May 1! Solidarity with US Migrant Workers!

On this May Day, 2006 we recognise and honour the struggles of oppressed people everywhere. We must take as our own the cause all those of the Iraqi resistance, the Palestinean people, the French youth, the Nepalese masses, the Bolivian workers and peasants, among many others. All of these struggles are fighting the same global capitalist system faced by the US migrant workers who are calling for international action in support of their national stoppage on May 1. In many ways, these struggles will all be represented as one global class, one global fight, on May Day when the US migrant workers are calling for global solidarity against all US Corporations around the world!

Years of subordination to “their" imperialistic state has almost ended any internationalist consciousness in the US working class. For this reason the US workers celebrate their ‘Labour Day’ in September not on May 1st like the rest of the world. Nevertheless, May 1st for the worlds workers marks the commemoration of the “Martyrs of Chicago”, executed because they struggled for the 8 hour day in 1886. They were martyrs to the cause which has since been won by workers in many countries only by more strikes, mobilizations, actions and skirmishes with the police.

Now, the coalition of workers organizations, immigrants and anti-war groups have formed a movement against the reactionary law that seeks to criminalise migrant workers. They have called a “National Strike of Immigrants” for 1st May to prove that migrant workers do not ‘ruin’ the economy, but actually ‘run’ the economy, contributing billions of dollars more than they cost in welfare payments etc.

The undocumented workers have said “enough is enough” to the deaths at the hands of the border police and the “patriotic” para-military gangs that patrol the borders to defend their “American way of life”. Enough deaths in containers and trucks trafficked by dealers in human carcases with the complicity of governors and politicians. Enough of dying of hunger and dehydration in the desert.

They have said “enough!” to the discrimination that locks the undocumented workers out of the hospitals, the schools, and the right to be exploited “normally” like the rest of the workers. Enough of the wage slavery that allows employers to profit from their lack of rights.

The struggle of the migrants has aroused sympathy and support among the whole US working class as they joined with migrant workers in their massive marches and demonstrations in the last weeks. On April 10 another massive demonstration showed that the movement is growing.

The May 1st nationwide strike has adopted the slogans of “no work, no shopping, no school”, in an effort to mobilise many of the immigrants, legal and illegal. The call has also gone out to all those who support them to boycott all US corporations and their products in the whole of Latin America and the world.

This call must be taken up by all the rank and file of all workers organisations base and political parties that claim to be part of the working class to make May 1st a true international workers day! We must renew the demands of the the Million Worker march of December 1, sabotaged by the union officials.

• Strike for the unconditional legalization of all the illegal immigrants! 
• Smash all "anti-terrorist" persecution of immigrants! Oppose War, Racism and Poverty! 
• Decent work for all! Free Public health, education and housing!

"We are America", "We are those that you made walk to the U.S.A."

Millions of protesters for weeks during March took to the streets in many US cities with placards carrying the above slogans, against the new law to criminalise migrants that is being debated in both Houses of Congress which is designed to control and to discipline the flow of migrants in the reserve army so it can be turned on the fill the available menial jobs, and turned off when the labour market is full with sacked workers from the closure of scores of plants and thousands of dismissals such as in the auto industry. Its purpose to keep an oversupply of labor necessary to ‘lower labour costs’ and so boost the falling rate of profit of US corporations to the level they can earn in low wage countries such as China, India, Malaysia, Vietnam, etc.

Such workers are prevented from demanding decent wages, hours and conditions because they can be fired and replaced immediately without the wages due to them. The US imperialist state is so cynical it has recruited thousands of illegal immigrants in the armed forces to go to Afghanistan and Iraq in return for the promise of citizenship on their return. Recently Bush made a public relations event where he ‘granted’ in a ‘special act of grace’ citizenship to the families of soldiers who had been killed in the ‘war on terror’.

Added to the 12 million illegal migrants, are the "legalized" migrants and their families numbering about 24 million (around 12% of the population of the country), whose status is always subject to revision, thanks to the anti-terrorist laws,and other laws such as anti-strike laws, anti-union laws which can be used to ‘criminalize’ workers. The current law under consideration proposes to make it easier to revoke the ‘legal’ status and to deport workers (as in France). This law would hit "legal" Latino and Caribbean workers who are currently the majority in unionised workplaces, especially in the South, the West Coast and in New York, such as the dockworkers, food packers, processors and freezers of chickens, truck drivers, doormen, transit workers (as in New York), etc.

