Argentina Kirchnerism in its final stretch

Nº 34 • May • August 2014 • IWU-FI
Argentina
Kirchnerism
in its final stretch
General
strike
10 April
Teachers strike
in Buenos Aires
province
Internacional Unification
Congress
Summary
Presentation....................................1 Turkey
Massacre in privatised mine in Turkey.21
Nº 34 • May • August 2014
Brazil
Magazine of the UIT–FI
International Wyorkers Unity – Fourth
International
Unification Congress.....................2
International Coordination
Offices
Hipólito Yrigoyen 1115
Buenos Aires
Argentina
Telephones
+54 11 4383 7733
+54 11 4383 4047
Internet
www.uit-ci.org
A strategic unity......................................... 4
Advancing in the reconstruction of the
Fourth International.................................. 6
Wave of strikes hits the government of
Dilma and the PT.....................................22
A step forward in the reconstruction of
the Fourth International........................... 7
The reactivation of the shipyards has
resurrected the workers’ struggle.......24
A true revolutionary alternative............. 8
Argentina
Mexico
Kirchnerism in its final stretch................ 9
Against the counter reforms imposed
by the government...................................26
Left Front: A great pole of class
independence............................................11
Venezuela
Successful Militant Trade Union
Gathering...................................................13
Layout
Isabel Sanchez
Daniel Iglesias
English Translation
Daniel Iglesias
Venezuela and the spectre of social
unrest..........................................................29
Ukraine
Contribution
Argentina: Ar$ 20
Brazil: R$ 5
Rest of Latin America: US$ 2
Europe: € 5
Rest of the World: US$ 3
The Social and Political drama of
Ukraine.......................................................15
For a response of the workers and
popular sectors to the crisis.................30
Global News
Spanish State
China: More and more strikes...............32
For a general strike: out with Rajoy.....18
Cuba: New foreign investment law......32
Panrico: the longest strike......................20
USA: Fast food workers mobilise.........32
Backcover
Signed articles do not
necessarily reflect the
position of the leadership of
the IWU-FI but that of their
authors.
Egypt: Down with the death sentence
to 720 political prisoners!
Presentation
Izquierda Socialista in Buenos Aires and (right) Lucha Internationalista in Tunisia, in support to the Syrian revolution.
Thus unity was forged.
Presentation
Unity of the
revolutionaries
This is a special issue of the magazine International
Correspondence whose theme highlights the call
to the Unity Congress of the IWU–FI with the
International Liaison Committee (ILC, formed by
Lucha Internacionalista, Spanish State and İşçi Demokrasisi
Partisi, Turkey) and the Partido Obrero Socialista (POS–
MAS, Mexico). Several pages are devoted to this
conference to be held in Buenos Aires during the
first days of August. This is a very important step
in the unity of revolutionaries in the fundamental
task of advancing in building revolutionary parties
in each country and an international organization,
with a view to rebuilding the Fourth International
founded by Leon Trotsky. This merge of revolutionary
organizations in Latin America and Europe comes at
a right time, in the midst of great workers, youth and
popular struggles in the world, which are demanding
new union and political alternatives. The fight to
overcome the crisis of revolutionary leadership is the
priority task.
The call to this event is an open invitation to the
participation of the fighters to meet and discuss about
our goals and policy proposals, with which we add our
contributions to the burning issues of world reality.
So you will also find in this issue notes on Argentina,
Brazil, the Spanish state, Mexico, Turkey, Ukraine and
Venezuela.
Contacting us:
Argentina: Izquierda Socialista: [email protected] — Bolivia: b.bolivia.izquierda.socialista@gmail.
com — Brazil: Corrente Socialista dos Trabalhadores : [email protected] — Chile: Movimiento Socialista de
los Trabajadores: [email protected] — Colombia: Alternativa Socialista: [email protected] —
United States: Socialist Core: [email protected] — Panama: Propuesta Socialista: propuestapanamauit@hotmail.
com — Peru: Unios en la Lucha: [email protected] — Venezuela: Partido Socialismo y Libertad: usi_venezuela@
yahoo.com
Recomended Sites: www.uit-ci.org / www.nahuelmoreno.org / www.izquierdasocialista.org.ar (Argentina) / www.cstpsol.
com (Brazil) / www.unios.tk (Peru) / www.laclase.info (Venezuela) / www.socialistcore.org (USA) / www.mst-solidaridad.cl
In Facebook: [email protected] (Chile) / www.linkezeitung.de (Germany) / www.luchainternacionalista.org (Spanish
State) / www.iscicephesi.net (Turkey)
Calling to the Unification Congress
Unification Congress
The Coordinating Committee UWU–FI / ILC in solidarity with Panrico workers, Barcelona, April 2014
Calling to the Unification
Congress IWU–FI and ILC
(IDP-LI)
We transcribe the call to the
unification congress that will take
place in Buenos Aires from 31
July to 3 August 2014.
The International Workers Unity
– Fourth International (IWU–FI) and
the International Liaison Committee
(İşçi Demokrasisi Partisi, IDP and Lucha
Internacionalista, LI) decided to unify.
To do so we convened a conference in
early August 2014. It will also feature
the incorporation of the Partido Obrero
Socialista – Movimiento al Socialismo (POS
–MAS) of Mexico. This unity of forces
is the result of of building a common
response to the main problems of the
international class struggle.
2
Capitalist crisis and
workers struggle
We live in a terrible crisis of
capitalism, which around the world hits
the working class and is sinking the living
conditions of the masses: destruction
of millions of jobs, wages of misery,
hunger and disease, destruction of
public health and education systems,
reversal of democratic rights, increased
repression... They want to present this
situation as a transient deregulation of
capitalism, but as Marxists we know we
are in a structural crisis caused by the
system itself and that inevitably pushes it
to further destruction of the productive
forces.
Against this offensive, the workers
and the people resist and fight. Special
mention required for the revolutions
in North Africa and the Middle East,
in which dictatorships that ensured the
imperialist order for decades have fallen,
in which workers and especially the
youth, arose for bread, work and freedom
and which spread in the region like
wildfire. There is a permanent attempt
by the counterrevolution and imperialism
to defeat and stop these processes, such
as the genocide of val-Assad in Syria
or Al Sisi’s bloody coup in Egypt. But
the masses resist under the rubble in
towns and cities destroyed by the Syrian
dictatorship, while new protests confront
the power of the Egyptian military.
Our place is beside the peoples and the
workers and young people, supporting
the revolutionary left.
This process in North Africa and the
Middle East impacted the world and has
fuelled responses as the popular rebellion
in Turkey (Gezi Park – Taksim Square). At
Calling to the Unification Congress
the head of the resistance of European
workers against the austerity plans that
the governments of the European
Union and the troika (IMF – ECB – EU)
dictate is the Greek working class that
has over twenty general strikes. Another
expression of this struggle is the massive
rally in Madrid on 22 March, which was
not controlled by the big unions. We
support the struggles seeking to unite
them into a European general strike,
for the defeat of austerity plans, against
payment of the debt and for the break
with the European Union.
There have been prominent mining
strikes in South Africa, in the Indian
textile workers and popular mobilizations
in Asia. In Latin America there have
been very important struggles against
the adjustment that were expressed in the
June days in Brazil, in the general strikes
in Argentina and Paraguay and student
demonstrations of Chile. There is a
growing political erosion of the centreleft which had created expectations in
the Latin American and in the world
left, especially the Chavist government
of Venezuela.
Building a political alternative
At the forefront of these struggles
appear new comrades willing to give
their best, to go to the end, in the
Syrian streets, in the Egyptian textile
companies, in the Greek strikes or in
the Brazilian demonstrations. Antibureaucratic sentiment grows, the
old union leadership are questioned,
control of the mobilizations is claimed
from the assemblies. They face the
power of the state and its repressive
forces, imperialism, the bosses and the
governments in their service.
They face the trade union
bureaucracy accommodated to manage
the crumbs that fell from the capitalist
table and who attempt to disable any
struggle or directly betray it. They
must also confront the false political
solutions, as Chavism, political Islam,
or the Ukrainian bourgeois leadership.
Neither is a solution the reformism of
those who say that it is enough with
democratizing the state and the system
as Syriza in Greece.
But the trade union and political
alternative to the old leaderships that
fetter the working class to capitalism, and
peoples to the dictates of imperialism,
will not be the result of spontaneous
action. Revolutionary parties which are
a fighting tool for these activists have to
be built. Parties are needed which make
the problems of the workers their own,
which are part of the working class,
youth and popular sectors, and build with
them the answers to their needs. Parties
which, without losing their political
projects, avoid sectarianism; because
this is incompatible with the success of
the struggles of workers and peoples.
Parties whose objective is not to have a
new apparatus but to contribute to the
struggle for workers’ governments and
socialism. The lack of such instrument
causes defeats and setbacks, even though
workers and youth demonstrate an
unquestionable ability to fight. To help
overcome this problem is our goal.
We merge taking the pillars of
revolutionary Marxisvvm, of Leninism,
of the Fourth International. The theory
of permanent revolution is essential for
a dialogue with the trade union and youth
vanguard of Tunisia or Egypt, to explain
that there is no possibility of a revolution
in stages. And that to even achieve
democratic demands it is necessary for
the revolution to join with anti-capitalist
tasks, and become a socialist revolution.
We vindicate the currency of the
Transitional Program on which the
Fourth International was founded, which
aims to respond to and from the most
pressing needs of the masses to figtht
resolutely for the workers to take power
and build a socialist society. The fight for
the working class to assume the defence
of individual and collective rights, to
lead the struggle of the oppressed
against the system. Building parties for
fighting based on democratic centralism:
full freedom in the discussion and
unity in action. Parties that rejecting all
bureaucratic and pyramidal conceptions
defend workers’ democracy.
We claim the need of a revolutionary
international organization facing
conceptions as Castro- Chavism which
speaks of socialism for the XXI century
while justifying the capitalist restoration
in China and Cuba, and which rules
facing the workers and agreeing with
multinational like in Venezuela. They
have a counter-revolutionary policy that
supports the genocidal regime in Syria
and present to the world the reactionary
Iranian regime as an ally of the workers
and youth. Today Castro-Chavism
tries to redirect the re-composition of
the old Stalinism and is an obstacle to
the construction of a revolutionary
leadership.
We vindicate the method by which we
come to the merger. We put at the centre
the problems of world class struggle.
Based on these vital issues we elaborated
and discussed to decide how to act. We
continued discussing agreements and
differences in a democratic, candid and
loyal form of discussion. We come to the
Congress with a principled framework
and a common method, without solving
all the issues but convinced that the new
organization will be better able to answer
the challenges of the class struggle.
We believe that the announcement
of the unification is important in a
situation marked by the division and
fragmentation of the revolutionary
forces. This Congress is also a call for
other revolutionary organizations and
fighters to work together in order to
build an International. Our goal is to
achieve the union of the revolutionaries.
We avoid all self-proclamation, all
sectarianism. We reject reformism
trying to make us believe that there is
solution within capitalism, which can be
humanized.
We join to continue to support more
vigorously the struggles of the workers
and peoples against imperialism and their
governments, so that the capitalists pay
for the crisis. The result of the unification
of the IWU–FI with the ILC (IDP, LI)
plus the addition of the POS–MAS is still
far from resolving the historical crisis of
leadership, but it is a bold step with the
intent that the IWU–FI be the engine
of the reconstruction of the Fourth
International. Today more than ever the
choice is socialism or barbarism.
International Workers Unity – Fourth
International (IWU–FI)
International Liaison Committee, formed
by İşçi Demokrasisi Partisi (IDP, Turkey)
and Lucha Internacionalista (LI, Spanish
State)
Partido Obrero Socialista – Movimiento
al Socialismo (POS – MAS), Mexico.
Barcelona, 19 April, 2014
3
Calling to the Unification Congress
The convenors speak
The Internationalist Gathering of Istambul in November 2012 was an important step in the process of merger
A strategic unity
Miguel Sorans • IWU–FI
After more than two years of
political exchanges and internationalist
tasks common in the early days
of August we will converge in a
common organization with the fellow
revolutionaries of the International
Liaison Committee (Lucha
Internacionalista, and İşçi Demokrasisi
Partisi [Workers Democracy Party])
and Mexico’s POS–MAS. This event is
a source of great joy for all the leaders
and members of all our organizations.
