rebstock).
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1011/S00277/welfare-
working-group-cries-crocodile-tears.htm
For a NZ Marxist critique of Hayekian Welfare-to-work see
http://www.scribd.com/doc/36826019/Dependency
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Class Struggle 92
NZ CAPITALISM
Pike River Mine Disaster
This is not a national disaster but a disaster for the workers and their families. Key’s class of banksters
and profiteers are facing a financial hit but hardly a disaster. They are using the same approach to the
failure of this mine as the failure of South Canterbury Finance. Inside traders get paid in full by the
state for investing in a state bailout. The banksters get away with murder while posing as national
leaders in national disasters. There is only one national disaster and that’s the NACT frontier capitalist
neo-colonial lackey regime that serves the interests of Australian, US and Chinese imperialism!
NZ Oil and Gas would have been happy to pay their $500,000
conscience money, recover the bodies and after a decent
interval reopen the mine. Even if they were found responsible
for the disaster they could hide behind a cowboy government
into strip mining and a greedy petty bourgeois class wanting
its share of the spoils. As soon as the explosion died down
there was already a campaign underway to blame the disaster
on the difficulties of ‘surgical mining’ forced on the company
by the ban on opencast mining on Conservation land. Even
though the company pointed out
this was technically impossible this
hasn’t shut the cowboys up.
But as it played out, the company,
the NACT regime and big business,
closed ranks and played the
disaster for sympathy to create a
smokescreen over any company or
Govt negligence. And now the
mine is closed and the bodies are
unrecovered, the Official Inquiry
will have to speculate on what
when wrong and why.
Well we won’t allow this frontier boss rule politics to shift the
blame from the operation and management of the mine onto
the miners, the contractors, the Greens or some freak
accident. After all it was Coasters that started coming out
with ‘blame’ comments right after Friday, November 19.
Former mine workers commented on safety defects in the
mine. Then the MSM got into the act. They have their reasons
(keeping the disaster movie interesting) but they did hit some
pay dirt. Investigate Magazine summarised most of this
information in its January, 2011 Issue. As was immediately
evident at the time of the explosion, and with plenty of
warning signs, the mine exploded because it was a ‘gassy’
mine without an adequate ventilation system.
Investigate Magazine puts a lot of emphasis on reports that
contractors tampered with the methane sensors so that they
would not lose pay in the event of gas leaks causing a shut
down. But the possible failure of gas sensors sabotaged or
not, is not the main cause. Even if it was the immediate
cause, it reflects company policy to used casualised
contractors rather than company employees who would be
paid for down time. Moreover, it’s damning of both the
company and the union that what was reported as a common
practice was not acted on and stopped. However you read the
safety problems the mine faced, it is the history of
deregulation of health and safety requirements and
inspections over the last 20 year allowing the mine to operate
without sufficient margins of safety, that is the fundamental
cause of the explosion for which the company and both
National and Labour Governments are clearly to blame.
Nov 2010-Jan 2011
Similar mines in the US now have failsafe ventilation systems
since if the ventilation system fails in ‘gassy’ mines explosions
are almost inevitable. Disasters in the US today are due to
owners’ negligence. So it’s no use talking about Pike River as
the ‘latest’ such mine. Peter Whittall, the mine manager,
while developing Pike River himself reported that the Mining
regulations needed updating and there was a shortage of mine
inspectors. What he failed to mention was that only in NZ had
a mine of such a type installed a ventilator fan inside the
mine where it could not be
reached in an explosion, rather
than at the top of the ventilator
shaft where it could be
protected from the blast.
Both the Labour Party and the
EPMU which covers most of the
miners knew about a report
critical of lack of inspection
made in 2008 but they did not
act on it. Pike River even had a
dangerous build-up a few days
before the explosion and workers
were out for the 20 hours it took to clear the gas. At that
point the EPMU should have stepped in and insisted that the
cause of the build-up be investigated and better ventilation
put in place.
Of course we won’t know the full facts even when the Official
Inquiry is completed. The mine is closed, and important
evidence is lacking. So if the Inquiry was always going to
whitewash the Company and Govt this is now certain.
Meanwhile our solidarity should be for the workers families
and not for the parasites that turned this disaster for the
miners and their families into a face-saving exercise for the
ruling class and their NACT regime.
The west coast miners have a proud tradition of unionism that
led the way in the fight to win improved conditions not only
in the mines but in all workplaces. The west coast miners
stood firm with the wharfies in 1951 until the navy was sent
to scab on the miners. Today it is a scandal that the miners’
union, the EPMU, should be included along with the company
and the Government as contributing to the conditions that led
to the Pike River mine disaster. Workers in this country should
make it their duty to revive the west coast unions along with
the rest of NZ union movement in the tradition of the militant
unionism of the Red Fed and take control of the health and
safety conditions of workplaces so that disasters like this
never happen again!
http://redrave.blogspot.com/2010/03/more-wildcats-dead-
fed-vs-red-red.html
3
Class Struggle 92 Nov 2010-Jan 2011

REFORMISM

A New Left Party?

What is going on here? Are McCarten, Bradford and Harawira going to found a New Left Party? What
happened to the New Labour Party that morphed into the Alliance. Will a new NLP be based in the
unions? It looks like Unite Union national secretary McCarten had a new party in mind when he stood as
a candidate in Mana. Only the unions have the base to put up candidates to the left of Labour but most
unions support Labour. McCarten wasn’t nominated by his union base, he nominated himself. What’s
the bet that a NLP will also be founded without any attempt to form a mass base? McCarten can
probably rely on the Unite membership base, but Bradford and Harawira are not currently involved in
unions. Will a New Left Party go down the same parliamentary road as the old New Labour Party trying
to push Labour to the left? The New Labour Party failed, and so will a New Left Party. McCarten got
around 6% of the Mana vote. We don’t give critical support to another attempt to create a New Labour
Party that says NZ capitalism can be reformed. It will become the tail of the Labour parliamentary dog.
We want a workers’ party with a socialist program that only uses parliament only as a forum and a
sounding board to expose it as a sham and to raise the banner of the socialist revolution.

Same old reformist illusions
The Labour left on The Standard blog is pushing for a ‘new
economy.’ What’s new? Touting 19th century Fabian solutions
for the 21st century? How are these different from Fabianism
that was the ideology of parliamentary socialism in Britain?
Trotsky identified Fabian
intellectuals as the ideologists of the
British Labour Party in the 1930s. In
NZ Fabianism arrived in NZ in the
1890s. W.P. Reeves was a Fabian.
State management of the economy
was necessary in a young colony
since the market was hardly formed.
The land had to be converted into
private property via state
dispossession. The biggest theft of
Maori land occurred under the watch
of the Liberal Party Fabians. Workers
had to be regulated into a labour
market via the Industrial Conciliation
and Arbitration Act, later called
‘Labour’s leg-iron’ by Harry Holland. It was WP Reeves’ baby.
The colonial capitalists ‘pork-barrelled’ (insider-traded) the
economy by electing themselves as legislators. Reeves got a
road put into his farm (inspiring the notorious labour rat FP
Walsh who became the biggest dairy farmer 50 years later).
The Reevesites used the state to establish a national
capitalist class through state protection and insulation - a
tradition picked up by the NZ Keynesian WB Sutch during the
30s depression. Sutch was the intellectual grunt behind state
intervention first in the Reform Government of Coates, and
then the first Labour Government of Savage and Fraser. He
had a second go as head of Trade and Industry during the
Second Labour Govt of 1957-60.
The Lange Fourth Labour Govt facing a deep crisis that had
built up during the 1970s, rejected Keynesianism for the neo-
liberal market reforms in the 1980s. NZ’s economy was
deregulated and bought out by Australian and US
multinationals. It suited the MNCs but not the working class
whose living standards plummeted. Only now facing a new
global crisis of capitalism is Labour turning back towards
weak-kneed Keynesian type policies to manage the economy.
It is being egged on by its coterie of left intellectuals who
have revived their state socialism brand as Fabian lectures.
Today, the NZ state acts openly for international capitalism
and no significant economic sovereignty survives. In a hundred
years NZ has gone from infant capitalist colony to a clapped-
out capitalist semi-colony. Instead of becoming a state of
Australia in 1901 when the other
states federated, NZ struck out (in
both senses) on its own because the
Liberals under Seddon and the social
imperialist Fabians had visions of NZ
capitalism as a little England with its
own Pacific empire. Of course these
were infantile delusions, so that today
far from being a minor imperialist
power lording it over tiny Pacific
fiefdoms, NZ is virtually a colony of
Australia without the benefits gained
by Federation over 100 years.
Catching up with Australia is
therefore impossible and futile. NZs
future therefore is more like that of the historic Latin
American semi-colonies of the US. If you want a current
model to revive economic nationalism look to the Bolivarian
states in Latin America and see that none of these states can
evade subservience to the big foreign powers. What we see in
Latin America is not a contemporary Fabianism, or a managed
national capitalism, that has escaped US domination but a
switch from US subservience to Chinese subservience.
Illusions of the NZ Bolivarian Left
It’s not surprising then to find that McCarten is a strong ally
of the Australian Green left which pins its hopes for socialism
on the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez
advocates a 21st century socialism that is not tainted by that
of the 20th century. Yet this ‘socialism’ is no different from
the state socialism of the Fabians of the 20th century. It is
essentially no different from the Alternative Economic
Strategy of the CTU. The AES which is a predicable wish-list
of reforms that sees workers taking a larger share in the
‘productivity’ of their labour. From this rising share of wages
would come more jobs, education, health and public housing.
This is also the broad program of Bradford and Harawira
addressing the needs of working people and of Maori.

