Leninist Trotskyist Fraction statement A pact between the UN, Zionism, Siniora and the Hizbollah leadership tries to do what the Israeli army could not do, impose disarmament and surrender on the Hizbollah and Palestinian resistance. Out with the new troops of occupation of the imperialistic butchers of the UN! Turn the civil wars in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq into the beginning of the workers’ and peasants’ revolution in Lebanon, Palestine and the whole Middle East, so that it becomes the grave of the Zionist-fascist state of Israel and the genocidal imperialist troops in Iraq! The genocidal Zionist army of Olmert and Bush smashed its teeth against the heroic national war of resistance of Hizbollah and the masses of the south of the Lebanon After 34 days of systematic bombing of the workers districts of Beirut and the south of Lebanon, leaving thousands of dead and wounded, the Zionist army of Israel - the fourth most powerful in the world commanded by Olmert and Bush, could not even occupy securely one kilometer into the south of Lebanon. It broke its teeth against the heroic resistance that cost thousands of lives of workers and oppressed people, including many of the the 100s of thousands displaced Palestinians. Because it could not win against a guerilla army, Israel agreed to a cease-fire on Monday 14 of August at 8 am and began to retreat back across the border. The ceasefire agreement provides that from the 17 of August the Lebanese army will start to move 15,000 troops south of the Litani river, and that along with around 2000 French troops already in the Lebanon, there will be an ‘international force’ of up to 15,000 under the command of UNIFIL. Its objective: to disarm Hisbollah and the other militias in the south of the Lebanon. That is to say, to impose what imperialism and his Zionist gendarme Israel could not do in more than a month of military destruction. We shall see if the can achieve this objective. The Lebanese and Palestinian exiles of the south of the Lebanon - and of all Middle East, that resisted heroically against a high tech military machine, feel victorious. That is why more of million workers, farmers and their families - Palestinian and Lebanese from the south, that had taken refuge to the north of the Litani river, immediately after the ceasefire began a mass migration back to their homes and land in the south. One said they were returning “as a tribute to the Resistance. For that reason it is necessary to return: they have died fighting by us and for Lebanon. The best way to fight Israel is to overcome outfear and to re-occupy our houses. That act intimidates the Israelis. They never thought that we would return and that they would lose the war” (Clarin, 15/08/06). In Bint Jbeil, a shepherd who returned to that city where the most brutal battles wre fought exclaimed: “Praise be to God, we won this war. We saved our land and we defeated to the Israeli army in spite of all its high technology” (Libération, France, 17/08/06) The goal of Bush and the Zionist state in this new “war for oil” is to turn Lebanon into a protectorate to plunder the oil wealth of the Caucasus Bush and Olmert has a clear objective in sending the army against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank at the end of June, and then going to war against Lebanon in the middle of July. This was to finally destroy the Palestinian resistance in the same way NATO bombed the Bosnian Serbs in the Balkans in the 1990s. They wanted to massively defeat the resistance in Gaza and Transjordan where the people are already imprisoned in concentration camps, causing a new diaspora. They were also determined to smash Hizbollah and its defence of the Palestine masses in the south of Lebanon because it forced Israel out of Lebanon in 2000 sparking the second intefada. In defeating Hizbollah Lebanon could be turned into a new Yankee protectorate. Anglo/US imperialism and its Zionist gendarme needed to fulfill these objectives to be able to be guarantee the oil pipeline from the ex- Soviet republics of Kazajstán and Azerbaiján to Israel. British Petroleum has built a pipe line from Bakú to the port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean in Turkey. The pipeline is planned to go from Ceyhan under the sea to Haifa where it will be piped to the Red Sea and on to Asia. Israel also wants access to water from the Litani r iver and further north. For these projects the US and the Zionist state needs to control the Mediterranean coast and the south of the Lebanon. So despite rhetoric about captured soldiers and Hizbollah being Iran’s proxy, the real purpose of this war was once more oil, as it was in Afghanistan and Iraq. And because wars for oil always generate resistance, Yankee imperialism looked to use this war to teach a lesson to the the resistance movements, in particular the Iraqi resistance that has bogged down the Anglo/US troops and caused crises for Bush and Blair at home. It gambled on a victory against Hizbollah to strengthen its Sunni allies in Iraq against the Shiite Mahdi army, and to free its military to invade other countries such as Syria and Iran. These objectives explain why the attacks on Lebanon were of a surgical precision. They destroyed the workers districts and the Palestinian camps of the south so as to defeat the working class, in particular the Palestinian masses. They destroyed the bridges and ports that were not needed in their plan to create a secure passage for the oil pipe lines and water aqueducts. On the other hand they left the districts of the bourgeoisie with its luxury hotels, summer houses, and exclusive tourist centers, absolutely intact – so that the bourgeois cooled off in their swimming pools while thousands of poor people died in Beirut. They also left the the modern “City” of Beirut, the properties of the bourgeoisie in the north of the country, and, the quarters of the Lebanese army, intact. They expected that the Lebanese bourgeoisie would “blame” Hizbollah for the war, and so give more authority to the government of Siniora and to the army of the Lebanon – pro-Yankee mercenaries and allies of Zionism – supported by NATO troops, would finish smashing and disarming the masses in the south. But after more than a month, it was obvious that Bush and the Zionist state ad failed to fulfill their objectives in their war of destruction: they were prevented by the heroic resistance of the armed masses. The armed masses’ heroic war of resistance stopped the fourth most powerful army on the planet which had to be rescued by the imperialist UNIFIL ‘multinational peacekeepers’ While its humiliated troops retreated from Lebanon before a tide of civilians, the Zionist General Staff along with Bush complained that Hizbollah was not a regular army and did not fight according to the rules of war! Hizbollah were “terrorists without scruples” that used the “civilian population” as “human shields”. What total hypocrisy from these imperialist Zionist butchers! They, the imperialists and the Zionists, are the true terrorists. They do not have any scruples in using the masses and the peoples of the world as “civilian” targets! The US imperialists killed millions in the last 30 years in Iraq alone, and are still killing every day tens of innocent civilians! The “terrorists” are the Zionists who reduce to rubble half of Lebanon, rubble under which there are thousands of corpses of workers, farmers, women, children, and old people! The Zionist state is racist and fascist. It is a racist state, where torture is legal! It is the state that for over half a century has been killing the Palestinian people systematically, and where Mossad “openly murders selectively” using snipers to assassinate leaders of the organizations of the Palestine resistance in complete daylight. A fascist