International MayDay, One Class! One Fight! Occupy, it’s our right!

On this day ever since the hanging of four workers in Chicago in 1886, arising out of a strike for the 8 hour day, workers around the world have come together in marches, rallies and strikes, to celebrate their common membership of an international working class that continues to struggle against all its class enemies for its emancipation from the chains of capitalism.

The struggle continues because international capitalism cannot survive without a constant increase in the exploitation and oppression of every worker who produces its profits. In the process it destroys resources, steals land, closes factories and expels workers from production. Most destructive of all, it recruits jobless workers to go to war and invade countries like Afghanistan and Iraq to seize their scarce resources.

When workers resist and try to reclaim their countries, their resources, schools and factories, they are asserting their right to own and control the means of production necessary for life. Here we can see the common factor behind all of these struggles; it is the spontaneous struggle of all those excluded from production or trapped in wage slavery, to assert their class independence and take control of the means of production to meet their basic survival needs.

Mayday 2006 Unite all the struggles around the world

Today many such struggles are taking place around the world. Peasants are fighting to retain or get land; factory workers are fighting to survive closures; women workers are fighting to keep their families together and against violence; young workers are fighting for an education, and decent jobs, a living wage and social rights. Unemployed recruited into imperialist armies or warlords militias are refusing to follow orders. Iraqis, Afghans, Africans, Melanesians, Colombians, etc. are resisting imperialist occupations and fighting for their national independence.

Peasants and agricultural workers in the Solomon Islands, in Bolivia and Brazil, India and China, Nigeria and South Africa, resist the removal of their land for capitalist agriculture, or extraction of oil, gas, timber or minerals etc. by the giant multinationals based in the imperialists countries. Many of these peasants are indigenous peoples who retain their own social structures and cultures. Their universal response to these attacks is to occupy the land.

Take the land, but join forces with workers and also take the trucks, the ports and the banks!


Industrial workers, whose wages and conditions deteriorate under the increasing exploitation forced on them by the IMF, World Bank and WTO, resist in many countries. In Latin America, around a third of the work-age population is without work, and another third lives in the ‘black’ economy of undocumented, super-exploited, dangerous, virtual slave labor. Where workers are cast out of production, their instinct is to occupy and continue production.

Turn the occupations into expropriations!

In the United States the 12 million undocumented ‘illegals’ have poured into the country from the South, West and East, and perform the most menial, dangerous and servile work. They are under immediate threat of being criminalised, arrested, deported, or turned into ‘guest’ workers regulated and repressed by Bush’s Department of Homeland Security. Wherever ‘illegals’ stand up and fightback, as they are doing today in the US, they are criminalized, deported or locked up in the Guantanamos of this world.

Long live the ‘illegal’ worker! We are all ‘illegals’!
Close down the Guantanamos!

Women workers continue to bear the brunt of the worst exploitation and oppression. On top of the burden of child care and support, women still do the low-paid, menial, insecure work. As the capitalist crisis of the 80s and 90s has shifted much industry from core capitalist states to the ‘third’ world, women have filled many such jobs in the maquiladores of Latin America, the shantytowns of Africa, and factory dormitories of China and India, and borne the brunt of family breakdown, rape and murder. Because of this women take the lead in struggles for land rights, indigenous rights, factory occupations, and human rights. They are asserting their right to break out of domestic slavery and to take ownership and control of the means of production.

Forward the woman worker!
Abolish domestic slavery!

Young workers are also among the most vulnerable, facing, unemployment, discrimination and ‘precarite’ - lack of job security. In December of last year the unemployed youth of the migrant communities in France rebelled against the police as the agents of capitalist repression. In March of this year university students, high school students and workers in auto, rail, and the state sector took to the streets to stop the latest reactionary labor law giving bosses’ freedom to hire and fire young workers. They occupied universities, schools, and blocked railways and roads to prove that they too can take over and control, if only symbolically for now, the means of production, distribution and exchange.

Occupy the schools and universities under student/worker control !
For free education to all!
 
Soldiers are workers or peasants in uniform, drafted to fight the wars of their bosses by killing and looting the peoples of the colonies and semi-colonies. They are mainly poor, unemployed youth drawn from peasant, migrant, or stateless families. If these troops refused orders the capitalist military machine would disintegrate. In Bolivia, Venezuela and Iraq some ordinary ranks have mutinied against their officers and sided with the masses under attack.