4
Class Struggle 92
They make no mention that this increased income share going
to workers is the result of rising exploitation and that workers
are entitled to all, not just a larger share of the value they
produce. So the differences on the left of Labour are not over
reforms as such but how far those reforms go and how they
can be implemented. Those who identify with the Bolivarian
left are pushing for more mass involvement in politics so that
more major reforms are possible. They point to the success of
Chavez and Morales in Latin America who have been elected
to power on big popular majorities.
What they don’t say is that the populist policies of these
leaders of sharing the wealth that workers produce, serves to
justify the right of capitalists to expropriate their profits from
workers’ labour. Workers become subordinated to popular
fronts which are dominated by bosses and prevented from
organising independently to overthrow these regimes. The
irony is that Chavez now talks about 21st socialism as being
similar to Chinese ‘market socialism’ when China is now the
new imperialist power that is in strategic alliances with the
Bolivarians to contain the masses so it can extract its super-
profits.
TPPA
Break down imperialist borders!
Already NZ, Singapore, Chile have set up and signed off what they called the Trans Pacific Partnership
Agreement (TPPA). Now the USA has moved to join and fast-track this agreement. John Key is overjoyed
with the promise of blood for butter. What is behind the US deals with these Pacific nations, and what
of the opposition to the TPPA? How do we organise a working class solution to US imperialist trade war?
It is significant that the USA is joining in the discussion. As
the world's largest economy the US needs to protect its
interests. We predict that the USA would try to use the TPPA
to contain the expanding imperialist force that is China. Since
China has emerged from the cold-war and used party control
of workers property to control development. China has
harnessed foreign capitalist investment and kept enough
capitalist profit in China, to emerge as an imperialist power.
That is China is now investing its own capital internationally.
The resources of the Pacific region are of interest to
imperialist powers, as US investments wane China emerges.
Already the largest export destination of Australia's exports is
now China (from previously being the US).
US imperialism wants to limit China's trade and investments,
and protect its own. The US will push its own military and
security agenda. NZ govt is following US agenda with Security
laws going through parliament.
The TPPA is an economic tool to push "free trade"
agreements, similar to other FTAs but under today's
imperialist conditions. Similar, since all "free trade" within
capitalism means that imperialist will super-exploit the
colonies/semi-colonies for cheap labour and raw materials.
Under today's conditions the rate of profit for capitalism
continues to fall, as shown in the 'financial crisis', which was a
symptom of the falling rate of profit in capitalist production.
The TPPA looks to open new opportunities for capitalist
expansion and to restore their profits e.g. to force govt
privatisations and allow monopoly firms to strip resources.
Nov 2010-Jan 2011
We need a Workers Socialist Party
Economic independence will not come from belated attempts
at economic nationalism by a fraction of the national
bourgeoisie that exploits xenophobia to keep the working
masses under the control of a section of the national
bourgeoisie, the ‘boli-bourgeoisies’, but the opposite. Instead
of the race to the bottom where isolationism and
protectionism leads inexorably to wars over diminishing
resources, real independence from the dominance of the US
or China today will only come by workers in every country
uniting to overthrow their ruling classes and building
international alliances to plan production on a global scale to
provide for the needs of the masses without destroying the
planet.
NZ at the beginning of the 21st century is a semi-colony of
Australia and the US, and increasingly China. Economic
nationalism is a reactionary utopia (or as we say these days a
dystopia) because to even begin to realise it, workers have to
voluntarily submit themselves to slavery, poverty and misery.
The time has come for workers to organise independently of
the state, and its parliamentary road, and build a mass
Workers Socialist Party, affiliated to a new world party of
socialism.
NZ and Australian economies have not been hit by the
capitalists' crisis as much as European and US economies
because of expanding China has created a huge demand for
raw material exports to China. China has passed the US as
Australia's biggest trading partner. NZs recent FTA with China
has continued to open up trade between NZ and China to
which NZ supplies raw materials - wood, steel, coal, milk
powder, wool, etc.
The NZ state is openly subordinated to Australian, US and
Chinese imperialism and becomes a mere manager for foreign
investment, and the force for social control - defending
capitalist property and imperialist interests.
The Trades Unions won’t stop the TPPA
Who will stop the TPPA? Not the trade union bureaucracy! The
so-called TU mobilisation against the TPPA is not about
fighting imperialism but dragging workers into the bosses’
agenda of exploiting the economic nationalism that links the
ruling class from right to liberal left and the union
bureaucracy to negotiate best terms with US and China.
Where has there been any discussion in the unions over what
position to take on the TPPA? The CTU leadership is simply
taking the longstanding position of economic protectionism to
protect NZ jobs and of course the top union officials’ jobs.
This is an ‘economic nationalism’ that claims that each nation
should retain its economic sovereignty and thus to ensure that
all classes benefit as a result. It is a strictly a utopian
5
Class Struggle 92
reformist program. It fits well with the national populist
program of the left bureaucracy in the unions which sees
China as a progressive force allied to the Bolivarian regimes in
Latin America, much as the Green Left in Australia does.
It ignores the reality that NZ is a weak and declining semi-
colony, subordinated to Australia and the US and increasingly
China. The race to the bottom won't be stopped by joining
forces with nationalist organisations that promote reforms to
protect NZ’s so-called sovereignty in the face of global
capitalist crisis. Despite and because of nationalist policies
endorsed by the union bureaucracy, no political party can
impose this through parliament.
The pathetically weak ‘centre-left’ Labour Party, and the
rightward moving Greens are all in sucking up to the weak NZ
bourgeoisie to negotiate the terms of 'our' national
sovereignty which barely exists. There are already virtually no
limits to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in NZ, capital flows
in and out without any borders. Attempts to stop FDI appeals
to national chauvinism as the recent opposition to Chinese
buying farmland showed, and in the racism and discrimination
directed at migrant workers. The real danger is that this
nationalism and racism morphs into fascism and becomes the
basis of uniting rightwing workers with a bankrupt middle
class behind the NACTs wars against Islamic ‘terror’ (already
happening in Afghanistan) and Chinese ‘communism’.
So the only way to stop the attacks which the TPPA means for
workers is to reject any campaign based on the program of
the nationalist bosses which is to rally the unions, labourites
and left academics like Kelsey into a cross-class, legalistic,
ultimately parliamentary opposition. That's a popular front
and makes workers servile to a weak fraction of the national
bourgeoisie which barely exists.
Class Struggle to stop the TPPA
Rather we fight FTAs by working class methods, we oppose
privatisation by calling for nationalisation by mobilising union
fight backs, occupations etc i.e. ‘socialisation’! That's what
we mean by a workers united front.
That means that the content of what is 'national' is not
defined by the bosses or their agents, but by the working
class. Of course most of the working class are infused with
nationalism and in a semi-colony like NZ much of that is
directed at imperialist countries that profit from our labour.
But 'nationalism' is a barrier to uniting workers across
borders in a proletarian ‘internationalism’. The defence
of 'nationalism' that is based on resentment towards
foreign ownership has to be put on a class footing
otherwise it becomes the basis for fascism. So
nationalisation of a company for example must always be
done not the basis of 'nationalism' to defend NZ jobs etc.,
but an internationalism that recognises that most firms
are already multinational and that defence of workers’
rights and living standards demands the expropriation of
imperialist and national companies without compensation
and under workers control. So we must demand the
socialisation of multinational firms by building a campaign
among workers in all countries where this firm operates.
The approach of the rank and file in the unions should be to
mount industrial action to get rid of this NACT government
and to put demands on Labour to adopt policies that meet the
Nov 2010-Jan 2011
needs of workers. Our purpose is to expose the failure of
reformist social democracy to fulfil those demands. We do
not support new reformist parties on the left putting pressure
on Labour. We support rank and file unionists putting up
candidates on a program to deliver what workers want. Not
just minimal demands for jobs, wages, houses etc paid for by
a transaction tax, or even the Greens’ capital gains tax.
Parliament cannot meet these demands.
A new Workers’ Party would use parliament only as ‘sounding
board’ to expose its bankruptcy and to mobilise workers to
organise independently of parliament and the state. Instead
of locking workers into parliamentary legislation for minimum
wages, etc., workers need to revive the unions as democratic,
fighting unions to impose their demands in the workplace. To
do this, it is necessary for strikes, occupations of workplaces
facing closure and sackings, occupations of vacant state
houses, the occupation of state SOEs under threat of
privatisation, and the expropriation of the banks and
formation of one state bank, all under workers control. That
is, a new Workers’ Party must raise not just a minimum
program for immediate reforms, but a transitional program
which maps out the road to socialism.
Within the unions it is the job of revolutionaries to raise these
demands in a transitional form and explain that to get them
we have to take power and what that means and how to do it.
The first principle of a transitional program is that it must be
international and geared to the current world situation.
Isolated actions (even on a pan Pacific basis) around FTAs are
part of a much bigger struggle against a global capitalist crisis
and mounting inter-imperialist rivalry. The TPPA is really
about the US reclaiming the Pacific to prevent China from
making further inroads. So what is behind the TPPA is the
growing rivalry between the US and China. NZ workers have to
reject NZ nationalism as nothing more than pulling workers
into a reactionary nationalism to go to war as an ally of the
US in the coming fight with China. Workers have to refuse to
fight in such wars and reject the NZ national bourgeoisie and
its subservience to the US (all the current political parties),
break from their agents in the unions (the bureaucracy), and
join forces internationally with workers in all of the Pacific
countries and in particular, China and the US.
So the real issue for workers is not to oppose free trade as
such, (or FDI which already exists since capital doesn’t
recognise borders, or even against privatisation by ‘foreign’
firms), on the basis of protection of NZ jobs and living
standards, but rather the fight for class independence and
proletarian internationalism. Opposing the TPPA then has to
be by working class methods, mobilising the unions to stop
privatisation, resisting all of the NACTs attacks on workers,
defeating the NACTs, putting demands on Labour to expose it
by raising a working class program, reviving the unions,
building strike actions and strike committees and defense
committees to prepare for a general strike and for a Workers’
Government.
Therefore revolutionaries in the unions should be opposed
to the TPPA as one of many measures sucking NZ workers
into a national alliance with the US to fight China. We put
forward a workers international program to defend jobs,
wages and rights, and to advance workers organisations to
do it, in particular to break from their own bourgeoisies
and their agents, everywhere in the Pacific without
borders, especially China and the USA.
6
Class Struggle 92 Nov 2010-Jan 2011

