On August 1, we learned that Fidel Castro had to undergo abdominal surgery due to a serious illness. His brother, vice-president and minister of defence Raul Castro, was to take charge temporarily of the presidency of Cuba. Fidel's serious illness and his old age – he has just celebrated his 80th birthday – has put Cuba’s future centre stage again.
Capitalist restoration or socialist revolution?
Cuba is the only workers state in Latin America. In 1959 a workers and peasants revolution succeeded in expropriating the bourgeoisie. Immediately Bush and Condoleezza Rice started speaking about a “transition” in Cuba. The ‘gusana’ bourgeoisie (1) in Miami demonstrated in the streets, enthusiastic about returning to Cuba to recover their properties. On the other hand, the European imperialist powers – which have lucrative businesses on the island – said they wished Fidel a quick recovery. No doubt, the imperialist bourgeoisies and their different fractions are discussing the best way to complete the capitalist restoration in Cuba. After more than 15 years of pro-capitalist measures carried out by the Castroite bureaucracy, Cuba has been turned into extremely degenerated workers state. The monopoly of foreign trade has been abandoned. Nationalized property and central planning, despite being heavily bureaucratic, has been badly eroded. In spite of this, the anti-imperialist consciousness of the Cuban workers and peasants won in the struggle for the victorious revolution is still alive. They will defend the expropriation of the bourgeoisie that arose out of the insurrectionary general strike that overthrew the dictator Batista and made possible the first workers’ state in Latin America. But with each day the bureaucracy’s restorationist policies causes creates deeper inequalities and a growing bureaucracy, workers aristocracy and rich middle classes as the potential new bourgeoisie.The poverty and suffering of the big majority of workers and peasants threatens to undermine the revolutionary consciousness of the masses. The worse their situation gets the more the masses will identify real socialism with the fake socialism Fidel Castro talks to them about; a “socialism” with miserable wages, rationing cards and never ending hardships. But real socialism can only start from the highest degree of development reached by the productive forces under capitalism; that is in the imperialist countries. The working class of a underdeveloped country like Cuba can make a workers and peasants’ revolution sooner than the workers of an imperialist country, but it cannot arrive at socialism without the victory of socialist revolution in at least some imperialist countries. For this reason, every workers’ and peasants’ revolution that remains isolated and doesn't join forces with other countries undergoing revolution, sooner or later will be bureaucratized and retreat backwards into counter-revolution. For that reason, the Stalinist pseudo – theory of “socialism in a single country” is clearly a reactionary utopia, proven by the collapse of the USSR, China and the East European ex-workers’ states headed by the Stalinist bureaucracy. The extreme decomposition of the Cuban worker state is yet another instance of the bankruptcy of that pseudo-theory. It was a reactionary utopia to affirm that a huge country (almost a continent in itself, with 150 million workers and peasants and enormous natural resources) such as the USSR could be arrive at socialism without a decisive advance of the world revolution (which the Stalinist bureaucracy strangled step by step). It was also a utopia that China could keep going as a workers state after the expropriation of the bourgeoisie in 1949, without a world revolution. Indeed far from realising socialism, both collapsed back into capitalism bringing about a historical defeat of the working class of those nations and the whole world. How much more reactionary then to claim, as the Castroite bureaucracy does, that it is possible to make “socialism in a single island” while the Latin American and North American revolutions have been contained and strangled (again with the help of the Castroite bureaucracy). The only thing that can result from the isolation of a workers’ state in a single country, is the distribution of scarcity. Arising out of this scarcity the bureaucracy emerges as the gendarme to police the queue and reward itself with privileges at the expense of the workers. As the agents of the capitalist world economy inside the workers’ states the bureaucracy frees itself from dependence on state property and restores capitalism to transform itself into a new bourgeoisie. The Bolshevik Party always saw the triumphant October revolution in Russia as a spark to ignite the European and world revolution, and for that reason it founded the 3rd International. On the contrary, Stalinism – the executioner of Bolshevism – usurped the October revolution, and developed the fake “theory” of “socialism in a single country” and its counterrevolutionary policy of collaborating with ‘democratic’ imperialists in the rest of the world. Without doubt, today the gains of the Cuban revolution are in danger. To finish the capitalist restoration in Cuba would be an historical defeat not only for Cuban workers and peasants, but for the proletariat and the exploited of all Latin America and the world. Defending the revolutionary gains that still remain, and preventing the Cuban worker state, despite its degeneration, from destruction is an anti-imperialist and revolutionary task of the working class of the greatest importance. As Trotsky said, those who won’t defend the existing gains cannot win new ones. Every standpoint on the Cuban issue today that doesn't agree with the position of the founders of the 4th International in the Congress of 1938 on the defence of workers’ states, amounts to an open and definitive rupture with the program of Trotskyism, and a capitulation to the Castroite bureaucracy. As Trotsky said in 1937: “To identify the October Revolution and the peoples in the USSR with the ruling caste, is to betray workers interests and help the reaction” (The Revolution Betrayed, Leon Trotsky). In the same way, today, to link the Cuban revolution and the Cuban workers and peasants fate with the fate of Castroite bureaucracy, is to betray the interests of the proletariat. On the contrary, the advances of Cuban revolution can only be defended today by fighting against the Castroite bureaucracy’s privileges, and replacing the bureaucracy with a government of workers’ and peasants’ councils (soviets). Only a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat can make Cuba the spark to light the fire of Latin American and world revolution. How to defeat the US Imperialist and the Miami “gusano” threat to Cuba? The overthrow of the bureaucracy by a workers and peasants’ political revolution would spread panic among the Gringo imperialist bourgeoisie. It would become a driving force to push the North American proletariat, only now standing up to fight, towards a revolutionary struggle.
Two imperialist plans to complete capitalist restoration in Cuba It is clear, once again that there are two different plans, promoted by different fractions of the imperialist bourgeoisies, to finish capitalist restoration in Cuba. The fall of the worker states in Eastern Europe and USSR – the only states Cuba traded with – plunged the Cuban workers’ state into a deep crisis. The productive forces were already retarded by the reactionary utopia of “socialism in one island” imposed by the Castroite bureaucracy. On top of this, US economic sanctions from the early 1990s made the shortages worse. This pushed the bureaucracy to open the economy to foreign trade with European imperialist monopolies and created the conditions for the birth of a rich middle class. Spanish, French, Italian, Canadian, Swiss imperialist monopolies began investing and extracting super- profits in Cuba from the beginning of the 1990s. This took the form of FDI or “joint ventures” with the Cuban state (the so called “mixed enterprises”) and they now have a big stake in very profitable businesses in tourism, nickel and oil, etc. A fraction of the US bourgeoisie – associated with the Chamber of Commerce – favors the same policy and calls for an end to economic sanctions so it can also share in in the plunder of Cuba alongside its European rivals. For this fraction of the world imperialist bourgeoisie, completing capitalist restoration in the island is best done by reintroducing the ‘law of value’ i.e. the market, money, “joint ventures” etc., as happened in both the ex-USSR and China. Free trade would open Cuba to cheap goods to undermine the workers and peasants support for the workers’ state, and create opportunities for the new middle classes and the bureaucratic caste to become a new bourgeoisie. But clearly this is not the plan of the bourgeois clique around Bush, Rice, the oil monopolies and the arms industry, who are currently administrating US bourgeoisie interests. Their plan means counterrevolution by invasion and occupation. Capitalist restoration will be completed by the “gusana” bourgeoisie and US monopolies return to the island. Meanwhile, they are happy for European monopolies to invest in the infrastructure on the island and to modernise the economy. For when the US invasion takes place the gringos and “gusanos” will seize their former property rights expropriated by the revolution, including those concessions granted by the Castroite bureaucracy to the European monopolies! The objective of the Bushite fraction of the US bourgeoisie is not only to obtain super-profits by restoring capitalism in Cuba, but to recover all their private property, turning Cuba again into “an American brothel” as it used to be before the revolution. US imperialism and the “gusana” bourgeoisie in Miami, would then become the national bourgeoisie in a Cuba restored to capitalism. his is the strategic objective of the Bushite fraction of US imperialism. However, it has not been able to implement this policy because of the heroic resistance of the Iraqi masses that “swamped” the Anglo Yankees troops in Iraq causing a crisis in Bush government, and the national war of resistance of the Palestinian and Lebanese masses that humiliated the Zionist army in the south of Lebanon. These are the two imperialist fractions in a race to see who gets the property in a restored Cuba: US imperialism and the “gusanos” of Miami, or the European imperialist monopolies in collaboration with the Castroite bureaucracy as the prospective new national bourgeoisie. Mercosur is a new milestone on the road to capitalist restoration Stalinists, Castroites and the fake Trotskyists – all members of the World Social Forum – tell the Latin American working class and exploited peoples that to defend Cuba is to support Fidel Castro and the Castroite bureaucracy. They say that both Castro and the Castroite bureaucracy are “anti-imperialist” and defend Cuba against capitalism. However, the Cuban revolution has not survived thanks to the Castroite bureaucracy’s policies, but in spite of and against it. The Cuban revolution survives thanks to the revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggle of the working class and the exploited during the '60s, the '70s, and the '80s. It survives thanks to the Ecuadorian and Argentinean revolutions, to the magnificent Bolivian