state, yes, because fascism – the most extreme form of capitalist rule during the epoch of imperialism – locks up the working class in concentration camps, surrounded by walls, wire fences, soldiers, and fascist colonies, in much the way Nazism did against the Jewish people in Europe during World War II. But what Bush and Olmert cannot hide is that the Zionist army failed not because it met “terrorists” who broke the rules of war, but because the armed people defended their lives, their land, houses and their families against an occupation army. It had to face a heroic national civil war of resistance of the armed masses, in which each house and each piece of land, became a trench, and each “civilian” a combatant. What Bush and Olmert call “terrorists” and “human shields”, were in reality Lebanese and Palestinian workers and farmers of the south that, from the roofs of their houses, shot Katiushas against the enemy, and fought in combat house to house, hand-to-hand. According to a teacher from Aïta al-Chaab, a town a few metre from the border with the Zionist state: “We fought not for love of the war, but to protect our lives, our women, our children (...) We are common people. The fighter that destroyed that Israeli tank military there, is the town’s medical doctor” (Libération, France, 17/08/06)
It was this heroic resistance of the masses that it prevented the Zionist army after a month of destruction, from holding onto even a kilometer of territory to the south of the Litani River! More than this, the workers and the exploited people of all Middle East began to rise up in Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iran and Iraq in defence of the Lebanese resistance. This put at risk all the survile bourgeois regimes and governments of the region. In Iraq, enormous mobilizations of hundreds of thousands of Shiites threatened to rise up against the puppet government whose main support is indeed the Shiite bourgeoisie of Iraq and Iran. The anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist mobilisations of the masses of the Middle East threatened to set fire to the region. Meanwhile inside the imperialistic countries - in the United States, the UK and Europe etc more militant sections of the workers and youth protested strongly against the huge destruction and the massacres in towns like Qana. What is more, instead of “blaming” Hizbollah for the war as the US and Zionists had expected, the more violent the destruction the more the masses joined the resistance, shouting “We are all Hizbollah” and “They bomb Tel Aviv”. Thus, if the Zionist army had continued to advance into the territory of Lebanon, there was the real threat of a revolutionary mass uprising. This could have overthrown the bourgeois leadership of Hizbollah, disarmed the pro-Zionist army of Lebanon, and used the arms to bring down the pro-imperialistic government of Siniora. That this was a real possiblity was reflected in the slogan “Bomb Tel Aviv” which would have turned the resistance into a counter-offensive. This would have been a signal for an uprising of the masses of Gaza and Transjordan in the fight to destroy the Zionist-facist of Israel. The Palestinian and Lebanese masses prove that the working class is the only class that can defend the nation against imperialism It was not lack of heroísm or lack of will to fight that stopped the masses from going down this road. The national bourgeoisies of the Middle East, that all national bourgeoisies in semi colonial or colonial countries, try to get as bigger slice of profits by negotiation with imperialism. However, as soon as the revolutionary masses begin to threaten their class interests, their property and the state itself, they turn against the masses to defend those interests and those of imperialism. The bourgeoisies of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, long allies of the US and the Zionist state – just like the Druse and Maronite bourgeoisies of Lebanon, and the client government of Siniora – demanded the “disarmament of Hizbollah” and in each country brutally repressed the demonstrations of the oppressed masses in support to their Palestinian brothers and sisters of the south of the Lebanon. So the Iranian the Syrian bourgeoisie, despite threatening “the mother of all battles” against imperialism and Zionism”, suddenly became “neutral”. They did not move a finger in support of the masses of Lebanon and historical Palestine when tens of thousands of Syrian and Iranian workers demonstrated against the imperialist and Zionist butchers. So the large armies of Syria and Iran did not come to the aid of the heroic resistance of the masses, leaving more than a thousand dead, tens of thousands injured and the south of Lebanon devastated. On the contrary, the Syrian bourgeoisie offered to be a “mediator” to negotiate the exchange of prisoners and even promised to support the US in its “war against terrorism”. In Iran the Shiite bourgeoisie of ayatollahs also acts as a guarantor of the puppet colaborationist government in Iraq, and in turn the stability of the US protectorate and the commands the ‘Iraqi’ army and the police in the civil war against the resistance. Equally, the leadership of Hizbollah - an organization that is alliled to the Iranian Shiite bourgeoisie and the ayatollahs –is incapable of fighting a national war against the invader until the end. For that reason, during the war, it did not break with the client regime of Siniora or call for itw overthrow It did not call on the masses to march on the barracks of the Lebanese army to disarm it and to create workers and peasants militias. It refused to call on Syria and Iran to declare war on Zionism, or the Shiite masses in Iraq to rise up against the puppet government. They refused to act on the demand raised by the masses of Palestine and Lebanon to “Bomb Tel Aviv”. On the contrary, it limited its missile strikes, declaring that it would only attack Tel Aviv if Israel bombed the center of Beirut – that is, the financial and business center, despite the bombardment of the workers districts and the heaquarters of Hizbollah. Yet the workers and peasants of south Lebanon, by their heroic national war of resistance against the Zionist attack showed once again that neither Hizbollah, nor Hamas, or any fraction of the national bourgeoisies can defend the nation from imperialism. They demonstrated that in Lebanon, in historical Palestine – as in any country oppressed by imperialism, the working class is the only truely national class, with the interest and the will to defend the nation against imperialism. UNSC 1701: A pact between the UN, Zionism, Siniora and Hizbollah leaders to make the mass resistance disarm and surrender Because of the heroic resistance of the masses, imperialism and the Zionist state could not totally destroy Hizbollah and the Palestinians in Lebanon. As is the case in Iraq, the Lebanese masses proved capable of putting up a stiff opposition to the imperialist/Zionist offensive. Opening up a second front in which the masses faced the US/Zionist “war of terror” was a victory for the world wide proletariat. But the bourgeois leadership of Hizbollah prevented this heroic national war of resistance from turning into the start of a workers and peasants revolution in Lebanon and Palestine capable of spreading to the whole Middle East. This was the only real prospect of defeating the Zionist army, destroying the State of Israel and burying the occupying Anglo/US troops in the sands of Iraq. Therefore, the halting of the war by means of a cease-fire creates a provisional status quo based on a pact between the UN Security Council whose permanent members, US, UK, France, China and Russia are imperialist powers or otherwise major rivals for the world’s resources, the Zionist-fascist state of Israel, the pro-imperialistic