Many of these ‘legals’ came out on the marches because they could see that the attack on the ‘illegals’ is also an attack on them. Even the ‘middle class’ recognized that the attack on the immigrants was not about ‘race’ or ‘ethnicity’ but about class, because “we are workers, one and all”. The strength of the demonstrations forced the mass media to take notice, if only to give most air time to interviews with vigilantes ("the Minutemen") who “take care of the borders”, beating, maiming, and even killing those who try to come to the US to find a a job that allows them and their families to eat.

The revolutionary struggle of the Latin American masses arrives at the heart of Yankee imperialism!

In Latin America today there are great anti-imperialist struggles that have overthown the governments of the client state of imperialism, notably the revolutions in Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia. While these revolutions have been diverted and tied up in dog collars by the Popular Front governments in those countries, they have nonetheless opened up a revolutionary road that goes to the heart of the US imperialist state.

It was these struggles, along with the Iraqi resistance, and the attacks on them at home, that forced the US working class to wake up from its American ‘dream’, and embark on a series of steps such as the Million Worker March; to condemn the Patriotic law; the war in Iraq; the war against jobs, health, education and housing at home; and more than anything, to express their anger at the disaster of Hurricane Katrina caused by US capitalism. This growing outrage resulted in the December 1 strike “against the war, poverty and racism”. It was such a threat to the ruling class that it was sabotaged by the Democratic Party. To add to this growing momentum of class struggle, the revolutionary struggles of the Latin American masses has spread into the USA through the Latino immigrants who refuse to be treated as criminals as well as slaves.

Today, US migrants are entering the fight alongside the heroic Bolivian workers and farmers who have brought down three governments; the Ecuadorian masses that have overturned four governments; the hard fights of the masses who have many times stood up against the “progressive” governments praised by World Social Forum and Fidel Castro in Argentina, in Chile, in Peru; the mobilizations in Central America against the Free Trade Agreements; the Mexican protests against the killings on the border and the eviction of farmers from their land; and the ground-swell of workers opposition to Chávez’ "Bolivarian Revolution" that threatens to strangle the revolution in Venezuela.

The great uprising of the US migrants has so far survived the attempts by the church, the NGOs, the union bureaucracy and the fake Trotskyists, to divert and contain it. Within weeks it has become a massive challenge to the Government. The determination of the migrants is strong but to defeat the Government the struggle has to become taken up by the whole working class, migrant and non-migrant, ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’. It must become part of the same struggle to end the war against Iraq and US imperialist attacks on the Latin American masses!

But the dangers of diversion and containment are real. So far the leaders of the movement have directed its force against the corporate owners and the Democratic party in an effort to get the Democratic members of congress to vote against the proposed law. In Washington, the marchers surrounded the Capitol and celebrated a ‘victory’ even while the Senate was voting to make them ‘outlaws’! Of course, this is to be expected from the Catholic Church and the NGOs who led the protest.

But much more shameful were the actions of the union officials and parties of the ‘left’ including the fake Trotskyists. None of them demanded that all workers, regardless of their union or lack of union, legal or illegal, daily workers or contract workers, victims of Katrina, those engaged in strike actions, or protesting the war etc., should unite to fight!

But again this does not surprise us. They sabotaged the nationwide strike on December 1 last year; the Transit strike in New York was left isolated –not only by the bureaucrats but by the “revolutionary” groups of the World Social Forum. Many other disputes such as Delta Airlines, Eastern Airlines, the auto workers at Delphi, General Motors, Ford, etc. remain isolated. So it is to be expected that they will leave the struggle of the migrants in the reactionary hands of the Church, and reformists and pacifists of the NGOs.

And of course, not a single voice of these traitors has been raised in Mexico and the rest of Latin America to organize a massive struggle across the whole continent in support to the immigrants in the U.S.A. who are members of the same class! Nor to unite the struggle in Latin America and the Caribbean against the exploitation and plundering of imperialism and the FTAA, CAFTA, the IMF, etc!