It is a mutual joy because, although
this is a modest step, we come together
old and new Morenist militants who
have been fighting for decades to keep
building revolutionary parties in each
of our countries without abandoning
internationalism, without succumbing
to the daunting task of continuing to
fight for the reconstruction of the
Fourth International.
This unit has solid foundations and
is strategic, not in the sense we agree
100 percent, it would be impossible,
but because we have a principled
framework based on key agreements
in the current revolutionary process,
such as in the policies and slogans for
4
the revolutions of North Africa and
the Middle East and on the nefarious
role of Castro-Chavism, as reflected
in the minutes of the agreement of
Barcelona which we are publishing and
all statements and common actions
carried out in these two years. And
with something which is essential, after
years of crisis in our Morenist current,
which is working with a common
method of respect, fraternity and
loyalty to each of the organizations
and the resolutions taken.
The Unification Congress will take
place in Buenos Aires on 31 July, 1, 2
and 3 August. And from there a new
IWU–FI will emerge, strengthened by
this merger that will give a qualitative
leap in value for the breadth of leaders
and militants and for its extension to
Europe and Mexico. It is not a simple
addition but something else. The new
IWU–FI will have a presence in 15
countries in Latin America and Europe.
The IWU–FI has always
acknowledged itself as an organization
that is part of the international
Trotskyist movement. We strive for
the reconstruction of the Fourth
International founded by Leon
Trotsky in 1938, but we do not
consider ourselves to be the Fourth
International. We fight for the unity
of revolutionaries, Trotskyist or not,
to support a principled revolutionary
socialist program to rebuild the
International and revolutionary parties
in each country, rejecting all forms of
opportunism, sectarianism and selfproclamation.
We strive to continue the legacy
of our master Nahuel Moreno, who
Nahuel Moreno
Calling to the Unification Congress
died in 1987 and who fought Mandelist
revisionism and always sought the unity
of Trotskyists and the revolutionary.
He said, correctly: “Revisionism has
fulfilled its disintegrating role and
keeps trying by all means to prevent
the International and its parties from
transforming themselves in authentic
Trotskyist parties” (Thesis XLI, The
Transitional Program Today). We follow
the same combat and, as Moreno
pointed out, in the task of rebuilding
the Fourth International “we will
not leave to their fate any militant or
organisation claiming to be Trotskyist.
On the contrary, the reconstruction
of the Fourth International also
means that we will cease to have a
defensive attitude of the principles
and of the Transitional Program,
to move to an offensive attitude to
defeat definitely revisionism, with a
bold policy of proposing common
activities, of joint committees, with
any honest Trotskyist group that,
even if it disagrees with some of our
points or with our interpretation of
the Trotskyist principles, considers
the unity of Trotskyism indispensable.
1 May 2012 in Tunisia, supporting the Arab revolution
This is why we make a fraternal
appeal to any Trotskyist comrade or
organisation that is willing to discuss
with us and to make joint actions on
the base of Trotskyism” (Thesis XLI,
The Transitional Program Today).
The path of the reconstruction of
the Fourth International is strategic.
And we know it doesn’t come just
by the growth isolated of the IWU–
FI, but as the result of unities with
different organizations or revolutionary
currents. We also recognize that it
is not an easy or quick task. But we
are optimistic about the future of
this reconstruction because there are
thousands upon thousands of fighters
in the world who come to fight and
rebel against old apparatuses and are
in search of new revolutionary political
alternatives.◘
Barcelona Agreement
The Coordinating Committee of the
IWU–FI / ILC considers that:
• In 2012, around a joint response
to one of the centres of world class
struggle, the revolutions in North Africa
and the Middle East, we exchanged
materials and publications, travelled
to Tunisia together, developed a first
joint statement and agreed to move
forward in the convening of the Istanbul
Gathering. This represented a leap in
our relationship, because on the basis
of agreement on the central resolutions
of the world class struggle (revolutions
in North Africa and the Middle East,
Europe, and international campaign
to support Chirino’s candidacy in the
Venezuelan elections), we set up the
Coordinating Committee and gave
ourselves a year to assess if we could
move towards a merger.
• In 2013, there was significant
progress not only in joint political
elaboration (international statement
with Syrian organizations, Brazilian
mobilizations, assassination of Mohamed
Brahmi and situation in Tunisia), but
also in others which while having been
written by one organization, they could
be taken up by the other (assassination
of Choukri Belaid written by LI, Egypt
coup written by the IWU, or all material
about Taksim written by Workers Front
...). In this year contacts were deepened
with the invitation to participate in the
IEC of the IWU where LI members
attended, and the start of regular contact
via Skype as Coordinating Committee.
• In these two years we witnessed:
a) a progressive approach in the analysis
and policy toward the centres of world
class struggle; b) a methodological
respect to agreements, differences and
different rhythms of each organization;
and c) that there are still theoretical
differences that may have an effect on
political analysis today.
• After the respective conferences
of LI and IDP approved the merger
with the IWU, and the February IEC
had positioned the IWU in the same
direction. Additionally we take into
account the decision of POS–MAS
(Mexico) to join the IWU-FI in the next
world congress.
The Coordinating Committee agrees
to:
1. To make a joint call to the next
congress of the IWU-FI, as unification
congress with the aim of further
promoting the reconstruction of the
Fourth International. This text will be
consulted with the POS–MAS.
2.The World Congress of unification
will have open political discussion
sessions, with invitations by common
agreement. (Internal organizational
points follow.)
Coordinating Committee IWU–FI / ILC
19 April 2014
5
Calling to the Unification Congress
Advancing in the reconstruction
of the Fourth International
By Josep Lluis del Alcázar on behalf of Lucha Internacionalista (Spanish State)
Among the comrades of Lucha
Internacionalista the prospect of the
merger raises great expectations; we
open a new phase of construction.
We had a hard time since the
excision of the PRT in 1999 and the
establishment of Lucha Internacionalista,
as sympathizing section of the
International Workers League–Fourth
International (IWL–FI), suffering
from isolation and boycott from the
international leadership which ended
with a bureaucratic exclusion to avoid
the substantive political debates raised.
We then constituted a liaison committee
(ILC), with Turkish İşçi Cephesi [Workers
Front] (now Işçi Demokrasisi Partisi —
Democratic Workers Party), to deal
in common internationalist initiatives
and relationships with other groups,
as well as tracking the construction of
our groups.
We established contact with the
IWU. To understand how we come to
a merger Congress, the discussions that
allowed us to define a broad agreement
on strategic and principled issues are
as important as working together
in the centres of the international
class struggle and the method used
in this period. We verified that we
can intervene with a policy built in
common in the revolutions of North
6
Africa and the Middle East or in the
fight against Castro-Chavism. We share
the importance of internationalization
of struggles and that this is a hallmark
in the construction of our parties
(campaigns for Chirino nomination
in Venezuela, against repression in
Las Heras, in Gezi Park / Taksim
Square, Panrico ...). And this process
of joint work and discussion of
the differences is conducted in a
framework of transparency and
respect, facilitating the various rhythms
of each organization.
The merger with the IWU is part
of the battle to rebuild the Fourth
International. The IWU to come out
of the merger — with the ILC and the
POS (Mexico) — will still be far from
being the revolutionary International
required by the international working
class, but it will have further strength
to be the engine needed to give impetus
to this battle. The very fact of the
merger happens in a period marked by
ruptures is a call to other organizations
and comrades to join forces.
There are comrades who tell us,
how it is possible that more than 75
years after the founding of the Fourth
International in Paris, we still talk of
its reconstruction? Organizations do
not expire by the passage of time;
organizations are useful until they are
dissolved, as the First International,
or used to destroy that for which
they were created, as happened to the
Second and the Third International,
which were founded to extend the
socialist revolution but ended up being
their instruments of the counterrevolution.
The Fourth International was
founded following the traditions of the
First International and the Communist
Manifesto, of the Second International
and the first four congresses of the
Third International. It led the battle for
the political revolution when Stalinism
degenerated the workers’ state in the
USSR. The Fourth International has
experienced long periods of isolation
under the weight of the powerful
Stalinist apparatus. There have also
been currents that have revised its
principles and renounced the battle
for the revolution. But there are forces
which have resisted and had continued
raising its banner and its program,
keeping alive the struggle for building
it.
The program of the Fourth
International is based on the premise
that capitalism has exhausted the
creative capacity of productive
forces; this makes possible and
necessary the socialist revolution.
We are in the imperialist stage that
Lenin characterized, of decadence,
of wars and revolutions. Crises no
longer regulate the system, but rather
unleash the brutal destruction of these
productive forces created. And we live
this reality: hunger, unemployment,
and poverty, destruction of public
health and education systems.
There is no reform of capitalism,
and the dichotomy of Marx, socialism or
barbarism, acquires its full dimension.
It is urgent to build the political
instruments that give perspective to the
struggle of resistance of the workers
and people: revolutionary parties in
each country and the reconstruction
of the Fourth International. ◘
Calling to the Unification Congress
A step forward in the reconstruction
of the Fourth International
By the Central Committee of İşçi Demokrasisi Partisi [Workers Democracy Party], formerly İşçi Cephesi [Workers
Front] of Turkey
In the month of April, at the
international conference of İşçi Demokrasisi
Partisi (IDP), we unanimously decided
to join with the International Workers
Unity – Fourth International (IWU–FI)
as a step forward in the building of our
party and in the reconstruction of the
Fourth International. We believe that
the unification of both the International
Liaison Committee (IDP is part of the
ILC, with Lucha Internationalista of the
Spanish State), and the Partido Obrero
Socialista of Mexico, with the IWU–FI
will strengthen the international Morenist
current and will also contributesto
the IWU–FI becoming the engine
of reconstr uction of the Fourth
International.
The decision of merging with
the IWU–FI is consistent with the
internationalist challenge of our current
İşçi Cephesi (lately in a legalization process
with the name of IDP) since its founding
35 years ago, when we broke with
the United Secretariat of Mandelism.
Until then we fought against the ultraleftist propaganda and then the eurocommunist opportunism of the Unified
Secretariat. Finally we separated from
it in 1979 after their betrayal in the
Nicaraguan revolution. However, it
took several years to connect with the
Bolshevik Fraction, which Nahuel
Moreno lead internationally, and then
with the International Workers League
(IWL) which he founded in 1982,
because of the repression of the military
dictatorship which took power in Turkey
in the late 1980s with a coup and which
also destroyed our party.
From the second half of the 1980s
we managed to rebuild İşçi Cephesi with
the best Turkish cadres and militants
of revolutionary Trotskyism, always
with a view to build the party in the
mobilizations of the workers and popular
masses and with an internationalist
vision of becoming part of the the
İşçi Demokrasisi Partisi launching rally, Istanbul, January 2014
process of reconstruction of the Fourth
International.
In 1995 we adhered to IWL–FI in
full political and ideological crisis of this
organization and the world left in general,
shocked by opportunism and revisionism
that escalated after the dissolution of
the Soviet Union and other bureaucratic
workers states since the revolutions of
the East in 1989. We helped the new
leadership of the IWL to overcome its
crisis. However, five years later when the
same liquidationism tried to converge
in our party, the leadership of the IWL
opted to align with the opportunistic
sector. Hence our experience with this
organization ended with political and
method problems, which unfortunately
left the section of the IWL in ashes.
In the last ten years we lived two
major mergers with revolutionary
Trotskyist groups, which strengthened
the party, making it easier to participate
more strongly in worker and student
struggles. Meanwhile, we formed the
International Liaison Committee (ILC)
with Lucha Internationalista of the Spanish
State for expanding the international
activity of the party. Through the ILC
we tried to give political answers to the
most important global struggles. We got
in contact with revolutionary parties in
Latin America, Europe and North Africa
in order to participate in the processes of
struggle and construction. Especially our
work with the Tunisian organizations in
the heat of the revolution in this country
expanded our international space where
we strengthened our internationalist
collaboration with the IWU–FI. The
meeting in Istanbul in 2012 was the
turning point where we extended our
ties with the IWU, coinciding in the
analysis and policy responses we have
to give to the world struggles and, most
importantly, facing the revolutions in the
Middle East and North Africa.