client regime of Lebanon and the bourgeois leadership of Hizbollah. This pact has the objective of achieving what Bush and the Zionist army could not do, defeating the Palestinian and Lebanese masses of the south, and destroying the only powerful guerilla army, Hizbollah, that can fight for the national independence of Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan. In order to implement the plan the Hizbollah must withdraw north of the Litani river while the south is occupied by 15,000 soldiers of the Lebanese army, which fired not one short defend the nation against the Zionist assault, and 15,000 “blue helmets” of the UN, who have the task of disarming the masses and locking up the Palestinian refugees in concentration camps. The cynicism of the permanent members of the UNSC has no limits. UNSC Resolution 1701 does not condemn the war of agression of the Zionist-facist state of Israel that left Lebanon in ruins killing more than a thousand workers and their families. It presents these UN mercenaries who authorised the massacres in the Balkans, the first war against Iraq, the occupation of Afghanistan, and the massacre of the Palestinian people that led to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, as the guarantors of “peace” in the south of the Lebanon! If this plan is to succeed Hizbollah will have to use all of its prestige and mass support won in the fight against the Zionist army, to persuad the masses to accept the rule of the pro-imperilalist army of Siniora,the UN ‘blue helmets’ and to give up its arms. This will be a difficult task. Each house in the south of Lebanon was a site of resistance, and each family has dead to honour. The masses feel like victors and are returning to their land and homes in the south where some Zionist troops remain and only a few kilometers separate them from the borders of the state of Israel. If they do not convince the masses to give up their arms th e next plan may be the one used against the Bosnians. The UN surrounded the Bosnian cities of Sebrenica and Gorazde, entered and disarmed them and then allowed the Serbian troops of Milosevic to come and “ethnically cleanse” the Bosnian people. This is what they are preparing with the counter-revolutionary pact between the UN, Siniora, the Lebanese army and the state of Israel! The French imperialist butchers want to take charge of the occupation to advance their interests in the Middle East France proposed the pact to the UN Security Council of the UN and already has around 2000 troops in Lebanon which arrived in mid July “to evacuate its citizens”. This is no accident. French imperialism is in a desparate rivalry with US imperialism for markets, spheres of influence and oil pipelines. It is in partnership with the Syrian and Iranian bourgeoisie of the Bazaar (Shiite), just as it was with Saddam Hussein in Iraq, before the Anglo/US invasion cancelled Frances oil contracts with Iraq. Iran supplies oil to France and gas to Russia which pipes it to the ex-Soviet republics of the Baltic. For that reason, the failure of the US/Zionist aims to defeat Hizbollah and partition Lebanon has created an opening for French imperialism to play a larger role in the region. That is why Chirac proposed the UN ceasefire resolution, some thousands of troops, and offered to lead the UNIFIL operation in Lebanon so that it could have more influence over the Lebanese regime. Chirac and the greedy French monopolies already speculate on their increased profits. Anglo/US imperialism and Zionist Israel will now have to offer a share of the gas and oil of Azerbaiján and Kazakjstán passing through Turkey and the Mediterranean, to their French competitors in exchange for guarantees of stablility in Lebanon. The French imperialist butchers will not hesitate to smash in fire and blood the popular resistance in the south of Lebanon, just as they did in the Balkans where the French “blue helmets” permitted the Serbian massacre of the Bosnians, or as they did in the Ivory Coast of Africa; are as they did against the Algerian people fighting the French colonial yoke. These are the bloodthirsty French imperialistic butchers who the treacherous leaders of the World Social Forum paint as “democratic” and “pacifists” before the workers and the exploited peoples of the world! French imperialism hands off the Lebanon, Palestine and the Middle East! The pact will also help conceal the ongoing Zionist repression in Gaza and the West Bank During the month that Israel assaulted Lebanon, imperialism, the UN, the mainstream media and the client bourgeoisies of the Middle East, all did their best to hide the fact that the Zionist-Fascist state of Israel continued its barbaric killing and repressing of the the Palestinian people of Gaza and the West Bank. More than 200 Palestinian workers, peasants, women and children were killed from 28 June onward. There are 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners still being ill treated and tortured in the Zionist jails. In Gaza and Transjordan, the population is locked up behind walls, surrounded by the Israeli army, with all their roads, bridges and border posts. These are nothing but two great ghettos, two concentration camps where hunger, thirst, disease and despair reign. There is no food, there is no medicine, there is no water, there is no work, it is not possible to be come or go. If this is not the same fascism used by the Nazis against Jews, then what is? The ceasefire pact is also to create the impression that the war is over, whereas in reality the killing continues in Gaza and Transjordan. Before long under the eyes of UNIFIL the Israelis will be preparing to slaughter the disarmed Palestinian and Lebanese masses in the south of the Lebanon.
Hands off Lebanon and Palestine! Down with the client regime of Siniora and his sepoy army!
We must stop this imperialist/Zionist pact, ceasefire, etc from being imposed on the heroic Palestinian masses and the people of the south of the Lebanon! UN troops out of Lebanon!
The Lebanese army refused to fight and to defend the nation from the brutal attack of the Zionist army. For committees of soldiers to sack the officers and disarm them and put the arms to the use of the resistance!
For workers’ and peasants’ militias from the north of the Lebanon to Gaza and Transjordan. For revolutionary national war to destroy the Zionist-fascist state of Israel! The masses of south Lebanon, and of of the workers districts of Beirut, who resisted the Zionist army, had their houses and infrastructure destroyed. Roads, bridges, power etc were wiped out. A quarter of the total population of the Lebanon is now returning to their towns and villages to the south of the Litani river to find a devastated land, without houses, food, water, medicines or hospitals. Meanwhile, the bourgeoisie and the rich middle-class of the north that did not fight, nor defend the country from the Zionist invasion, have their properties and luxurious houses intact, and do not have to suffer hunger, thirst, cold, and only risk sunburn when basking in their swimming pools. For a workers emergency economic plan to provide adequate living conditions for the workers and peasants families who defended the nation! For the immediate expropriation without compensation and under workers control, of the mansions, tourist hotels, summer houses etc. of the bourgeoisies of the Lebanon, to provide food, water, medicine, and shelter to the Palestinian and Lebanese masses!
Down with the imperialist-Zionist client regime of Siniora and Co!
Transform the heroic civil war of resistance against imperialism and the Zionist-fascist state into a counter-offensive and the beginning of the workers and peasants revolution in Lebanon and historical Palestine.
A Workers’ and Peasants’ government is necessary to defeat the imperialist occupation!