For rank-and-file control of the military! For the formation of rank and file councils!
For workers' and peasants' militias!


Socialism is the only way out

Global capitalism in the 21st century is in a crisis in which the forces of production are being destroyed so that capitalists can continue to profit. Marx long ago predicted that capitalism would ultimately dig its own grave by creating a working class that would overthrow the private owners to claim social ownership of the forces of production.

This is where we are today. Peasants, factory workers, women workers, youth, conscripts; the majority are being cast out of production. This is what Marx and Engels meant in the Communist Manifesto when they raised the slogan: “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains”! Despite all those doomsayers who claim that socialism is dead, or those wheeler-dealers who claim that capitalism can be reformed by ‘democratic’ , ‘humane’ politicians, the system has them all in its grip. The producing classes cannot survive by placing any hopes in reforming the system. This can only lead to further social destruction, climactic disaster and fascist barbarism.

The only solution for the worlds’ workers is to expropriate the means of production from the private owners for our own use. When we are excluded from production, or forced into slave labor, we must occupy and put the means of production under our own control. Where workers have done this as in Argentina and Venezuela, they have proved that bosses are superfluous.

We are one class; the working class, and one fight; the fight for socialism

Standing between workers and socialism are all the enemies of their class. They are those who seek to contain and divert the workers struggle to expropriate the capitalists into compromises, deals, and sellouts to save the bosses skins. These are the false friends of workers – the union officials who are paid by the bosses state to prevent workers from running unions democratically; the political parties funded by the bosses state with false names like ‘labor’ , ‘socialist’, ‘worker’ or 'communist', that promise workers, land, jobs, health and education, but instead cut jobs, wages and benefits to guarantee bosses good profits.

Today the most dangerous class enemies of all the peasant, wage slaves, women, youth, and conscripts, who are struggling to take control of the means of production, distribution and exchange, are those false ‘socialists’ who tell the workers to put their faith in strong leaders who can bring about socialism from ‘above’; in particular, those in the World Social Forum who look to Castro, Chavez and even Lula, to solve their problems for them.

No! To defeat the class collaborationist World Social Forum we must build a new revolutionary communist international. The only guarantee of socialism is the independent, armed organisation of our One Class! Peasants, factory workers, women, and youth workers, united in workers councils everywhere; and our One Fight! Turn occupations all into expropriations as the basis of a socialist planned world economy!

Communist Worker Group (NZ) Member of the Leninist-Trotskyist Fraction

From Class Struggle 66 April/May 2006

Make May 1st Iraqi Freedom Day!

WHILE IRAQ IS NOT FREE, NO COUNTRY CAN BE FREE!

STOPPING THE WAR AND THE OCCUPATION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE FACING THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS!

A big leap forward in the anti-war movement

March 19, marking 2 years of occupation, saw an important step up in the international campaign to stop the war in Iraq. The mass rallies that took place right around the world called for "Troops Out Now". In the US twice as many rallies were held than last March 19. 30,000 marched in the Bay Area, 15,000 in New York City.

Many of the 100,000 protesters in Italy, for example, added the demand that Iraqis have the right to resist the occupation. They were joined the previous day by 200,000 striking public sector workers opposed to the economic attacks of the pro-war Berlusconi Government. Others demanded solidarity with the Iraqi Resistance.

What was new on March 19 was the much increased rallying of organised labour. The connection between jobs, livelihoods, and war is being driven home to workers everywhere.

Bosses' wars take workers' lives!

In the US the Million Worker March Movement, formed last year to protest Bush's attacks on the labour movement, called for and co-sponsored the anti-war actions. The ILWU Local 10 in the Bay Area stopped work closing down the ports (photo above).

In New York City the rally marched through the African-American neighbourhood of Harlem and was addressed by Brenda Stokely a leader of the Day-care Workers Union.

In Auckland, NZ, the rally was organised by trade union activists and two of the four arrested by police were union organisers.

In Brussels over 100,000 youth, unionists and anti-war activists rallied linking demands for jobs, for a 'social' Europe (see article on Europe). in opposition to the imperialist war in Iraq.

In Turkey, prominent among the 20,000 were members of the Workers' and Engineers Unions.

This growing labour activism is important, because while there are now over 5000 US troops who have refused to fight in one way or another, and while the Iraqi resistance continues to add to the toll of over 1500 US military personnel, only the mass strike action of the labour movement can bring the US and British military machines to a halt and defeat the imperialist war terrorists.