Now we are in the process of merging
with the IWU in a single international
organization, hoping to make it the engine
of the reconstruction of the Fourth
International, a task inherited from
Trotsky, Moreno and all revolutionary
Marxists of earlier generations. We
know it is not an easy task. However, the
ongoing revolutions in the Middle East,
the protests have begun to expand in
Europe and the struggles of the workers
and popular masses in Latin America; we
believe they create better conditions for
participation in the revolutionary process,
for the dissemination of our slogans and
the building of revolutionary parties,
both at national level and the Fourth
International itself.
The reconstruction of the Fourth
International as the Leninist and
Trotskyist party of world revolution has
been and always will be the main task of
İşçi Cephesi, and now IDP. ◘
7
Calling to the Unification Congress
A true revolutionary
alternative
By Enrique Gomez, member of the Executive Committee, POS-MAS (Mexico)
In August, we will participate in
the Unification Congress between the
International Workers Unity – Fourth
International, Lucha Internationalista
(Spanish State), İşçi Demokrasisi Partisi
(Turkey), and the Partido Obrero Socialista–
Movimiento al Socialismo (Mexico), after
a process of discussion, activities and
internationalist campaigns, where we
found a common framework. This
is excellent news, because it marks
a process of unity, after long years
of dispersion and divisions in the
revolutionary movement.
We arrive at this Congress after
suffering painful breakups, such as we
faced with the International Workers
League— which all of us that today
are regrouping were founders of—
due to bureaucracy in its leadership,
which kept expelling any organization
which dared to express criticism
to its leadership, far, far away from
the teachings of its founder and
main leader: Nahuel Moreno. It was
particularly painful that it has refused to
carry out a solidarity campaign with the
great strike of workers in Euskadi, in
El Salto, Jalisco, which faced a powerful
German transnational.
8
Thereafter we began a long sojourn
in search of an alternative international
revolutionary organization, which
led us to found the International
Revolutionary Current (CIR) in 2009,
with whom we edited Pluma Magazine
for some years. Unfortunately this
was unsuccessful due to differences
between the organizations we were part
of it, as well as its failure to comply
with the agreements, which showed
that we did not agree on what type of
organization needs to be built at the
present time.
A clear revolutionary alternative
is needed, based on revolutionary
Marxism, the historical experience
of Bolshevism, which led the first
workers revolution, which built the
Third International. An alternative
based on the historical heritage of
Trotskyism, the only current that
faced the bureaucratization of those
enormous conquests, which strove to
keep building the tool that the working
class needs to confront the imperialist
offensive and its accomplices, the
governments like Peña Nieto, who
strictly applies the requirements of big
business interests.
What finished convincing us to
get closer to the IWU was its clear
policy of class independence, against
governments like Hugo Chavez in
Venezuela, rejecting his call to build
the “V International”, while agreeing
with large multinationals, as well as
their attempts to impose in the labour
movement the construction of a new
Trade Union Confederation controlled
by his government, that reminded us
of the subjugation of the Mexican
working class to the designs of the
government of Lázaro Cárdenas, the
real builder of the PRI regime we
suffered for decades.
Because a Marxist revolutionary
response to the current revolutionary
processes— headed by the Arab
revolution and its ongoing fight against
dictators like al-Assad in Syria— is
needed. Because with LI and IDP, it is
campaigning to support the struggles
of the European proletariat against the
troika of the European Central Bank,
European Union and US imperialism.
As in Latin America, where it
develops the fight against the wild
adjustment plans, against “nationalist”
governments like Cristina Kirchner’s,
taking a prominent role in the
last national strike, after gaining a
significant electoral victory, along with
the Left and Workers Front, taking to
congress federal and local deputies,
representative of the demands of the
Argentine working class.
And no doubt this alternative is
today embodied by the IU, the most
dynamic organization of revolutionary
Marxism, because of its sound analysis
and policy, of its program, although
there are some nuances and possible
differences. But what is most important
is that we have a common base, a
revolutionary democratic program
and methodology based on democratic
centralism, collecting the best traditions
of Marxism. For this reason we consider
a primary task our participation in this
important Unification Congress, we call
upon all organizations of revolutionary
Marxism to join efforts to build this
new alternative. ◘
Argentina
The strike of 10 April was conclusive
Kirchnerism in its
final stretch
Juan Carlos Giordano, Izquierda Socialista
Elected Member of National Parliament for the Front of the Left and the Workers
A year and a half away from the
2015 presidential elections, there
is already a clear result: we are
witnessing the beginning of the end
of Cristina Kirchner’s government.
A bourgeois replacement is
being prepared through the
anti-K [Kirchnerist] sectors of the
Justicialist [Peronist] Party (PJ). The
labour rise has taken a new leap
with the second general strike in
the “era K” that has just been taken
place last 10 April. Militant trade
unionism and the positions of the
Left Front grow. In unity, they have
been the protagonists of the largest
and most combative May Day rally
in Plaza de Mayo.
The Peronist government embodied by
Cristina Kirchner, after eleven years, finds
itself in what has been called its “end of
cycle”. In last year’s legislative elections it lost
4 million votes. This showed the breaking
of broad sectors with her government.
They concluded that this “decade” was
won by the bankers (who continue to
amass fortunes), multinationals like Barrick
(which just fired half of its workers),
Chevron (which keeps the oil reserves at
Vaca Muerta), the automotive companies,
international financial institutions (which
get paid the foreign debt in cash) and
so-called “national bourgeoisie”, i.e. the
bosses tied to capitalist business sheltered
under Kirchner (presidential figurehead
Lazaro Baez, betting Tsar Cristobal Lopez,
among others).
In its final stage, the government
has decided to deepen the adjustment. It
blamed a ‘‘speculative strike’’ for its brutal
devaluation in January of the peso against
the dollar (60 percent in one year). A
measure which benefits the large bosses,
especially the exporters. And with the
increase in bank interest rates, in turn, it
gave the banks large and growing profits.
The government lets run a brutal
increase in prices, especially of food (45
percent last year), which has led to a wage
loss like never before. Wage agreements
were signed between 25/30 percent in
instalments, which although far from
the 18 percent the government originally
wanted to give, are below an actual inflation
estimated at 40 percent for this year.
At the same time, rate hikes are being
implemented in Buenos Aires in water,
gas and electricity bills (from 200 to 400
percent), that the labour rise had been
freezing, but not so in the provinces,
where increases have been very high in
these years. Additionally, the government
is bleeding the country with foreign debt
payments. The government has now started
negotiations with the Paris Club, paying a
shameful and expensive compensation to
Repsol after this multinational took our
oil and gas. It has agreed once again with
the IMF. And in the field of human rights,
it has anointed the genocidal Cesar Milani
9
Argentina
as head of the army, the first coming from
“intelligence”, crowning thus an official
policy of pursuing those who struggle,
infiltrating labour marches and mass
meetings. It has been trying to pass an antipickets law to regiment social protest. All
this after having passed the Antiterrorist
Act imposed by imperialism to apply
against the fighters, after refusing to release
from prosecution over 5,000 social activists
and endorsing, as the president did in the
legislative session in Congress this year, the
life term to the Las Heras oil workers for
fighting against the tax to wages in 2006.
In defence of the bosses’ profits and
submission to the United States, is also the
bosses opposition. In recent months there
was a veritable parade to visit the mecca of
imperialism: Macri, Carrio, Massa, Michetti,
Sanz, Binner. They all seek Yankee blessing.
While they are partners in the national
adjustment, the vast majority approved
payments to Repsol, they are against the
teachers and supported the devaluation.
Big general strike
The working class has just starred on
10 April in a new general strike against the
adjustment of Cristina and the governors.
The strike was also against the bosses’
opposition; because where they govern they
also coincide with the adjustment tand, in
broad strokes, with Cristina’s “model”.
The strike was the second in the
Kirchnerist era; much greater than the last
one on 20 November 2012, which had
already been great. Then the UTA (bus
The Malvinas Argentinas teachers during the strike in Buenos Aires province
drivers’ union) and The Fraternity (train
engine drivers’ union), did not stop. This
time they did. In industry and the large
automotive manufacturers there was no
production or it was very low. In schools the
strike was complete in most of the country.
Teachers, who were coming from a revolt
in Buenos Aires province, imposing an
indefinite strike and a partial victory against
the Kirchnerist bureaucracy of Baradel, did
not listen to the CTA of Yasky or CTERA
(teachers’ unions), and did not go to work.
There was a clear contempt of official
bureaucracy.
The strike was started from below.
The CGT of Moyano and Barrionuevo
(in opposition) had to convene it because
of the pressure from the rank and file and
the teachers’ strike. They also called it to
readjust and self-propose as replacement
bureaucracy in 2015. And to shrink their
space to militant trade unionism. Micheli’s
CTA (state workers and unemployed), an
anti Peronist sector linked to the centre-left,
joined the strike.
One of the “winners” of strike has
been the militant trade unionism and the
left, who achieved visibility with the pickets
of conviction held on the day, as an actor
and a very important part in the reality of
the Argentine labour movement.
Millions of workers again gave a hard
blow to the government. The middle class
also joined, showing the important union
and political break with the government
and trade union bureaucracy. Defeated
was the policy of adjustment and the
official bureaucracy and strengthened the
workers and militant unionism. The latter
played a very prominent role. Many analysts
recognize that is gaining on the union
bureaucracy. There is a new generation
of fighters who hates the bosses and the
bureaucracy. A generation looking at the
leaders who fight and are not sold, who are
a way of organizing to confront low wages,
adjustment, dismissals and suspensions.
PST: 40 years after
Pacheco’s massacre
On 29 May 1974 three militants of the PST – Partido Socialista de
los Trabajadores [Socialist Workers Party] (predecessor of Izquierda
Socialista) were killed at the hands of Triple A: Oscar “Hijitus”
Meza (26), shipyard workers at Astarsa; Antonio “Toni” Moses (24),
metalworker of Wobron, and Mario “Tano” Zidda (22 ), student.
Back then Juan Domingo Peron, who would die shortly after (1
July), was president. These were the first killings of the fascist gangs
who later became known as the “Triple A”. Weeks before they had
killed Inocencio “Indio” Fernandez, metalworker and militant of the
PST at Pacheco.The PST had in that area a strong work in the union.
This is how Avanzada Socialista, the PST’s newspaper, reported
the attack: “First a whistle sounded, similar to those used by police.
Then a shot and, after a tiny interval, a deafening burst of machine
gun fire. Immediately, bursting the door and jumping from rooftops
and the terrace, 15 murdering thugs, armed with long guns, entered
amid blows and insults. The six comrades present were thrown to
the ground and kicked, while others entered the rooms and burned
and destroyed everything in their path. Then, with their head full of
blood from the beating, the six comrades were forced to enter the
10
Oscar “Hijitus” Meza, Mario “Tano” Zidda and Antonio
“Toni” Moses
cars. A few blocks away, the three female comrades were unloaded
from the car and forced to go away. The cars continued traveling
to an unknown destination, carrying the comrades in their trunks.
On the morning of the 30 [of May], the bodies of Meza, Zidda and
Moses appeared in Pilar, riddled with bullets” (Avanzada Socialista, 4
June 1974).
Two days later, at the massive unitary demonstration called by the
PST, Nahuel Moreno, on behalf of the party leadership, said: “These
three comrades will live not only in the memory of our Party; they
will continue to live in the memory of their class and all the anticapitalist, anti-imperialist and revolutionary fighter comrades of the
country. They shall remain beside us despite having physically gone.”
Comrades Meza, Zidda and Moses, until Socialism always!