A Lebanese Workers and Peasants’ government can become a bastion in the struggle to build destroy the state Zionist-fascist of Israel and to win a secular, democratic and nonracist Palestinian state, and open the road for a Workers’ and Peasants’ Government of the armed Palestinian masses.
The international working class must reject the ceasefire that has been imposed on the Palestinian and Lebanese masses!
The international working class must support the Iraqi resistance in the growing counter-offensive against the puppet government of the protectorate, to fight for its overthrow and to expel the invading troops! The workers and peasants of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and the whole Middle East must break their submission to their own bourgeoisies and redouble the combat against their governments which stand by while the Zionists kill the Palestinian and Lebanese masses, and use the blood of the resistance fighters as small change in their negotiations with imperialism and Zionism. Only in this way will the workers and peasants of the region will be able to advance towards a Federation of Workers and Peasants’ Republics of the Middle East, defeating imperialism and Zionism, and the regimes of their junior partners, the national bourgeosies, to create the conditions for peace and justice in the region. The Zionist-fascist state of Israel must be destroyed and imperialism buried in the sands! Once again, the heroic resistance of the Palestinian and Lebanese masses, has tested the strength of the military might of imperialism and Zionism, and has won a victory for the workers and exploited peoples of the world. The US and British workers are strengthened in their fight against the weakened Bush and Blair regimes. The working class youth of France are also strengthened in their fight against the persecution and deportation of the French bourgeoise and their imperialist regime. Recognising this fact, the world wide working class, espcially in the imperialist countries, must honour this struggle and raise as their battle flag “Long Live our class brothers and sisters of Palestine, of south Lebanon, of Iraq and all the Middle East; the Zionist-fascist state of Israel must die, and the Anglo-US invading army must be buried in the sands of Iraq!”
Our first task is to smash the counter-revolutionary pact between the UN, the US, France, the Zionist state and the client regime of the Lebanon. UNIFIL hands off Lebanon! The French working class has a great responsibility in its hands, against its own bourgeoisie leading the imperialist occupation of Lebanon. It must prevent a repeat of the ‘Balkans’ massacres against the Palestinian and Lebanese masses: is necessary for working youth rise up again to the shout of: “French imperialism hands off Palestine, Lebanon and the Middle East”!
French trooops out of Lebanon or Paris and every city in France will every nigh become “a Baghdad”!
Stop the imperialist troops being sent to occupy Iraq to aid the victory of the Iraqian resistance!
For the defeat of the Anglo-US troops in Iraq and for the victory of the Iraqi masses!
Out with all imperialistic troops in Afghanistan and the Middle East! To achieve this it will be necessary to defeat the labour aristocracies and the bureaucratic leaderships of the the World Social Forum that subordinate the working class to the bourgeoisie by calling on the imperialists “to fight for peace” and painting the UN and the French imperialistic butchers in the Middle East as “democratic” and “pacifist”. To break with the bourgeoisie, the workers in the imperialist countries, in Latin America, Africa and Asia Pacific, must make the victory of the heroic resistance of the Palestinian masses, of the Lebanon and the Middle East, their common demand: “So that the Palestinian people and the oppressed masses of the Middle East live, the Zionist-fascist state of Israel and imperialism, must die! Leninist-Trotskyist Fraction 17 August of 2006
From Class Struggle 68 August-September 2006
Matt McCarten’s Unite Workers’ union sacrifices rank and file democracy for deals with bosses and parliamentary careers. McCarten is trying to enlist ‘his’ union as part of the World Social Forum reformist left bloc that tries to make deals between workers and ‘democratic’ bosses as the road to parliamentary socialism.
"My Union"
Unite Workers Association won a good wage increase from Restaurant Brands but how did it do it? By strike action! So far so good. Matt McCarten presented the victory as a “new historic deal” for young fast food workers. But then we hear that instead of taking the proposed deal back to a vote of the members he signed the deal behind the backs of the members. What was the rush? It may have got overwhelmingly support from the membership anyway. So why not take it back to the members? We know that some fast food workers were upset by the fact that Unite was calling on workers to go on strike by text messaging them. One worker we spoke to who was also a job delegate was called into work to fill in for workers who walked off the job without any discussion or a vote on strike action. She was called a scab by those who walked off. Were the Restaurant Brands deal and the charge of scab hurled at this young woman isolated cases of things going wrong? Or were they symptomatic of the McCarten political machine? We think the latter. This looks like McCarten using these young workers as media fodder to pressure politicians to back Sue Bradford’s Bill to eliminate discriminatory youth rates, at the cost of their own democratic right to discuss matters and vote on them. In other words the rank and file members of McCarten’s Unite branch are being used by him to back his own campaign to form a new reformist party on the left.
Why doesn’t this surprise us? Well we’ve seen it coming for years. Back in 02 when the Alliance lost out in Parliament we predicted that McCarten would regroup and try to find a union base for his politics. It took him about 3 years to insert himself into Unite by forming his own branch in Auckland, Unite Workers Association, and start recruiting members, but deliberately excluding beneficiaries and the unemployed. All the while we kept up a running commentary on McCarten’s methods. First, he exposed workers to unnecessary risk of sacking by his flamboyant, high profile advocacy. Second, he started poaching workers from other unions. Third, he structured UWA so that he controlled the union from the top down. Fourth, he associated the union with the police in the ‘Comrades and Cossacks’ commemoration. Fifth he ran, and continues to run, a scurrilous campaign against Waitemata Unite! a branch of the union based on beneficiaries who have been openly critical of his bureaucratic methods and his exclusion of beneficiaries over several years. But in spite of these problems, CWG backed the initiative of recruiting non-unionised workers especially young fast food workers. For us this is elementary united front politics. But we always said to Unite organisers that the members had to be in charge. We pushed to make Unite a genuinely rank and file based union. Those inside Unite who were in agreement with this principle assured us that they too were fighting for this objective. It seems however, with the Restaurant Brands deal, that our fears have been justified, and their hopes have been defeated.