TONGA

The National revolution stalls

Protests of ordinary Tongans at the inequity of nobles’ wealth and mass poverty built up to riots in June
2006 when the King reneged on reforms. This has forced the rulers into constitutional change to keep a
lid on the movement for democracy. The rule by a feudal king and system of lords who self select a
parliament has changed and more seats were elected by commoners (17), than the nobles (9), total =26.
The King still gets the power of veto, including the power to sack the government. The Nobles can still
bloc with Commoner MPs to keep control of parliament. So what has changed?
Constitutional reform is the legal surface appearance of the http://www.matangitonga.to/user?article=article/tonganews
ruling class, under which the capitalism maintains its /politics/20101125_tonga_election_download_results.shtml)
exploitative class relations. Tonga is a tiny Pacific state,
dominated by not only the US via its regional allies, Australia The DPFI were never going to rule alone, since they only had
and NZ, but increasingly influenced by China. The Tongan 12 possible candidates in a government of 26 members. Even
economy is capitalist which uses more traditional labour had the DPFI been able to unite all the commoners to get
forms based on the family to produce exports of agricultural Pohiva elected, he has committed to working within the
goods - fish, coconut, vanilla. Yet Tonga's main income is constitution. However, since Pohiva has long been a thorn in
from the thousands of Tongan the backsides of the King and
workers who live offshore, in nobles, the nobles bought the
countries like Australia, U.S. loyalty of the 5 so-called
(west coast) and New ‘independent’ commoner MPs
Zealand, and who send some to elect Lord Tuivakanō as
of their wages home. The Prime Minister by a vote of 14
Tongan working class is the against12 for Pohiva.
main export of Tonga, and its
strength is outside Tonga. Whoever is ruler of Tonga, as
The IMF and World Bank such they can only manage
consider Tonga a poor capitalism on behalf of a few
country; 40% population lives local owners, and the many
below their "poverty line"; international capitalist
and at high risk of failing to interests. Their ability to
pay government debt. manage capitalism and to meet
the needs of the working
The newly elected people who voted them comes
government of Tonga may second to keeping the King and
represent a change from a Nobles in the wealth to which
capitalist feudal semi-colony they are accustomed, and
to a capitalist parliamentary continuing to export
democracy (an elected time- unemployed workers to
limited dictatorship), but it Australia and NZ as a reserve
remains a capitalist semi-colony. Semi - as in having the army of workers in those countries to be returned home when
appearance of independence, while a colony in terms of the they are no longer needed. Thus to keep the profits of
ruling class acting as a compradors or agents of imperialism, international capitalism flowing, ‘democracy’ in Tonga
and dependence on a division of labour which sees Tonga limited as it is, is nothing more than a taro leaf covering the
export of basic items/raw materials to imperialist or other nakedness of the hypocrisy of the ruling class. The economic
intermediate countries and a dependence on the import of conditions which leave the masses impoverished and their
capital goods (machines etc) and consumer goods from those sons and daughters migrant workers will continue. Wages and
imperialist or intermediate countries. conditions will be cut in Tonga to balance the books for
international capitalism, and force the next generation to
The new parliament which includes more 'commoners' is no migrate to low paid jobs in Australia and NZ.
threat to the rule of capitalism within the constitution. The
King and nobles as the capitalist ruling class retain the ability Evens if the DPFI had won all 17 commoner seats and a
to control parliament and prevent any popular democratic majority for ‘democracy’ it would be forced to rule on behalf
challenge to their class privileges, and the subservience of of the ruling class and imperialism and expose ‘democracy’ as
Tonga to imperialism. a fraud before its own supporters. There is no freedom under
capitalist rule. Democratic capitalism in Tonga will be as bad
Thus while Akilisi Pohiva and the Democratic Party of the as 'feudal capitalism'.
Friendly Islands (DPFI) won all 12 of the 12 seats which they
contested, 5 independent candidates won the other 5 of the Only socialism can end Tonga’s servitude to imperialism.
17 general election seats, and 9 nobles were voted in by 54 For a socialist Tonga as a member of a socialist federation
nobles. See Matangi Tonga: of the pacific

7
Class Struggle 92 Nov 2010-Jan 2011

RESOLUTION ON NORTH AFRICA AND MIDDLE EAST:

Permanent Revolution Unfolds!