How is it possible to fight the war in Iraq without also fighting for the rights of immigrants? A fight to legalize migrants and open the borders for all workers in need, would be a fatal blow to the war on terror, and to the US occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, because for one thing, it would release those immigrants who are forced to go to fight to get their citizenship.

Enough of the treacherous politics of the bureaucrats and reformists, who play the game of the bourgeoisie who threaten a tsunami so that the workers can live with a hurricane!

The result of so far is that this so-called “victory” has not shaken the Republicrat regime or big business. It continues to press ahead with criminalisation of those who employ or aid immigrants, enlists many more agents as migrant police with new detection technology, and continues to build the border wall between Mexico and the U.S.A.

But what is more perverse is that they are quite open in allowing a large proportion of illegals to be legalised to work for 5 years provided they do not leave their jobs and get no complaints from their bosses. Any breaches of these slave labor conditions, such as joining a union, will allow them to be deported. If they are ‘model’ workers for 11 years they can apply for a ‘green card’ and residence.

In other words this is a ‘slave charter’ for migrant workers. This creates a new non-unionised workforce able to scab on the workers in the airlinies, GM, Delphi etc who try to fight against the use of the Bankruptcy laws by their bosses with the complicity of the union officials, to cancel their agreements and force them to retire on reduced pensions or face wage cuts of two-thirds.

Many of these plants are being closed and transferred to Latin America, China and other countries of Asia. But the ‘transplants’ of Asian automakers like Toyota in the US are non-unionised, so US automakers will try to use the migrant reserve army to work in any new plants they build for the same low wages, with no social benefits union rights or labour protection.

The bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO and ‘Change to Win’ (the new supposedly "progressive" bureaucracy) as well as many of the ‘left’ cannot mobilise a united fight against the new migrant laws because they concentrate their attack on the Republicans instead of mobilising a movement independent of both the union bureaucracies and both bourgeois parties. In so doing they play into the hands of the ruling class that fears the emergence of a radical militant labor movement that mobilises its power in the workplace to challenge the class rule of the US imperialist regime.

At the same time, the ruling class is trying to capitalise on the fear of migrant workers in the labor aristocracy and the petty bourgeosie to create a social base for a fascist movement to smash any future radical militant movement in the working class. This is why it is Homeland Security that is attacking illegal aliens as “unpatriotic” (waving Mexican flags!) and potential “terrorists". That is, they plan to recruit the racist, nationalist divisions that have always been used to isolate and smash the militant sections of the US working class, which when aligned with the growing anti-imperialist and revolutionary struggles of the Latin American masses, would become an unstoppable force.

• For the legalization of all immigrants! 
• Open borders for all those that want to work in the U.S.A. and any country of the planet! 
• The struggle of immigrants in the U.S.A. is the same as immigrants in Argentina, in Europe, in Australia and everywhere, for work, education, housing, health, and all other rights!  
• Unite the proletariat of North, Central and South America! 
• Down with the union bureaucracies and the treacherous leaders of all kinds, organised in the World Social Forum, that keeps the proletariat subservient to the national bourgeoisies and imperialism!

There is nothing, apart from the treacherous leaders, that stops the unity of the struggles of North, Central and South American workers. These struggles are against the same class enemy trying to smash almost two centuries of workers struggles to impose new defeats and reduce wages and rights to the same level as the reserve army of cheap labor in Asia.

The oppression and super-exploitation of workers in the oppressed nations gives imperialism more power to defeat its own workers at home. Just as the Latin American struggles have strengthened the re-awakening of layers of the US working class, a strong campaign of US workers against the Republicrat regime, halting the ruling class offensive on its rights and conditions, against the anti-terrorist laws, for open borders, for the democratic organization of the unions, for the defense of the victims of the Katrina, for the defeat of the imperialist army in Iraq and Afghanistan), for the popular uprisings in Latin America, and for the young workers and students in France, etc., would give a huge impulse to the struggles in Latin America.

To make this happen we have to defeat the union bureaucracies – the ‘labor lieutenants’ of the bourgeoisie in the ranks of the working class. We have to defeat all the treacherous leaderships grouped in and around the World Social Forum. They perform a vital service for imperialism by organising a continental-wide Popular Front to contain and defeat these struggles, by dividing, isolating and subordinating the revolutionary energy of the workers, the students, the immigrants, the oppressed sectors, to the Democratic Party, the Greens, Fidel Castro, Chavez etc. separating them sector by sector (employed versus unemployed, casual versus career, young versus adult, "national" versus "foreign", union from union, workplace from workplace, country by country).