Radical Youth ‘walkout’ Radical Youth originated the campaign against youth rates taken up by later by Unite which then steered it behind Bradford’s Bill. The ‘walkout’ organised by Radical Youth in March could not be contained by McCarten’s Unite. Both the Alliance and McCarten praised the walkout but then tried to steer the youth’s actions behind parliamentary reforms to make capitalism a ‘fair’, ‘democratic’, 'socialist' society. But there is no future in such activism. It is no more than media fodder to support parliamentary reforms. Similar street activism was the routine tactic of the Peoples Centre in Auckland when Sue Bradford ran it in the late 1980's and 1990s without much success. It was also the preferred method of the university students against user pay fees in the 1990s. They made their point, but the protest fizzled because it was always designed to put pressure on parliament. We don’t think that radical youth were prepared to be used as rent boys and girls on McCarten’s parliamentary roadshow. We see the walkout as part a wider movement of young workers globally that is taking on capitalism itself? This is a movement that goes beyond immediate reforms towards revolution? In this they are not alone. Young people in France, migrant workers in the US, and oppressed Iraqis, all know there is no way that capitalism can afford ‘democracy’ and a living wage for them. Sure fast food outlets may pay more in NZ, but they are going to screw workers in other ways and in other countries to make their profits. Capitalism today is about taking these rights and conditions away from the weakest. And even the best organised workers in the world, the US autoworkers, are facing crippling job losses and pension and health ‘takebacks’. So the more pressure radical youth puts on companies here, the more they will find that they are still exploited so that its not just low wages but the wage system that is the problem. Just like the youth in France right now i.e. facing wage slavery. The French youth won a small victory against the CPE, but it will take an unlimited general strike to stop the ruling class from bringing in the measures it wants in some other form. French Lessons In France the recent student rebellion proved that students, youth and workers can unite to fight not only bad laws but can mobilise to bring down a government. They were aiming for a general strike to defeat the law. But the union bosses are as usual playing a treacherous role. The Communists and Socialists think that a ‘social Europe’ can be won through parliaments to do everything they can to stop a real all –out general strike from happening. But not only the open reformists. The leading so-called ‘Trotskyist Party’ the LCR joined with the CP and SP and the Greens to sign a statement begging Chirac to throw out the new law and sit down to talk with the ‘left’ about a ‘consensus’ i.e. ‘compromise’. In other words the so-called ‘far left’ took the struggle off the street back into parliament to do a deal behind the backs of the young workers. The LCR in France has close relations with the SWP and the Socialist Workers in NZ. The LCR talked about a general strike but did not put this demand on the union officials to force them to call one. This is the same politics of the Workers’ Charter and McCarten’s Unite in New Zealand. They try to contain the spontaneous struggles of the youth, students and workers by making backroom deals with the bosses and with governments. Their reformist perspective is to build a popular front in which the ‘left’ can pressure the right. Fat chance! Right across the world, the parties of the ‘new type’ are no more than the broad left leg of the popular front alliance with the ‘democratic’ capitalists, sowing illusions in young, militant workers that they can deliver parliamentary socialism from above, and disarming them in the face of imperialist attacks. Where to from here? Fight for rank and file democracy! Challenge the leadership? Make McCarten accountable! Insist that all issues are debated at all up meetings. Insist that delegates are elected by the rank and file and are accountable and recallable. Stand up for your rights! Unite for workers power, not bureaucratic power! Build fighting, democratic unions, not parliamentary careers! Reject the McCartenite, Workers Charter local kiwi branch of the World Social Forum bloc that draws young workers under the influence of the bourgeois and restorationist leadership of Chavez, Castro, Morales and Lula that is containing and strangling the revolutionary masses in Latin America!
Caracas: Meeting of the 6th Counter-revolutionary World Social Forum From the 24 to the 29 of January the Sixth annual meeting of the counter-revolutionary international the World Social Forum met in Caracas, Venezuela. The LOI of Argentina, a member of the Leninist Trotskyists Fraction, gives its verdict. The WSF, along with the "left" of the US Democratic Party, was responsible for betraying the US national ‘day of absence’ against poverty, racism and war called for the 1st of December by a Committee of more than 700 worker and antiwar organisations. This was the first time for years that militant elements in the US working class had coordinated a counter-offensive against the Bush government and the US capitalist class. It is this same collection of social democrats, Stalinists, "Greens", Castroites, Maoists, and fake Trotskyists – all associated with the WSF - that have mobilised to contain the awakening US working class in response to the crisis of the Bush administration, such as we saw in the Transit strike in New York, to make sure it remains subordinated to the Democratic party of US imperialism. At the Sixth WSF were all those dedicated to the suppression of US workers struggles and all the mass struggles in Latin America in the name of the much heralded ‘Bolivarian Revolution’.First up was Chavez declaring "it is necessary to go forward to 21st Century Socialism”, speaking of "socialism or death", shamelessly singing the ‘Internationale’ to close the meeting, and taking photo opportunities with Cindy Sheehan - the mother of the US soldier killed in Iraq who fights for the return of US troops – while at the same time he continues to sell the US regime the oil it needs to occupy Iraq and kill its people! Or course Chavez never calls on the oppressed workers of Iraq, or the mothers, wives, or daughters of the thousands of Iraqi resistance fighters killed by the invaders, to organise for the military victory of Iraq and the defeat of Anglo-Yankee imperialism! Following Chavez were all the supporters of Evo Morales, the new president of Bolivia, just finished appointing to his cabinet millionaire industralists like the ministers of Defense and Public Works, and ex-state employees of the former government of the murderer Goni overthrown in a popular rebellion in 2003, as well as peasants, miners and ex-union leaders. In other words, the Sixth WSF was a meeting for all those backing the class collaboration of Morales who has already announced that he will respect and defend private property, allow the private exploitation of the Mutún mine (the largest manganese deposit in the world), made deals with the Santa Cruz bourgeoisie (home of most of Bolivia's oil and mineral wealth), with the Spanish firm Corona, and with the oil monopolies, to contine to plunder Bolivia’s gas wealth. After the Morales cheerleaders were the supporters of the current Ecuadorian government of Palacios such as the Maoist MDP, the Pachacutik and the CONAIE. They had tried to prevent the removal of his predecessor, Lucio Gutiérrez, who fell at the hands of a revolutionary mass uprising. Today these same forces are once more trying to stop the new uprising of the workers and poor peasants led by students, who have been fighting for two weeks against the the signing of a FTA between the Palacios government and the US. These same leaders went to the WSF to embrace Chávez, who only months ago openly lent millions of barrels of oil to Palacios, thus sabotaging the strike and a political uprising of the workers and farmers of the Ecuadorian provinces of Sucumbíos and Orellana against Oxy and other imperialist oil companies. With the aid of his friend Chávez, Palacios