Liaison Committee Formed: For a New World Party of Revolution!

Liaison Committee formed

We reprint the (slightly edited) official statement of the Liaison Committee that was formed in Brazil, 10-11 July 2004. The Liaison Committee brings together different currents of principled Trotskyists including the CWGNZ, which despite their difference, agree to 5 basic programmatic points as a first step in a process of regroupment that we hope will lead to the formation of a new revolutionary international.

For a New World Party of Revolution!

Act of the pre-conference in Brazil 10 and 11 of July of 2004

Presentations of the attending groups: POM, CCR, FT (TCI), Workers Opposition, Marxist Trench, Revolutionaries in Fight, all of Brazil; POR Argentina; and (TCI) Bind Trotskista de Peru; Loi-ci of Argentina; COPOI (GOI/NOT) of Chile, FTI in Urus in Action in Bolivia, all members of the FTI-CI. (Trotskyist International Fraction – Fourth International).

Reading of messages of adhesion from the CRI of France and CWG of New Zealand. (see ‘Five Points for Revolution’ in Class Struggle #56).

Discussion began on the current world situation (conjuncture) and the 21 points document (see Class Struggle # 51).

From the communications of the different participants the following agreements arose:

(1) Facing the war in Iraq and the imperialistic war of aggression: we fight in the trenches alongside trench all oppressed nations attacked by imperialism, for their military victory and the defeat of imperialism. We fight for the revolutionary proletarian leadership of the national and anti-imperialist wars to transform them into the start of the socialist revolution in the oppressed country and in the aggressive imperialistic nation. Revolutionaries and anti-imperialists in the imperialistic countries are for the defeat of their own imperialism and of the victory of the working class and the nations oppressed by imperialism.

(2) To fight against the treacherous leaders of the working class: of social democracy, stalinism, the labour bureaucracy and workers aristocracy, the great majority of them grouped in World Social Forum.

(3) Against the popular front and the governments of the bourgeois-worker parties in power. Against all policies of class collaboration. To denounce and to face the conter-rrevolutionary role of the government of Lula, and Castrism, and its continental policy of containment which strangles the revolutionary struggles of the masses of Latin America and maintains the governments and client states of imperialism.

(4) Confrontation and struggle against the liquidators and renegades of Trotskyism. Against the pseudo-Trotskyist centrism that is subordinated to the reformist apparatuses, and that, for example in Brazil, is in alliance with ministers of the pro-imperialistic government of Lula as in the case of Socialist Democracy (United Secretariat), or who act like pressure groups on the same government like the PSTU.

(5) For the defense of the principles of proletarian and revolutionary morality: as it is stated in point 19 of the 21 points document: "the social democracy unions, stalinism and labour bureaucracies have eliminated the most elementary principles and working class morality. The liquidating centrists, revisionists and of Fourth International follow them to do the same. The proletariat is thirsty of frankness, honesty, devotion, and the fullest workers democracy. In order to discuss, to solve and to act, the workers and youth must renounce the workers organizations use leaders use the method of trying to dissolve or silence political differences inside the labor movement by means of the lies, distortions and the use of physical violence ".

In the debate, the following points also arose around which programmatic differences were expressed, that is to say:

(a) Method of understanding the current reality and to characterize the world-wide situation and concrete situations of the class struggle (Argentina 2001, Bolivia 2003) and tasks that derive from this method.

(b) In particular, in Iraq, divergences on the slogans ‘Arms for Iraq’ and ‘international workers’ brigades’.

(c) On the situation and the present program for Argentina. Precise divergences around the declaration on the massacre of the miners of Turbio River, as it is expressed in texts already written.

(d) On the tactics of Anti-imperialist United Front, expressed in the materials already written by the TCI, Fti-ci, Marxist Trench, POM, CCR, and on its application in Argentina; on the Proletarian Military Policy; the work inside the FFAA, [Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (in texts written of TCI and Fti-ci)

(e) On the position on the police, expressed in concrete discussions about events in Argentina, Brazil and Peru.

(f) On how the revolutionaries must act inside the unions.

(g) On Brazil, with respect to the characterization of the government of Lula, the divergence was over whether it is a pro-imperialistic bourgeois government in general, or if it expresses the characteristics of a popular front.

(h) A debate opened about what revolutionary program of action is necessary to intervene against governments, the capitalist state and all its institutions.