We need a revolutionary leadership in the unions fighting for a workers’ program in defense of the work, housing, education and health. We need an action plan against the attacks of the bourgeoisie, for the proletarian leadership of the anti-imperialist struggles and for open borders. It is vital that North American workers understand that their fate is bound to the exploited masses of Latin America and the world. To make this possible we must build, in North America as in Latin America, an internationalist, Leninist-Trotskyist revolutionary combat party, a section of a new Trotskyist International.

Unite the fight from Alaska to Terra del Fuego!

For an internationalist struggle against the treacherous leaders to give the working class of the continent the leadership that it deserves!

Fraction Leninist-Trotskyist April 2006 Translated from the Spanish

From Class Struggle 66 April/May 2006

Katrina Aftermath: Capitalist Disaster: Socialist Answer!

The impact of hurricane Katrina was a metaphor for capitalism. The rich white ruling class left the poor black working class population of New Orleans to drown or die of exposure.

The hurricane was itself a natural force, but its major impact was not its predictable violence but the equally predictable cuts in the budget of the Army Engineers for building adequate levees against flooding. Compare this. For all its faults, in Cuba 1.5 million people were recently evacuated out of the path of a hurricane with no loss of life! In the US, black and white workers must unite to build a working class movement capable of taking the struggle for equal rights all the way to socialism!

 

The Third American Revolution?

The anti-war movement has been boosted by the massive anger that followed the capitalist disaster of New Orleans. Bush and his Wall St cronies have proven to a world wide audience that it is the system that is rotten whether its against Iraqi workers or workers in New Orleans.

We need to take this movement back to its class roots in the labor movement and build the upcoming nationwide Strike in the US on December the 1st into a world wide strike against US imperialism and its War Of Terror. Bush is going to use his power to fight terrorism to impose a state of emergency on the Gulf Coast following the recent crises to the compounding crises of US imperialism. This demands a revolutionary response from the working class.

Taking the lead in imposing martial law will be FEMA, the federal authority empowered to deal with 'emergencies'. At the end of this article are a set of regulations detailing the draconian powers FEMA has to control the people in a bosses' 'emergency'.

If we substitute the term 'workers' in all the FEMA regulations for 'government' we can see the task that lies ahead.

There's no movie to guide us but here's a few ideas for the plot.

Since the ruling class is responsible for these compounding disasters, only the working class can provide a solution that will NOT inevitably lead to further, and worse, disasters. The weakness of the US economy, its costly occupation of Iraq, the rising price of oil etc mean that Bush is facing a mounting class opposition at home. Like 9/11 Bush will use this crisis to impose the next level of his anti-terrorist police state to contain growing opposition.

But the horse has already bolted. The majority growing against the war, and the clear failure of the system (not just the 'free' market at some leftists are suggesting) that caused these capitalist disasters has generated a huge outrage against the rich white ruling class that is now bringing the most oppressed layers of the working class into vocal opposition to the Bush regime.

The international day of action on Saturday the 24th September showed that the New Orleans disaster is widely seen as part of the same problem as the invasion of Iraq. The bigger turnout on the marches around the world is a good sign, but it goes nowhere unless it takes root in the only place where workers have power, the workplace.

We must redouble our efforts to make sure that the union led nationwide strike on December 1 will take off and become an international strike!

Bush will use the disasters to justify using emergency regulations and existing anti-terrorist laws to try to stop the growing class resentment and class mobilisation against him; just as the anti-terror laws were used to stop the Million Worker March last October from becoming a huge event.

They will be used to identify, lock up or kill those who protest against FEMAs allocation of fuel, food, housing etc just as survivors of Katrina were shot as 'looters' for helping themselves to food from supermarkets in New Orleans.

Workers made destitute by capitalisms neglect of its reserve army of black and migrant labour have already been drafted into virtual slave labour gangs to rebuild New Orleans where labour laws have been suspended. FEMA can use its powers to extend this to draft workers into work brigades.

So how to build a workers response to this crisis against increasingly draconian state powers of repression?