revolution, and to the great anti-imperialist struggle of the Venezuelan masses that have taken place in the first few years of the 21th century. And today the Cuban revolutionary advances are in danger not because Fidel is sick, but because the restorationist Castroite bureaucracy in the name of the revolution has collaborated with the national bourgeoisies to strangle the Argentinean and Ecuadorian revolutions, and contain the great Bolivian revolution. Over four decades the Castroite bureaucracy, in condemning Cuba to isolation, and in preparing the destruction of the gains of the revolution, has betrayed the Latin American revolution. Thus, the betrayal by Castroism of the Chilean revolution (the revolution of the “Industrial colons” and coordinated worker-peasant councils) in 1973, with Fidel proclaiming the “peaceful road to socialism”, lead to a coup by Pinochet and the ITT followed by a number of counterrevolutionary military governments in Latin America. All those developments left Cuba isolated. In the 1980s, by proposing that Nicaragua shouldn’t be a new Cuba, and abandoning the Central American revolution to the counter-revolutionary pacts of Esquipulas and Contadora, the Castroite bureaucracy – which is a part of the Stalinist bureaucracy – began to prepare its transition to capitalist restoration. Thus, in the 1990s – after the collapse of USSR, China and the Eastern Europe workers states – we saw the reform of the Constitution and Foreign Capitals Investment Law driven through by the Castroite bureaucracy in preparation for capitalist restoration on the island. These reforms which undermined the foundations of Cuba as a workers’ state. Since 2000, the opening of the Ecuadorian and Argentinean revolutions, and expecially that of the heroic Bolivian revolution in 2003, has sounded the alarm to the Castroite bureaucracy. It knew perfectly well that a victorious workers and peasants revolution in Bolivia would be like an electric shock to the entire Latin American masses, and especially, the Cuban masses. Its own survival as a privileged caste and its plan to become the new bourgeoisie would be immediately at risk. For that reason, the Castroite bureaucracy played a key role, together with the other counter-revolutionary leaders in the World Social Forum, in surrounding and containing the Bolivian revolution, in backing and supporting the class collaborationist policies of Mesa’s government and the government of Evo Morales today. The betrayal to Bolivian revolution, is consistent with the history of betrayals of the masses’ struggles in Latin America, and prepared the conditions for a new leap in the capitalist restoration process in Cuba and ofn the bureaucracy recycling itself as a bourgeoisie. This leap was clearly seen when Castro signed a commercial agreement on behalf of Cuba with Mercosur, at the last summit of presidents in Cordoba (Argentina), in mid July. Argentinean, Venezuelan, Brazilian, and Uruguayan bourgeoisies, along with imperialist monopolies installed in those countries, will be able to export to Cuba large quantities of goods at subsidized prices. This agreement for introducting cheap imports by means of ‘joint ventures’ with capitalist corporations is part of the plan of completing capitalist restoration in the island. Thus the restorationist Castroite bureaucracy represented by Castro himself proved that they are on course to become the new national bourgeoisie. This is why Fidel Castro has said that Chavez “has the task to look after Cuba” when he dies. His objective is for Cuba to become like Venezuela, that is to say, a capitalist country, but with a national bourgeoisie formed out of the recycled bureaucracy. This agreement of the Castroite bureaucracy with Mercosur – a free trade agreement with the imperialist monopolies and national bourgeoisies of its member countries – marks a new leap forward in the capitalist restoration process in Cuba. It is as if – though not an exact analogy –Stalin and the Russian bureaucracy had established a trade agreement with French and English imperialists, instead of creating COMECON – the common market with the deformed worker states of Eastern Europe. That would have meant clearly an opening of the road to capitalist restoration as was finally done by Gorbachev in the 1980s, and by Yeltsin in 1989 to complete the restoration and the recycling of the bureaucracy as a new bourgeoisie. The signing of the agreement with the Mercosur clearly points to the fact that once the Bolivian revolution is strangled and the revolutionary struggle of the Latin American masses completely aborted, the the process of capitalist restoration in Cuba can be completed. This agreement between the Castroites and Mercosur angered Bush, Rice and the “gusanos” in Miami because it confirmed that the bureaucracy is already planning to restore capitalist private property of the means of production under the framework of Mercosur and not the FTAA of US imperialism. The social inequality in Cuba will get worse and will cause greater demoralization of the workers and rural masses, undermining their commitment to defend the gains of the revolution. In fact this is what both the main imperialist fractions bet on, in their race to finish capitalist restoration in Cuba.
The strip tease exposes the “mixed economy” as the Castroite bureaucracy prepares its transformation into a new bourgeoisie Fidel's illness and Raul Castro’s role as his temporary replacement is a “srtrip tease” of the Castroite bureaucracy, exposing its plans to complete capitalist restoration and turn itself into a bourgeoisie. It is clear the army -a.k.a “Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias” (“Revolutionary Armed Forces”) is the fundamental institution through which the Castroite bureaucracy is driving the capitalist restoration plan. The army controls most of the “mixed companies” (“joint ventures” with foreign monopolies, created under the umbrella of the “Foreign Investment Law”), from model farms that produce for export, to telecommunications, to tourism and nickel. Today the army controls 322 of the biggest companies, some of them Cuban capital, and others mixed with foreign capital – among them, “Gaviota” (tourism and transport), Cubanacan (tourism), Almacenes Universal (tax free areas), Sasa (auto parts), Habanos (cigars), Cimex (import and export, distribution, gas stations, real estate). These companies employ 20% of Cuban labor, represent 89% of the exports, and generate 59% of the earnings in tourism. The army directly controls these companies through the Grupo de Administración Empresarial S. A. (Managerial Administration Group A.S.) or GAESA, of which the general director is... Raul Castro, and the executive director is his son-in-law. These companies are run by a new generation of young army officers, all of them trained in business administration schools in Europe. In this way the restorationist bureaucracy has been preparing for its role as a bourgeoisie: by joining the boards (undisclosed to the public) of stock companies with bank accounts in fiscal paradises (off-shore accounts); as anonymous shareholders with their holdings protected by commercial secrecy; as partners in joint ventures with imperialist monopolies such as the Sherrit (which has 50% of the mixed company Moa Nickel, and the gas company Energas), the French Pernod Ricard (which has 50% of Corporation Cuba Ron S.A.), the Swiss Nestlé (with 50% of the food company Los Portales), and the Spanish Altadis (50% of Habanos S.A.). It is clear then that private property rights are being restored in Cuba very quickly, and that the bureaucracy is now rapidly forming a new bourgeoisie. The only two things that for the moment the bureaucracy has not been able to do – and the reason that capitalist restoration has not yet been completed – are the absolute right to private property in land and the right to inherit such property. The right to inheritance is a key question, as Leon Trotsky brilliantly outlined in The Revolution Betrayed, “property that cannot be bequeathed to descendants loses half of its value”. The Castroite bureaucracy’s policies have carried the Cuban workers’ state to an extreme degree of degeneration. Such that today in Cuba two economies coexist at the same time: a capitalist economy that works under the law of value, and a transitional economy in crisis and severe decomposition. These two economies are in a struggle of life and death. One or other must win. The unstable coexistence of these two economies has its expression in the two currency system introduced in Cuba by the bureaucracy. Thus, you have the “chavito” (convertible peso; 1peso= 1dollar) used for tourism and which allows foreign monopolies to take their earnings out of Cuba in US dollars. This “chavito” is a real “exchange insurance” for imperialist investments, paid for by super-exploiting the workers and peasants. It expresses the law of value in the sector of the economy open to capitalist property and to imperialist investment which has the highest labor productivity and most value-added commodities. Only 20% of the population – the restorationist bureaucratic caste, the labor aristocracy and a newly enriched middle class, linked to imperialist investments – have access to the “chavito” and to exclusive goods and services of this sector. On the other hand, you have the devalued Cuban peso that expresses low labor productivity, the low quality of products and the low value created in the nationalised sector of the economy. It represents the workers’ state in acute degeneration. The low wages of the big majority of workers and peasants are paid with this devalued peso. 80% of the population lives facing shortages and deprivation, depending on ration cards. This poverty coexists with a growth rate of 11.8% in 2005 which exceeded that of China. This shows that in Cuba the law of value that governs the capitalist economy is already in operation. It means that market values are imposed on the planned economy creating huge wealth in the newly enriched middle class and emerging bourgeoisie, while driving the vast majority of the population into poverty as in any capitalist country. The introduction of the market and the widening gap between rich and poor is what undermines the ability of the Cuban masses to defend the revolution. Political consciousness is always the expression of material conditions. If the material gains of the revolution resulting from the expropriation of the bourgeoisie are destroyed, then so is the consciousness that defends them destroyed. During the 1980s the bureaucracy In the USSR and the workers’ states of Eastern Europe became restorationist, and by enforcing pro-capitalist measures (such as Gorbachev’s "perestroika") it forced tens of millions of workers and farmers into misery. For example, the coalminers in the Donbass (Ukraine) were living under worse conditions than the Bolivian miners in 1940 – such that they had to fight for... soap and toilet paper. Why would millions of hungry workers and farmers come out in defense of a "revolution" that condemns them to hunger, misery, and unheard of shortages? It is precisely the intention of all fractions of the imperialist bourgeoisies to cause this same demoralization and destruction of the anti-imperialist consciousness in the Cuban masses and to undermine their resistance to the completion of capitalist restoration.