(i) All the participants agree to fight to construct Leninist parties with democratic centralism. Nevertheless, there is a debate opened about the conception of party and democratic centralism, as well as around the conception of constructing an international.

(j) It is necessary to deepen the debate on characterization of worker states, degeneration of such and capitalist restoration.

(k)There is a need to deepen the debate on the International Moral Court.

On the base of this development it was agreed that the present state of the programmatic differences and of the debate, and the fact that new organizations have only recently become involved in the formation of the committee, did not allow the constitution of a Parity Committee that could proceed to call an International Conference as had been anticipated for December of 2004 in Brazil.

Therefore, it was resolved to constitute a Liaison Committee on the basis of the points in agreements, and the recognised programmatic differences and areas of debate.

The Liaison Committee was charged to organize the debate with the objective to explore the possibility of increasing the programmatic agreements beyond those reached by the original organising groups, because the class struggle requires it, and to strike together with international campaigns, on those points where we have agreement.

Towards this end, the following resolutions were made:

(1) First, to communicate the resolutions of this pre-conference to the comrades of the CWG and the CRI, so that they can become members of the Liaison Committee.

(2) The production of a public Bulletin of common international debate of the member organizations of the Liaison Committee, in which all are committed to present their contributions in writing as briefly as possible.

(3) To invite to GB of France and the GG of Spain to join in this debate and the Liaison Committee, and to reverse their decision not to attend the Pre-Conference in Brazil, in spite of being specially invited, and in spite of being co-writers of the 21 points to convene the International Conference, turning their backs on the comrades who made a big effort to begin the task of building a new revolutionary international.

(4) To call on all groups to join the Liaison Committee and enter the debate if they agree with the 21 points, or agree on the five common points listed above in this document, and agree to the publication of the 21 points in its official materials.

(5) The members of this Liaison Committee are committed to guarantee a democratic discussion. Therefore, no current, group or tendency that is a member of the Committee can expel comrades who raise political differences that adhere to various positions of other groups, currents or tendencies of the same Committee.

(6) The Liaison Committee fixes its next meeting on 8, 9 of January 2005 in Buenos Aires, in order to make a balance sheet of progress over the previous six months of debate, and to explore if there has been a sufficient programmatic agreement to fix a date for an International Conference that, on the basis of a firm program with clear majorities and minorities, can form an International Center to advance the regroupment of principled Trotskyist and revolutionary workers’ organizations.

Approved international campaigns:

(1) For the freeing of comrade Tonhao, and his readdmissión to his work, as well as the other comrades sacked and persecuted by the bosses’ justice iin the fight against capitalist exploitation and the treachery of the labour bureaucracy.

(2) Campaign for the freedom of the political prisoners of Latin America and of the world.

(3) A tribute to the Trotskyist comrades who fell in the revolutionary fight, presented to the pre-conference of Brazil by comrades F and R

(4) International Campaign to call on the Brazilian workers to the fight against the Lula government that sells and sends arms to the imperialistic countries that massacre the Iraqi people, and to demand the removal of the Brazilian, Argentine and Chilean troops, and all the imperialistic troops, from Haiti.

Proposals of international campaigns for consideration, on the text base to present:

Proposal of the Fti-ci: International declaration against the popular front government in Brazil and with the program of action to face it in Brazil and its counter-revolutionary role in the continent.

Proposal of the Fti-ci: International declaration for the boycott to the referendum in Bolivia, and for a Congress of workers and farmers delegates of the COB and the organizations farmers.

Proposal of the Fti-ci: to all the constituent organizations of the Liaison Committee, to adhere and to work for international support of the declaration on the miners of Turbio River as has already been done by the FT and the POM of Brazil, the CWG of New Zealand and the Fti-ci.

Proposal of the Fti-ci: international declaration against the den of thieves of the European Parliament of the imperialistic oppressors, exploiters and murderers of the workers of the semi-colonies, the colonies and the oppressed peoples of the world, its own proletariats, and against all adaptation to the social-limperialist parties, as it is found in the texts of the CWG and the Fti-ci.

At the end of the pre-conference, all the participant organizations testified to the method of working class democracy that characterised the debates, and agreed that despite sharp political and programmatic discussions, nobody used moral accusations or lies or slanders to try to disguise political differences, setting a precedent for future meetings.