used the Ecuadorian army to fiercely repress the people and to militarize these two provinces. They can both count on the support of the Cuban bureaucracy of Castro - as can Morales – which also comes to the rescue of the US client regimes of Lula, Kirchner, Tabaré Vázquez, Bachelet and Co., as it prepares to complete the restoration of capitalism in Cuba. Not to be left behind, there were four ministers of the Brazilian government, representing Lula and the PT (Workers Party), one of the most servile lackey governments of the US (like Kirchner, who has paid off the billions owed to the IMF in cash) which allows its troops along with those of Argentina and Chile, to occupy Haiti in the service of the imperial master. The Argentine delegation included the Kirchnerites of the FTV, Barrios de Pie, bureaucrats like Yasky of the CTERA and Gutiérrez of the UOM - today a supporter of Kirchner in parliament. During the WSF a number of workers were attacked and jailed by the police and local politicians in Tartagal and Mosconi (in the North of Argentina), while in Caracas the state servants of Kirchner, the ally of Bush, Repsol and the IMF, met with the union bureaucrats and pro-government officials of the piqueteros (unemployed workers movement), bosses' politicians like Mario Cafiero, the mst, and Nestor Pitrola of the Workers Party which voted for the popular front government of Evo Morales. Playing a key role in the WSF are the fake Trotskyists who destroyed the Fourth International and became reformists. Today, all are fervent defenders of Chávez, Morales, the Castro bureaucracy, and the "Bolivarian Revolution". They have openly broken with the struggle for the workers and socialist revolution, and have adopted the old class collaborationist policy of "revolution by stages" of Stalinism, telling the workers to put their hopes in the "good", "progressive" bosses, the "anti-imperialist" military, and the "democratic" and "pacifist" imperialists. So the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’, the ‘star’ of the Sixth World Social Forum, is no more than a cover to disguise the sordid deals the national bourgeoisies make with each other and with the imperialistic monopolies, to decide who gets what share of the profits, according to what resources are available, and how each country is slotted into the global capitalist division of labor. It is also a cover for the politics of the Castro bureaucracy that wants to restore capitalism in Cuba and to re-invent itself as a new bourgeoisie. Socialist revolution is the triumphant insurrection of the workers and poor peasants that seizes the power, overthrows the bourgeoisie and expropriates the imperialistic monopolies and all the bosses. That is the only way that the anti-imperialist struggle can be carried through to completion, breaking with the imperilialists and their national bourgeois junior partners and making a planned socialist economy possible. That is why there are only two roads for the working class and the exploited masses of Latin America: either the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ in which the proletariat submits to the continued exploitation, misery, massacres and imperialistic sacking of our nations; or, the struggle for a victorious workers socialist revolution on the road to the Socialist United States of Central and South America which can plan production where the gas, iron and managnese of Bolivia, the meat and the soyabean of Argentina, the copper of Chile, the minerals of Peru, the oil of Venezuela, the industry of Brazil, etc., are all used to meet the needs of the vast majority of the exploited and oppressed workers and poor peasants. Today the most important step along the socialist road for all workers and poor peasants of the continent is the fight for the victory of the heroic revolution of the Bolivian workers and peasants which the popular front goverenment of Evo Morales, backed by the counter-revolutionary WSF, is today trying to destroy.
- Against the WSF, expropriator of the struggles of the masses!
- For the Workers' and poor Peasants' Revolution!
- For a Socialist United States of Central and South America!
Translated and condensed from Supplement to Democracia Obrera 3rd February 2006
From Class Struggle 65 Feb/Mar 2006
Workers Charter had its founding conference in October. CWG members went along to offer some advice. Here is a report of how we saw it. We stand by our critique of the Workers Charter (printed in Class Struggle 62) and its parent movement the World Social Forum (critiqued in Class Struggle 59). We wish to continue to engage in critical support of the Workers Charter (WC). Communist Workers Group does not wish to build another parliamentary-type of workers party and will criticise unreservedly any movement the WC makes in that direction. We are keen to support the building of a revolutionary party, unfortunately the origins of the WC indicate that it will mislead workers. Members of Communist Workers Group decided to test the un-democratic (Stalinist) methods of Workers Charter, which had said they were going to exclude us (and ACA) from the conference. We considered it important to challenge the internet noise of SWO / Unity, on NZ activism, in reality. (The Socialist Workers Organisation has renamed itself “Unity”, it was previously the Communist Party of New Zealand – a Stalinist group). Unity members were the gatekeepers on the front desk and did interview us on how critical we were going to be, to which we wished to maintain our rights to speak critically, while giving a positive direction for the workers movement. This could have gone either way, however, the appearance of democracy was maintained. The meeting rules were set out from the start, we had to leave if we thought the Charter was useless. This does not allow for overall discussion of the weaknesses of the Charter. Unfortunately the Charter may be worse than useless, it may suck working people into a dead end road, which does not challenge capitalism. It is urgent to pose the question of how to avoid this Charter becoming a bureaucratic parliamentary vehicle for the likes of Matt McCarten. The speakers to introduce the Charter were a SWO leader followed by Matt McCarten. It wasn’t what was said but what wasn’t, that is notable: I failed to get a clear understanding of what the purpose of the Charter was from either speaker, and neither made distinct their own politics from that of the charter, or declared their own intentions. No history of the Charter, or connection with the World Social Forum was declared. It was a milestone for the writer to be allowed into a Unity dominated meeting, and to speak. Our opportunity for contribution was time limited. The writer put about 5 amendments or additions within 2 minutes speaking time. This limited my ability to argue for the amendments and additions that were put to the charter itself. Many others raised their criticisms and suggested improvement to the Charter –which created a squeeze on time, with numbers of amendments and additions put. Many of these were put to vote and successfully added, for the next rounds of discussion. And have improved this minimal program of rights. Some amendments were left as contentious issues for further discussion. I will leave much of the detail of the Charter and its ongoing discussion for Workers Charter to run with, and discus a couple of additions we put to the conference. We asked for the addition of the word capitalism to describe current social system. This charter was so minimal in its approach that it did not even include the word capitalism or describe capitalists as the ruling class. While the WC is appealing to workers, the level of class consciousness in its program is minimal. To fight for workers rights is to take on the capitalist system, unless the charter is clear about that, then it is likely to end up like the current Labour Party, negotiating with and ruling on behalf of the capitalist class. This sort of vagueness about class leads to a Labour Party outright attacking workers, to maintain profits for the capitalist. The NZ Labour Party clearly did that in 1984 – 1990 when it cut services to workers (health, social welfare, education) and sold socially owned assets or