Argentina
Strengthening the Militant
Trade Union Gathering
and the Left Front
In this framework takes on greater
significance the successful Militant Trade
Union Gathering headed by railworkers
leader Rubén “Pollo” [Chicken] Sobrero,
and Carlos “Perro” [Dog] Santillan (SEOM,
Municipal Workers Union, Jujuy province)
and countless factory committees, councils
of union delegates, regional and militant
unions gathered in Atlanta Stadium on 15
March. A provisional Caucus was formed
and provincial and regional meetings were
convened to build a national, democratic
and anti-bureaucratic pole (see Successful
Gathering …).
On May Day in Plaza de Mayo, in
turn, thousands of fighters convened by
the militant trade unionism and the Left
Front staged a great rally, of unity and for
the struggle. Increasingly more and more
people are looking sympathetically to the
positions of anti-bureaucratic union leaders
and the militant left.
The militant progress it the unions,
with new union branches (as the militant
Sutebas [teachers unions]), factor y
committees and councils of delegates,
happens because the union bureaucracy
is leaving a large space. Both the official
CGT and CTA, as the opposition CGT
of Moyano and Barrionuevo. The latter,
although they called the strike of 10 April,
are also questioned. Moyano, after the strike
of 20 November 2012, did not lift a finger,
letting nearly a year and a half go until he
had to call to the strike on 10 April, because
of pressure from the rank and file.
He is not interested in calling for a plan
of struggle to defeat the adjustment. Why
not give continuity to the 10 April strike
with a new 36-hour strike as demanded
by the vanguard and the Militant Trade
Union Gathering? And hence the standing
of Sobrero, Santillan, the leaders of the
militant Sutebas, factory committees as
in Kraft and many others, many of them
grouped in the Militant Trade Union
Gathering. They are gaining ground in the
unions, promoting a trade unionism of
struggle and workers democracy.
Another element of change in reality is
the political break with the bosses’ parties
and the search for a different outcome.
Peronism, for decades, instilled class
conciliation, whereby workers could be
saved by the hand of the bosses. And in
many years there were alternatives through
the bipartisanship PJ–UCR. But that is
changing.
The electoral projections for
2015 point at the main bosses political
parties measuring little. There is a huge
fragmentation. None of them reaches 30
percent. They plunged in this crisis due to
the Argentinazo of 2001. Rebellion which,
at the cry of “throw them all out”, struck
against the disastrous Alliance government
(De la Rua–Chacho Alvarez). From there,
the bipartisanship has not been able to
recover.
In this context it becomes important
the development of the Left and Workers
Front (Partido Obrero [Workers Party, PO] –
Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas [Party of
Socialist Workers, PTS] – Izquierda Socialista
[Socialist Left, IS]). The FIT along with
the militant trade unionism occupied the
vacuum always left by the PJ and the union
bureaucracy on May Day. They left playing
second fiddle the rally of the Movimiento
Socialista de los Trabajadores [Socialist Workers
Movement, MST], Classist Combative
Current (CCC) and the CTA led by Micheli,
organizations which promote already failed
centre left solutions.
The seats of the FIT, both in the
National Congress and in many provinces
are well received by vast sectors. Supporting
the struggles and presenting alternative
projects for the working people. The 1.2
million votes won last year by the FIT was
a clear demonstration of an electoral left
turn that is still taking shape into 2014.
In Mendoza the Left Front comes from
getting almost 15 percent of the vote. And
polls today show that it maintains a national
commitment floor of over a million wills.
Its leaders are rightly viewed as “different”.
Jorge Altamira, Angelica Lagunas, Christian
Castillo, Nestor Pitrola, Nicolas Caño,
Juan Carlos Giordano, Liliana Olivero,
Laura Marrone, Monica Schlotthauer, Jose
Castillo, Anisa Favoretti are referenced as
leaders for the struggle as opposed to the
practices of the bosses’ parties.
As it was said on the May Day rally,
the challenge is to “overcome Peronism by
the left”, giving steps in the path of class
independence. A historical path which we
must contest daily; putting forward the Left
Front in the struggles and fundamental
political events.
The task for the fighters and the left
is to fight for a new strike of 36 hours
with mobilization to Plaza de Mayo. To
further develop combative unionism
via the Militant Trade Union Gathering,
promoting regional plenaries and national
coordination. And to keep strengthening a
political alternative of the workers and the
left, calling to join the Left Front.
Izquierda Socialista puts all its effort
and labour and student insertion, and its
parliamentary seats, at the service of these
strategic fights that have opened in our
country. ◘
Left Front: A great pole of class
independence
Jose Castillo
The Left Front (FIT) achieved in
the legislative elections of October
2013, 1,182,620 votes nationwide.
A front formed by three parties that
claim to be Trotskyist (PO, PTS and
Izquierda Socialista) achieved the
best electoral results for the left in
Argentina’s history. It won national
and provincial parliamentarians
and local councillors, as never
before. With a revolutionary socialist
program capitalized the workers
and popular votes of a wide sector
of masses. The task is to sustain
and strengthen the FIT as a political
class alternative.
The FIT’s election result shows that
that a change is happening. A workingclass and popular sector breaks with
11
Argentina
student centres were won from the proKirchner currents of the centre-left
(La Mella) and where Kirchnerism (La
Campora) now holds no student centre.
The seats of the FIT
are rotational
Plaza de Mayo, May Day Rally of the FIT and the Militant Trade Union Gathering
their traditional vote to Peronism in
any of its variants. This bourgeois
political movement, founded in the
1940s by General Peron, is the great
obstacle in the consciousness of the
Argentine labour movement. The result
of the FIT has no precedent for its
magnitude. It exceeded by 30 percent
the votes that had been obtained in the
mandatory primary (PASO) elections
in August. It went from 900,371 to
1,182,620 votes. There was a growth
of 100 percent compared to the first
electoral presentation of the FIT in
2009. Then it received 512,000 votes.
Now three national MPs and a fourth
seat in Cordoba, with Liliana Olivero
of Izquierda Socialista removed with
fraud, are achieved. Two provincial
senators (Salta and Mendoza), more
than 10 provincial MPs and several
local government councillors were
obtained. In the subsequent election
in Salta on November 2013, the FIT
through the PO’s slate, reached the
highest point, with the left winning the
capital of the province to the Peronist
(PJ) party, leading by 11 percentage
points. Thus the left achieved four
provincial MPs, eight councillors and
a provincial senator. In Mendoza 14
percent of the vote was achieved,
Nicholas Del Caño (PTS) became
national MP. Córdoba is another
example of this growth, in a province
where Izquierda Socialista headed the
slate. Due to fraud, our comrade Liliana
Olivero is not the fourth national MP
12
of the FIT. Standing out is the city of
Córdoba where we were achieved 13
percent of the votes, an unprecedented
election.
A vote to the left who is
present in the struggles
The FIT receives the vote of
thousands upon thousands of workers
and young people who break with the
Peronist government of Kirchner,
defrauded by its policy, as well as
the policy of the centre-left. It is a
reflection of the political and social
crisis, which is expressing in the vote
what may come later in the class
struggle itself. We must recall that in
2001, prior to the Argentinazo, the
elections also expressed a turn to the
left and advanced what might happen.
The FIT has transformed into an
objective phenomenon, as more than a
million people give support to a radical
left front.
The good electoral results of FIT
were preceded, for example, by the
election of several opposition teachers
union branches of Buenos Aires
Province (the militant Sutebas). There
the vote was for the left opposition
(Multicolour slate) and it also was an
anti-government pro-left vote for the
referents who headed their slates. By
the conquest of the Western branch of
the Sarmiento railway line workers with
the Burgundy slate or the last election
of unity of the left at the University
of Buenos Aires (UBA) where all
One issue that has impacted the
vanguard is that the seats won by the
FIT will be shared by the three parties:
PO, PTS and Izquierda Socialista. In
the case of Buenos Aires province,
for example, Nestor Pitrola (PO)
is occupying the seat for a year and
a half and then he will rotate with
Myriam Bregman (PTS) and Juan
Carlos Giordano (Izquierda Socialista).
So later on, Laura Marrone (teacher)
and Monica Schlotthauer (railway),
of Izquierda Socialista, will take a seat
in Buenos Aires City and province
respectively. In Neuquén, our teacher’s
leader Angelica Lagunas took the
place left by Raul Godoy (PTS) and in
Cordoba, Liliana Olivero left her seat,
after years of consistent track record,
to a leader of PO.
This mechanism allows each
party, with their leaders, to have the
experience, carry forward the FIT’s
program, showing in turn that the seats
are not tenured or of privilege but
fighting positions.
The role of the FIT
With the worsening of the political
and social crisis in Argentina, the
importance of the Left Front is clear.
The working class needs to break its
political bonds with Peronism and
other bosses variants. They need a
new political and union leadership.
This is key to preserve and develop the
FIT, beyond the obvious differences
between their components (see The
debates ...). This is the great challenge.
Putting their seats to the service of
workers and popular struggles. Putting
itself forward at each union and political
process. Fighting the adjustment
and proposing another workers’ and
people’s “model”. Consolidating this
tool as a political alternative of class
that fights for the strategy of a workers’
and people’s government. ◘
Argentina
The debates within the FIT
By Luis Covas
The FIT has had much impact on the
national and international fighting vanguard.
It has always been difficult to achieve unity
on the left. From our Morenist current, we
have always fought for it. Many fighters always
ask us if the unity is compromised by existing
debates. Others go further and question
whether there are possibilities to march
towards a single party. At Izquierda Socialista
we are champions of the FIT and aware of the
many differences we have with the comrades
of PO and PTS. Precisely because there are
differences there are different left parties.
So we do not believe either that the goal is,
for now, going towards a single party of the
revolutionary left. The FIT allows achieving
unity in a variety of positions. In our party we
fight sectarianism and self-proclamation that
do not help towards a bigger and better unity.
This year such attitudes, in the case of PO,
have led to a polemic and to no longer act
unitedly in the union movement. Along with
PTS comrades we enthusiastically support the
initiative of the Sarmiento railway workers
and municipal workers of Jujuy province,
led by Carlos “Perro” [“Dog”] Santillan, to
convene a Militant Trade Union Gathering
(see note) which united various antibureaucratic union sectors. Unfortunately
the PO refused to join with the unusual
argument that the constitution of this trade
union militant pole would contribute to the
“development of a political bloc antagonistic
to the Left Front” (Prensa Obrera No. 1313,
page 10, May 2014). Arguing that Santillan
and other components are not in the FIT
or did not supported it electorally. Indeed
“Dog” Santillan electorally neither endorsed
the FIT last October, nor does he claim to
be Trotskyist. But the purpose of the Atlanta
meeting is not to make a political bloc, but
rather it is a union plenary to discuss how
to coordinate diverse forces to support
the struggles and confront the trade union
bureaucracy. For years a workers plenary
with these features has not taken place.
Constituting a caucus of militant unity was a
big step. To make it a condition, such as PO
proposed, for union unity, to be part of the
FIT, is incredible sectarianism. More so in a
country where most of the workers are not
on the left yet, but they come to it believing in
Peronism, a political movement of the bosses.
There are still thousands of anti-bureaucratic
fighters who still vindicate Peron.
PO wrongly questioned the Militant
Trade Union Gathering for not belonging to
the FIT, while its trade union organization,
the “Classist Union Coordinating–PO” has
joined the opposition CTA, led by Micheli
and his current, which adhere to centre-left
positions. Getting to form slates for trade
union elections, in places such as Neuquén
and Mendoza, with local bureaucrats.
Questioning the Atlanta meeting, PO
has come to propose that the FIT convene a
“fusion Congress of the left with the working
class”. This formula may sound interesting
to the ears of an unsuspecting comrade.
But what does this proposal mean? Who
would be part of this “fusion Congress”?
It is not known, nor has PO clarified it. In
reality it is just a simply a smokescreen to
try to hit someone distracted, trying to “run
left” to continue denying the importance of
the meeting in Atlanta and continue holding
its self proclamatory policy, a mixture of
sectarianism with opportunism, as seen with
its “turn” to the CTA.