This statement was originally written during the early days of the Tunisian revolt and does not attempt
to deal in detail with the quick moving escalation of revolutionary events in Egypt and elsewhere in the
Middle East occurring today. Two and a half years since the onset of the world imperialist crisis, we are
seeing a revolutionary development in the Arab world that resembles the generalized revolutionary
upsurge that accompanied and followed the final days of WWI. These uprisings are developing in many
countries in the North Africa and the Middle East. In Egypt we see the toilers climb on the tanks hug the
soldiers, carry them on their shoulders and ask them for their participation in the revolution. We saw
similar fraternization in Tunisia. Are we witnessing the unfolding of the Permanent Revolution?

The National Revolution revives
We are not surprised that revolutionary uprisings in which the
workers and the impoverished toilers throw themselves
bravely against the batons, shields and armored vehicles of
the police, are not happening in Europe but rather in North
Africa where American and European imperialism has driven
down the masses livelihood to nothing; and has, for decades,
crushed the inspiration to fight imperialism and the Zionists
via the brutal services of the most vicious puppet dictators.
Now the masses flow by the tens of thousands into the streets
fighting to overthrow the dictatorships installed, armed and
defended by imperialism.
The goal of overthrowing these dictators and the class of
comprador capitalists with them, expresses the democratic
nature of this re-opening of the national democratic
revolution. The masses of
North Africa and the Middle
East despite their de-
colonization struggles have
never gone through the
experience of bourgeois
democracy and its
associated illusions (that
democratically
administered capitalism can
provide the greatest good
for the most people).
Naturally many of the
people in the streets
believe that by
overthrowing the
dictatorships and creating a democracy, under the control of
the masses, or with the support of the army, their basic needs
will be met. Yet, this “democratic” re-opening of the national
revolution will be crushed if it aims only at the creation of a
parliamentary democracy and does not develop over into a
workers’ revolution spreading across the Arab world and
ultimately Europe.
The national and the democratic character of the revolution
combine and cannot be separated. Imperialism divided the
Arab world into many countries in order to divide and control
the masses. The national question in the Arab world cannot
be fully answered unless the revolution becomes international
and creates one Arab nation. This was understood by
different left Bonapartist dictators in the region who tried
several times to create one unified Arab nation. The most
famous of which was Nasser’s project with the Ba’athist
regime in Syria to create an Arab nation from north to south.
The betrayal of this pan-Arab nationalist project of Nasser
and the Ba’athists by the national bourgeois lackey’s of
imperialism and the Stalinist parties contributed to decades
of defeats in the Arab countries and passivity of the masses.
Now the democratic and the national questions are back on
the agenda. This time the masses are the sole driving force
behind it. The events, in Egypt and Tunisia showed that the
nationalist pan-Arab unification is not yet a serious concern of
the masses. Their focus today is the economic question. Like
in the Russian revolution the demands today are for bread,
jobs and the end of the dictatorships who have failed to
provide them. However these economic and democratic
aspirations of the masses cannot be resolved by ignoring the
national question, since without defeating imperialism these
neo-colonies cannot win true national independence.
Therefore in order to succeed,
the revolution must be unified
across borders and this can be
done only if the masses struggle
to complete the democratic tasks
of the national revolution carries
over into the socialist revolution.
A revolution that will defeat the
imperialists and their agents, not
only the dictatorships but the
national bourgeoisies in all these
countries, and create a federated
socialist Republic of North Africa
and the Middle East. This is the
only progressive way to resolve
the national question.
Yet since the masses emphasize the question of democracy
and their economic conditions, the national question, at the
moment, is important only insofar as it encourages the spread
of the revolution across borders to make it permanent and
socialist. The economic yoke of imperialism has enriched a
small comprador bourgeoisie at the expense of the masses
who are now wary of solutions that maintain these elites in
power.
Imperialism will seek to resolve this crisis by imposing a
democratic façade, either coalitions or ‘patriotic’ popular
front governments of ‘national salvation’, with or without
Constituent Assemblies, to protect the rights of capitalist
property. In the interim, left Bonapartist officers' coups may
arise to manage the transition to ‘democracy’. But ultimately
these cannot meet the masses needs and imperialism will, if
it is necessary, conspire with the military high command to
8
Class Struggle 92
unleash counter-revolutionary coups to crush the masses as
we have seen recently in Honduras. If local 'democratic'
solutions or home grown military solutions are not sufficient
to contain the masses, then imperialism will not hesitate to
send NATO or Zionists dogs to crush the revolutions. That is
why it is critical for the Palestinians, Syrians, Jordanians,
Yemenis, Iraqis etc to join the North African uprisings and
unite with the masses to drive imperialism and Zionism out of
the Middle East.
The Tunisian Revolution
It’s clear that the Tunisian uprising has sparked off a re-
opening of the Arab national democratic revolution. There are
now demonstrations going from Algeria to Jordan and the
West Bank and Yemen. The massive revolutions erupting
throughout the Arab world express the fundamental character
and contradictions of the following revolutionary aims: The
struggle for national independence, agricultural reform,
control of foreign trade, control of national resources,
expansion of workers and poor farmers wages and rights
(relative to those enjoyed under imperialism and neo-colonial
dictatorial rule); these are all goals which can be achieved
only by the leadership of the working class pushing the
struggle on to the formation of a workers’ state.
These lessons from which the theory of permanent revolution
was derived have been played out over and again in countries
across the colonial world where the working class has been
prevented from taking power
into their own hands. During
the post colonial period, in
wars and struggles for
liberation, a weak comprador
bourgeoisie subservient to
imperialism came to hold the
reins of power, often using
revolutionary rhetoric but
ultimately acting in the
interests of imperialist
finance capital and a small
home grown crony capitalist
class. Without the rapid
emergence of a revolutionary
workers’ party capable of
leading the masses to create
democratic organs of worker’s power, the consolidation of
power in the hands of the counter-revolutionary comprador
bourgeois will strangle the revolution.
Today, the Tunisian, the Maghreb and North African working
class is faced with the necessity of accomplishing the national
and democratic tasks of the bourgeois revolution, which
today, can only be done through the formation a workers’ and
farmers’ state. The bourgeoisie of Tunisia has proven too
weak and too corrupt to carry the revolution against the
dictatorship through to full independence from imperialism,
neither can they advance and sustain democracy nor
overcome the structural constraints imposed by French and
US imperialism through the IMF over the decades. The largest
sector of the elite is a crony class in the worst sense.
Researcher Juan Cole reports that 50% of the financial elite
are tied to the Ben-Ali family’s financial empire. The petty
bourgeois layer of lawyers and civil servants have taken to the
streets, joining the most oppressed who have no faith in the
oligarchy or the Ghannouchi interim government. The
inability of the local capitalists to liberate the nation places
Nov 2010-Jan 2011
those tasks squarely in the hands of the proletariat which will
come to see its own economic liberation as tied to the
unfinished tasks of the national revolution of the whole region
– the defeat of imperialism and its national bourgeois
lackeys.
The driving force in the revolution so far has been the
working class, the youth and the unemployed. Any
governmental solution short of a workers’ state will
perpetuate the economic crisis because the bourgeoisie has
no choice but to maintain subservience to imperialism.
The class character of the uprising and revolutionary
process is therefore proletarian.
However, for lack of a revolutionary leadership, mass
organizations of workers, unemployed councils, and
neighborhood committees have, to the extent they have
begun forming, not become true organs of workers power
or generalized as of yet. Therefore, true dual power, which
is a necessary stage to complete the proletarian revolution,
has not yet developed. In this vacuum the grave danger is
that the formation of a popular front, coalition bourgeois
government, or left Bonapartist ‘officers’ coup’, would be
a setback for the revolutionary process and would set
Tunisia up for a solution to the crisis much like Haitian
masses received following the ouster of “Baby Doc”
Duvalier.
Only the working class can lead
Immense pressure from the
spontaneous outrage of the
masses has already resulted in
the release of many Tunisian
political prisoners, and a
relaxation of the curfew. The
revolution requires the end of
all restrictions on assembly and
the freedom of all political and
economic prisoners. Pitched
battles between the military
and the counter-revolutionary
militias followed the ouster of
Ben-Ali. The violence of the
counter-revolution has been
met with by the formation of
neighborhood committees and to a large extent has been
rooted out (for now). Reports of battles with the police mix
with reports of some police coming over to join the
demonstrators creating cracks in the state power structure.
The neighborhood defense committees are not controlled by
any left or other organizations. They are truly spontaneous
controlled by the workers in their areas. We don't know what's
going on inside them or if they are trying to connect
nationwide. This is the task of the vanguard to build the
councils, spread their influence and coordination. According
to a few sources the committees so far have no ideology or
direction, representing ‘anarchism’ or ‘chaos’. But this is not
true. The street protesters are part of the rising defense
committees across the country that wants to overthrow the
'coalition' government and in particular all those forces linked
to the dictatorship seeking to maneuver a foothold in the new
administration. This populist anger has already forced the
prime-minister and president to distance themselves from the
hated (former) ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD).
It has also pressured representatives of the UGTT to withdraw
from the first attempt at a popular front.
9
Class Struggle 92 Nov 2010-Jan 2011

