- For a class program, anti-imperialist and the fight for the unity of the world working class
- Solidarity with the North American workers’ vanguard.
- Support its anti-imperialist, internationalist and working class mobilizations for the 19th of March and 1st of May!
- Call to the militant workers organizations of Latin America and of the world
The North American working class, the main ally of the exploited workers and peoples of the semi colonial world, because it can strike at the heart of imperialism, has begun to wake up. The vanguard workers of the United States and their militant organizations have begun to look for a way to fight against the war in Iraq, opposing their own imperialistic bourgeoisie, and the attacks that Bush and the ruling class make on their historic gains and living standards, and against the rotten union bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO, servants of the imperialist bourgeoisie.
They have launched the Movement of the Million Workers March against the war, adopting the call originally made by Local 10 of the Oakland dockworkers (ILWU). Hundreds of local unions have signed up to this call breaking the discipline of the bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO. The MWM Movement mobilized about ten thousand in Washington on 17th October 2004 calling for the immediate return of the Yankee troops from Iraq. Now, it has issued a new declaration, calling for "the unity of the rank and file of the unions in the fight for the rights of workers and the end of the war in Iraq", raising an anti-imperialist and working class independence program, based on the united struggle of the international working class.
This call by the militant workers vanguard of the United States, stands up against the union bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO which adheres to the sell-out World Social Forum. This declaration by our North American class brothers and sisters challenges the subservience of the AFL-CIO to Bush and the Democratic Party that is creating a big crisis in the unions in the US. The unions in the epoch of imperialism are totally dominated by the labor aristocracy and the labor bureaucracy and their reformist programs. This proves that the rebuilding of the unions will only come as the result of the most militant workers guided by a revolutionary program.
This Movement and its declaration came as a breath of fresh air for the exploited workers and peoples of the world. It proves that the future of the North American working class is in the hands of its most exploited sectors, the African-American and migrant workers who are the backbone of the new militant movement. The African-American and Latino workers, immigrant workers, and the unemployed workers are the rank and file troops of this movement and they are flexing their muscles against the privileged workers aristocracy and the labor bureaucracy, struggling to unleash the power of the North American working class!
19th of March, all out against the war in Iraq, all out for May Day all over the world!
In their struggle to revive proletarian internationalism, this new militant Movement has forged links with the Zengakuren students and the railway workers of Japan fighting against privatization of rail, marking a leap forward in the international cooperation of workers organizations.
A delegation of this Movement also joined with Japanese workers who traveled to Tokyo to protest outside the owners’ head office against the lockout of hotel workers in the USA. It has also established international solidarity links with the Korean Confederation of Unions (KCTU) as it prepares for a general strike.
Its call to the antiwar and workers organizations in the United States to jointly organize on the 19 of March – marking two years since the invasion of Iraq – a big mobilization in New York, demanding the immediate end of the war and the return of troops from Iraq, is a major step forward in the anti-imperialist struggle. Its call to reclaim the 1st of May as the international day of struggle for the world labor movement, with a worldwide day of action against the imperialist war in Iraq and in defense of the demands and the rights of workers, clearly marks an historical event for the world proletariat.
Long live the North American workers’ vanguard and its militant organizations, who have erected in full view of the world’s workers a barricade for class independence against the imperialist massacre of our Iraqi brothers and sisters by their own bourgeoisie, and against the workers aristocracy and the union bureaucracy, and for proletarian internationalism!
The North American workers vanguard raises the barricade of working class internationalism objectively opposed to the barricade of the World Social Forum and its politics of class collaboration
Though the leaders of the MWM Movement do not see this, the proletarian, anti-imperialist and internationalist demands of the Movement objectively raises a barricade against the World Social Forum and the policy of the AFL-CIO. In the heart of the imperialistic beast, class against class, there is now a class struggle barricade; a barricade against the World Social Forum, opposed to the policy of the AFL-CIO in the United States, and of the labor bureaucracies and the social imperialist parties of Europe, all serving the class interests of their own imperialist bourgeoisies; a barricade against the counter-revolutionary class collaboration politics of treacherous nationalism, which the Castroists, stalinists, and labor aristocracies and bureaucracies of all types –with the collaboration of the liquidators and renegades of Trotskyism – try to strangle the vanguard of world working class.
It will not be the Iraqi bourgeois fractions, Shiite, Sunni or Kurd, all minor partners of imperialism and the betrayers of the national resistance against the invader, nor even the heroic resistance of the workers of that blood soaked nation that wins the war against the imperialistic invader. On the contrary, the main ally and the decisive factor in the victory and the liberation of the oppressed peoples of the world, is the North American working class that is now beginning to find its strength to attack the imperialist beast at home.