Only such a defeat can stop the imperialists from extending their 'war of terror' to Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and beyond.

Stopwork to stop the war!

Two examples: the ILWU Local 10 stopwork is part of a proud tradition in this union which stood against the Korean and Vietnam wars, and in 2003 resolved to oppose the US war against Iraq. The call to 'stopwork to stop the war' is a call that the international labour movement must now pick up and act on.

Second, in Auckland, New Zealand, a small militant protest of around 200 occupied the headquarters of the Australia and New Zealand Bank in the city for 30 minutes publicising the fact that this bank was profiteering from the occupation of Iraq and calling on the bank workers to take action against management.

This demand is a model for industrial action on the part of all those workers employed in the multinational banks, oil companies, military corporations and service providers currently profiteering in Iraq, to take industrial action against the blood money paid for by over 100,000 Iraqi lives during the occupation.

These two examples show how it is possible for organised labour internationally to take action to stop this imperialist war and occupation to re-colonise and plunder the assets of Iraq.

Make MayDay Iraq Freedom Day!

This is why we have to take up the call of the Million Worker March movement in the US to make May Day an international day of labour action against the war!

May Day is the traditional day when workers all around the world commemorate the history of struggles that have advanced the cause and rights of workers. If there is a cause that unites workers globally it is to resist wars of their imperialist ruling classes. Workers are the cannon fodder expended in their bosses' grab for territory and resources.

Workers sacrifice not only their lives, but their living standards as the huge financial cost of wars are taken out of the jobs, wages, health and other social spending vital to workers lives.

May Day is the day when workers must revive the traditional slogan that 'Workers of the World Unite' against bosses' wars and their causes - the drive by imperialist bosses to make workers pay in every way in their grab for the diminishing resources of oil, gas, and other raw materials that sustain their profits.

Solidarity with the Iraqi Resistance!

But it is Iraqi workers who pay the highest price in lives lost and a country smashed. Not only do Iraqi workers have the right to resist the imperialist occupation, workers everywhere have a duty to support them. The Iraqi workers alone have an interest in evicting the imperialist occupiers. This is because the various nationalist factions led by Baathist or Islamic leaders are only concerned to do deals with the US which will allow it to retain ultimate control over Iraq and the wealth created by Iraqi workers.

That is why on MayDay we must call for international support for the rebuilding of the Iraqi unions in defence of jobs, for the rights of women, for the nationalisation of industry under workers' control, for imperialist reparations, and for a national plan to rebuild the economy under a workers and small farmers government!

Stop work to stop the war!

No workers’ lives for bosses' wars!

Solidarity with the Iraqi resistance!

WORKERS AGAINST THE WAR OF TERROR

From Class Struggle 60 March-April 2005

MayDay! Workers of the World Unite!

May 1 is International Workers’ Day! All around the world we are seeing those who are exploited and oppressed by capitalism and imperialism engaged in resistance struggles. In Aotearoa/New Zealand we need to rebuild a labour movement that can act in solidarity with this global resistance. We need to build unions that are democratic, independent, militant, and internationalist, as 'schools for socialism'!

Workers commemorate past struggles and act in solidarity with present struggles. We remember the historic struggles of the Paris Commune of 1870, the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the heroic colonial revolutions such as the Chinese and Vietnamese. In NZ we celebrate the class battles of 1890, 1912-13 and 1951. These are the major milestones in the making of our class into that revolutionary force that has the power to overthrow capitalism and build socialism.

Workers resistance on the rise

Today the workers movement is weak and defensive. Years of defeat have pushed workers into retreat. But while capitalism can drive back workers struggles it cannot destroy the only class that creates its wealth. Around the world there are signs that workers are once again on the move. Imperialism is in deep crisis and can only survive that crisis by robbing workers and peasants of their resources, driving down their wages and making their lives miserable.

International resistance to imperialist rule is mounting. But the organisation of that resistance is still at a rudimentary level. Because of the weakness of the organised workers movement worldwide, resistance to oppression is taking forms that cut across working class solidarity and hold back the rise of international labour solidarity.

In Palestine and Iraq, the invaders have smashed working class organisations and are forcing workers into the arms of the bosses and Islamic clerics. Young workers are being driven to futile suicidal attacks against high-tech invading armies. Isolated and outgunned these ‘intifada’ can be smashed as in Palestine and Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda, the terrorist organisation funded by wealthy Saudis, is bombing and maiming Western workers to drive imperialism out of the Middle East, not to liberate Muslims but to make rich Arabs bosses even richer.