The debate is in place. Meanwhile we will
continue calling the PO leadership to abandon
its negative stance and join the Militant Trade
Union Gathering. •
Successful Militant Trade Union
Gathering
Javier Leonforte
Nearly 4,000 workers overflowed
the Atlanta club last 15 March. It was
decided the formation of a national
coordination caucus of militant trade
unionism, demanding a national strike
(which took place on 10 April) and to
organize a plan of struggle. The final
hugs showed the emotion for having so
successfully completed it. It had been
months of work and preparation to
get to this event. First with the trip of
the Sarmiento railway workers to the
inauguration ceremony led by “Dog”
Santillan who recovered the Municipal
Workers Union (SEOM) of Jujuy,
against the corrupt bureaucracy linked
to Kirchnerist Milagro Sala. Later on
with the coming of the “Dog” itself
and several SEOM leaders to the rally
our party did in Atlanta on 7 December,
where both Santillan and Sobrero
announced that “we are at work to
organize in unity a union gathering”.
Then new travel and meetings, such
as in Bauen Hotel on 25 February,
which ended up launching the “call to
the unity of militant trade unionism”
which incorporated new union sectors,
expanding the range of convening
labour organizations. Among those
many factory committees could be
counted, such as Kraft and Pepsi
Co from the food industry, Metro
delegates, teachers, and others. In
addition to our party, the PTS, New
MAS and other organizations joined
with their trade union work.
In the opening ceremony, led by
the bureau of conveners, had great
impetus the fight for the acquittal of
the Las Heras oil workers sentenced
to life imprisonment. Right there
the characteristics of democratic
functioning and in various committees,
so that more workers might make use
of the word, were explained.
The committees overflowed with
participation. Indeed, two of them ran
into the street, three others in the social
facilities of Atlanta and five others
within the micro-stadium. Hundreds
13
Argentina
of workers spoke and all sectors could
engage freely with their proposals and
opinions.
The closing plenary began with
a fighting cry: Hey, hey, hey, for the
teachers increase, for the oil workers
freedom! After several speakers, it went
on to democratically vote the decisons.
Undoubtedly, the militant trade
unionism has taken a big step forward
with the successful holding of the
meeting and the establishment of
national coordinating caucus. Now, with
regional meetings and new activities we
must deepen this journey started. ◘
Militant Trade Union Gathering in Atlanta
Ruben “Pollo” Sobrero
“We demand from the bureaucracy a general
strike”
“Here are those who want a different
union model. Those who are facing the
adjustment on the roads, in the factories
and in all workplaces.We cannot afford the
luxury of being divided. The government
wants to pass the brutal adjustment
that it is applying and for this it counts
with the complicity of the bureaucracy,
the Moyanos, the Daers, all the union
bureaucracy. They all look the other way.
No one, absolutely no one wants to bring
to the forefront a national plan of struggle.
Just now I was asked for what we came
to this plenary. In each committee we will
discuss and agree to demand from the
union bureaucracy a work stoppage against
the economic plan [...].
We have agreed to form a provisional
National Caucus, we try to make sure
all the comrades are represented and
certainly many more will be added.
Because we intend to make a gathering,
not an act. We want to discuss, to debate.
We want this to be extended to the
Rubén “Pollo” Sobrero, Carlos “Perro” Santillán and Juan CarlosGodoy
whole country. Making regional, provincial
gatherings, all that is necessary to steer a
new pole. A new pole bearing the voice
of those who want to fight the unions
whose leaders are on their knees, a new
democratic and combative pole.”
Carlos “Perro” Santillán
“This gathering has to serve to coordinate the
struggles”
“I am very proud of this great challenge
with this gathering and being in this caucus
of fighters. [...] And we will fight to reverse
that shameful ruling against the Las Heras
oil workers. As “Pollo” said, this meeting
should serve to coordinate the struggles.
14
To demand from the bureaucrats to come
out to the streets. We are for unity, it will
not be easy. But if we do not unite we will
be traitors to the working class [...] We
come to join you. We come for unity. The
word unity is already revolutionary. A unity
with the teachers, with the rail workers
and all those who are fighting. With this
meeting a new moment for the Argentine
labour movement starts.” •
Ukraine
The Social and Political drama
of Ukraine
Miguel Sorans
The crisis in Ukraine seems to
have no end, in the midst of violent
armed clashes in the eastern part of the
country between pro-Russian separatist
groups and the Ukrainian army, and
among its own civilian population,
which could result into an all-out civil
war and walk towards the division
and dismemberment of Ukraine.
Amid the complexity of this crisis, the
Socialist Revolutionaries, grouped in
the IWU–FI, we reaffirm the position
that we have taken since the fall of the
capitalist pro-Russian government of
Viktor Yanukovych in February and the
subsequent annexation of Crimea by
Russia. We defended the revolutionary
popular mobilization that toppled the
corrupt and repressive government of
Yanukovych, but we denounced that
there was no solution for the Ukrainian
working people with government pro
pact with the European Union (EU),
the United States, and the IMF nor
with the capitalist government of Putin.
And that this inter-bourgeois dispute
established between the two could lead
to a bloodbath and political and social
debacle of Ukraine. And this is what is
starting to happen.
The origins of the crisis
The cause of this conflict has
historical origins and others closer
in time. Ukraine, a very rich territory
for its fertile land and mineral wealth,
has always been an invaded nation,
divided and exploited by different
empires. In the nineteenth century
it was dismembered, with its eastern
territory passing to be part of the
Tsarist Russian Empire, while the
western part was under control of
Austria-Hungary Empire and Poland.
Only with the revolution of 1917, under
Lenin’s policy of self-determination
of nations, Ukraine was recognized
in 1922 as an independent socialist
republic and by the will of its people
became part of the USSR. The later
Stalinist regime kept whittling this
autonomy and creating all kinds of
repressive monstrosities, now hanging
over the confused consciousness of
millions of Ukrainians. Crimea, for
example, was an independent Tatar
republic in the USSR since the 1920s;
it was “Russified” by Stalin after World
War II, who expelled the native people,
the Tartar, under the pretext of having
collaborated with the Nazis, although
most had been on the side of the Red
Army. It was a false pretext to send
Russian troops to colonize the region.
Later on Nikita Khrushchev “gifted”,
actually “annexed”, it to Ukraine. The
15
Ukraine
Stalinist bureaucracy sought thus to
dominate, to avoid all autonomy and
right to mobilization of their peoples.
The closest cause of the current
crisis is the capitalist restoration that
was consolidated in Ukraine and across
the former USSR, since 1991, after the
fall of the Stalinist dictatorship and the
proclamation of its independence. The
progress of the market economy caused
Ukraine to suffer decades of plunder
and impoverishment of workers and
popular sectors, while a minority of
Ukrainians billionaires grew. These
billionaires are both in the pro-Russian
capitalist sector of Yanukovych and
the liberal opposition headed by Yulia
Tymoshenko and Petro Poroshenko,
aka “the chocolate king”, owner of the
Roshem group in the chocolate and jam
industry, both presidential candidates
for the 25 May elections. All of them
have created the current division of the
Ukrainian people. Since the restoration
of capitalism in the 1990s, living
standards have fallen precipitously.
The population declined from 54 to 45
million people. Part of the former state
industry was dismantled by mafia gangs.
The value of working time is now less
than what is paid in China and 14 times
lower than in Germany. Unemployment
is 8 percent.
The background of
the social crisis
This social crisis is what stood
behind the Maidan popular movement,
unleashed in November 2013, which
led to the fall of the pro-Russian
government of Yanukovych last
February. The revolutionary action
of the masses, especially in Kiev,
overwhelmed the liberal bourgeois
political leadership, which only raised
the banner of an economic agreement
with the EU against Yanukovych’s
pact with Putin. The masses went
further and broke the covenant that
the EU, Yanukovych, the opposition
and Putin had already established to
try to stabilize the country. Herein lies
the root of the new crisis.
Since then the Putin regime
has sought to turn on the “Russian
16
nationalist” feelings from the people
of easter n Ukraine, seeking to
divide the country. This is a counter
revolutionary action that has nothing
progressive. Because it seeks to defeat
the revolutionary popular mobilization
of Kiev, yearning for fundamental
changes in the country, and pushes to
reach a new pro-Russian government
or be better able to negotiate with
the EU and Obama an agreement on
behalf of its business with gas and of
plundering and political control in the
region. We must take into account that
the main pipelines carrying Russian
gas to much of Western Europe go
through Ukraine. Thus, the first step
was to invade Crimea and keep the
historic naval base of Sevastopol on
the strategic entrance to the Black Sea.
The current pro-Russian separatist
uprisings in Odessa and Donetsk and
Sloviansk in the Donbass region in the
east of the country, are part of this
manoeuvre by Putin. While it is true
that in these states the Russian language
and culture predominates, there is no
genuine separatist movement. It is a fact
that for over 60 years of coexistence
there never were problems among
Eastern and Western Ukrainians. Or
with the use of the Russian language.
Why does this crisis arise now? Clearly,
the separatist movement is being
driven by the capitalist government
of Putin, taking advantage of, on the
one hand, the social crisis that is also
lived in this region with industrial
(steel, chemicals) and mineral (coal,
iron) weight, because of falling wages
and unemployment; and, secondly, for
the disastrous policies of the current
liberal government of Kiev, which
supported by NATO and the European
and American imperialism, exercises
a criminal crackdown of its armed
forces against the alleged “terrorism”
rather than having a policy of granting
autonomous forms of government,
language and culture together with
the social demands which are claimed.
While Putin arms and encourages
armed separatist groups, which has
led to harsh confrontations in Odessa
and Sloviansk. This further encourages
the pro-Russian separatist forces;
leading to a possible confrontation in
a fratricidal war that would be criminal
for the Ukrainian people. We say
fratricidal because both sides of the
conflict would be headed by equally
reactionary bourgeois leaders, looking
to put Ukraine and its workers in
the service of European and Yankee
imperialism, or in the service of the
Russian capitalist oligarchy that rules
and plunders many of the countries of
the former USSR.
Fascist coup or popular
mobilization?
Various sectors of the world left
support Chavism and Putin’s version that
what happened in February in Kiev was
a fascist coup. And in this way, indeed,
they justify Putin’s policy and provide
full or partial support for the Ukrainian
separatist movement.
This contributes to the logical
confusion that has been created within the
global vanguard on the events in Ukraine.
But reality is more contradictory. What
happened in February was not a fascist
military coup. It was a mass mobilization
which for months checkmated and
ended up toppling the capitalist proRussian and repressor government
of Yanukovych. There was no military
coup. Another thing is that this mass
movement had at its head a liberal
bourgeois leadership which took power.
Putin holds on to the fact that certain
nationalist fascist groups participated
in this movement, which collaborated
in the self-defence of the barricades.
But they have been and are minority.
What happened in February resembles
the revolutionary processes, such as
North Africa (Egypt, Tunisia and Libya),
where great revolutionary mass action
overthrew oppressors and derived, by
the absence of a revolutionary socialist
leadership, in new governments of
capitalist currents and political leaders. •
Ukraine
Neither the EU-Obama
nor Putin are a solution
for the workers
Sectors of the world reformist left,
headed by the Chavist government
of Maduro, support Putin’s policy of
division of Ukraine on the grounds that
the government of Kiev is “fascist”
and pro-Yankee. And that Putin would
be “anti-imperialist” and “not fascist”.
This is false. Of course the government
in Kiev is pro- Yankee and pro IMF
and no one calling himself of the left
can support its imperialist policy of
EU-IMF adjustment or sending troops
east of the country and their criminal
actions such as Odessa, which we
repudiate. But it is a caricature of reality
to place Putin as “anti-imperialist” and
progressive. The Putin government
is as bourgeois, repressive and of the
right as the government of Kiev. To
the point that, by its policy in Ukraine,
it has received the support of all the
European ultra-right as Mariana Le
Pen in France and the neo-Nazis
of Golden Dawn in Greece, among
others. Meanwhile, Putin is carrying
out a policy in agreement with the US
to quell the revolutionary processes in
the region. Especially against the Syrian
revolution, supporting the dictator
al-Assad. In addition, Putin, perhaps
playing a double game on Ukraine
of military pressing and negotiating,
signed a covenant on 17 April in
Geneva with the United States and the
Kiev government, to call for the general
disarmament of the militias and the
delivery of the occupied buildings in
eastern Ukraine. And he even called to
dismantle the referendum of 11 May,
which the separatists did not accept.