It is not Chávez, Lula or Kirchner – nor Fidel Castro, the stalinist unions, the bureaucracies and the reformist leaders of all colors, who subordinate the working class to the bourgeoisie and prop-up its regimes and governments – that are the allies of the working class and the poor farmers of Latin America. Rather it is the working class of the United States and in particular, the African-Americans, Latinos and immigrants – the most exploited, oppressed workers who are treated like pariahs – who today begin to find their strength and to organise themselves in the Million Workers Movement!
The big majority of the liquidationist currents of Trotskyism have now officially joined the World Social Forum at the 5th meeting in Porto Allegre at the end of January of 2005. They have already chosen their barricade: with the World Social Forum, blocking the road of the North American workers vanguard and its anti-imperialist, internationalist, working class program.
These currents were the ones who took the most militant representatives of the workers vanguard of Brazil, of Argentina, of Peru, of Latin America, to the meeting of that traitors’ forum in Porto Allegre, to try to subjugate them to their reformist policy of class collaboration.
- Down with the World Social Forum of Lula, Chávez, Fidel Castro, of the AFL-CIO, all agents of imperialism and traitors to the Latin American and world revolution!
- No subordination of the militant workers and their class struggle organizations to the World Social Forum!
To the militant workers organizations of Latin America and the world: Solidarity with the Million Workers March Movement and its mobilizations of March 19th & May 1st
We revolutionary internationalists who have signed this declaration enthusiastically welcome and join our forces with the Movement of the Million Workers, and its two working class, anti-imperialist and internationalist calls of the March 19th and May 1s.
We call on our comrades in the different groups which are members of the Liaison Committee for an International Conference of Principled Trotskyists and revolutionary internationalist workers organizations, to add their support and signature, and build together a great internationalist campaign.
We call on all the militant workers organizations of the countries in which we are active, and in the rest of the world, to play their part on the barricade that has been built by our class brothers and sisters of the United States. We call on the workers of the Subte [underground railway of Buenos Aires] and their delegates who are within reach of victory in their strike against the employer's association, the union bureaucracy and the government of the imperialist lackey Kirchner; the miners of Turbio River, the piquetero movement, and the internal commissions, bodies of delegates, and militant workers organizations of Argentina; to the worker and youth vanguard that in Brazil which has built CONLUTAS to confront the union bureaucracy of the CUT that supports Lula; the militant working class organizations of Chile, of Peru, of Bolivia, and of New Zealand, all to adhere to the declaration of the Movement of the March of the Million Workers and to its two calls to action.
The barricade of North American workers vanguard is also our barricade in the fight for the revolutionary students of the Technological University of Oruro (UTO) in Bolivia, and those of the National University of the Comahue (UNCo) in Argentina, that rose in struggle for a University in the service of the workers and the people; it is the same barricade for all the militant anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist youth of Latin America and the world. We call on all of them to unite with the revolutionary students Zengakuren of Japan, who have adhered to and support the declaration and the calls to action of the Million Workers March Movement.
We call on the militant workers organizations and the anti-imperialist youth to take the struggle into their own hands so that March 19 becomes a day of anti-imperialist mobilization and class struggle everywhere in the world for the defeat of the imperialistic troops in Iraq, and support for the heroic Iraqi masses. We fight against the rotten politics of the World Social Forum which tries to neutralize the mobilizations and to remove their proletarian class character and substitute a reformist and pacific politics. The revolutionary organizations that have signed this call, undertake to fight inside all united front actions on March 19th to raise our class struggle program for the military defeat of the imperialist troops in Iraq, and for the victory of the indomitable resistance of the Iraqi masses.
We call on the militant workers organizations to reconquer the heroic tradition of proletarian internationalism of the world working class, which was suppressed by social democracy and stalinism: let us reclaim, alongside the North American workers, May 1st [May Day] 2005 as a day of world proletarian struggle, with strikes and mobilizations coordinated in every country! This is what is most urgently needed by our Iraqi brothers and sisters!
This is what we urgently need, the workers, and the exploited and oppressed peoples of the world! This is what we need to free from the jails the tens of thousands of worker and anti-imperialist fighters who the bourgeois imperialist regimes and governments keep as hostages, in Guantánamo, in Turkey, in Bolivia, in Argentina, etc.!
We call on workers everywhere to take the declaration and the two calls to action as motions to be discussed and voted on in the militant workers organizations of Latin America, of Europe, of Asia, of the world. For our part, we commit ourselves, on the honor of revolutionary internationalists, to build this struggle and to take these motions to the heart of the workers organizations and all the struggles of the exploited and oppressed in the countries where we are active.
Signed by FTI-CI (Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia), FT-PV (Brazil), CWG (NZ)
From Class Struggle 59 January-February 2005
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