The 'Government' will impose control over all of these functions via its agencies. No doubt this will include the oil refineries and outlets of the Venezuelan state company in the US that distributes oil aid offered by Chavez. But those agencies are all manned by state employees or contractors.

In fact the 'Government' in order to rule over the working class, has to pay workers to do this. The emergency services, the national guard and so on are made up of workers. So are all the services that the 'Government' will take over directly to run transport, health, education, etc. The work brigades will have to be run by mercenaries - just like the slave drivers of old.

Workers Control of Rebuilding New Orleans

What is needed is that the locals of the unions spearhead demands for community assemblies to take over the running of all of these services on the grounds that this is the only way to ensure that emergency aid and rebuilding will meet the needs of the people, and not the Halliburtons, Bechtels and Bush's other capitalist cronies.

All the agencies 'empowered' by FEMA to do these tasks must become subordinated to community assemblies backed up by armed self defence committees. Fuel and food must be controlled and allocated by workers committees. Workers should refuse to be forced to work and agree to work only if community assemblies are responsible for overseeing the work.

Under the US Constitution the provision for citizens to bear arms against tyranny will be suspended in any emergency. Workers armed defence committees should be set up to maintain law and order and prevent real looting of fuel and aid.

Where the National Guard or the army is used to disarm the self-defence committees, the community assemblies must appeal to the rank and file of the army to disobey all orders that involve repressing these local democratically constituted organisations.

When the 'Government' tries to crack down, as in Iraq, on what they designate as 'terrorism', the US labor movement, bureaucratic and compliant with the state as it is, has to be challenged by the rank and file to take strike action against Bush and his ruling class backers.

In this way organised opposition to FEMA could see the build up to a nationwide strike on December the 1 become the launching platform for a renewed mass democratic unionism and the birth of the first genuine workers party ever. At that point the strangle hold the ruling class exercises over the working class with its 'Republicrat' congress can be blown away, and the formation of a workers party rooted in workers councils and self-defence committees open the way to socialist revolution.

 

From Class Struggle 63 Sept/Oct 2005

Bread and Circuses: The US ‘show’ elections

Most workers in the US vote for one or other of the bosses’ parties. Why when the whole electoral machine is corrupted by bosses’ money and fraudulent practices should we take it seriously? Even if workers are allowed to vote what do we gain? After all an election, as Lenin said, is the right to vote every few years for our oppressors? So what’s the point? There is a point, but only if revolutionaries use the elections as a platform to raise their revolutionary program! Otherwise elections are no more than ‘bread and circuses’.

Bush exploits fear

The fact is that many workers are deluded into believing that the US is the great benefactor of the world, the defender of democracy and human rights. The bosses’ media has scared them into voting for Bush to defend their country from the threat of ‘terrorism’. The ‘alternative’ media that produces critical views of the Bush administration and its economic interests, like Fahrenheit 9-11, Outfoxed and The Corporation, still reach only a minority audience.

Many of these workers are the better paid ‘labour aristocracy’ who have benefited from decades of US domination of the world market. There are also lower paid migrant workers who put their hopes in a strong US to protect their jobs. The US economic crisis is cutting the wages and conditions of well paid as well as poorly paid workers to restore the bosses’ profits. The bosses’ shift the responsibility for the crisis by inciting workers to blame migrants or workers in other countries for stealing their jobs. This economic insecurity is manipulated by the bosses into support for aggressive US policies against other countries such as Iraq. In this way the ‘war in terror’ becomes a test of the patriotism of US workers in support of the US ruling class to dominate the world economy.

We say to these workers that Bush is not defending your interests. Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Bush is making you pay for these wars with your jobs, your wages, your rights and the lives of your children, draft or no draft. The ‘terrorists’ in Iraq or Colombia are largely the poor and oppressed people of those countries invaded and plundered by US imperialism over generations who are now fighting back with whatever means available.

Bush is using the ‘war on terror’ to fight a never-ending terrorist war against the poor workers and peasants of this world to re-colonise their countries to ‘smash and grab’ the oil, gas, and other vital resources. Now he is making war against the poor inside the USA. Voting for Bush will bring more ‘terror’ at home not less. Bush’s ‘homeland security’ will take away all your union and civil rights, including your right to vote for anybody but Republican. Siding with Bush puts you offside with the vast majority of the poor workers and farmers of the world!