We reject attempts to divide Ukraine,
which will only serve to continue
plundering its wealth and oppressing
its people. Now Russia wants to raise
a false separatist banner to defend its
new oppression with Gazprom and
its Russian oligarchs. The workers and
the people of Ukraine should strive
to avoid falling into this dramatic trap
placed for them, on the one side by
EU–Yankee imperialism and on the
other, by Putin and the new Russian
capitalism. And to fight for the defence
of a united and independent Ukraine
without covenants and adjustments of
the EU–IMF–Obama, without pacts
with Putin–Gazprom. Workers and the
Ukrainian people, both from the West
and the East, Ukrainian or Russianspeaking, must unite against clashes
between workers, against a possible
fratricidal war, to repudiate massacres
as in Odessa, against the Russian
military threat; mobilizing to demand
the non-payment of the foreign debt
with Russia and the Western powers,
for the re-nationalization of industrial
and mining enterprises, so they can
work conducted by their employees to
serve the country, for a wage increase
and more work. And that the workers,
youth and the western Ukrainian people
demand for the rights of regional
autonomy for the eastern provinces,
so that everyone can live together in
a united and independent Ukraine.
Knowing that this will be achieved, in
final form, under a workers’ and people’s
government, consequently carrying
forward the social and democratic
demands of the mobilization. The
revolutionary socialists, we call to
conduct a global campaign to clarify the
reality of this fratricidal confrontation
and to support the development of a
Ukrainian revolutionary left to fight for
these banners. ◘
17
Spanish State
Madrid, March for Dignity, 22 March
For a general strike:
Out with Rajoy
M. Esther del Alcazar
The misery resulting from the
implementation of the Troika’s
austerity plans generates
a muted anger, which only
increases with the police
measures and the corruption
scandals of the government
of the Popular Party (PP) and
the very own monarchy. We
must coordinate the struggles
that arise isolated and convert
them in an engine of the anger
towards a general strike to put
an end to the government of
Rajoy.
May comes again with 6
million unemployed, cheapening
of redundancies, rapid growth of
18
precarious work, expiration of labour
contracts, wage cuts and increases in
taxes and domestic consumption bills,
thousands of evictions. While paying
the illegitimate public debt, which
has saved the banks and big business,
and it is soon to be 100 percent of
the state GDP. The full weight of
economic adjustment of the Spanish
and international bourgeoisie falls over
the working class, in its attempt to meet
the objectives set by the European
Union. The Rajoy government says
we began to emerge from the crisis,
but does not say it is at the expense of
greater insecurity and poverty for the
workers.
This panorama of attacks comes
garnished by undemocratic laws that
strengthen the Bonapartist traits
of the government. Starting by the
amendment of the Constitution agreed
between PP and PSOE (Partido Socialista
Obrero Español – Spanish Socialist
Workers’ Party) to precede the payment
of the debt to anything else, followed
by the Labour Reform of PP and CiU
(Convergència i Unió – Convergence and
Union), the abortion law against the
rights of women, or the Act gagging
public order with the reform of the
judiciary, the repressive actions have
taken a qualitative leap against workers,
youth, or in the bloodiest case against
immigrant workers trying to cross the
border at Ceuta who were directly
victims of state crime.
Spanish State
In this context, the PP government
takes advantag e to force a recentralization of the state, which is a
frontal attack on the waterline of the
state of the autonomous communities
agreement between the central and
peripheral bourgeoisie during the
Transition, which had the explicit
support of PSOE and PCE (Spanish
Communist Party) — currently in
IU (United Left) — without which
it would not have been possible.
The Wert Education Act with the
Castilian language as mandatory
vehicle throughout the state, the local
government law which removes powers
from the autonomous communities
to close councils and cut back in
transfers of taxes collected by the
central government in the autonomous
communities and which should be
returned for social spending such
as health or education which they
depend on; these are the breeding
ground for the resurgence of the
nationalist movement, which today has
its greatest exponent in Catalunya with
three consecutive years of protests of
over one million people demanding
independence. This movement goes
beyond the Catalan bourgeoisie that
attempts to ride on it, but it also opens
a wedge into the structural basis of
the monarchy, heir to the Franco
regime, which denies the right to selfdetermination of peoples.
With this background, it seems that
the continuing allegations of cases of
corruption of millions of euros linked
to institutional parties but especially
the PP may be one more element
of social unrest which will focus on
ousting them out when it is obvious
they charge fees to capital to govern
for their benefit. That is always the case
in capitalism, and it is also common
to surface in times of crisis. What is
less so is the total impunity. And for
that, as in the previous case, the key
is the impunity with which was born a
monarchy which had to first grant it to
the Francoist murderers who outlived
in the constitutional structures. To
this is added the politics of the EU
after its failures to impose technocratic
governments in Greece and Italy — in
the latter with the appearance of ending
with the corrupt Berlusconi—, in Spain
opted to ensure the support of the PP
government and force the unity of the
other parties to keep it in power . Easy
thing, when the crisis of the possible
alternative, the PSOE, is absolute.
So we face the next European
elections: with those who line up
around the maintenance of a EU as
is — option of the right around the
PP-—, those trying to sell the already
failed “growth” of Holland more or
less radically—- from the PSOE, to
IU, and even a Podemos [We Can] which
with Pablo Iglesias apparently mimics
the role of Beppe Grillo in Italy—, the
bourgeois and petty bourgeois variants
of nationalism, pro-Spanish Lerrouxist
proposals, those directly fascist and
the sectarian minority, who do pose
a rupture with the EU by way of
propaganda. A distressing scenario in
which already is envisaged such a high
abstention that the PP would win again.
So we say that the objective
conditions are ripe for a mobilization
which could wipe out this government,
with the struggle of the working
class and of the peoples. But the iron
determination of the bureaucratic
political and union leaderships is a
burden that the workers’ movement
had not been able to break. The 15M
Movement failed to be an incentive
for the workers’ strug gle, and it
dissolved like a sugar cube; subsequent
mobilizations, such as health in Madrid
or Gamonal, took to the streets from
a citizen movement that goes parallel
to the passivity in the jobs or isolated
struggles, which while accepting layoffs,
improve compensation. This is why
before the eyes of all take special
importance the indefinite strikes since
late 2013 with Balearic Islands teachers
first, the street cleaners in Madrid later,
Monroe in Asturias and now Panrico.
Because these attempts could be the
start of a shift of the protests, with the
determined entry of the working class
with methods of workers democracy,
passing over their leaderships. In this
possibility is also framed the March
for Dignity in Madrid on 22 March
called outside the mainstream union
leaderships.
But here we must shun sectarianism,
because the focus should be in existing
real struggles and not on the whims
of the individual apparatuses. It is
essential to link the struggles that
exist: be it Panrico, Coca-Cola, Bosch,
Alstom or Dracka regardless of who
the leaderships are, and once again
we have to force the unified call for
a general strike to retake the reins
of the movement to overthrow the
government. And its parallel in the
political arena is getting a front of the
workers and left to take in its hands
the right to self-determination and the
break with the monarchy on the one
hand, and on the other hand to raise
the break with the EU, for a Europe
of the workers and peoples. ◘
March for Dignity, Puerta del Sol, Madrid, 22 March
19
Spanish State
Panrico:
the longest
strike
The strike of Panrico, now 7 months
old, is the longest in Catalonia since
the Republic. But the importance of
this struggle goes beyond this figure. It
comes after years of layoffs, brutal wage
losses, setbacks and more setbacks ...
and with a policy by the majority Trade
Union leaderships that there is nothing
to be done, that you have to agree
to the lesser evil. And the lesser evil
today is just a bigger one tomorrow.
Over 95 percent of dismissals for ERE
(Records of Employment Regulation)
have been agreed. Labour reforms —
many of them also agreed or decided
without mobilization— have defined a
panorama of entrepreneurial impunity, of
arrogance, of mafia-like actions. Gila, the
representative of the company— in the
hands of vulture fund Oaktree —, takes
upon himself not only to sit but to issue
the crude insult of accusing the striking
workers as possible poisoners. But the
workers at Panrico have said enough!
They stand against a plan of massive
layoffs at the plant in Santa Perpetua and
wage cuts to the few remaining. They
answer: 0 dismissals, 0 wage cuts.
The situation was not foreseen
either by the company or by the
Generalitat (autonomous government
of Catalonia) or by the majority union
CCOO [Workers’ Commissions]: it is
not in the manual with which they have
managed the crisis so far. UGT [General
Union of Workers] got disconnected and
publicly defined the strike as illegal. Too
many open fronts for these 200-odd
workers, who know they are risking
their future and of those who come
behind.
Support Committee— from which as
Lucha Internationalista (LI) we have given
them all our efforts—, travel through the
state to coordinate with other struggles,
demonstrations, rallies outside the
municipalities or Parliament.The last one
in April to deliver 8000 over signatures,
with councillors and MPs (CUP-AE
[Popular Unity Candidacy] and IC / EuiA
20
Workers solidarity rally at factory’s gate
[Catalonian Greens Initiative / United
and Alternative Left]) denouncing the
Government complicity in the violation
of the right to strike by the company
which outsources and expands days
at other plants to cover the striking
workers production as outlined in the
resolution of the Labour Inspectorate.
Together with the Generalitat is
the CCOO bureaucracy. Both try to
negotiate with the bosses reduced layoffs
in exchange for removing the conflict
from the law courts, because during
these months the company has violated
all kinds of rights that the workers have
taken to court and apparently in the
current situation, Oaktree is unclear to
maintain impunity. The most important
trial, since it is about the illegality
of the ERE, was on 20 March at the
National Court in Madrid, and winning
it would represent the reinstatement
of those sacked. The Generalitat and
CCOO endeavoured to suspend it and
only the rejection by CGT [General
Confederation of Labour] allowed
ending it only in postponement. But it
was a brutal blow to workers who had
already been in strike for almost five
months, but even so they responded by
ratifying it until the new date of 6 May:
154 votes in favour and 11 against. The
pressures of the CCOO bureaucracy
against the strike escalated: even before,
from the Current of Opinion of Girona’s
CCOO this policy had been challenged
internally, and the Panrico comrades
had entered headquarters and faced
the leadership, then signatures followed
demanding from the union that the
strike continued. This became visible in
the demonstrations on May Day ... and
on 6 May, the trial continued!
After this important step, the
workers assembly reiterated the strike
until the judgment, already surpassing
the 7th month. But also, the Generalitat
and the bureaucracy of CCOO rushed
to make public their willingness to seek
the “termination” with the acceptance
of layoffs. Therefore, the swords remain
high.
Until now, the heroism of the
strike and its democratic functioning
around the mass meeting and the strike
committee voted by them, have been
able to stop the manoeuvres, staying
firm on not going back with a single
comrade missing. But this has been made
possible by the enormous sympathy
aroused by the struggle and solidarity
initiatives generated, among which we
must highlight the International Day on
March 20 that was driven by the IWU.
It is grassroots support what has been
filling the resistance box and enabled
to resist all these months. And, because
we have fallen too much, often without
practical resistance, we all need a win
to start thinking that if you truly fight,
you can make the bosses go back. Hence
many workers eyes now look at Panrico,
admiring the capacity for struggle and
suffering of the workers and their
families, and willing them to win, because
if Panrico wins we all win. •
Turkey
On the left, IDP taking part in the Istanbul protests. On the right Rescuers carry out dead miners on 14 May.
Massacre in privatised mine
in Turkey
At press time an explosion occurred
in the mine and we publish this note
with data sent at the last minute by the
comrades of İşçi Demokrasisi Partisi,
(Workers Democracy Party), formerly
İşçi Cephesi (Workers Front).
Tuesday 13 May, in the city of
Soma, an explosion and collapse
occurred in a coal mine, while 700
miners were underground.
It is the largest massacre of workers
in the history of Turkey. It is expected
that more than 400 workers will be
victims. Officially it was stated that 282
bodies were recovered, but there are
still over 120 workers inside the mine.