Editorial Board designated by Pre-Conference to consist of:

Gustavo Gamboa, Arg. (TCI) Antonio de Oliveira, POM Brazil; Andrade, CCR Brazil; Walter Towers, (delegated) FTI-CI; Otavio Lisbon, FT Brazil (TCI)

Act of the Pre-Conference in Brazil

10 and 11 of July 2004 

From Class Struggle 57 August-September 2004

The Social Re-Forum of Aotearoa

From Class Struggle 52, September/October 2003

The Social Forum Aotearoa is meeting in November at Porirua to gather together those ‘social movements’ in NZ that are broadly anti-globalist and anti-capitalist.  The fundamental problem with these WSF currents is that they are reformist, believing it possible to overcome the defects of capitalism internationally without overthrowing it. The reason for this is that the gurus who dominate the WSF like Naomi Klein, George Monbiot, Noam Chomsky and Walden Bello, say that capitalist exploitation is caused by unequal exchange driven by powerful elites who can be replaced by more powerful masses.  We agree that a ‘A New World Is Possible’. But this must not be the old world order in new clothes, but a new socialist world.

The purpose of this article is to explain why this understanding of capitalism is wrong and why it leads to such disastrous consequences. Some anti-globalists like Monbiot argue that globalisation can only be resisted by an international civil society developing out of the institutions like the UN. This tendency is theorised in the book Empire by Hardt and Negri. Others seek to reclaim national sovereignty from these globalising forces. In NZ, ARENA, the Alliance, some Greens, and academics like Jane Kelsey, take this position (see article on Trade Wars).  These two positions overlap considerably, but can become somewhat antagonistic at the extremes.

We shall show that logically both of these approaches are two sides of a false coin which wrongly mistakes globalisation for a ‘transnationalisation’ of the location of power and wealth.  That is, international capitalism has centralised its power by undermining and then transcending the power of nation states. The question then becomes how to match this global power on an international level, and/or how to fight to reclaim national sovereignty at the local level?

Both strategies result from a common conception that the capitalists use their power to enforce unequal exchange between capital and labour. This inequality can be corrected at either global or local level by mobilising the counter-power of the masses to take over the capitalist state. For example, the ‘anti-globalisation’ movement adopts the strategy of attacking the global headquarters of multinational capital, while others favour the strategy of organising and linking local resistances to globalisation.  

Market fetishism

The key to understanding the different currents of the WSF is to see where they go wrong in their theory of capitalism.  They misunderstand the nature of capitalist political power. They see capital as exploitative because capitalists use their power to extract surplus from producers by underpaying them for their labour during the process of exchange. For them what is wrong with capitalism is the unequal exchange in the market that robs the producers and enriches the bosses.  Therefore exploitation can be resisted by workers mobilising their power and struggling until wages become equal to their value, and by nationalising the wealth accumulated from their past unpaid wages. This is political logic of the exchange theory of David Ricardo the foremost classical political economist critiqued by Marx in Capital.

The problem with Ricardo’s theory of capitalism was that he took the exchange relations of capitalism to be the basis of exploitation.  He equated capitalism with the market rather than with a set of historically unique social relations. 

For Marx, what distinguished the capitalist market from the earlier development of the market was the way it turned everything into commodities which exchanged more or less at their values (the socially-necessary-labour-time –SNLT, or the normal hours of workers using typical machines –required to produce them).

However, Ricardo could not explain why the value of one ‘commodity’, labour, which he agreed created the value in commodities, was paid less than this value. As Marx pointed out, Ricardo failed to understand that capitalism had created a new form of exploitation by making labour-power into a commodity. The capitalist bought the worker’s labour-power in order to create value. Labour-power was the only commodity capable of producing more value than its own value. Its own value was the socially necessary labour-time (SNLT) required to produce the commodities workers needed to consume to replenish their labour-power (i.e. the workers consumption). Because Labour was equal to the value of the product of labour-power the two could not be equated.

By forcing workers off the land and into industry capitalists could buy this labour-power at its value, produced by workers during part of the working day –necessary labour time –but also force workers to work for a longer period –surplus labour time –to extract surplus value and hence profits.  (Marx said if capitalists actually paid workers the full value produced by their labour they were idiots and would soon go out of business.)

Marx discovered this because he used a method of analysis that looked beneath the level of market exchange to the underlying social relations of production. For Marx then, it was necessary to explain how capitalism falsely presents production relations as exchange relations so that workers could become conscious of the need to revolutionise the relations of production.