Break with all the national bourgeoisies of the continent! For a Federation of Socialist Republics of the Americas! Everyone that claims to be anti-imperialist and revolutionary has a duty to defend Cuba from the US blockade and the renewed threats of US imperialism and the “gusana” bourgeoisie of Miami. But how to defend effectively the historical gains of the Cuban revolution already much weakened by the class collaborationist politics of the Castroite bureaucracy? The first task to effectively defend the gains of the revolution, is for the Cuban workers and farmers to break with Mercosur and all the agreements and treaties which give the resources of the island to the imperialist monopolies that have been sacking Latin America for decades. Second, is to break with the bourgeoisie all over the continent. Third, to defeat the counterrevolutionary policy of the Castroite bureaucracy that usurps the prestige of the Cuban revolution to maintain and support the lackey, anti-worker and repressive governments and regimes of Kirchner, Lula, Bachelet, Morales, etc. Fourth, is to break with the UN - that today is ready to intervene in Middle East to crush the Palestinian people, as it did in the 1990s in the Balkans, and to defeat the politics of Fidel Castro and the Cuban bureaucracy who call on the world’s masses to trust that den of imperialist thieves. It is not possible to defend Cuba without fighting against all class collaborationist politics, so that the working class and the exploited in the continent can break with their own bourgeoisies and the left leg of the popular front of the treacherous fake Trotskyists of the WSF. It is not possible to defend Cuba if you are holding hands with the WSF because it belongs to Chavez, Lula, Evo Morales and the likes, to the national bourgeoisies of Mercosur, to the Castroite bureaucracy and the treacherous misleaders of all colors, that form the party of capitalist restoration in Cuba! Cuba will be defended when El Alto becomes once more the central headquarters of the Bolivian revolution, and when that revolution (today caught in the trap of the Constituent Assembly by Evo Morales’ class collaboratist government backed by Fidel Castro) returns to the road to victory. It will be defended when the Ecuadorian revolution rises up again (after Fidel’s friend Chavez stabbed it in the back when he lent oil to Palacio to break the oil workers’ strike). Cuba will be defended by the Argentine working class breaking the ‘social pact’ of the bureaucracy with the bosses and the government of Kirchner (a government that has put Castroites in many state offices, and which was warmly supported by Fidel on his recent visit), and retakes the revolutionary road of 2001. Cuba will be defended when the workers and farmers in Mexico –the teachers of Oaxaca, the miners and steel workers of Michoacan, the exploited people of San Salvador Atenco, the poor farmers of Chiapas –unite their struggles into one revolutionary front. Today these struggles are in danger of being isolated and expropriated by the bourgeois Lopez Obrador, presented as "progressive" by the Castroite bureaucracy and the WSF. Cuba will be defended when the workers and peasants of Central America rise up against the CAFTA imposed by the bourgeoisies with the open collaboration of the ex-commaders of the Sandinistas and FMLN who today have become Wall Street yuppies and government officials in the bourgeois states of Nicaragua and El Salvador. Cuba will be defended when the Venezuelan workers and exploited can guarantee that not one barrel of oil is sold to the US imperialists who feed it to the military machine that murders Iraqis, and finances the Zionist-Fascist state of Israel to murder the Palestinian people and the Arab masses in Lebanon. Either the revolution will extend to Central and South America, or, sooner or later, the fate of Cuba will be the same of the oppressed nations in Central America and the Caribbean: new enslaved colonies, enslaved by the CAFTAs, or directly occupied as US protectorates, as Haiti is today after it was bled-white. Cuban workers and peasants can see themselves in the mirror of their class brothers and sisters of the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America today: that will be their destiny if the capitalist restoration prevails! Cuba will be defended when the North American workers, led by the Latino immigrants, refuse to kneel before the imperialist butchers of the Democratic Party - as Castroism does- but rises up and unites against the war in Iraq. It will be defended when the US working class comes to the defense of the Palestinian people and the masses of Lebanon. It will be defended when the US workers defend the gains of the Cuban revolution against all imperialist threats and aggressions, and supports the fight against the FTAA that ties the nations of Central America to imperialism with double chains. The fence imposed on Cuba from the outside by US imperialism with its blockade, and from the inside by the Castroite bureaucracy with its restorationist policy, can only be broken by the Cuban workers and peasants their fight for political revolution with the struggles of the working class and the exploited of the rest of Latin America. Te isolation of Cuba can be effectively broken by centralizing a common struggle in Latin America and with that of the North American working class, against imperialism and the national bourgeoisies that are its servants!
In order to defend the conquests of the revolution the Cuban masses must fight for a political revolution to overthrow the bureaucracy and win worker democracy To defend Cuba means to break all political ties with the bourgeoisie that the restorationist Castroite bureaucracy imposes on the workers and peasants. For that reason, it means to finish with the restorationist policies of the bureaucracy and with the growing social inequality it brings. Stop the wage and social inequality!
Stop the privileges, ranks, medals and decorations!
Down with the differential wages and the prizes for production in the joint ventures and the imperialist monopolies!
For equal work for an equal wage in all the sectors of the economy!
Out with the parasites: all the bureaucrats must go to work paid at the average wage of a worker and in Cuban Pesos!
Down with the "two currencies"!
For a single currency that reflects the real productivity of labor of the whole Cuban economy!
Reimpose exchange controls so that the value produced by Cuban workers is not siphoned off to imperialist monopolies! Re-imposing the monopoly of the foreign trade in all the branches of the economy!
Restore the centrally economy planned, under the control of the workers and peasants councils!
Smash the “gusano” bourgeoisie!
End all commercial secrets that allow the imperialist monopolies to hide their profits!
End all corruption that allows the bureaucracy to profit from “joint-stock companies"!
For workers’ control of all the branches of the production – including tourism, nickel and petroleum!
Renationalise without compensation and under workers control the private interests of the "joint-stock companies" and mixed companies!
For the freedom to organize unions in the private and mixed companies and in the state owned companies!
For workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ councils!
For workers democracy where the majority of the workers and peasants decided on strategy and tactics of defending the revolution!
For political parties that demonstrate they can defend the gains of the revolution!
For workers’ and peasants’ militias, the arming of the entire population to defend Cuba and take back Guantanamo!
For a political revolution to overthrow the restorationist bureaucracy and build a socialist Cuba as part of the Socialist United States of Central America and the Caribbean, which would be, at the same time be a decisive step to win the unity with the North American proletariat, and open the way to the workers and socialist revolution in the United States!