But this has not stopped these treacherous labor bureaucrats The Madagascar experience from 2009, of soldiers arming
from endorsing the second proposed cabinet. The UGTT has the workers must be popularized in the workers discussions
long associated itself with the regime and the rabidly anti- in the coming weeks. Workers’ militias are needed to
communist International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. defend the revolutionary process and to unite the workers
During the build up of the movement the UGTT did not take a with the neighborhood committees and the soldiers who
leading role. Rather they appealed for calm, at first tried to break rank and come over to the revolution. Soldiers must
distance the organization from the uprising with a call for a be pressed to open the armories to the workers to defend
council for a national dialogue. As the masses ran out in front the revolution through the formation of a popular worker’s
of the UGTT they tried to catch up calling a two-hour strike militia.
on January 14th, all the while hoping the masses would forget
its treacherous role over the decades and in the first stages of To defeat imperialism this revolution must
the uprising - find a crowd and jump in front of it - an old
technique but one the masses would not stand for. As noted spread
when the UGTT maneuvered into the first attempted coalition
Defense of the revolution by necessity is a confrontation with
government with the RCD they felt the heat of the uprising
imperialist forces and that confrontation has begun.
and backed out. The masses have nothing to expect but
Imperialism will first try to undermine the revolution from
conciliation from the UGTT leaders who would be happy to
within. If their coalition governments and popular fronts, or
participate in a popular
military putsches, are
front to stop the
not successful we can
revolution. The UGTT will
expect to see US,
maneuver to create a
French, Zionist, NATO or
popular front ‘unity’
UN imperialist
government that includes
troops arrive to ‘restore
‘progressive’ bourgeois
order’. Internationalist
parties but with sufficient
workers and anti-
trade union Ministers to
imperialist fighters must
‘push the popular front
take action to demand:
left’.
No to Imperialist or
The revolution must go
Zionist intervention!
around, over or through
Prepare to stop
this obstacle to
shipments of troops
democratic workers’
and supplies!
mobilizations and self
Internationalist dock
organization. Members of UGTT must oust the leadership
workers prepare to tie up the docks! French and US
which is tainted with this collaborationist history and build
workers: build general strikes to stop imperialist
rank and file democratic organizations in defense of the
intervention!
revolution. Today the UGTT threatens strikes in defense of
the revolution but we can see this is only hot air as they have
The forces arrayed against the Tunisian working class far
not dared to call for indefinite General Strike until all the
outweigh its own isolated power necessitating an
demands are met and the old guard of the government is
internationalist perspective in order to advance the
driven out.
revolution and drive out imperialism. Already this uprising
has the imperialist overlords and bourgeoisie of the Maghreb
Liberals are returning to Tunisia and without a doubt will try
and the entire Arab Middle East trembling, as the masses
to either convince the masses to accept a "reformed" version
realize the dictators are paper tigers and the forces of
of the coalition or call for a bourgeois government without
theocratic control (militant Islam) cannot be counted on to
the elements of the corrupt regime. None of this is
contain the masses. But imperialism has too much to at stake
acceptable to advance democracy or the revolutionary
knowing full well the internationalist implications of a
process.
victorious revolution. For the Tunisian revolution to be
victorious it must spread past boarders and reignite the Arab
Vanguard workers need to counter-pose the power of
workers revolution. Today we see Egypt in flames, the masses
the spontaneous organizations of workers, unemployed
are taking to the streets in all the major cities. Jordan,
youth, and students who organized the revolutionary
Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and even Albania are all feeling the
uprising as the bread the butter protest developed; these
ripple effect. The occupied masses of Palestine and Iraq are
organizations need to link with the street defense
lifting their eyes in hope towards these events. A wave of
committees to form an incipient workers councils.
revolutionary fervor is awakening the oppressed masses. For
These forces should be linked to newly formed rank-and- the Tunisian revolution to be successful it must spread and
file action committees within a revitalized UGTT, the break out of its national and regional isolation.
factories and the army. Thus such workers councils will
We have seen the terrible consequences of the isolation of
rise as a challenge to the capitalist regime in a dual power
the revolutionary process to one country. First, with the
situation. We have already seen the soldiers (who are
USSR which through isolation had its revolution overturned by
mostly short term conscripts with close ties to the working
the Stalinists who made their peace with imperialism, selling
class) hesitate in suppressing the masses; the short next
out world revolution, engaging in pacts with Hitler and later
step to opening the armories to incipient workers militias
at Yalta with Churchill and Roosevelt. Isolated, invaded and
must have imperialism and its local lackeys sweating. If
outspent militarily the revolution was destroyed from within.
North Africa falls to armed workers’ revolution, the
Now in Cuba the PCC rapidly restores capitalism as socialism
workers and youth of Southern Europe will take the
on one island could not survive without the advance of
struggle into the heart of Imperialist Europe.
socialism in the Americas. Tunisia’s revolution will either be