Marx’s theory therefore reveals to workers how production relations come to be fetishised (re-appear falsely in another guise) as exchange relations. This happens because workers do not see the underlying mechanism of surplus-value production and assume that profits are deducted from wages.   This fetishised ideology of the marketplace where individuals appear as actors exchanging their commodities is the material base of the bourgeois ideology of the state representing individual citizens who can mobilise electoral majorities and reform exchange relations. 

From this ideology flows the concept of class exploitation at the level of exchange, of workers participation in parliamentary politics in popular fronts (all those who are in some way exploited by unequal exchange including small capitalists and even national capitalists) and reformist policies of wealth ‘re-appropriation’ or ‘redistribution’ back to the producers as the property or income of all those ‘exploited’ by capital – e.g. the rationale for Hardt and Negri to replace class with ‘multitude’ i.e. all those exploited by unequal exchange.

But more than this, neo-Ricardian theory becomes a practical application of bourgeois ideology when it is actively used by the petty bourgeois agents of capital as social democracy or reformism. This political doctrine tries to eliminate the risk of revolution by putting ‘socialism’ on the ‘installment plan’. Socialism becomes achievable in easy, progressive stages of equalising exchange, first by means of exhausting the potential of the bourgeois state for reforms such as land reform, nationalisation, social welfare etc. so that at some indeterminate point in the future these reforms  will compound into full-blown socialism. But in effect all that is being ‘revolutionised’ here is the fetishised form of capitalist production relations – exchange relations.  Thus even this reformist agenda pre-supposes getting and using state power step by step to defeat the capitalists.

The problem is that capitalist state power is only incidentally a means of determining the value of wages. That is overwhelmingly the role of the labour market. The state’s real purpose is to organise the interests of the ruling class as a state force to guard against any threat to capitalist productive relations.  The ruling class will not concede any state power if it results in their expropriation.

Therefore capitalist state power has to be taken by force and replaced by workers state power to transform capitalist social relations into socialist relations.  But as long as reformists and their exchange theory socialism continue to dominate the labour movement capitalist state power and capitalist social relations will not be challenged and overthrown. Or worse, any challenge will be defeated because workers are not prepared to take power. 

Global anti-capitalism

This is why those who adopt the strategy of global reforms to take power and equalise exchange are wrong. Hardt and Negri are a good example. They say that the enemy is no longer organised into national capitalist classes, but is united into one global Empire. The bosses’ power is now concentrated in global institutions like the IMF, WB, WTO and the big multinational firms. Since these are no longer located within any one nation state, then the anti-global and anti-capitalist forces must also be organised ‘transnationally’. The struggle that results will allow the ‘multitude’ (or the ‘new proletariat’) to become global citizens, win a ‘social wage’ (i.e. a guaranteed income) and assert its right to re-appropriate’ of capital.

S11 and the war on terrorism proves this theory wrong. The enemy is still imperialism organised on a national basis. US imperialism is based on US national territory and its government and military are violently advancing its interests with the war on terrorism and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.  Hardt and Negri have been forced to explain the post-S11 imperialist war and growing rivalry between US and EU as a regression of US imperialism back to nationalistic politics. But instead of seeing that this is neither a regression nor something confined to the US alone, they pronounced EU multilateralism as a more progressive stage of transnational capitalism, or Empire, and the UN as the body that represents the reformist potential of transnational government that can made to deliver on the masses’ demand for global citizenship, social wage and re-appropriation.

S11 has therefore knocked down, along with the twin towers, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, the reformist illusion that transnational capital is no longer located in rival imperialist powers. On the contrary, the conflict between the US and EU was not about the US breaking from its multinational obligations, but rather the naked re-emergence of rivalry between US and EU imperialism for control of territory, resources and markets.  Far from reflecting a victory of the ‘new proletariat’ in Europe to pressure Empire to concede its demands, EU imperialism is busy driving down workers living standards, cutting their social wage and ‘re-appropriating’ the gains of past workers struggles.

Therefore if there is no transnational location of power which determines production of surplus, there can be no transnational location of resistance to take power and reclaim the surplus.  This leaves the global anti-capitalists in their millions, reading Monbiot, marching without direction on the streets, incapable of organising anti-imperialist movements to defeat the military power of the imperialist states, and incapable of forming military blocs with oppressed states under attack from imperialism.  Worse, they are diverted from the elementary task of rebuilding independent organisations capable of mobilising workers to combat the deadly popular fronts of the reformist left with the bourgeoisie, religious extremists etc in the name of ‘civil society’. So maybe those who say that the better strategy to fight globalisation is that of reclaiming national sovereignty have a point?