For an international party of socialist revolution to defeat the class collaborationist and restorationist World Social Forum! For this reason, no-one can defend the Cuban revolution without fighting to re-found the international party of the socialist revolution. Only such an internationalist proletarian party is capable of uniting and organising the working class from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego in a victorious war against imperialism, the client national bourgeoisies and capitalist restoration in Cuba. Castro’s bureaucracy is a declared enemy of an international revolutionary party. On the contrary, it organises a continental policy of subordination of Latin American workers to their own national bourgeoisies and the North American working class to the Democratic Party. The fake Trotskyists have lent support to this class collaborationist policy by supporting the Castroite bureaucracy and the ‘Trotskyist’ impostor Celia Hart Santamaria. All over Latin America, that are forming new parties uniting Castroites, Stalinists and the trade union bureaucracies – such as the PRS in Venezuela, Podemos (“We can!”) in Chile, the P-SOL in Brazil, “Plenario de Autoconvocados” (“Self convened fighters plenum”) in Argentina, etc. which acts as the “left wing” of the the World Social Forum as a counter-revolutionary international. The imminent danger posed by finishing capitalist restoration in Cuba, makes the first task of internationalist Trotskyists that of completing the unfinished work of the founders of Fourth International in America: "... for the Leninist Bolsheviks, there is no more important task than to establish the connection - and then the unification – between the different parts of the proletarian organization in the continent, creating such a well constructed organism that any revolutionary shock taking place in Patagonia, reverberates immediately as if it was transmitted by a perfect nervous system, in the revolutionary proletarian organizations of the United States. Until this has been done the task of the Leninist Bolsheviks in the American Continent will not have been carried out". ("The countries of the Caribbean ", Clave magazine Nº 4, November 13, 1937). Only as a result of this struggle will an international workers revolutionary party be set up in Cuba, which armed with the Program of the Fourth International and its fight for political revolution – both having passed the test of histor –will be able to lead the Cuban working class and peasants to victory. To this task, we, of the Leninist Trotskyist Fraction, devote all our forces. In the 1930s, Trotskyism – the heir and continuator to Bolshevism – was the only current in the world working class that adjusted and updated its theory and the program to fight to for political revolution in the Soviet workers state, overthrowing the Stalinist bureaucracy which had usurped the revolution, to create a healthy workers’ state as a revolutionary pole in the struggle for the world revolution. In those years, groups and tendencies called “friends of USSR“ blossomed all around the world. They were the agents of the Stalinist bureaucracy and promoted its counter-revolutionary policies. Today, social democracy, recycled Stalinism, and former Trotskyists, joined together in The World Social Forum, are the “friends of Cuba”. That is, the servants and defenders of Castro and the Castroite bureaucracy’s policies in the continent and in Cuba itself. The tasks of defending the gains of the Cuban revolution and the fight for political revolution to defeat the restorationist bureaucracy, are key parts of the program for socialist revolution in Latin America, the United States and the world. The Cuban issue today – as the Russian issue in the ’30s, devides the healthy forces of Trotskyism that fight to regroup at an international level from those that rally –like the Pabloites did in 1953, but in a more brazen and shameless way –to the side of the Stalinist bureaucracy, defending its interests. In 1953, the Pabloites subordinated Trotskyism into Stalinism. The Stalinist bureaucracy had gained prestige from the victorious struggle of the Soviet masses to defeat Nazism. Millions of workers everywhere entered the communist parties. This policy led to Trotskyism tailing Stalinism and ultimately liquidating the Fourth International as a revolutionary world party of socialism. Inevitably when the restoration of capitalism occurred in the degenerated workers’ state began after 1989, the renegades of Trotskyism who had kneeled down to Stalinism wept while trying to hide their capitulations and their responsibility for the counter-revolution, putting the blame on Trotsky, Lenin and Marxism. Today, with the excuse that Cuba is being attacked by imperialism, the renegades if Trotskyism kneel down before the Castroite bureaucracy and abandon any struggle for a political revolution in Cuba – that is to say, the dictatorship of the revolutionary proletariat in Cuba. When in the 1930s Trotskyism was fighting Stalinism, it organized hundreds of Trotskyist militants in Cuba. The struggle to set up again a Trotskyist, revolutionary and internationalist party in Cuba is in our hands, in the hands of those who are fighting for an International Conference of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary worker organizations. The renegades to Trotskyism already have their party in Cuba: the party of Castroite bureaucracy and its agent’s, the charlatan Celia Hart Santamaria. They are the third batch of Mensheviks. They have deserted to the Stalinist camp with all their arms to be the left leg of the popular front with ‘democratic imperialism’!
Leninist-Trotskyist Fraction 17 August 2006.
From Class Struggle 68 August-September 2006
In Argentina today a crucial struggle at the hospital of Garrahan for a monthly wage of $1800 is underway. It is a struggle that can be won by the workers but only if they break with the treacherous leaders of the unions, and the sellout ‘left’ parties that serve the bureaucratic bloc in the WSF containing all the struggles in Latin America behind popular front or Bonapartist regimes posing as popular, anti-imperialist governments. Condensed from Workers Democracy 9/8/05 Imperialism has contained the struggles for now Imperialism and the pro-imperialist bourgeoisies of Latin America have won a breathing space. The working masses and farmers who only months ago, overthrew with their revolutionary action Mesa in Bolivia and Gutiérrez in Ecuador, have been contained momentarily. In Bolivia, the World Social Forum led by Chávez and Castro, Evo Morales, Solares, Quispe, and the liquidators of Trotskyism that today play the role once played by the old Communist Parties of Latin America, have forced a truce with the government of Rodriguez and the Bolivian bosses’ regime. By this means they prevented the creation of a dual power organ of the workers and farmers and of a centralized militia, and blocked the recalling of the national congress of delegates of the Original Popular Assembly. By this means they legitimated the illegitimate government of Rodriguez and the puppet parliament of the mine owners. They reversed everything that the masses had done in 16 days of heroic struggle, and made a truce until the elections in December. For that reason, in El Alto and La Paz, there are appearing graffiti saying “Solares you sold out” and “Robert De La Cruz we will hang you" (a reference to the Castroite labor leader Solares, and Roberto de la Cruz, a leader of the COR of El Alto). All of them, as a continental bloc, supported Palacios - the successor of Gutiérrez- in Ecuador. The result: today Palacios sent the army to ruthlessly repress the masses that rose up in Amazonia, taking 200 oil wells, confronting the Western Yankee monopoly (Oxy) that robs petroleum from them, paying $12 a barrel which it then sells for almost $70! More than 60 were injured and the army remains occupying Amazonia: [See Venezuelan oil workers statement above] This is the result of the suppression of the revolution in Bolivia and the fight of the Ecuadorian masses! The new treachery that the workers in Latin America face has important consequences. For the Central American workers, the region has been transformed by the US under CAFTA into an enormous assembly plant with the complicity of Ortega (leader of Nicaraguan Sandinistas), Shafik Handal (leader of the Salvadoran FMLN) and all the old "commanders" living today as yuppies, servants of the restorationist Castro bureaucracy. For the Chilean workers, it means the slavery and the flexibilisation of work under the TLC. This is the "anti-neoliberal model" of Lula, Kirchner, Chávez, Tabaré Vázquez and other servants of imperialism, and the one supported by the reformist left of WSF that back these agents of imperialism! For that reason, imperialism and the national bourgeoisies can breathe freely again. In Argentina the struggle has been strangled In Argentina, the big wave of workers fights for higher wages, that began last December, including the Telephone, Subway, rail, education, public sector and metal workers, was strangled by keeping the disputes divided, with separate contracts, and inflation destroying any wage gains. Meanwhile, with poverty line pensions and Work Plans [work for the dole] and with public sector workers wages frozen, with the health and education budgets the lowest ever, the bosses are raking off a huge fiscal surplus to pay the IMF external debt on time. Thanks to this treachery of the union bureaucracy of the CGT and the CTA, which once more could count on the collaboration of the reformist left (that was thrust into the leadership by the workers in those fights), today the bourgeoisie breathes easier and admits that it " continues to do good business" Under these conditions, the struggle of the workers of the Garrahan is at the head of the fightback and faces the concerned attack of the employer's association, the government and the union bureaucracy. The reformist left met this attack by opposing all independent class actions opposed to the hated regime of the social pact. It destroyed, as soon as it was born, the Intersyndical, an attempt to link all sectors in struggle such as the Subway workers, because it challenged the bureaucracy to break the wage freeze imposed by the employer's association and backed by the union bureaucracy. . . The World Social Forum promotes ‘democratic’ imperialism It is the left of the World Social Forum, that made the truce with Palacios in Ecuador and Rodriguez in Bolivia; that is now led by the supposedly "nationalistic" Colonel Chávez, who supplies Venezuelan oil to the US despite the US massacre in Iraq, and who has not threatened the interests of the rich 31 families in Venezuela or the imperialist monopolies that control the Venezuelan economy. It is the same left of the WSF that trusts the