Bush lite

But will voting for Kerry make a difference? The democratic party presents itself as a more liberal bosses’ party. Yet it drew on racist southern democratic support for years. Under Clinton the Democrats introduced policies of workfare taking away the welfare rights of millions. It is supported by the main union organisation the AFL-CIO –the same organisation that supported Bush’s invasion of Iraq and of Haiti.

Kerry claims he does not endorse the extreme militarism of the New American Century faction of the US ruling class which calls for the US to invade any country where it has a vital interest. (http://www.newamericancentury.org/). But this policy was already the hallmark of US foreign policy in the 19th century and continued in the 20th century under Democrat leaders like Roosevelt and Kennedy. Kerry pretends that the US can continue to rule the world without ‘going it alone’ and splitting with the other major powers. He may not have invaded Iraq knowing that Saddam did not have WMDs or connections to al Queda. But like the last Democrat president, Clinton, he would have bombed Iraq and Kosovo to enforce UN resolutions.

Leftists for Kerry

Many prominent ‘left’ intellectuals are supporting a Kerry vote as the only way to get rid of Bush. Some, like Noam Chomsky, say that this is necessary in the ‘swing’ states were a few hundred votes may make the difference. Yet it seems that it will be the lawyers hired by the Democrats that make the difference, not the followers of Chomsky et al.

The leftists for Kerry use a ‘lesser evil’ argument that says that US imperialism can be more humane and democratic under Kerry. It is a view echoed by prominent ‘Eurocommunists’ like Tony Negri who says that Bush’s leadership is a retreat from a multilateral world Empire back to a unilateral US imperialism. Others, like former right-winger Chalmers Johnson in his book the ‘Sorrows of Empire’, say that the rise of US militarism is because the Pentagon now controls the state.

Return to ‘ultra imperialism’?

All of these ‘lesser evil’ arguments promote the belief that the US can conduct itself without going to war to defend its leading role in the world economy. This is a return to Kautsky’s theory of ‘ultra-imperialism’ at the time of WW 1. Kautsky claimed that the big corporations and big banks no longer had an interest in fighting wars since their assets were now distributed across many countries and would be damaged by war. Today, with the rise of the global economy, the power of finance capital and trans-nationals spanning the world market, these Kautskyites claim that national rivalries are even more anachronistic.

What these apologists for the big corporations overlook is the fact that the current crisis of world capitalism does not allow the US and its imperialist rivals the luxury of collaborating peacefully. They are each driven to compete to win larger shares of trade and control of vital resources at each other’s expense. Whatever the minor policy differences between Bush and Kerry these will quickly disappear. Under the impact of the deepening economic crisis it is impossible for US imperialism to collaborate with its main rivals in the scramble for scarce resources such as oil and gas.

Therefore we say to all those who call for a vote for Kerry to get rid of Bush, that this is promoting the illusion that Kerry will be better for workers than Bush. We say that this election is a ‘show’ election where the victor will be whoever has the biggest budget, the dirtiest tricks, and the power to delude the masses that they can be secure from the threat of ‘terrorism’. Voting for Kerry will only contribute to these illusions and delusions, rather than challenging workers to organise against the interests of an imperialist ruling class that hides behind the ‘bread and circus’ elections. A good example of this is the AFL-CIO sabotage of the recent Million Man March as a ‘diversion’ from the Kerry election campaign.

Million (50,000) Man March

According to Martin Schreader, editor of Appeal to Reason:: “On October 17, the Million Worker March was held in Washington, DC. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the main dockworkers’ union on the west coast, initiated the event, and organised it with the assistance of local unions and leftwing organisations across the country. The march put forward a series of concrete demands ranging from universal healthcare and abolition of restrictive anti-labour laws to democratic control of the media and the economy.

The immediate goal of the MWM, according to organisers, was to “gauge where workers are” - to see how many workers were open to a radical-democratic and socialist platform. The ultimate goal would have been to use the march as the basis for beginning to build a new political party of working people.” (Weekly Worker 549 Thursday October 21 2004).