restructured them into capitalist ‘for profit’ SOEs (State Owned Enterprises). A very current example of this was discussed at the conference. Air New Zealand has just announced its attack on workers of the Engineering services by its proposed redundancies and closing of a whole branch of service. Air NZ is part owned by the state. We argued that the WC needed include nationalising assets (even the Alliance Party program already includes this in their program). To re-nationalise Air NZ fully could then be used in order to maintain those jobs. Pressure needs to be applied to the current Labour Government by picket line defence of the engineering facilities. If this Labour government allows Air NZ engineers to be sold down the road, that is another betrayal of workers interests. Communist Workers Group is for the expropriation without compensation of Air New Zealand, to be run under workers control. It would take a working class pickets and engineering workers occupation of the engineering facilities to achieve this. Interestingly ‘Unity’ / Socialist Workers voted against an addition we put up of “for socialist revolution”. To us this indicates they continue a Stalinist tradition of running with minimal programs and mass parties, while hiding their “revolutionary” beliefs until the ‘critical’ moment. Even the pre-Blairite British Labour Party had a clause for “socialism” (also known as clause 4). So this WC is in great danger of becoming just another parliamentary party, sucking workers into sell-outs and a dead-end. Communist Workers Group fully support building a party on a rank & file trade union basis. We were successful arguing for rank & file run, democratic fighting unions, to be included as part of the charter. Only a strong rank & file driven union can avoid being sold out by bureaucratic deals between misleading paid officials and the employer or government. Those sort of sell outs are rife, for example where union officials just argue about how many redundancies, and how much redundancy pay. Officials can give false hope of stopping redundancies, when they are up against the capitalist system. Organising workers into picket lines and strike committees is the localised strength of the workers movement. The extent that Workers Charter members can build a fight back around existing struggles, can organise workers in on-the-ground fight backs, will be the real test. It is heartening to hear that WC members have supported pickets of striking workers. However it is also frightening that the WC steering committee (leadership) could have left out basic trade union rights from its Charter. Communist Workers Group looks forward to working with any activist or group committed to the overthrow of capitalism. And we will criticise any movement that is vague about that! Chavez’ ‘21st century socialism’ not good enough for Workers Charter From a discussion on Aotearoa Indymedia
Unity Reader defended the SW’s ‘turn to social democracy’ and the expulsion of the CWG from the Alliance in 1989 and its exclusion from Workers Charter. A member of CWG replied: “Someone called Unity Reader says that the SWO is justified in taking a turn to social democracy because socialist revolution is not on the agenda in NZ right now. . . .There has never been a revolutionary situation in NZ in the nearly two centuries of its capitalist existence. And that is because the working class has never been independent of parliament or the bourgeoisie. The first step out of a non-revolutionary situation is to assert the class independence of workers from the bosses! What Unity Reader fails to understand is that there is a difference between united fronts and revolutionary programs. In non-revolutionary times workers should join forces in united fronts that advance their interests as a class, but not by suspending their revolutionary program and making a 'turn' to social democracy - the bosses program! Revolutionaries are obliged to fight inside united fronts to prove that it is their program that will advance the interests of workers. What Workers Charter is a reduction of the political program of the working class to a minimal program that does not even MENTION socialism. If this was just a loose network to organise in the unions and fight in united fronts, this would not be so bad. But WC presents itself as the embryo of a new mass workers party, on a social democratic program of the bosses This takes us to Unity Reader’s 'study' of the history of the New Labour Party. The CWG entered the NLP because it its leaders claimed to be forming a new workers party. We were obliged as revolutionaries to fight for a revolutionary workers party, not meekly sit around while Anderton and McCarten betrayed the workers who had broken with Labour and took the NLP back into parliament as part of a middle class' Alliance, which then propped up another Labour Government. Workers Charter is headed down the same road, but this time it’s not a tragedy; it’s a farce. Its a farce because it has already been rejected by a large number of militants as too little, too late, based on manifestly dead-end reformist politics, and at a time when its own international allies, the militant workers of Latin America, Asia etc are moving rapidly towards socialist politics under a reborn 'socialism of the 21st century' championed by Chavez in the spirit of Che, Castro etc. When the militant masses are moving in the direction of socialism, WC moves backward. This is not the 'backwardness' given by NZ's particular place in the world, because in itself that's deceptive and open to rapid changes, but the backward political perspective of those who have given up on socialist revolution in order to build another parliamentary party.
From Class Struggle 64 Nov 05/Jan 06
In Argentina today a crucial struggle at the hospital of Garrahan for a monthly wage of $1800 is underway. It is a struggle that can be won by the workers but only if they break with the treacherous leaders of the unions, and the sellout ‘left’ parties that serve the bureaucratic bloc in the WSF containing all the struggles in Latin America behind popular front or Bonapartist regimes posing as popular, anti-imperialist governments. Condensed from Workers Democracy 9/8/05 Imperialism has contained the struggles for now Imperialism and the pro-imperialist bourgeoisies of Latin America have won a breathing space. The working masses and farmers who only months ago, overthrew with their revolutionary action Mesa in Bolivia and Gutiérrez in Ecuador, have been contained momentarily. In Bolivia, the World Social Forum led by Chávez and Castro, Evo Morales, Solares, Quispe, and the liquidators of Trotskyism that today play the role once played by the old Communist Parties of Latin America, have forced a truce with the government of Rodriguez and the Bolivian bosses’ regime. By this means they prevented the creation of a dual power organ of the workers and farmers and of a centralized militia, and blocked the recalling of the national congress of delegates of the Original Popular Assembly. By this means they legitimated the illegitimate government of Rodriguez and the puppet parliament of the mine owners. They reversed everything that the masses had done in 16 days of heroic struggle, and made a truce until the elections in December. For that reason, in El Alto and La Paz, there are appearing graffiti saying “Solares you sold out” and “Robert De La Cruz we will hang you" (a reference to the Castroite labor leader Solares, and Roberto de la Cruz, a leader of the COR of El Alto). All of them, as a continental bloc, supported Palacios - the successor of Gutiérrez- in Ecuador. The result: today Palacios sent the army to ruthlessly repress the masses that rose up in Amazonia, taking 200 oil wells, confronting the Western Yankee monopoly (Oxy) that robs petroleum from them, paying $12 a barrel which it then sells for almost $70! More than 60 were injured and the army remains occupying Amazonia: [See Venezuelan oil workers statement above] This is the result of the suppression of the revolution in Bolivia and the fight of the Ecuadorian masses! The new treachery that the workers in Latin America face has important consequences. For the Central American workers, the region has been transformed