Parliamentary Commissions for "investigating" the class traitor Lula, the greatest servant of the Brazilian bourgeoisie and of imperialism in Latin America. The same left which with Tabaré Vázquez and the Communist Party of Uruguay, is ready to pardon the genocidal military in that country today, as Menem did in Argentina yesterday. Thus, this policy of continental class collaboration tries to throw water on the fire of revolution to defeat the masses, so that the multinational companies and finance capital can retain in control of the hydrocarbons, and other resources and super-exploit the masses of our continent and oppress our nations. But to successfully put out the fire, they need the renegade Trotskyists and their parties – that for decades in Latin American led the combative proletariat – to be used like “squeezed lemons” to sell to the most militant workers this bosses’ politics of oppression and plunder. We are thus witnessing in Latin America the cynical and treacherous politics of class collaboration promoted by the Castro bureaucracy and all the liquidators of the Trotskyists Fourth International who have gone into the popular struggles armed with their collaborationist programs to contain the proletarian revolution. The Resistance Continues! But, just as in Iraq, the heroic resistance continues. The laws of history are stronger than any political apparatus, and will not leave unpunished the currents that in the name of the proletariat have gone over to prop up the citadels of power of the enemy, their states and regimes, promoting the "peaceful road to socialism", calling to fight for "what is possible", and supporting "from the left" all the collaborationist union bureaucracies of the continent, hated by the masses. At the same time, a picket has been set up in front of the ranch of Bush in Texas, United States. There, hundreds of demonstrators spend days and nights, next to the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq, who blames Bush for his death and demands the immediate return of the troops. It is a symbol, a symptom of the awakening of the North American working class. In this awakening, which can bring about –along with the heroic resistance of the Iraqi masses – a new defeat of its own imperialistic bourgeoisie, which as in Vietnam, and open up the way out for the working class and the exploited people of Latin America. They confront and resist the deceptions, the traps and the frauds of the treacherous leaders of the workers organisations, showing the way for the revolutionary movement. It is the Trotskyists, refounding the [Trotskyist] Fourth International that will rub the tinder to create the spark that sets the prairie on fire. . . . Garrahan is the rallying call of the workers! "They are too left", "they follow political objectives", "They cause too much discord", "are politicized", "they will not enter dialogue", "they are terrorists", are the way the bosses’ politicians try to discredit and isolate the heroic fight of the Garrahan workers and to the militant piquetero movement [unemployed], in order to defeat these workers in struggle. Cynical gangsters! These are the people who are going to bring to Argentina in November, the greatest terrorist in the world, the genocidal Bush, while every day they serve him in the super-exploitation of the oppressed nation! This is the government and the employer's association that "are radicalized" against workers who request a miserable basic wage to be able to scratch a living from the family shopping basket while they work all their lives in the Hospital! They are those who "are radicalized", paying to the IMF thousands of million dollars a year, and favoring the businesses of the slave driving employer's association! They are campaigning in the election "making politics" against the workers to boost their profits! And the workers have no right to fight politically for a living wage! No more begging! No more asking for permission to strike! No more any obligation to explain ourselves! . . . The working class must win Garrahan! The victory of Garrahan must be the victory of the whole working class. What this heroic fight and all the others underway need is a true and authentic class politics that opposes the regime and the government of the exploiters and its policy of wage slavery and sacking. It is a political fight in defense of public health and public education whose budgets have been plundered to pay to the IMF. For that reason, to win sufficient spending on health and education, wages, work, etc., it is necessary to confront and defeat the economic plan of the government, the employer's association and the IMF, uniting the struggles of the Garrahan with those of the teachers and university students who mobilized themselves in their tens of thousands in Cordoba and which are conducting militant campaigns in Mendoza and other provinces.
· All to the Garrahan to coordinate now!
· Enough! Out with all the bosses and the traitors! Yesterday, thousands of workers in Brazil marched against the treacherous Lula to the shout of "the workers speak: out with all the bosses and the traitors!". This is the shout that we must raise today in the militant vanguard of the Argentine working class, and this is the commitment of the international Trotskyists of Workers Democracy. · Living wages and real work for all!
· For a basic wage of $1800 and month and real jobs for all!
· For a national committee of struggle to defeat the union bureaucracy!
· For a Plan of Action and a National Strike! Article Condensed from: WORKERS DEMOCRACY Nº 9 9th August 2005
From Class Struggle 63 Sept/Oct 2005
For the Nationalisations of the Hydrocarbons!
Out with Mesa! Dissolve the Parliament!
For Workers' Militias and a Workers' and Peasants' Government! The masses of Bolivian workers and peasants have begun a new revolutionary fight. This uprising has not come out of the blue. It takes place just weeks after the Ecuadorian workers and students, rising up as an independent mass, demolished the pro-imperialist government of Gutiérrez, shouting “Que se vayan todos” [“all go away" the cry of the Argentinazo of 2001] not only against the bourgeois institutions, the bosses’ parliament and the politicians, but also against the Stalinist, Maoist and Castroist leaders that helped to elect Gutiérrez as President and that, along with World Social Forum, continued to defend him. US imperialism has imposed a severe defeat on the nation of Iraq, crushed the Palestinian workers and people, and because of the treacherous betrayals of the leaders, contained the masses in Latin America, strangling the revolutionary struggle in Argentina and holding it back in Bolivia. Now it has relaunched an offensive in its back yard to impose new colonial laws like the FTAs [Free Trade Agreements] and the FTAA [Free Trade Agreement of the Americas] to guarantee access to the natural resources and payment of the external debts of all the nations of the continent. The renewed revolutionary uprising of the masses of Ecuador and now in Bolivia, the struggle of the workers and students in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, the revolt of the students in Chile, the build up of workers and students struggles in Argentina, are the anti-imperialist response of the Latin American masses to the intensified attacks by imperialism. The revolutionary uprisings in Bolivia and Ecuador in Latin American; Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in Eurasia; the heroic resistance of the Iraqi masses and the resurgence of anti-imperialist struggles in Afghanistan in the hearts of these Yankee protectorates, pose a challenge to the fragile stability created by imperialism with its victorious counter-revolutions. These events in Bolivia accelerate from day to day. The government of Mesa did not oppose the hydrocarbon law passed by parliament. It will become law automatically. Obviously, fearing a new revolutionary uprising the bourgeoisie has made some small concessions to keep negotiations open. This is the position of Evo Morales: to negotiate with the bourgeoisie over the percentage of the gas royalties, where the national bourgeoisie acting as the junior partner of imperialism in the exploitation of the natural resources of Bolivia, asks for the scraps, while imperialism takes the lion’s share of the huge wealth made from plundering the gas and oil. The workers and peasants, with the miners in the front line, once more rise up with the central objective: “Nationalization of the gas without compensation, out with Mesa, close down Parliament” But the passing of the law far from calming the situation has stirred it up. From Monday May 16, the revolutionary masses have taken to the streets, with pickets, roadblocks, general strikes like that of the teachers, and barricades, raising the slogan of the moment: ¡nationalization without compensation of the gas and oil, down with Mesa and the parliament that serves the oil companies! Since Monday the 16 there has been no halt to the demonstrations in La Paz, with thousands of workers and peasants, now headed by the miners, surrounding the parliament and carrying out pitched battles with the police, responding with "puppies" of dynamite to grapeshot and tear gas. The Congress of the Federation of mining workers that was being held in Huanuni suspended its sessions, and the miners are already in La Paz at the head of the fight. The urban and rural teachers have declared an indefinite strike. On the 20 of May, El Alto stopped for 24 hours, blocking the Freeway, and once more tens of thousands led by the miners were mobilized in La Paz, and the bourgeoisie, terrified, evacuated parliament. A indefinite general strike was planned to begin on Monday 23 of May by the ‘extended’ emergency meeting [delegates of all organizations in struggle] of the COR [Regional Workers Centre] of El Alto, which included the miners, the COB [Bolivian Workers’ Centre, affiliates of the national organization of Bolivian workers] the Fejuve, [Federación de Juntas Vecinales, or federation of community groups] the students, the teachers and other sectors in struggle. In February 2003, the cry was “Fusil, metralla, Bolivia no se calla”, ["Guns, shrapnel, Bolivia will not be quiet”], in October 2003 the cry was “El gas y el petróleo para los bolivianos” ["gas and oil for the Bolivians"]. With the repeated uprisings of the masses they have learned from experience, even without the presence of a Marxist party, that the bourgeoisie uses different manoeuvres to counter the revolutionary situation. With this experience, the masses have not only confronted the government of Mesa, but their own treacherous leaders in the COB and the peasant organizations. In February 2003 and October 2003, the revolutionary masses rose up, despite these leaders, and brought down the murderous government of Goni [Lozada]. But the leaders of