What we have to learn from all these struggles of oppressed peoples against imperialism is two things: first, the working class is the only class that can unite all the oppressed and defeat imperialism, and second, that the working class must be united internationally and led by a revolutionary party.

Why the working class?

The leadership of the national struggles against imperialism must come from the working class. Only the organised armed workers can turn resistance on the part of peasant and tribal fighters into a victorious defeat of imperialism. All other classes have an interest in doing deals with imperialism for a share of the wealth created by workers and peasants.

Workers, in opposing the system that exploits and oppresses them, have a class interest not only to defeat imperialism. They also have an interest to overthrow the national capitalist class and its hired politicians - including those who pose as friends of the workers like Arafat, Chavez or Lula. And workers have the means to do this as they can strike to close down the economy, arm themselves, win over sections of the military and take state power.

But even where workers are highly organised as they are in Bolivia, they have been cheated of power by class traitors in their own ranks. Armed peasants and miners led by militant trade unions have several times in the last decades been capable of taking power, only to be betrayed by leaders who do deals with imperialism to share the expropriated labour of workers and peasants.

To avoid repeating these defeats, we have to keep alive the lessons of the past as guides to action today. In Russia in 1917, the armed workers were led by a revolutionary party that defeated the treacherous sellout elements in their ranks and helped the struggle for national liberation to become a victorious socialist revolution. The difference between Russia in 1917, and the failed or incomplete revolutions in Germany 1919, Bolivia 1952, Cuba 1959, and Chile 1973, was the existence of a revolutionary party.

The second lesson is, that a victorious national liberation movements against imperialism cannot survive as independent workers’ state without the class solidarity of the workers in the imperialist countries, including their rich client states like New Zealand.

This is because these ‘Western’ workers are the only class that has the strength to shut down the imperialist economies and bring the war machine to a halt.

For example, it was the German workers who went on strike and the soldiers and sailors who mutinied in 1918 stopping the European imperialist powers from overwhelming and smashing the Russian Revolution at its birth. The workers in the imperialist countries are the only force with the power to stop their own bosses from invading, occupying and destroying other countries, by defeating the 'main enemy' at home.

The labour ‘aristocracy’

But there is a problem in building support for liberation struggles in the Western working class. Many workers are ‘bought off’ with high wages and back their bosses in imperialist wars. They are members of the labour ‘aristocracy’ whose wages are partly paid by the cheap labour of the ‘developing’ countries. Their unions are led by bureaucrats that manage labour relations within the law of the bosses’ state. They vote for reformist parties that claim to manage capitalism in the interests of ‘all classes’.

For example in the US, the main union organisation, the AFL-CIO, is proud of its ‘patriotism’ in supporting the ‘war on terror’, including the use of the Patriot Act to attack labor rights at home. Why? Because this war defends the interests of US workers whose jobs and wages depend on the strength of US imperialism. The AFL-CIO calls for votes for the Democratic Party, as the more union-friendly party of the US bosses, to deliver these jobs and wages.

This is why the vast majority of those millions of workers who opposed the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, did little more than demonstrate in the streets or pray for peace. They thought that war was the wrong policy. And their pacifism is catching. When Bush abolished the labour rights of public employees after 9-11, there was no strike in response. Even the West Coast Longshoremen, traditionally one of the most militant US unions, loudly proclaimed their unrivalled patriotism and backed off an industrial dispute last year when Bush threatened to lock them up under the Patriot Act.

NZ workers sign up for imperialism

In NZ the CTU official stand on the ‘war on terror’ was to endorse the UN resolutions. While the Auckland CTU leadership took a more principled stand against a UN invasion of Iraq, the union movement in NZ has not taken any industrial action against the SAS being sent to Afghanistan or the Engineers to Iraq. NZ workers too are dominated by a union bureaucracy that banks its career paths on 'lesser evil' Labour governments or an alternative future Alliance/Green coalition managing a 'peaceful and just' capitalism.