National anti-capitalism

The nationalists at least recognise that power is not globally located outside national borders. Therefore they are usually on the side of oppressed countries against imperialism. But they make the same mistake of fetishising the power of nation states (as opposed to transnational states) to overcome unequal exchange. They think that reclaiming political sovereignty at the national level will allow them to regain control over their economies and the distribution of wealth.

To refute the nationalist position all we need to do is point to the history of social democracy. Whenever mass social democratic parties have become the government and attempted to use state power to radically redistribute wealth or equalise exchange by nationalisation etc, they have been overthrown by imperialist-backed coups or imperialist invasions. The high point of post WW2 social democracy was the 1970s when Chile, Portugal and Nicaragua all attempted to introduce radical social democratic reforms and were all overthrown by right wing coups.

After such defeats, including the fall of the Soviet Bloc, social democracy retreated a long way to the right and adopted neo-liberal policies imposing the costs of imperialism’s crises on the backs of workers and peasants. Where social democrats have won elections, as today in Latin America, not only can they not roll back neo-liberalism and win any substantial reforms, they are forced to attack their working class supporters. For example, Lula’s Workers Party in Brazil, the most left wing party in power in Latin America, is forced to govern in a popular front with the big boss party of Alencar and implement the World Bank’s policies. Lula is now busy suppressing rising opposition within his ranks.

This means that the same state power that the reformists claim can be taken over to win back sovereignty and protect the economy, is inevitably used against them by international capital. The state is the agency of imperialisms’ crisis policies and the means of repressing all challenges to its rule. The reformists dream turns into the workers’ nightmare.

The only power that can win control over the economy is the workers’ power used to overthrow the state and to impose a workers government and socialist plan. And that will not happen unless the domination of the labour movement by reformists in the WSF is exposed as grounded in a petty-bourgeois neo-Ricardian theory of unequal exchange. Not until revolutionary Marxists in the workers movement can build a class conscious vanguard party with a genuinely revolutionary theory and program to leader the masses will the prospect of workers power become real.

 Conclusions

As we have seen,  the problem with the global and local strategies being debated in the WSF movement is not that one fights at a global level and the other at a national level, but that both are incapable of winning state power and taking control of, and planning,  the international economy.  This is because they fail to understand to real nature of capitalist production and the capitalist state.

By taking the fetishised forms of capital as real, the anti-globalisation strategy of the internationalists becomes a diversion from the real struggles that must initially be located within nation states. S11 has shown that faith in building an international social democracy on the basis of the UN or even the EU is utopian and dangerous.  It deludes those layers of workers and youth who are idealistically opposed to the effects of imperialism into the dead end of de-territorialised and directionless struggle against a non-existent transnational state. Instead these kids get beaten or shot by US, Italian or German cops and military.

On the other hand, while the nationalists are at least fighting on the ground where the worst effects of globalising imperialism are felt, their strategy is to sow illusions in social democrats winning state power from the capitalists without an armed struggle. As the history of Latin America demonstrates and today again shows, state power will not be conceded to the workers. It has to be taken by force and used by the masses to create workers governments that can take control of the national economies and begin to build federations of socialist republics and economic cooperation between countries.

The task of revolutionaries is to explain to those who are attracted to the WSF solution to capitalist imperialism that it is an adaptation to imperialism not a solution. We say that the WSF is a forum for the promotion of a reformist politics grounded in a fetishised ideology of capitalism. We say the leadership of the WSF hides their reformist politics behind a façade of ‘democracy’ that in effect denies workers’ democracy. The WSF leadership refuses to allow political parties to affiliate because it knows that this would invite serious debates leading to exposure and challenge of their reformist agenda.

As revolutionaries we want to break the rank and file participants in the WSF from its reformist agenda. The way to do this is to demand freedom of speech and organisation within the WSF. In this way those who see the necessity to expose and defeat the reformist agenda can challenge the WSF to take positions on the important questions of our time – the defence of Iraq against imperialism; against Lula’s popular front in Brazil; for workers occupation and control –without compensation –of factories like in Argentina etc.  CWG will do so on the basis of the 21 principles contained in the document calling for a conference of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary workers. As we say in that document, our urgent task is to refound a new world party of socialism that can unite the theory and practice of revolutionary Marxism in a program to overthrow capitalism and build socialism.