the COB and the peasants then took back control over the workers uprising, giving the power to Mesa [Goni’s deputy who continued his policies] who formed a new government of the Rosca [mine owners] and oil companies. For one and a half years, the treacherous leaders made truces and pacts with the new government. The national bourgeoisie, with Evo Morales at its head, used the enormous mobilization of masses to increase its share of the gas royalties. Today, with this third revolutionary uprising, the workers and farmers are trying to break out of the containment pacts made between their leaders and the different bourgeois groups, and to free the masses to directly confront the capitalists in Bolivia and in all of Latin America. Therefore, on one side of the barricades are the mine owners and its puppet government; the Castroite leadership of the COB (Solares) and Evo Morales, who represents the national bourgeoisie in negotiating an increased share of the oil wealth at the expense of the Bolivian masses. On the other side of the barricades are the revolutionary masses of workers and farmers who raise the demands “Out with Mesa, down with parliament and nationalize the gas and oil without compensation". In the same way, on the bosses’ side of the barricades are the members of the World Social Forum, supporting Mesa in the same way they supported Gutiérrez – the servant of the IMF in Ecuador. On the other side of the barricades alongside the masses of workers and farmers in the struggle, are the internationalist Trotskyists, the Latin American revolutionaries. These barricades separate the classes in struggle in Bolivia and the whole continent. The bourgeoisie is divided on how to defeat the masses that once more rise up to complete the revolution. Again the treacherous leaders of the masses are called upon to betray the masses’ struggle. Facing the new revolutionary offensive of the masses the bourgeoisie is divided. One fraction, the bourgeoisie of Santa Cruz, Tarija and the Medialuna, where most of the oil and gas reserves are found, are campaigning, with the support of the oil companies, for much greater regional autonomy. On the other hand, there are two other fractions advancing different policies to try to prevent that the masses from throwing out Mesa and destroying the mine owners’ regime. One fraction of the bourgeoisie, with Mesa and Evo Morales at its head, tries to contain the masses within a ‘democratic reactionary’ solution. It proposes new elections for a Constituent Assembly, elections of prefects, and a referendum on regional autonomy. This is designed to stabilize the regime and allow time for the different bourgeois fractions to negotiate their shares of the oil wealth and the surplus value of the working class. Thus Evo Morales opposed Mesa’s resignation and advised him to send troops to the oil wells to prevent mass occupations. He constantly acts as a ‘safety valve’ turning the revolutionary struggles of the workers and farmers towards parliamentary elections and referendums, rescuing the government of Mesa, the reactionary regime of the mine owners, and the Bolivian state from collapse. Another fraction of the bourgeoisie tries to abort the revolutionary uprising of the masses by promoting a nationalistic way out. Mesa would be replaced by a ‘patriotic’ military regime that would contain the anti-imperialist revolutionary struggle of the masses like Chavez has done in Venezuela. Solares and the Castroist leadership of the COB are working to implement this bourgeois solution under pressure of the masses to call for the resignation of Mesa and the closing of parliament. That’s why Solares has said: "If there were an honest military man like Hugo Chávez, I would support him" (Clarin, 20/05/05). But the lesson of Venezuela clearly demonstrates to the workers and farmers of Latin America that, because of Chávez, Venezuelan oil fuels Bush’s military machine in Iraq while Repsol makes superprofits. In the same way, any general or colonel of the Bolivian army, even though Solares dresses him up him as "patriotic", will give the gas to the Yankees and not the workers and farmers. Meanwhile, POR [Revolutionary Workers’ Party] of Bolivia – that has already openly renounced the program of Trotskyism – calls for the convening of a Popular Assembly like that of 1971. That is to say, to repeat what General Torres, that supposedly ‘patriotic’ military man, did in 1971. POR therefore provides a programmatic left cover to the policy of class collaboration of Solares and the Castroite leadership of the COB. The main objective of i.e. Castroite leadership of the COB and of Evo Morales is to prevent the masses from throwing out Mesa, destroying the mine owners regime, winning the rank and file soldiers in the army, and creating dual power organs capable of making an insurrection. For that reason, all their forces are used to prevent the miners, workers, farmers and students who have been struggling for ten days against the police and army, from taking the Plaza Murillo in La Paz, the seat of Parliament. The treacherous leaders fear like death that the workers and peasants will take the same road as that of the workers and oppressed people of Ecuador. They know that if the workers and farmers take the plaza and occupy parliament, the mining bosses’ regime and the Bolivian semi-colonial state would be split wide open, and a period of dual power would be opened where the masses would counterpose to the weakened bourgeois state their own power based on their organs of struggle, direct democracy and self-defense. For that reason, in the different regions and departments the bureaucracy has decided against a massive march to La Paz, but only to send delegations of the COD's [Departmental sections of COB] and COR's [Regional sections of COB] and the Civic Committees [FUJEVE] headed by bureaucratic leaders whose task is to restrain the masses and to withdraw them from the Plaza Murillo. All the bureaucrats of the COB, COD, COR's and FUJEVE that converge on La Paz, although throwing some dynamite "puppies", have only one objective which is to stop the masses from taking the Plaza Murillo and the Parliament. For that reason, Evo Morales called for the roadblocks to be lifted and a truce until Monday 30 of May. That fraction of the bourgeoisie that is trying to revive the puppet parliament – to meet in session while surrounded by the miners, workers and peasants who have returned to occupy La Paz and face the police defending the Plaza Murrillo and the seat of Parliament – seeks to divert the masses by calling for new presidential elections, referendums or for a Constituent Assembly, to prevent that the masses from carrying through their demands to bring down Mesa and parliament and open up a revolutionary crisis in the regime. Meanwhile, the officers of the armed forces are on alert over the "danger of the disintegration" of the regime. What deceit: the real disintegration of the Bolivian nation has been caused by the capitalist gangs –the oil companies and the national bourgeoisie. It has been caused by the national bourgeoisies of Latin America that, hanging on the apron strings of the oil companies like Repsol, Petrobras, British Petroleum, and Totalfina, try to profit from the plunder of the natural wealth of Bolivia that passes through Brazil, Argentina and Chile. Social disintegration is the political program of the bourgeoisies of Santa Cruz, Tarija and the Medialuna, that want to keep most of the reserves of the gas and oil for themselves, while 80% of the population of Bolivia must use firewood, charcoal etc for cooking and heating. It is the insatiable drive for superprofits by the imperialistic monopolies and the native bourgeoisie that continues to oppress the Bolivian nation. The only class that can unite the nation and end the oppression and “disintegration” is the working class, leading the poor peasantry, and creating its own government, with its own militias, reviving the best traditions of the heroic revolution of 1952. The Armed Forces, at the moment, remain on alert to defend the bourgeois state and safeguard its security, prepared if necessary to drown the revolution in blood if they cannot otherwise contain or divert the revolutionary advance of the masses. But the bourgeoisie will only resort to open repression if all else fails, because it is aware that to do could lead to another massacre like that which led to the downfall of Goni, and run the risk of splitting the army so that the conscripts would mutiny against the officers. This is the greatest danger posed by the revolutionary uprising of the masses because, since, in the last instance, whoever controls the army rank and file, wins. If the bourgeoisie retains control, it will suppress the workers and peasants uprising with blood and fire. If the workers and poor farmers win control, the workers militias will be reinforced by soldiers committees. Long live the revolutionary program of the democratic base of the COR of El Alto and of the miners: down with Mesa! Workers must dissolve the puppet parliament, build worker militias and form a provisional workers’ and peasants’ government to nationalize the gas and oil, and carry out the program of the working class and the Bolivian people! The strong revolutionary upsurge that has erupted in Bolivia must prevail. Only a provisional government of revolutionary workers and peasants supported by the organs of direct democracy of the masses, workers militias and soldiers committees, will succeed in winning the most elementary national demands of the Bolivian workers and oppressed people, on the ruins of the regime of the mine owners and their imperialist partners, who are the real expropriators of the natural resources of the millions of Bolivians and Latin Americans. The masses, betrayed by the truces and pacts which their leaders used to prop up Mesa and his crony oil bosses, have begun a new revolutionary uprising. Against the containment policy of Morales and Solares, the exploited workers of El Alto have marked out the revolutionary road to the masses’ victory. On May 17 the COR of El Alto meet with the miners, the teachers, the neighborhood committees, the students, and voted for a program of struggle to bring down Mesa, for workers to dissolve the puppet parliament, for workers’ militias and Workers’ and Farmers’ provisional government to nationalize the gas and oil, and to carry out all the demands of the Bolivian workers and oppressed people. This program was re-affirmed on May 25. Long live the revolutionary program lives of El Alto, that marks a clear course of action for the preparation of a decisive revolutionary struggle that does not leave a stone standing of the government of Mesa and the mine owners regime! This resolution and this program voted by the COR of El Alto is a slap in the face of the liquidators of Trotskyism and