Massive protests began immediately
in Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir and other
cities.
This situation is a result of
the flexibilization, precariousness
of working conditions and the
government’s privatization policy. This
mine had 3,000 workers, 700 to 800 of
them were working in the mine. Their
salary is around US$ 600 (the minimum
wage in Turkey is around US$ 450).
The entrepreneur Alp Gürkan,
beneficiary of the privatization and
owner of the mining company Soma
Holding, two years ago had boasted
of the huge low cost achieved since
privatization in 2005. In the nearly 10
years of AKP government, more than
10 thousand workers have died of
“work accidents”. For this reason, this
disaster is not a coincidence, but the
result of privatization and corruption.
For example, a day after the disaster,
in two other cities, two workers died
in the mines.
One of the leaders of the College
of Engineers and Architects exposed
the poor working conditions in the
mines and stated “This is not an
accident, it is a crime”. Mine Workers
Union president Dev-Maden Sen said:
“There were no dead when the mines
belonged to TKI, the state-owned
coal company; deaths began with
privatization. These are not accidents,
they are murders” (Clarín, 15 May
2014).
The g overnment once again
reiterated its anti-worker attitude.
Erdogan stated that these accidents are
part of this sector, so that it is “normal”
and gave examples of Great Britain (an
accident that occurred in1862!), the
US (1907) and Japan (1914). When he
visited Soma, he was met with angry
people protesting in the streets. They
surrounded his car, and he was forced
to get into a supermarket to hide. There
he punched a girl of 15, whose father
was killed in the mine because she
protested.
On Wednesday, police forces
brutally attacked the protesters in mass
demonstrations in Istanbul and Ankara,
with hundreds injured and arrested.
On Thursday 15 there was a strike
called by several trade unions, it was
not total, but protests occurred across
the country. In Ankara, Izmir, Istanbul
and some Kurdistan cities they were
massive.
İşçi Demokrasisi Partisi (which is in
the process of merging with the IWU–
FI) denounced immediately that this is a
massacre whose responsibility is on the
AKP government with its anti-labour
policies. It rejected privatization and
unsafe working conditions, demanding
the re-nationalization of the mines
without compensation and under
workers control. Punishment and jail to
those responsible! Resignation of the
Erdogan government, who is primarily
responsible for this massacre! For the
unions to convene a general strike by
workers demand! ◘
21
Brazil
Wave of strikes hits the
government of Dilma and
the PT
Michel Tunes (CST-PSOL [Workers Socialist Current of Socialist and Freedom Party])
The triumph of the strike by waste collectors in Rio had an impact
The working class and the
people are protagonists of
strong strikes and mobilizations
that face the wage squeeze,
authoritarianism and the real
estate speculation of the FIFA
World Cup, fiscal adjustment
and corruption of the Dilma
government (PT/PMDB [Workers
Party / Brazilian Democratic
Movement Party]).
22
The long distance drivers from
Rio de Janeiro paralysed the city for
three days, stimulating strikes in several
states. Before, the strike of bus drivers
and conductors of Porto Alegre
had occurred. Construction workers
paralysed works in Cubatao (Sao Paulo
state), held massive demonstrations in
Para and 30,000 of them crossed their
arms in the works for the Olympics in
Rio de Janeiro. Federal employees of
universities and technical schools are
on nationwide strike and held protest
in Brasilia. Municipal workers of
Salvador, Belo Horizonte, and Natal
are paralysed.
Teachers in the city of Sao Paulo
have been on strike for several days
conducting massive rallies. In Rio,
security personnel, health sectors and
state and municipal education are on
strike, also there are stoppages and
strikes by steelworkers and workers
from the naval shipyards (see The
Brazil
Reactivation of the shipyards …). There are
ongoing strikes in the police barracks
of various states, such as the radicalized
action of low-ranking military in Para
with occupation of the barracks and
street closures. Increase in urban
occupations and the fight against the
high price of rents with its epicentre in
Sao Paulo organized by the Homeless
Movement. There are also explosions
against police violence against black
people in Rio’s favelas [slums].
This is the real Brazil, very different
from Dilma’s speech on 1 May which
attempted to deceive the people by
saying that we live in a country of
“economic growth” and good salaries.
In fact the economy remains in crisis,
so much so that the automakers of Sao
Paulo’s ABC attack their workers and
together with the government and the
trade union bureaucracy are planning
flexible rights. At the beginning of the
year inflation was 6.1 percent and the
cost of living advanced. At the same
time holding the FIFA World Cup has
turned against the government, because
its legacy is the elitism of games, deaths
of workers in the reforms of the
stadiums, overbillings in favour of the
contractors and the risk of rationing
electric power. The economic policy
deepens the social crisis, as it has as
focus the payment of the debt that
today sucks half the federal budget,
while education and health get only
about 7 percent
The strike by Rio’s “garis”
strengthened the class
The “garis” are the municipal waste
collectors in the city. In the middle of
Carnival, the “garis” of Rio de Janeiro
held a radicalized strike for eight days
winning an historic pay rise of 37
percent and an increase of the food
voucher by 66 percent. The strike was
marked by marches, mass meetings and
broad popular support. Also important
was the emergence of a negotiating
committee with the revocability of
mandate, democratically elected by
the rank and file to coordinate the
movement. All this ensured the victory
against the government of Eduardo
Brasfells shipyard workers on strike. Rio de Janeiro. May 2014
Paes (PMDB-PT) which threatened
layoffs and against the bureaucratic
leadership of the union which it had
signed a lesser agreement. The strike
falls in the context of a situation open
by the strong demonstrations of June
2013. Since then those at the bottom
do not want to live like before and
those above can no longer govern
as before. This explains that the
triumph has stimulated “garis” strikes
in Niteroi, Recife, ABC, Sao Luis and
Belo Horizonte.
Similar to the example of the
“garis” there are other processes where
broad militant organizations emerged
to group the strikers, because of the
treachery by the bureaucrats. This
is what we saw in the strike of civil
construction workers of COMPERJ
(petrochemical complex in Rio), where
it even came to burning of the sound
car of the bureaucrats; the long distance
drivers of Porto Alegre through a rank
and file commission; and recently in the
factory committee at Brasa Shipyard in
Niteroi. In the case of the long distance
drivers of Rio the same happened: the
bureaucratic leadership negotiated a
low agreement out of category. The
long distance drivers ignored the
leadership, formed a rank and file
commission and went on strike.
In the midst of this process we
must focus our energy in the workplace
on organizing workers in rank and
file commissions, deepening these
experiences and battling to oust the
bureaucrats of the leadership of our
unions, demanding that our bodies
return to democratic instruments
and in service of mobilization. We
propose that we all demand for
decisions of interest for each category
to be taken at mass meetings and that
during struggles wide commands be
elected to coordinate the movement,
whose members must have revocable
mandates.
Dilma and PT
Government in crisis
After 10 years in power, the PT
and Lula have lost their hegemony
in the streets. No longer are they
able to fully control the struggles or
easily deflect strikes towards the path
of social pacts. This prevents the
government from fully implementing
all the measures of its policy of fiscal
adjustment and privatization, which
increases the friction within the ruling
coalition. Thus we witness the increase
of political crises between the PT
and its corrupt allies and we saw the
role of the opposition headed by the
PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy
Party). Besides that, this explains the
emergence of another bourgeois
variant around Eduardo Campos (PSB
– Brazilian Socialist Party) and Marina
Silva (REDE – Network [Green Party]),
two former ministers of Lula.
It is in this framework that we
understand the crisis around Petrobras,
one of the most iconic companies in
23
Brazil
Metalworkers
The reactivation of the shipyards has
resurrected the workers’ struggle
By: Rosi Messias (National leadership of CST-PSOL [Workers Socialist Current of Socialist and Freedom Party])
On the left, metalworkers of Niteroi on strike, on the right mass meeting of BRASA metalworkers
In recent years companies in the
shipbuilding industry, linked to the
production of ships and platforms
for oil exploration, have been one
of the most dynamic sectors of the
Brazilian economy. This reactivation
occurred from 2003 with the Lula
Government of the PT (Workers Party),
with heavy government investment
allied to international companies. Most
contracts are for the construction
of ships and rigs for Petrobras. This
reactivation of the shipbuilding industry
has caused a resurrection of the struggle
of the industrial working class, which in
recent years has been one of the most
dynamic sectors in struggle. It was an
industry in crisis, with just over 2,000
employees nationwide. Today there are
already more than 65,000 workers, with
over 16,000 just in Niteroi and adding
the other municipalities, it can reach
almost 30,000 in the state of Rio de
Janeiro alone.
The perspective is this sector will
continue growing due to large works
related to the Pre-Salt Layer Project.
Among the main shipyards is Brasa, a
partnership between the Dutch SBM
and Synergy Group Corp. SBM is the
largest builder of naval platforms in the
world, and it has just been denounced for
paying 30 million reals (about US$ 13.4
million) bribe to Petrobras employees,
24
to facilitate the approval of contracts.
Also VARD (formerly STX), composed
mainly by Italian company Fincantieri
and MAUA, controlled by Synergy Group
Corp., a South American industrial
holding. Together these three shipyards
agglomerate almost 12,000 workers.
Strong strikes hit the shipyards
Since 2012 the metal workers of
Niteroi have been protagonists of strong
strikes for wage increases and against the
poor working conditions. Since then the
strikes and work stoppages have been
done against the bosses and outside the
trade union bureaucracy. For over 20
years the union is being run by the CUT
(Unified Workers Central) connected
to the PT. A leadership embedded in
the union and which through legal
manoeuvres has been extending its
mandate expired three years ago.
This time, driven by the wave of
strikes happening in the country from
north to south, the metal workers
of Niteroi have been since April
protagonists of strong strikes against
the bosses, going over the leadership
of the union. The protagonists are the
Brasa shipyard workers, paralysing
their activities and conducting massive
street demonstrations. The workers
self-organized outside of the union
and elected as Factory Committee a
leadership recognized by the rank and
file and which has been directing the
struggle of the workers and has achieved
triumphs through stoppages, radicalized
strikes with 100 percent adherence,
pickets and demonstrations.
The victory of the Brasa workers,
who managed a profit sharing payment
and the reinstatement of 14 workers
who had been fired, has been infecting
the workers of other shipyards. In VARD,
heading the fight are members of CIPA
(Internal Commission for Accident
Prevention); site where the workers
held two stoppages last week. In Maua,
the strength of the strike unfortunately
failed to reverse the nearly 150 layoffs
as only a portion of those have returned
to work at the shipyard. In this case the
role of the union was nefarious, because
on this this yard they have ten directors,
including the president of the union,
and ended up helping the company and
its armed thugs to impose a defeat for
the workers in relation to lost days off
which were discounted. But the workers
responded to this attack conducting
further stoppages.
Now in the month of May, when wage
category bargaining occurs, conditions
exist for these conflicts to spread into
a common struggle, a battle which is still
ongoing. •
Brazil
Strike of Federal public servants, March 2014
Brazil. It is a kind of joint venture with
hegemonic control of the Brazilian
government which is being investigated
by the Federal Police and may be
the target of an investigation in the
national congress. Petrobras is the
pivot of a major corruption scandal
that goes from overpriced purchases of
a refinery in Texas to a grand scheme
of money laundering and billionaire
evasion of currency involving money
changers, former Petrobras directors,
PT parliamentarians and former Dilma
ministers. What is worse is that the
destruction of Petrobras favours oil
multinationals as Shell, TOTAL and
British Petroleum advancing in the
control of our oil basins.
In this scenario the Dilma
government has just fallen in the
polls conducted by leading institutes
of the country. About 72 percent of
respondents want “that the actions of
the next government be different from
the current”. The pessimism of the
respondents reveals that the timing is
tricky for Dilma because most believe
that inflation and unemployment will
rise in the coming months before the
elections for the presidency of the
republic, governors and the national
congress.