by the US under CAFTA into an enormous assembly plant with the complicity of Ortega (leader of Nicaraguan Sandinistas), Shafik Handal (leader of the Salvadoran FMLN) and all the old "commanders" living today as yuppies, servants of the restorationist Castro bureaucracy. For the Chilean workers, it means the slavery and the flexibilisation of work under the TLC. This is the "anti-neoliberal model" of Lula, Kirchner, Chávez, Tabaré Vázquez and other servants of imperialism, and the one supported by the reformist left of WSF that back these agents of imperialism! For that reason, imperialism and the national bourgeoisies can breathe freely again. In Argentina the struggle has been strangled In Argentina, the big wave of workers fights for higher wages, that began last December, including the Telephone, Subway, rail, education, public sector and metal workers, was strangled by keeping the disputes divided, with separate contracts, and inflation destroying any wage gains. Meanwhile, with poverty line pensions and Work Plans [work for the dole] and with public sector workers wages frozen, with the health and education budgets the lowest ever, the bosses are raking off a huge fiscal surplus to pay the IMF external debt on time. Thanks to this treachery of the union bureaucracy of the CGT and the CTA, which once more could count on the collaboration of the reformist left (that was thrust into the leadership by the workers in those fights), today the bourgeoisie breathes easier and admits that it " continues to do good business" Under these conditions, the struggle of the workers of the Garrahan is at the head of the fightback and faces the concerned attack of the employer's association, the government and the union bureaucracy. The reformist left met this attack by opposing all independent class actions opposed to the hated regime of the social pact. It destroyed, as soon as it was born, the Intersyndical, an attempt to link all sectors in struggle such as the Subway workers, because it challenged the bureaucracy to break the wage freeze imposed by the employer's association and backed by the union bureaucracy. . . The World Social Forum promotes ‘democratic’ imperialism It is the left of the World Social Forum, that made the truce with Palacios in Ecuador and Rodriguez in Bolivia; that is now led by the supposedly "nationalistic" Colonel Chávez, who supplies Venezuelan oil to the US despite the US massacre in Iraq, and who has not threatened the interests of the rich 31 families in Venezuela or the imperialist monopolies that control the Venezuelan economy. It is the same left of the WSF that trusts the Parliamentary Commissions for "investigating" the class traitor Lula, the greatest servant of the Brazilian bourgeoisie and of imperialism in Latin America. The same left which with Tabaré Vázquez and the Communist Party of Uruguay, is ready to pardon the genocidal military in that country today, as Menem did in Argentina yesterday. Thus, this policy of continental class collaboration tries to throw water on the fire of revolution to defeat the masses, so that the multinational companies and finance capital can retain in control of the hydrocarbons, and other resources and super-exploit the masses of our continent and oppress our nations. But to successfully put out the fire, they need the renegade Trotskyists and their parties – that for decades in Latin American led the combative proletariat – to be used like “squeezed lemons” to sell to the most militant workers this bosses’ politics of oppression and plunder. We are thus witnessing in Latin America the cynical and treacherous politics of class collaboration promoted by the Castro bureaucracy and all the liquidators of the Trotskyists Fourth International who have gone into the popular struggles armed with their collaborationist programs to contain the proletarian revolution. The Resistance Continues! But, just as in Iraq, the heroic resistance continues. The laws of history are stronger than any political apparatus, and will not leave unpunished the currents that in the name of the proletariat have gone over to prop up the citadels of power of the enemy, their states and regimes, promoting the "peaceful road to socialism", calling to fight for "what is possible", and supporting "from the left" all the collaborationist union bureaucracies of the continent, hated by the masses. At the same time, a picket has been set up in front of the ranch of Bush in Texas, United States. There, hundreds of demonstrators spend days and nights, next to the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq, who blames Bush for his death and demands the immediate return of the troops. It is a symbol, a symptom of the awakening of the North American working class. In this awakening, which can bring about –along with the heroic resistance of the Iraqi masses – a new defeat of its own imperialistic bourgeoisie, which as in Vietnam, and open up the way out for the working class and the exploited people of Latin America. They confront and resist the deceptions, the traps and the frauds of the treacherous leaders of the workers organisations, showing the way for the revolutionary movement. It is the Trotskyists, refounding the [Trotskyist] Fourth International that will rub the tinder to create the spark that sets the prairie on fire. . . . Garrahan is the rallying call of the workers! "They are too left", "they follow political objectives", "They cause too much discord", "are politicized", "they will not enter dialogue", "they are terrorists", are the way the bosses’ politicians try to discredit and isolate the heroic fight of the Garrahan workers and to the militant piquetero movement [unemployed], in order to defeat these workers in struggle. Cynical gangsters! These are the people who are going to bring to Argentina in November, the greatest terrorist in the world, the genocidal Bush, while every day they serve him in the super-exploitation of the oppressed nation! This is the government and the employer's association that "are radicalized" against workers who request a miserable basic wage to be able to scratch a living from the family shopping basket while they work all their lives in the Hospital! They are those who "are radicalized", paying to the IMF thousands of million dollars a year, and favoring the businesses of the slave driving employer's association! They are campaigning in the election "making politics" against the workers to boost their profits! And the workers have no right to fight politically for a living wage! No more begging! No more asking for permission to strike! No more any obligation to explain ourselves! . . . The working class must win Garrahan! The victory of Garrahan must be the victory of the whole working class. What this heroic fight and all the others underway need is a true and authentic class politics that opposes the regime and the government of the exploiters and its policy of wage slavery and sacking. It is a political fight in defense of public health and public education whose budgets have been plundered to pay to the IMF. For that reason, to win sufficient spending on health and education, wages, work, etc., it is necessary to confront and defeat the economic plan of the government, the employer's association and the IMF, uniting the struggles of the Garrahan with those of the teachers and university students who mobilized themselves in their tens of thousands in Cordoba and which are conducting militant campaigns in Mendoza and other provinces.
· All to the Garrahan to coordinate now!
· Enough! Out with all the bosses and the traitors! Yesterday, thousands of workers in Brazil marched against the treacherous Lula to the shout of "the workers speak: out with all the bosses and the traitors!". This is the shout that we must raise today in the militant vanguard of the Argentine working class, and this is the commitment of the international Trotskyists of Workers Democracy. · Living wages and real work for all!
· For a basic wage of $1800 and month and real jobs for all!
· For a national committee of struggle to defeat the union bureaucracy!
· For a Plan of Action and a National Strike! Article Condensed from: WORKERS DEMOCRACY Nº 9 9th August 2005
From Class Struggle 63 Sept/Oct 2005