But this rally was sabotaged by the AFL-CIO now so attached to the Democratic Party that not only did it refuse to allow its member unions to participate in a march against the administration in Washington, but it collaborated with the Homeland Security authorities to have busloads of workers stopped and questioned on the way to the rally. Many buses were turned around and only 50,000 rallied to the march. This open betrayal can only add fuel to the rallying call for independent unions and a mass Workers’ Party.

Nader is a left Democrat

Against the open collaboration of left intellectuals and the labour bureaucrats of the AFL-CIO with the Democrats, several small left reformist parties are putting up their own candidates. Do these parties offer an alternative for the workers’ vote? Nader, the Greens, the Socialist Workers Party, Workers World Party, among others, stand on platforms opposing both Republicans and Democrats.

Nader would replace the US ‘coalition’ troops in Iraq with UN troops. He demands more state spending on education, welfare etc. But his real position is to provoke the Democrats to offer a more left alternative to the Republicans. His agenda is a return to some ideal concept of a democratic, humane, welfarist, but still social-imperialist, USA. That is, his reforms for US workers would be paid out of the super-profits extracted by US imperialism in its colonies and semi-colonies. This is a left bosses’ program not very different from the Labour parties and Social Democrat parties in Europe, where sometimes revolutionaries give critical support to get these parties elected and exposed as anti-worker. Does Nader quality for critical support? No way!

The difference between Nader and social democracy is that Nader has no backing in the organised working class which sees in him a party that represents its interests. Therefore to call for a critical vote for Nader would be to sow illusions in the possibility of the Democrats reforming themselves into a social democratic alternative to the Republicans. For the same reasons that workers should not vote for Kerry, they should not vote for Nader or the Greens who also promote reformist illusions about ‘greening’ and ‘humanising’ capitalism. Nevertheless, this has not stopped many small so-called Trotskyist groups from endorsing Nader-Camejo, e.g. International Socialist Organisation (ex-Cliffite-or SWP (UK) and SWO (NZ); Socialist Alternative (CWI or Socialist Party (UK) Left Party/Solidarity etc.

Socialist alternatives?

A number of socialist groups today see the US under any fraction of the ruling class –left, right or center –as incapable of delivering real democracy. Martin Schreader of the Debs faction in the Socialist Party sees the victory of Bush in 2000 as marking the end of the 2nd Republic (which began with the victory of the northern bourgeoisie against the southern slaveowners in the civil war of the 1860s). Similarly, a leader of the Communist Party of Great Britain says that because the elections are rigged by those with wealth and power, the US needs a ‘third’ democratic revolution. The CPGB would join with Schreader in voting for the Socialist Party (US) candidates.

For all of these groups this proposed democratic revolution will require the mobilisation of the working masses to replace those with wealth and power with a genuinely democratic republic. Their programs are therefore limited to immediate and democratic demands for civil rights, union rights and economic welfare such as jobs, health, education, welfare rights, women’s and migrants rights, repeal of homeland security, opposition to the war on Iraq war etc.

Good as far as they go, but not nearly far enough! All of these demands are raised on the premise that workers can build an electoral majority and return a workers’ party to Congress and the White House to complete the national revolution.

But standing candidates on such reformist programs creates a trap for workers because it reinforces the illusion that a parliamentary majority can make capitalism democratic, when every historical example of such programs have been defeated by reactionary anti-democratic counter-revolutions, from Germany in 1919 to Chile in 1973. As we will see below the Bolsheviks avoided this trap only because they rejected the Menshevik theory that the workers led by progressive bourgeois intellectuals can force capitalism to deliver democratic demands and economic welfare.

Unlike most of the other US left parties which evolved out of Stalinism or social democracy, the Socialist Workers Party (US) is standing candidates on this Menshevik policy as a result of consciously rejecting the Leninist/Trotskyist ideological weapon used to destroy the argument of the Mensheviks in 1917 –the concept of ‘permanent revolution’.

Socialist Workers Party and Cuban ‘socialism’

The SWP candidates take a position very similar to others on the socialist left – calling for workers to complete the bourgeois revolution in the US. But their program is more credible to militant workers because of their past association with Trotsky. The SWP are the party strong influenced by Trotsky when he was in exile in Mexico in the 1930’s. Today, having broken with Trotskyism the SWP has the dubious distinction of holding up the Cuban revolution as a model of how the democratic revolution can be completed in the US.