10
Class Struggle 92
corrupted and reintegrated into imperialism’s structures or
will be the spark that ignites revolutions that initiate and
sustain the world revolution.
Events are moving fast yesterday the call was to free political
prisoners today many are free and the demand to free all
remaining political prisoners must not be forgotten.
In the next days and weeks we say
• Generalize the neighborhood committees unite
with workers committees in the factories and form
workers assemblies where the demands of the
revolution can be debated and voted on. Rise up
worker’s councils, soldier’s councils, student and
unemployed councils. These are the embryonic
organs of duel power and the workers state.
• Demand the immediate sacking of the officer corps
and the disbanding of the army into a popular
soldiers and workers’ militia with elected officers.
• Demand the immediate expropriation of the
property of the imperialists, and of the Tunisian
and Egyptian ruling classes that serve imperialism
• Repudiate the foreign debt!
• Nationalize the land! Distribute land to the
peasants.
• Nationalize major industry without compensation
to the imperialist and comprador bourgeoisie.
Take the planning and direction of these industries
under democratic workers control!
• Expropriate the banks and form of one state bank
controlled by the workers representatives.
• For the formation of workers food and transport
commissions to administer just distribution.
• No to coalition governments of the bourgeoisie! No
to popular fronts between capitalist parties
liberals or and the UGTT! For an independent
workers government!
• For a workers, soldiers and farmers Government!
• We see your cities, counties and states collapsing.
We see your financial bulwark is a house of cards.
Brothers and sisters blow it down! Join the
oppressed and super-exploited of the world stop
giving your sons and daughters to imperialism’s
military. Stand down any attempt to crush our
revolution; the best way to support the
revolutionary process is to defeat your own ruling
class. A successful socialist revolution in the US
will guarantee the victory of socialism in North
Africa.
Nov 2010-Jan 2011
• Reverse the structural adjustment privatizations!
• Bread for all, jobs for the unemployed and land for
the poor farmer.
• Stop all capital flight demand return of all stolen
wealth to the people!
• Immediate suspension of debt to the IMF!
• For full employment! To provide a job for every
unemployed youth and worker we fight for thirty
hours work for forty hours pay at full union scale.
For an immediate implementation of sliding scale
of wages and prices.
• Solidarity with the workers of Algeria, Morocco
Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine. Rise up - only
together can we defeat imperialism.
• Solidarity with the workers of Southern Africa! US,
European and Chinese imperialism have turned the
continent into a blood bath over your resources.
Your oppressors are our oppressors rise up to
defeat all imperialisms, together we can build a
rich and united federation of democratic workers
states of Africa!
• Solidarity with the workers and students of
Europe. We have watched you fight from Greece,
across Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and event into
England where your youth attack the Prince! Your
dying system which has enslaved us for centuries
can no longer share its wealth and elevate
European worker far above our plight. Our
present conditions are your future unless you join
us to defeat your own bourgeoisie. Only a socialist
United States of Europe can stand with the African
workers to remake a just and viable world.
• Solidarity with the workers and students of
America! Your empire is crumbling; we know our
oppressors and your exploiters sit on the same
boards of directors. This makes us family, the
family of the exploited. We see your millions in
prison. We see your multimillions out of work.
You have more people out of work than Tunisia
has people.
• Brothers and sisters, learn the lessons of the
revolutionary history. Unite to form a World
Revolutionary Party that draws on the tradition of
struggle of the previous communist internationals,
based on the Trotskyist program of 1938, to
coordinate and lead the international revolution to
a victorious socialist revolution!
Liaison Committee of Communist Workers Group(NZ) &
Humanist Workers for Revolutionary Socialism(US)
11
Class Struggle 92
US IMPERIALISM
Free Bradley Manning!
The jailing of Bradley Manning in solitary confinement is torture designed to make him confess to his
role in the leaking of US classified war information to wikileaks. The British bourgeois Guardian
newspaper has claimed that Manning is their source. Wikileaks boss Assange refuses to reveal his
sources. The US ruling class wants to try him for espionage. It is the duty of workers everywhere to
stand up in defence of Manning and wilileaks and defeat imperialisms desperation to murder anyone
who stands in its way.
Capitalism trains its own gravediggers
Marx observed that capitalism had to create its own
gravediggers. It had to empower its working class in order to
exploit it and so its fate was sooner or later sealed. But
capitalism doesn’t just roll over and die leaving only the need
for a burial. Workers are not handed socialism on a plate they
are propelled towards it by the whole of capitalist history
which begins with a revolution to overturn feudalism, then
the rapid development of its incredible productive forces,
before ending its life as a parasite
living off the blood of its workers
and of nature. The gravediggers are
the working class which becomes an
organised revolutionary class
because it is enmeshed into a total
global labour force which has to
free itself from the shackles of
capitalism or die. Marx even
referred to this global capitalist
labour force as 'socialised'.
Nothing expresses the extent of its
global 'socialisation' at this point in
history more than the role of the
internet and cyberspace. While
century-old capitalist imperialism is
locked into its need to maximise
profits, it now makes its biggest
profits by speeding up the
circulation time of capital via the
new digital technology of the
internet. And it competes with its
rivals by speeding up
communications, espionage and
warfare via cyberspace. It’s like the
old man going out on a dose of
adrenaline. He has had several
bypasses and at least one heart
transplant (China) but is more and more exhausted. Who will
administer the final rites of passage? China?
China is no way out for capitalism
China cannot despite being the dynamic new imperialist
power that has stopped a full slide into global depression.
The new Chinese imperialism is winning the battle for the
global economy and its rivalry with the US is becoming
increasingly hostile. But China will not replace the US as the
hegemonic power for some years, and meanwhile its own
working class is emerging as the most powerful and dynamic
section of the global labour force. Thus the China/US rivalry
may spill over from proxy wars such as in the Sudan to
regional wars and even wider nuclear destruction, but the
Nov 2010-Jan 2011
global working class, which now includes a billion Chinese
workers, has the power to stop these wars before it is buried
along with capitalism in a nuclear catastrophe.
The death rites of imperialism are now being prepared as the
global working class moves stage center. Cue the awakening
of the world proletariat to the reality of the brutality and
barbarism of capitalism in its dying days. When ordinary
enlisted soldiers break ranks to blow the whistle on mass
murder; when the middle class libertarians use their
advanced computer skills to home in on the US as the NO 1
threat to human rights; when hundreds
of thousands are risking their lives
engaged in spontaneous street protests,
general strikes and occupations; then
capitalism's days are numbered.
Death sentences for
cyberwarriors
Private Bradley Manning, the
international working class hero of 2010,
risks his life (did he do it, or didn’t he?)
because US imperialism must make an
example of an enlisted whistleblower
who disregards orders and leaks its
military secrets while listening to Lady
Gaga. The US ruling class has no sense of
humor. Manning is now incarcerated in a
US marine prison at Quantico in solitary
confinement for one reason only, to
break him and make him confess to
conspiring with wikileaks boss Julian
Assange to reveal the secrets that
expose US imperialism as a giant mafia
with millions of hired killers on its
payroll. While Assange has to answer the
rape charges made against him, we are
opposed to his extradition to Sweden if
this is likely to result in his 'rendition' to the US.
Such is the fear of the US ruling class that exposure of its lies
and secrets will threaten its 'legitimacy' and lead to socialist
revolution, that its natural impulse is to extend its many
global wars, occupations and missile rings, into the total
surveillance of cyberwars. They will try to lock up Manning
for 50 years, and if they can cook up a story that Assange is a
spy, they will try to get him lynched under the 1917 US
Espionage Act. The clear intent of the US to kill those who
blow its military secrets will politicise another mass layer of
anti-US imperialist militants, bringing the end of US hegemony
even closer. If the US goes down this road expect a mass
worker uprising that will unleash the full repressive state
apparatus on its head.
12
Class Struggle 92
The emperor has no clothes
US imperialism since 9/11 has been forced to expose its open
hypocrisy in destroying bourgeois democracy in order to save
it. Since it cannot win the battle for the hearts and minds of
even its own working class majority that opposes its wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, it must resort to force to suppress the
rise of a militant working class. It will try to divide and rule
the militant working class. It will have to turn the Tea Party
into a fully fascist militia. This will raise the stakes and lead
to sacrifices such as those of the youth in North Africa who
have burned themselves alive to prove they are prepared to
die to live. These state forces are made up of working class or
peasant ranks and can be split from their officers who
represent the ruling class. Armed workers, peasants and
soldiers militias will deprive capital of its state forces
allowing the working class majority to take power and remove