Why? Because in NZ the most privileged workers in unions affiliated to the Labour Party and the 'left' parties, benefit from NZ’s military alliance with Australian and US imperialism. For example the Maritime Union 'cabotage' campaign appeals to NZ bosses to join forces with Australian imperialist bosses to keep ‘foreign’ workers on lower wages off local ships. And the EPMU is begging the Aussie military to contract out maintenance on its frigates to the Whangarei shipyard that helped to build these ANZAC frigates to police the Pacific on behalf of US and Australian imperialism’s interests.

Pacifism means sucking up to bosses

Thus the most privileged layers of Western workers depend for their jobs and incomes on direct or indirect benefits from imperialist military expenditure. Or on wars for oil, gas, copper, diamonds, fish etc whose proceeds trickle down into their jobs and pay packets. These unions are bureaucratic, pacifist, dependent on the state and form racist national fronts with their bosses to protect their jobs from migrants or foreigners.

The most these workers will do against war is to argue that imperialism does not need to fight wars to defend their jobs and high wages, and that the UN should manage invasions like in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. This is why the official labour movement in the imperialist countries will never go beyond pacifist posturing and never take organised strike action to stop war. For example, even when train drivers went on strike against Britain’s role in the Iraq war, they acted as individuals and not as members of their union.

Build unions of the most oppressed!

But all is not lost. While the union bureaucrats in the imperialist countries serve the interests of the bosses and the labour aristocracies, they do not represent the vast layers of other workers who are highly exploited and oppressed.

These are the migrant workers and/or low paid service workers who are mainly women, ethnic minorities and youth. They are typically casualised workers, not unionised and on the worst pay and conditions. They do not benefit from imperialism and form an oppressed layer of cheap labour in the imperialist heartlands. They have the class interest to form strong links with other workers across borders in the oppressed world and take direct action against their own military machine.

It is to these workers that we must look to form new class struggle unions based on rank and file democracy. They can be organised independently of the state, reformist parties and the bosses. Like the Latino janitors unionised in Los Angeles, they can take militant strike action to fight for better wages and conditions in the heart of the imperialist machine. They can act in international solidarity with the anti-imperialist resistance around the world.
Organise the casualised worker!

In NZ, the large majority of workers in the casualised mainly private service sector are not unionised. They are predominantly young, female, migrant workers. They work for multinational hotels like Sheraton, fast food outlets like Burger King, petrol stations like Mobil, and supermarkets, multinational call centres and commercial cleaners.

They need to be unionised so they can join forces with the workers who are employed by these same global corporates in other countries to fight together to win rights and better pay and conditions.

They can also link up globally with unionised workers in oil companies like Shell, banks like Citigroup, and military contractors like Halliburton, and other war profiteers, to blockade these companies and demand that they get off 'corporate welfare' and free up billions for health, education and housing for the poor.

The can unite with unionised workers in the export industries such as fishing and forestry to oppose anti-worker practices and the destruction of fish and timber stocks. They can fight to keep the foreshore and seabed from being sold-off to the expanding multinational aquaculture corporations. They can demand the nationalisation of all these companies under workers’ control with no compensation to the bosses!

For Rank-and-file control of unions

To be effective these unions must be run by their rank and file members. They must struggle to be independent of any political bureaucracy, of the reformist parties who suck them into parliament and the bosses’ state, and able to unite with other unions in militant strike action.

With this organisational strength, these unions can be what Leon Trotsky called ‘schools for revolution’. They can take up the fight for the most immediate bread and butter demands, and when the bosses refuse to meet them, they can take the fight all the way to win workers’ control of industry and state power.

They can take action on wages which become stands on war. They can defend their jobs yet refuse to build or repair frigates. They can demand that the CTU takes strike action against NZ’s military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. When the CTU refuses they can replace it with their own rank and file leadership.

They can impose boycotts and bans on Israel. They can mount solidarity campaigns in defence of migrant workers, so-called illegal workers, refugees like the jailed Algerian Ahmed Zaoui. They can fight for the rights of foreign workers in NZ ships, and build support for the independent trades unions and women’s’ organisations of Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.

These unions must be democratic, independent, militant and internationalist! They can train and empower the working class fighters who will unite with workers globally and create a new political leadership that can bring an end to capitalism and build a world socialist society!

Workers have no country!
No to cabotage, frigates and theft of the foreshore!
Strike to stop imperialist war at home!
Support the resistance in Iraq and Palestine!
Support the workers and peasants revolution in Bolivia!
No to the treacherous leaders of the WSF - Lula, Chavez and Castro!
For a new World Party of Revolution!

From Class Struggle 55 April-May 2004