Castro defeated the colonial power (US) and its landowning agents (Bastista etc) and put revolutionary nationalist intellectuals into power in 1959. This was a democratic national revolution in which the workers and peasants backed a left bourgeois leadership. It went beyond a national revolution only when the counter-revolution of the US and its local agents forced Castro to expropriate capitalist property. The SWP does not recognise that Castro is part of a Stalinist bureaucracy that controls the economy, which has to be removed by a ‘political revolution’ to open the road to socialism.

According to the SWP, the Cuban revolution proves that it is possible for petty bourgeois intellectuals to complete the stage of a national revolution, and then go on to make a socialist revolution. Instead of recognising that Cuba is a bureaucratic workers state where the Castroite leadership must be overthrown, the SWP elevates the Castroites to the role of the vanguard of the Menshevik two-stage transition to socialism.

Translated to the US election today, the SWP presidential candidates, like the other left reformist candidates, call for the first stage of this transition, the ‘democratic dictatorship’ of the workers and farmers i.e. a radical democratic bourgeois republic. The second, socialist, stage will only become possible when further conditions are present, in particular, mass support for the expropriation of capitalist property.

But to suggest that it will be possible for US workers to complete the bourgeois revolution short of socialism is to reject the revolutionary program of Lenin and Trotsky that made the Russian revolution possible. In taking this position the SWP rejects Trotsky’s program of Permanent Revolution and substitutes the Menshevik program of 1917 and of the Cuban revolution.

Permanent Revolution

Revolutionaries cannot call for workers to vote for any of the reformists left candidates because they delude workers into thinking that a mass workers movement can make capitalist democracy work. This was a theory rejected by Lenin in his April Theses of 1917. Until that time he and the rest of the Bolsheviks thought that Russia was not ripe for socialist revolution. Russia needed a bourgeois revolution to prepare the conditions for a socialist revolution. But the Russian bourgeoisie were too weak to overthrow the Tsar. It would be necessary for the workers and the peasantry to join forces to do what the bourgeoisie could not do. This was called the ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’.

But it became increasingly obvious that to prevent the return of the Tsarist regime workers and peasants would have to take power from the bourgeoisie who would rather ally with Tsarism and imperialism than allow workers to take power. And once workers took power, what would be the point of limiting their program to the bourgeois constitution in defence of private property. After Lenin returned to Russia, he and Trotsky joined forces to win over the Bolsheviks to their position of ‘permanent’ or ‘uninterrupted’ revolution.

It proved to be the case that only the Bolsheviks could muster the workers, peasants and soldiers to defeat the Tsar, the Russian bourgeoisie and the imperialist forces. In doing this they created a workers state, expropriated capitalist property and defended the revolution from counter-revolution. In Germany, where a Bolshevik party did not exist, the revolution failed to break from the bourgeoisie and was disarmed by the reformists' promise of a ‘democratic’ republic. The new Weimar republic contained the revolutionary upturn of the masses and paved the way for the rise of fascism in Germany to smash the working class.

A Trotskyist program for the US election

Working class history written in blood reveals why revolutionaries do not give political support to any bourgeois parties but must call instead for the independent political organisation of the workers. The only program that revolutionaries can raise in the US elections is a revolutionary program. By definition such a program cannot be realised by completing the democratic revolution. On the contrary, the democratic revolution can only be completed as part of a socialist revolution.

Therefore an electoral program must be a transitional program that includes not only the most basic immediate and democratic demands but also socialist demands such as the formation of independent working class organisations like parties, councils and militias, capable of seizing power and creating a workers’ and small farmers’ state.

For the formation of a mass Workers’ or Labour Party!

For rank and file control of the unions independent of the state!

For a 30 hour working week on a living wage to combat unemployment!

For a program of public works, state-funded health, education and housing, all paid for by taxes on the rich!

For civil rights and citizenship rights for all minorities and migrants!

For the nationalisation of all capitalist property, including the banks, without compensation and under workers control!

A mass workers party based upon independent unions raising such demands will quickly come up against the reactionary state forces and propel workers to form soviets, militias, and national organs of workers power preparatory to the seizure of state power and the creation of a Workers and small farmers State as part of a federation of socialist republics of the Americas!

From Class Struggle 58 October-November 2004