all barriers to socialism.
The class war has never stopped. But today the ongoing global
crisis of capital has shifted the many fronts from the
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan into cyberspace. Drones
are now the US weapon of choice, and computer viruses are
used to destroy the enemies' weapons control. We are
approaching Starwars where the evil empire is surrounded and
REVOLUTION
Suicide as a Political Act
The self-immolation of Mahomed Bouazizi in Tunisia that
sparked of the uprising in that country in December last year
ousting the dictator, has been followed by others in North
Africa, posing the question of the significance of political
suicide as a revolutionary act in opening up revolutionary
uprisings.
While these acts of self-immolation are
ones in which individuals act in relative
isolation it should not be overlooked that
political suicide can mean any
revolutionary act that is met with state
violence. The Jihadist suicide bombers
against US invasions in Iraq and
Afghanistan, or those in Pakistan and
India, are no different from the many
acts of heroism of militants confronting
state forces in revolutionary uprisings.
These acts are not new as all revolutions
are heralded by the actions of martyrs
who are killed by counter-revolutionary
repression.
We can also see the suicides of those in
the imperialist occupying armies as politically motivated. The
US has lost more soldiers to suicide in its invasions of Iraq and
Afghanistan than lost in combat. These suicides are just as
much the result of political oppression and repression as those
of the freedom fighters of the resistance movements they are
sent to fight.
The question we need to ask is: if revolution is about the
struggle for freedom, is it necessary that the revolution has
its martyrs? Is death the price of liberation?
Nov 2010-Jan 2011
undermined by myriads of subversives and freedom fighters
who are not only at home on the streets but in the internet
and cyberspace. The old man is dosed up on adrenaline and
all dressed up to kill but has nowhere to go.
Free Bradley Manning!
Defend Assange and Wikileaks from state
repression!
Defeat US and Chinese and all other
imperialisms!
For international class struggle across borders!
For a Revolutionary World Party of Socialism!
For Workers' and Peasants' Councils and
Militias!
For rank and file soldiers councils to overthrow
their officers!
For general strikes to unite the working class
and take power!
For Workers' and Peasants' Governments
everywhere!
Yes, it is a necessary price because revolutions begin with the
acts of heroism of its most committed militants before the
mass support sufficient to overthrow the reactionary forces
has developed. This means that such militants are isolated
and face death since the ruling regimes see political
assassination as necessary to deter revolution gaining
momentum. But their martyrdom becomes a
catalyst in mobilising that mass support. This
is also true of suicides in invading armies
since the demoralisation and rejection of war
that underlies such suicides is also the
inevitable product of weakness of individuals
soldiers trapped in an imperialist army.
Currently Bradley Manning accused by the US
military of being a whistle blower who
released US secrets to wikileaks is on suicide
watch in solitary confinement in the Marine
jail of Quantico. The authorities are using
solitary confinement to torture Manning into
confessing and implicating wikileaks as war
criminals. If Manning is driven to suicide in
this setting this would be a clear case of
political assassination and again prove the
point that suicide for political reasons is a revolutionary act.
Suicides are therefore political acts in situations where
resistance is weak and there is no organisation to turn
individual self-destruction into a collective armed struggle to
defeat and destroying the oppressor.
This is especially true when we are talking about states in
which the mass movement has been repressed for a long
period and when the revolutionary forces are weak or where
their leaderships betrayed them. In the colonial revolutions
that won independence after WW2, each revolution had its
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Class Struggle 92
martyrs. Gandhi, Lumumba, Fanon and Steve Biko, to name a
few. But these revolutions only began the process of
decolonisation as national bourgeoisies came to power in the
service of imperialism. The national revolutions remain
trapped, or frozen by neo-colonialism.
When popular movements rose up against neo-colonialism, as
in Latin America, Asia and Africa, imperialism adapted to
maintain control. They resorted to popular fronts or patriotic
fronts (Peron, Allende, Chavez) and when these fail to
contain the masses, dictatorships follow. Where national
leaders went against imperialism, coups or invasions were
imposed to restore compliant national leaders (e.g. Vietnam,
1955, Iran 1956, Indonesia, 1965, Nicaragua, 1979 etc).
Sometimes these coups and invasions failed or were reversed
(Cuba, Iran, Iraq). In every political turn, thousands of
militants were martyred.
Today, facing the global crisis of capitalism, the masses are
once again moving against imperialism and their local neo-
SPONTANEISM
We are NOT all Zapatistas
The age old bogey of the left, 'do we need leaders?' has reappeared again (having never gone away)
following the massive student protests in the UK. Once again the left is split between those who want
to have a 'democratic' victory without Bolsheviks or Communists imposing their 'top-down hierarchy',
and those who insist on the party leaders running the show. That we have this debate constantly every
time a major spontaneous struggle bursts out just shows how lacking is our understanding of
revolutionary history.
There are two kinds of democracy in capitalist society.
Bourgeois Democracy and Workers Democracy. Bourgeois
democracy arose historically when the bourgeoisie came to
power and offered workers the vote to convince them that
they were equal citizens to their bosses. A sort of
parliamentary front to hide the fact that behind the scenes
the bosses organise everything very undemocratically so that
Bourgeois Democracy is a front for Bourgeois Dictatorship.
Most on the left understand this
consciously or instinctively but at
the same time defend Bourgeois
Democracy as a life line to
freedom to organise, mobilise, and
express opposition to mounting
bourgeois state repression.
What is not seen in this struggle is
that Bourgeois Democracy is the
expression of a deep seated
bourgeois ideology of individualism
that is generated by capitalist
production itself. Wage workers
have their surplus labour
expropriated as surplus value which then takes on the benign
appearance of value inherent in commodities. The members
of the exploited proletariat become transformed into the
isolated bourgeois individual whose value is equal to the value
of the commodities he or she consumes. Such individual
consumers are then dignified as citizens who are all 'equal
under the law'. Bourgeois Democracy then, is an ideological
fiction that represents an inverted, false picture of capitalist
class exploitation as the equal rights of citizens.
Nov 2010-Jan 2011
colonial lackeys, and again a wave of uprisings sparked by
martyrdom is evident. At the same time the suicide rate in
the imperialist armed forces is on the rise. What we see here
is the initial inevitable imbalance of forces where the
oppressed do not yet have organised mass support to express
their opposition to oppression. Such individual acts, even
when copycatted, will continue until such time as collectively
the international proletariat takes on its shoulders the task of
socialist revolution.
The task today then is to recognise the heroism of martyrs but
at the same time to use their heroism as inspiration to build a
mass revolutionary movement that will make it no longer
necessary for the best fighters to die for freedom, but rather
to create the conditions that will allow death to take its
natural course within the realm of freedom.
Necessarily then, opposition to Bourgeois Democracy
spontaneously takes the form of a defence of it as a pure or
anarchist form of Bourgeois Democracy against its abuse by
capitalist elites. Noam Chomsky's huge popularity reflects this
standpoint. If the bosses deny the right of the majority to
rule collectively, then the majority asserts that right and real
democracy ensues. This is the common underlying anarchist
position that we find in all social movements today from the
Zapatistas to the recent student
protests. If the majority expresses
its democratic will bourgeois state
power will dissolve. But this
democratic will becomes a
reactionary utopia because in
rejecting the struggle for power it
succumbs to it.
The fate of the Zapatistas proves
the point. The Zapatistas won the
minds of the new left in 1994 but
failed to lead it anywhere since
then. The result is that such
pacificism in the face of the
bourgeois state has seen social movements smashed or co-
opted everywhere. At the end of 2006 the uprising in Oaxaca
ended in defeat because it pinned its hopes on mass pacifist
protest defeating the armed Mexican state. Meanwhile sub-
comandante Marcos was absent touring other parts of Mexico
on his motor scooter. The spontaneous resistance of youth
using home-made rocket launchers and barricades was
rejected by the indigenous teachers as futile gesture of
resistance to power. Yet the defeat that followed saw all the
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Class Struggle 92
leaders of the Commune arrested and jailed in other parts of
Mexico.
Everywhere it is not passive resistance but armed resistance
that reveals the weakness of the ruling class. The Oaxaca
youth, the French youth of the Banlieus, the Greek Youth on
the streets, and the Council Estate youth who fought back
against the cops in London recently, point the way towards
the only means of defeating Bourgeois Democracy - Workers
Democracy. But in itself spontaneous mass anger and
mobilisation on the streets cannot defeat Bourgeois
Democracy (Dictatorship). At best it unites masses of
individuals in crowds, now formed instantly by means of cell
phones and social media. What it lacks is a democratic
leadership. The loudest voice or the most bureaucratic party
hacks, colonels or sub-comandantes can impose an
unrepresentative leadership in the absence of true Workers
Democracy, what Lenin called 'Democratic Centralism'.