the reformist left of Latin America and the world. It says that the problem is not that the working class does not suffer from a "crisis of the subjectivity" "or underdeveloped consciousness” but rather too many treacherous leaders. The demand of February 2003 "Gun, shrapnel, Bolivia will not shut up"; of October 2003, "Go away Goni, the gas is for the Bolivians", and now the program of the COR of El Alto demanding the "nationalization of the gas and resources, a workers and peasants government and workers’ militias", proves that the Bolivian working class has raised the flag of socialism for the workers of the world. Some months ago, during the March events, the bourgeoisie claimed that there were ‘soviets’ in El Alto. They were not mistaken. The COR of El Alto, coordinating and representing workers, miners, students, teachers, unionists, drivers and all of the masses in struggle in that revolutionary city, acting independently, called for an indefinite general strike, for armed pickets and militias –a call that was taken up by the COD in Oruro and other cities – creating the most advanced and authoritative organs of the masses in struggle. It is without a doubt the highest point reached in the creation of workers organs of dual power that is now being strengthened and extended. There is no more urgent task than to develop, extend and centralize the organs of self-determination and self-defense of the militant masse in preparation for the insurrectionary seizure of power. The COD, the peasants’ organizations marching from Caracollo towards the La Paz, , and all workers, peasants and students organizations that are engaged in struggle, must elect and sent delegates of the rank and file, mandated and recallable, to the COR of El Alto! In the dynamite charge of the miner, in the stones of the picketers, there are already the embryos of the workers’ militias called for by the resolution of El Alto. It is necessary build them urgently because the army generals have warned that the revolution means ‘the disintegration of Bolivia’; that is, threatens the profits of the oil companies and the big capitalists. They are preparing another blood bath against the workers and farmers. Nor will they hesitate, as they did in October 2003, to shoot the troops – the children of the workers and farmers – that refuse to repress their class brothers and sisters. It is necessary for the people to surround the barracks to win over the rank and rile soldiers, the children of workers and farmers! It is necessary to call on them to form committees of armed soldiers, and to send their delegates to the COR of El Alto! For the dismissal of the officers of the Armed Forces, killers of the people! The committees of soldiers will elect their own leaders! With thousand of delegates of the rank and file workers and peasants meeting in El Alto, it is necessary to build a ‘soviet-type’ organ that represents the legitimate and democratic expression of the will of the vast majority of the Bolivian people. That organ would be the only one with the authority to create a provisional revolutionary government of workers and peasants supported by the organs of direct democracy of the masses, workers militias and soldiers committees. The government would nationalize without compensation the gas, oil and mines, and place them under workers control; break with the IMF; distribute the best land to the poor peasants; nationalize the banks without compensation and under workers’ control; create a single state bank that grants cheap loans to the small peasants; make a general wage rise and a sliding scale of wages and working hours; and provide free public quality health and education for the workers and the people. This revolutionary workers’ and farmers’ government is the only one that can guarantee the unity of the Bolivian nation. It is the only one that can realize the most advanced form of bourgeois democracy, such as a truly free and sovereign Constituent Assembly. And it will enable the peasants to learn from their own experience that the most democratic of the bourgeois republics it nothing but a cover for the ruthless dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and that the Workers’ Republic, born out of the self-organization and the arming of the workers and peasants in struggle, is the only way to realize their demands for land and to break with imperialism.
Build centralized and armed organs of dual power, in which the revolutionary party can fight for the program that is necessary for the victorious revolution! The crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletariat is acute facing the new uprising of the Bolivian masses. The collaboration with the counter-revolutionary leadership of the renegade Trotskyists reveals in its true light their total bankruptcy. POR Lora, in 1952 supported the “progressive" bourgeois Paz Estenssoro and the MNR (Military Revolutionary National) government, breaking all connection with the program and strategy of Trotskyism. In 1971 POR Lora supported General Torres and the class collaborationist front (FRA). Today it is in the counter-revolutionary camp in the third Bolivian revolution. We are on the threshold of decisive battles. The revolutionary uprising of the masses begins to break the strangle hold of the treacherous leaders. The counterrevolution forces are preparing to abort or smash it. It is a race against time to build the internationalist revolutionary party that can lead this uprising to the victory of the workers and farmers. In order to close overcome this crisis and build a true proletarian revolutionary party, the key is to extend the program of the El Alto workers and peasants so that organs of direct democracy and of dual power (councils or soviets) extend across the whole country. In those class struggle organs, the programs of all those who claim to represent the working class and its interests can be put to the test of experience of the workers and farmers who can then get rid of their treacherous leaders. In those organs the alliance of the working class with the poor farmers can can develop a unified command and break all subordination to the different bourgeois fractions. Inside these organs a small nucleus of revolutionaries, fighting uncompromisingly against the treacherous leaders, explaining at each point who are the workers’ allies and enemies, convincing workers of the correct program through their own experience, can create the revolutionary leadership needed to win. The forces necessary to create a revolutionary party already exist. They are the miners, the poor workers, farmers and revolutionary students of El Alto who have voted for a revolutionary program. They are the miners, the workers and the farmers who, in Oruro, Cochabamba, in every city, every land occupation, every mine, agree with the El Alto program and try to unite and centralize all their struggles. The place of the revolutionary internationalists is with them, to unite with these advanced forces and fight for international Trotskyism in Bolivia; a fight that is inseparable from the struggle to regroup internationally all the healthy forces of Trotskyism, confronting all over the world the treacherous leaders of the liquidators of the IV International. We call for a united struggle of the whole Latin American working class: Not a cubic centimeter of gas or oil must leave Bolivia unless authorized by a provisional government of revolutionary workers and farmers! The pro-imperialist bourgeoisies of Argentina, Brazil and Chile say that because of the fight of the Bolivian masses, they will increase the price of gas. This is a lie, as the capitalist governments of Latin America raise the prices of the gas to rob their own nations in complicity with the imperialist monopolies!
Not a cubic of Bolivian gas or oil must leave that country, if is it not authorized by a provisional revolutionary government of workers and peasants! This must be the common cry of the workers of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and the whole continent! The struggle of our Bolivian brothers and sisters is a slap in the face to Chavez, who has decided that Venezuelan oil’s not for the Venezuelans, but for Bush to enable him to fuel the military machine to kill in Iraq and the Middle East, and for the profits of Repsol or Corona of Spain. The Castro bureaucracy – which has opened up the first Latin American workers’ state to imperialist companies – is on the same side of the barricade as Chávez, Repsol, Kirchner, Lula and Tabaré Vázquez, against the Bolivian revolution. It did the same in 1973, preaching the "peaceful road to socialism" in Chile, and in the '80s it betrayed the heroic Nicaraguan, Salvadoran and Central American revolution with the pacts of Esquipulas and Contadora. These "peace accords" brought about the submission of Central America to the US imperialism and to their recolonization today by means of NAFTA, the FTAs and the FTAA. Meanwhile the old “commanders" of the Sandinista’s and the FMLN have turned into "yuppies" and agents of the IMF plans, or become officers in the bourgeois armies, as is the case in both Nicaragua and El Salvador. The revolutionary uprising of the masses in Bolivia, after the exemplary action of the Ecuadorian masses, means that it is now necessary for the workers and exploited people of Latin America to unite behind the demands of the Bolivian workers and peasants against imperialist plunder, oppression and wage slavery. The fight to stop any gas from leaving Bolivia for the oil monopolies, and for its nationalization without compensation and under workers’ control, now leads the fight of all the oppressed nations of Latin America to reclaim their natural wealth exploited by imperialism. To achieve this, the most important task of workers and exploited people in Latin America, is to oppose and defeat all the regimes and governments that support Mesa and are subservient the imperialistic policy of the IMF and the multinationals in Latin America, such as that of Lula, Kirchner, Tabaré Vázquez, Toledo and Lagos. It is necessary to take the road opened up by our class brothers and sisters in Ecuador. What the exploited people of Bolivia and Ecuador, and of all Latin America, need, is that the continental working class settles accounts with all the sell out collaborationist bureaucrats of the workers and mass organizations, to be able to create a coordinated and centralized movement of workers and peasants able to defeat imperialism and its regimes client states. Against the revolutionary uprising in Bolivia, signified by the workers and peasants of El Alto calling for the formation of workers militias, the officers of the Bolivian army are preparing for repression. All the client states in Latin America are ready, if called by their Yankee master and the gang of thieves of the OAS, to sent their armies against the