Contrary to the bogey language of those who caricature
Leninism as 'hierarchy' it is nothing of the kind. Lenin argued
as early as 1902 in What is to be Done, that mass spontaneous
uprisings could not break with Bourgeois Democracy unless
they became class conscious and rejected the false
consciousness of bourgeois ideology. Such class consciousness
would not emerge politically until the class had fought hard
battles on the production line where their power as workers
was pitted against the power of the bosses. The tragedy of
Tunisia: Is it a Revolution?
Are the huge protests that spread from Tunisia to Algeria,
Egypt and Yemen part of a revolution, or not? Revolutions
must overturn existing social relations to qualify as
revolutions. However, revolutions often take many years to
complete and may become redundant when overtaken by
other revolutions. The current uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt,
Algeria and Yemen are a continuation of ongoing colonial
revolutions. They qualify as bourgeois revolutions since they
the purpose is to eliminate barriers to the full development of
capitalist social relations. They must unify the nation, replace
pre-capitalist relations with bourgeois market relations (or
integrate them fully) and create a capitalist market for the
production of commodities. These revolutions may take
decades to complete and remain incomplete until overtaken
by socialist revolutions.
For example, the American Revolution was a revolution to
establish an American bourgeoisie independent of Britain. But
it didn’t succeed in establishing the complete dominance of
capitalist social relations until it eliminated the pre-capitalist
social relations of slavery and united the federation after the
Civil War. Once the European powers and the US had united
their nations and their economies had outgrown their national
territories, they expanded to become imperialist states. That
is, they dominated all the other nations in varying degrees,
subordinating them to a division of labour in which their raw
materials were exchanged for manufactured commodities.
This economic dependence, or backwardness, meant that
they were incapable of completing their bourgeois revolutions
and achieving national independence without a total break
with imperialism.
Thus the bourgeoisies of the colonies, or even weak
imperialisms such as Tsarist Russia, did not have an economic
base to allow them to win wars of national independence.
Nov 2010-Jan 2011
1905 in Russia proved this. The industrial struggle would
teach workers to unite, form their own organs of power such
as soviets or workers councils, and begin the fight to take
power. The women workers of the St Petersburg textile mills
took this first step in February 1917. Workers Democracy
would then become an expression of both the democratic
decisions of the workers collectively to act against the ruling
class, together with the election of leaders to implement
their decisions but who were accountable and recallable by
them if they failed in their delegated tasks.
Such revolutionary lessons of history are vital if the world
proletariat is going to defeat the bosses’ crisis today. 2011
will be the year in which the leadership of the workers
movements everywhere is contested. The outcome will decide
if we win or lose and whether defunct capitalism is swept
away or survives to destroy humanity and nature. Against
those misleaders who try to keep workers inside the straight-
jacket of bourgeois ideology and spontaneous, anarchist
actions, we must fight for Workers Democracy, calling for
councils of action where workers can unite, organise
collectively, debate and decide on courses of action, as well
as elect leaders who prove themselves able to lead, or be
thrown out and replaced by those who can. Those leaders
who succeed will be those who are class conscious and
capable of taking the struggle for proletarian world revolution
forward to victory.
These bourgeoisies remained agents of imperialism while the
task of completing the bourgeois revolution passed onto those
classes who were super-exploited by both imperialism and
their national bourgeoisies.
The proof of this was in the fact that it took socialist
revolutions to break from imperialism, in Russia, China and
Cuba. The Russian bourgeoisie remained tied to imperialism
so it was necessary for the workers and peasants to overthrow
them with a socialist revolution in order to break from
imperialism. So the goals of the bourgeois, or national
democratic, revolution were subsumed in the socialist
revolution. These examples allow us to understand the logic
of the current incomplete colonial revolutions of which
Tunisia is one of many.
Tunisia’s national revolution against France was incomplete
and the exploited and oppressed classes are now waking up
under the whip of imperialist crisis which imposes terrible
austerity on their lives. At the moment their goal is bourgeois
‘democracy’ i.e. removing a 'corrupt' capitalist class. They
have yet to see that this will be insufficient. The examples of
the USSR, China and Cuba appear to be irrelevant or worse as
models for completing their bourgeois revolution. For that we
have to thank imperialism that strangled these socialist
revolutions over many decades, and Stalinism for holding the
workers down.
However, the lessons of these socialist revolutions will
remerge more clearly when the barriers to national liberation
become obvious. The sooner that the new generation of Arab
fighters can see through all the imperialist ploys to pretend
they can create a bourgeois democratic state, or that Islam
can create a moderate clerical state, and fight for a popular
workers and peasants socialist government, the better.
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Class Struggle 92
What We Fight For
Overthrow Capitalism
Historically, capitalism expanded world-wide to free
much of humanity from the bonds of feudal or tribal
society, and developed the economy, society and
culture to a new higher level. But it could only do this
by exploiting the labour of the productive classes to
make its profits. To survive, capitalism became
increasingly destructive of "nature" and humanity. In
the early 20th century it entered the epoch of
imperialism in which successive crises unleashed wars,
revolutions and counter-revolutions. Today we fight to
end capitalism’s wars, famine, oppression and
injustice, by mobilising workers to overthrow their
own ruling classes and bring to an end the rotten,
exploitative and oppressive society that has exceeded
its use-by date.
Fight for Socialism
By the 20th century, capitalism had created the pre-
conditions for socialism –a world-wide working class
and modern industry capable of meeting all our basic
needs. The potential to eliminate poverty, starvation,
disease and war has long existed. The October
Revolution proved this to be true, bringing peace,
bread and land to millions. But it became the victim
of the combined assault of imperialism and Stalinism.
After 1924 the USSR, along with its deformed offspring
in Europe, degenerated back towards capitalism. In
the absence of a workers political revolution,
capitalism was restored between 1990 and 1992.
Vietnam and China then followed. In the 21sst century
only Cuba and North Korea survive as degenerate
workers states. We unconditionally defend these
states against capitalism and fight for political
revolution to overthrow the bureaucracy as part of
world socialism.
Defend Marxism
While the economic conditions for socialism exist
today, standing between the working class and
socialism are political, social and cultural barriers.
They are the capitalist state and bourgeois ideology
and its agents. These agents claim that Marxism is
dead and capitalism need not be exploitative. We say
that Marxism is a living science that explains both
capitalism’s continued exploitation and its attempts to
hide class exploitation behind the appearance of
individual "freedom" and "equality". It reveals how and
why the reformist, Stalinist and centrist misleaders of
the working class tie workers to bourgeois ideas of
nationalism, racism, sexism and equality. Such false
beliefs will be exploded when the struggle against the
Nov 2010-Jan 2011
inequality, injustice, anarchy and barbarism of
capitalism in crisis, led by a revolutionary Marxist
party, produces a revolutionary class-consciousness.
For a Revolutionary Party
The bourgeois and its agents condemn the Marxist
party as totalitarian. We say that without a
democratic and a centrally organised party there can
be no revolution. We base our beliefs on the
revolutionary tradition of Bolshevism and Trotskyism.
Such a party, armed with a transitional program,
forms a bridge that joins the daily fight to defend all
the past and present gains won from capitalism, to the
victorious socialist revolution. Defensive struggles for
bourgeois rights and freedoms, for decent wages and
conditions, will link up the struggles of workers of all
nationalities, genders, ethnicities and sexual
orientations, bringing about movements for workers
control, political strikes and the arming of the working
class, as necessary steps to workers' power and the
smashing of the bourgeois state. Along the way,
workers will learn that each new step is one of many
in a long march to revolutionise every barrier put in
the path to the victorious revolution.
Fight for Communism
Communism stands for the creation of a classless,
stateless society beyond socialism that is capable of
meeting all human needs. Against the ruling class lies
that capitalism can be made "fair" for all; that nature
can be "conserved"; that socialism and communism are
"dead"; we raise the red flag of communism to keep
alive the revolutionary tradition of the' Communist
Manifesto of 1848, the Bolshevik-led October
Revolution; the Third Communist International until
1924, the revolutionary Fourth International up to
1940 before its collapse into centrism. We fight to
build a new, Fifth, Communist International, as a
world party of socialism capable of leading workers to
a victorious struggle for socialism.
Class Struggle is the bi-Monthly paper of the
Communist Workers’ Group of New
Zealand/Aotearoa, in a Liaison Committee
with Humanist Workers for Revolutionary
Socialism.
PO Box 60620, Auckland, New Zealand.
Email cwg006@yahoo.com
http://redrave.blogspot.com
http://communistworker.blogspot.com
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