workers and peasants to "defend the constitutional order" in Bolivia. The US military bases in Latin America at Chapere in Bolivia, Manta in Ecuador, in Colombia, etc. have been put on alert. As revolutionary internationalists we alert the workers of Latin America to this threat. We call for the expulsion of all imperialists military bases such as Chapare, Manta, the Malvinas! Immediate recall of the Chilean, Brazilian and Argentine mercenaries in the service of US imperialism in Haiti! We call on the workers and anti-imperialist organizations of Venezuela to put the 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles bought by Chávez into the service of workers’ militias that the COR and workers and peasants organizations in El Alto have called for in Bolivia! Left in the hands of the Chavista national bourgeoisie those guns will be used to prevent the victory of the Bolivian revolution, and to repress the anti-imperialist masses of Venezuela and Latin America. It is necessary that the Chilean working class - whose bourgeoisie profits from the oil pipeline from Bolivia across Chile to the sea - takes in its hands the fight for the territorial rights of Bolivia. A workers’ and peasants’ government arising from the defeat of the civic-military regime of Lagos could establish fraternal and cooperative relations with a workers’ and peasants’ government of Bolivia to determine the future of the disputed territory. The organizations who have signed this declaration declare that it is our duty as to devote 100% of our forces to the revolutionary struggle for victory of the workers and farmers of Bolivia, and to take to the workers and mass organizations in the countries in which we are based, the resolution that “not a cubic centimeter of gas or oil leaves Bolivia for the imperialist monopolies”, and to adopt as our own the revolutionary program of the workers and farmers of El Alto who are in the vanguard of this heroic struggle. Long live the uprisings of the masses in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstán and Uzbekistán! Long live the heroic Iraqi resistance and awakening of the North American working class! Long live the revolutionary uprising of the masses of Ecuador! For the victory of the revolution in Bolivia, Ecuador and in all Latin America! For a Federation of Workers’ and Peasants’ Republics of South and Central America! The revolutionary uprising of the Bolivian masses is not alone. Their allies are the workers and students of Ecuador who, like Bucaram and Mahuad yesterday, threw the US lackey and poster boy of the WSF Gutiérrez, into the waste-basked of history; they are the workers and peasants who threaten another uprising in Ilave, Peru; they are the rebellious workers and students of Nicaragua and Chile; they are the militant vanguard of the labor movement in the US, the Million Worker March Movement that stands against the killer Bush’s war. They are the Afghan anti-imperialist fighters that are resisting the humiliations they have suffered under Bush’s occupying troops, and the anti-imperialist fighters of the Middle East who are imprisoned in Guantánamo. They are the Iraqi masses that continue a strong and heroic resistance against the imperialistic occupation and its colonial puppet government. The allies of the proletariat and exploited people of Bolivia are the rebellious workers and farmers in Kyrgyzstán and Uzbekistán - nations of the former USSR where capitalism has been restored by the stalinist bureaucracy who became a new bourgeoisie as junior partners with imperialism. The workers and oppressed people rose up against dictatorial regimes and ‘pinochet’ governments, headed, as in the case of Uzbekistán, by the head of the KGB in the former stalinist bureaucracy, who ordered the army to repress the uprising, massacring more than 700 workers and farmers. In all the former workers’ states it is necessary to build revolutionary parties with transitional programs that can lead the fight for the restoration of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The workers and oppressed people of Latin America, the United States, of the Middle East and Central Asia; these are the allies of the Bolivian workers and peasants who march on the revolutionary road of October! The renewal of the revolutionary uprising of the masses in Ecuador and Bolivia demonstrates the urgency of a continent-wide struggle of Latin American workers and peasants. These two great struggles prove that the only solution to imperialist plunder, starvation and slavery is the victory of a Federation of Workers and Peasants Republics of South and Central America. The North American and EU proletariat have a key role to play in defending the revolutionary victories of their class brothers and sisters of Latin America. They must strike at the heart of their own imperialistic bourgeoisies, expropriating the monopolies –British Petroleum, Exxon, Totalfina, Repsol, and other oil monopolies – the IMF, the World Bank and international financial capital that plunder and oppress the workers and people of Bolivia and Latin America.
Build the World Wide Party of Socialist Revolution, to provide the working class of Bolivia, Ecuador, of Latin America and the world, with the revolutionary leadership it deserves. To make revolutions in Ecuador and Bolivia that can spread like wildfire, the masses need world revolutionary party. Today, all the liquidators of Trotskyism and the Fourth International have become the disciples of Chávez, Fidel Castro and the World Social Forum, and act as leftwing public relations agencies of the pro-IMF regimes and governments such as Lula, Kirchner, Lagos, Toledo, and Tabaré Vázquez. The liquidation of the Fourth International into Stalinism began in 1948 with the adaptation of pabloism to Tito who was called an "unconscious Trotskyist", and with the entry of the pabloites into the communist parties. Today, the liquidators of Trotskyism have been subordinated to the Castro bureaucracy under the ideological authority of a leader of the Cuban PC Celia Hart Santamaría. She, with the collaboration and support of the renegade currents of Trotskyism, appeals to the legacy of Leon Trotsky, falsifying it in order to conceal the continental policy of class collaboration of Castroism and the completion of the process of the restoration of capitalism in Cuba. The liquidators of the Fourth International have abandoned the struggle for socialist revolution. Some openly like the United Secretariat in Brazil, that has a minister for land reform in the Lula pro-IMF government that represses and continues to kill the landless farmers. Others, of many stripes and colors, proclaim the socialist revolution on holidays, but during workdays betray it day after day. Today, the revolutionary program of the COR of El Alto is a new test that serves to separate the reformists, liquidators of Fourth International from the revolutionaries. On one side of the barricade of El Alto, are those fighting to implement their revolutionary resolutions in action, to defeat the government and create a regime like that of 1952 based on the dual power of the armed masses that is capable of taking state power. On the other side of the barricade are those on their knees before the "patriotic" generals, or before those who seek to defend the bourgeois parliament and constituent Assemblies in order to salvage the collapsing regime of the mine owners. The theory and the program of Trotskyism have passed the test of history. The opportunist liquidators of the Fourth International have gone over to the camp of the World Social Forum. The healthy forces of Trotskyism and revolutionary workers organizations, have begun to rally our forces and to regroup in the Liaison Committee for an International Conference. The objective must be rebuild the World Party of Socialist Revolution on the base of the program foundations of the Fourth International from 1938-40, to equip the Bolivian, Ecuadorian working class, of Latin America and the world, with the revolutionary leadership that they deserve, with true insurrectionary parties of struggle that give programmatic expression to the historical objective of the proletariat and lead if to victory. Ecuador and Bolivia are the current life and death tests of the revolutionary program. The masses in struggle demonstrate their heroism, and they are already distinguishing, more and more clearly, their enemy. The revolutionary program and will to fight brought to the Ecuadorian and Bolivian revolutions, are and will be the rallying points to regroup the internationalist Trotskyists. The revolutionary organizations who have signed this declaration call on all the healthy forces of Trotskyism to commit 100% of our forces to the victory of the Bolivian revolution and to combine to make an International Conference, on the base of revolutionary history and a correct program founds a transitional international center of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary workers organizations with the objective to found the World Party of Socialist Revolution as a centralized force to confront the counter-revolutionary leaders of the liquidators of the Fourth International. - Long live revolutionary struggle of the workers and exploited people of Ecuador and Bolivia!
- Long Live the uprisings of the masses in Afghanistan, Kyrkystán and Uzbekistán!
- Long live the Iraq heroic resistance '!
- The revolution lives in the workers and peasants of El Alto!
- Down with Mesa and his puppet parliament!
- For a National congress of the COB and the farmers organizations; for workers’ militias and soldiers’ committees!
- For a Revolutionary Provisional Government of workers and farmers to nationalize the gas and petroleum, and to impose all the demands of the working class and the Bolivian people!
- Down the truces, pacts and class collaboration with the bourgeois governments of Lula, Kirchner, Lagos, Tabaré Vázquez, Toledo! All of them must be watched in the mirror of Gutiérrez: all of them must fall at hands of the proletarian revolution!
- Not a cubic centimeter of Bolivian gas or petrol for Repsol, Petrobras, Totalfina, or British Petroleum, or for their small partners, the national bourgeoisies of Latin America!
- Down with the TLCs, NAFTA, FTAA and Mercosur of the exploiters!
- For a Federation of Workers’ and Farmers’ Republics of South and Central America!
- Long live the anti-imperialist fight against Bush’s war by the dock workers of Oakland in the United States, because in the awakening of the North American working class the lives the possibility of the final triumph of the revolution in South and Central America!
- Against Stalinism, social democracy, all reformists and liquidators of Trotskyism!
- For an International Conference of the healthy forces of Trotskyism and or revolutionary workers organizations!
From Class Struggle 61 May-June 2005