This panorama demands more than
ever the construction of a political
alternative to face both the PT as well as
the other acronyms of those “on top”
such as the PSDB and PSB / REDE
which are trying to impose a false
polarization in the country since they
have no fundamental disagreement. In
this sense, to contend for a policy of
class within the PSOL (Socialism and
Freedom Party) and for a program that
meets the demands of the strikers and
the people will be a major challenge for
the coming months, for the candidate
of the PSOL to express the aspirations
of the working class and having a
left-wing candidate in the bourgeois
electoral process.
Unifying the struggles
towards the general strike
All the ongoing struggles occur
outside of or questioning the leadership
of the trade union confederations
(CUT [Unified Workers’ Central], Força
Sindical [Trade Union Strength], UGT
[General Union of Workers], etc.), and
of popular and youth movements tied
to governments and the bosses. To
such an extent that on May Day the
labour federations organized music
concerts instead of a day of struggle.
It was interesting to note that Dilma’s
ministers were booed in the events
of the bureaucracy itself. Therefore
we must demand that the CUT and
the other trade union federations
break their pacts with governments
and bosses and orient their unions to
conduct rank and file mass meetings
for organizing the mobilization. We
demand that the CUT and other union
federations abandon their collusion
with our enemies and coordinate the
ongoing strikes and demonstrations
and push for wage campaigns in the
second half of the year (banking, oil
workers, metal workers, postal workers,
etc.) aiming towards a general strike. If
the union bureaucracy refuses to call a
general strike, this must be headed by
the rank and file, starting with building
new days of struggle as occurred in
May and what will take place in June.
To confront the economic and
social crisis imposed by the capitalist
governments of Dilma, governors and
mayors, we must support the agendas
of the strikers, the sectors in struggle
and demand the following emergency
measures:
1) General increase of wages,
shorter workweek, better working
conditions and collective labour
ag reements ensuring automatic
replacement of lost wages caused by
inflation every three months. Freezing
of service tariffs and of prices of
staples. Suspension of external and
internal debt payment, channelling
these resources to social areas and a
plan of public works that includes
affordable housing.
2) We demand budget funds for
health, education and transportation,
and not for the FIFA World Cup.
Popular audit of all contracts between
the public authorities, contractors and
FIFA. For free and quality State public
services. End the criminalization of
struggles and poverty, the militarization
of slums and the extermination of poor
and black people.
3) For a 100 percent stateowned Petrobras under workers’
control! Down with the rigging and
corruption in the public and state
agencies! Renationalization of all
privatized companies! Independent
investigation of Petrobras contracts
with contractors and multinationals by
a Commission formed by unions and
popular organizations. Punishment to
all politicians involved in the corruption
scheme uncovered by the Federal
Police. ◘
25
Mexico
A new process of struggle incubates in Mexico
Against the counter reforms
imposed by the government
Francisco Retama, member Executive Committee of POS-MAS (Mexico)
In Mexico the government of
Enrique Peña Nieto, in agreement
with the bourgeois parties and the
bosses, has imposed severe blows
against the workers: the adoption of a
new generation of neoliberal reforms,
which included the energy sector, was
completed, opening the possibility of
putting oil revenues in the hands of
the private sector, as well as advancing
the privatization of electricity. Also, the
so called “education reform” which
actually focuses on the destruction
of important labour victories of the
education workers.
It imposed amendments in
labour legislation to further deepen
the precariousness of the collective
26
barg aining, the cheapening of
dismissals, among other regressive
measures. It also adopted “reforms”
in the field of taxation and finance,
for example, which will give banks the
opportunity to collect debts by force,
garnishing the wages of the workers.
It was said that with the reforms
Mexico would initiate an economic
growth, of employment generation
and improvement of income. Many
had expectations that the government
would mitigate the severe insecurity
and violence caused by the action of
the drug cartels, but the opposite has
happened.
The country remains economically
stagnant, growth does not get ignited
and unemployment remains high.
Unemployment is recognized at 5
percent, to which it must be added more
than 20 percent of underemployed. A
quarter of the economically active
population, as the g over nment
acknowledges, is outside formal work.
And more and more workers earn less.
In addition, workers get the burden of
the effects of the crisis and the policy
of adjustment in public spending,
especially in the social field, increasing
the price of various public services
such as transport, reducing subsidies,
lowering the depressed income of most
Mexicans.
Moreover, violence and insecurity
constantly runs rampant. This far in
Mexico
the government of Enrique Peña Nieto
the number of the so called “wilful”
deaths does not represent a decrease
compared to what happened in the
government of Felipe Calderon. After
14 months of Peña’s government, the
prestigious weekly ZETA, in the north
of the country, recorded 23,000 deaths
linked to drug trafficking and crime.
Fighting the “reforms” of
Peña and the parties
The so-called Pact for Mexico was
the gimmick used by Peña and the
bourgeoisie to tie the bourgeois parties
to the approval of the “reforms”. A
supposed political reform was sold
in exchange for the reform towards
the privatization of the oil and energy
sectors. Financial and education
reforms were also included in the
package and they all were voted in
common by the major parties, except
energy. Indeed, even the Party of
Democratic Revolution (PRD), which
calls itself of the left, became complicit
in the project of the government of
Enrique Peña and his Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI).
The reforms were also adopted
because it was allowed by the leaderships
of the mass movement, subordinated
to the PRI through corporatism; as
well as those which are referred to
as independent and which are mostly
aligned with the PRD.
Even Andrés Manuel Lopez
Obrador (AMLO), the leading figure
of “opposition” to the government,
focused on the denunciation of the
energy reform, but he refused to
promote an intensive mobilization that
could defeat the privatization attempt.
In several “assemblies” convened by
the man from Tabasco, AMLO, many
of his followers were clamouring for
a national stoppage to stop the sellout. AMLO categorically rejected it,
imposing a harmless mobilization, the
“fence” to the Congress of the Union,
on the day that began the examination
of the PRI initiative that was being
negotiated with the National Action
Party (PAN), in the so-called Pact for
Mexico.
Teachers against the education reform of the government
What the rulers and leaders of
the political parties did not expect
was the emergence of the National
Coordination of Education Workers
(CNTE) against the poorly named
“education reform”, that hundreds
of thousands of teachers across the
country mobilized intensively and
shook the national political scene, as
did no other sector. For months, they
paralysed activities, conducted mass
demonstrations and installed a massive
protest camp in the Zocalo1 of México
City. A rich process of independent
organization of the teachers, many
of them with no history of struggle
in their states. Only the weakness
of the CNTE and their inability to
achieve a truly coordinated plan of
action at national level,2 in addition
to the isolation in which the vast
majority of independent leaderships
left them, allowed the repressive action
1 The Zocalo, actually named Constitution
Square, is the principal public square of the
country and is the most important stage of
the mobilizations in Mexico.
2 A great deal of the actions carried out by
the education workers were separate from
different branches of the Union; they
never managed to coordinate an indefinite
national strike by all mobilized so that the
strikes had to be lifted separately, motivated
by fatigue or private negotiations held with
state governors. Thus was dispersed the
energy of a mobilization that drew attention
not only because of its massive power, but
also for its radicalism, as they carried out
roads cuts, regional airport sit ins making
entities, gasoline service station sit ins, and
even a massive blockage to Mexico City’s
international airport.
of the government of Mexico City,3
which violently evicted the camp, in
agreement with federal forces.
T h e t e a ch e r s ’ m o b i l i z a t i o n
reached such intensity that forced the
government to postpone for months
its energy reform and to cancel the
increase to the collection of value added
tax (VAT). The teachers’ mobilization
failed to halt the approval of the
“educational reform”, but neither did
it fell on its face. It is expected that
the implementation of the reform will
generate new demonstrations which
may have the participation of union
of sectors not previously mobilized
and are now supporters of the CNTE.
Similarly, the transport price
increase led to a spontaneous
mobilization of thousands of young
people who, unable to cancel the
increase, showed the potential of
this sector, which had already been
mobilized en masse before the election
of Peña as president.
Community police and selfdefence: the sharpening
of the class struggle
The events in Michoacán that
have flooded newspapers and political
analysis magazines, television and
radio newscasts and websites illustrate
the degree of polarization which
has reached the class struggle in
3 Mexico’s Federal District is governed by
Michelangelo Mancera Espinosa, who was
nominated by the Party of the Democratic
Revolution.
27
Mexico
the country. Although this is not a
generalized phenomenon, since it
has centred on a few states of the
Republic, the emergence of groups of
self-defense and community police and
their confrontations with drug cartels
and organized crime has tinted the
national reality.
To analyse this phenomenon,
we start with our characterization of
drug cartels as capitalist organizations
which motivated by illegality resort
to extremely violent practices. From
this point of view, it is possible to
understand the confrontation involving
criminal cartels and the reactions of
peasant communities or sectors of
the population who are victims of the
criminal practices of these groups.
Also of sectors of small and medium
businesses which are subject to the
appropriation of a portion of their
profits.
Fed up with the complicity of the
authorities to these powerful economic
and paramilitary groups has led to the
emergence of self-defence groups as
the only way to combat extortion and
the climate of extreme insecurity.
It is an uneven process. On one
hand are the communities, with
democratic practices, as is the case of
Cherán,1 which through their governing
bodies are willing to defend themselves,
something not provided by the capitalist
state. On the other hand, sectors of the
population who unilaterally decide to
organize to take into their hand security
tasks, arming themselves and creating
police structures that are not based on
a democratic community organization,
although it is evident the support of
local communities to their actions.
There is also evidence that different
levels of government tolerate and
even encourage the formation of selfdefence groups, where they estimate
that is not necessary to expose the
Army or Federal Police or where these
have been subordinated to the interests
of the cartels.
1 Cheran is a municipality in Michoacán,
inhabited by Purepecha communities and
where more than ten years ago they built a
community police to confront criminals and
looters of their forests.
28
While there is no homogeneity,
there are self-defence groups that
show their weaknesses, their limitations
and even their proclivity towards the
bourgeois state. Here is the agreement
signed by the leadership of the “selfdefence” groups with the Michoacán
government and the representative of
Peña, to integrate them into the rural
police.
Our organization defends the
rights of communities to self-defence
against the omission or open complicity
of government authorities with these
criminal illegal capitalist groups.
However, at the same time we claim that
self-defence rests on the democratic
and independent organization of
communities and peoples. When
exercising self-defence the peoples
should also build up new institutions
of government that are put above the
corrupt councils, subordinated to the
interests of criminal gangs.
For a new revolutionary
socialist organization
The Partido Obrero Socialista [Socialist
Workers Party – POS] has been an active
participant in the struggle of resistance
to the policy of the government
of Peña and the parties. But it also
identifies the absence of a leadership
capable of successfully confronting
the government and bosses offensive.
Therefore, in addition to committing to
the struggle of the workers and youth
against neoliberal reforms and the
rejection of repression, the POS has
put forth for discussion the proposal
to build a new political organization,
of socialist left, revolutionary, to bring
together the best of the activism that
mobilizes and to offer a new alternative
leadership to the working class and
youth.
We live in a situation where the
working people are on the defensive,
receiving hard knocks, but crucial
battles are given in which there is an
enormous learning, as is the case of
the electricians of the SME [Mexican
Union of Electricians] resistance or of
mining sectors, or of education workers
grouped in the CNTE and, of course,
Oaxaca teachers’ poster
in the small but significant labour
organizations which have spent years
waging struggles in defence of freedom
of association or collective bargaining.
Recently, the youth has given ample
proof of its potential vigour, first in
their fight to prevent the return of
the PRI to the presidency, through the
movement #YoSoy132, and later with
its active solidarity with the teachers’
movement facing with an exemplary
combativeness a government which
intensifies repression and reconfigures
their fraudulent dealings of this
democracy for the rich.
Without a doubt, this situation
is evolving. It is incubating growing
contradictions in the Mexican social
and political system, and we must be
prepared with an organization that
is able to intervene in the intensified
class str ug gle to come, with a
class, independent, democratic and
revolutionary position, which does not
encourage new illusions in decadent or
fraudulent institutions that are at the
service of the survival of capitalism,
but which seriously proposes building
a new society.
Deserving a special mention is one
of the assets that the POS wants to make
available to this project: their role in the
leadership of the victory obtained by
the tyre workers of the Revolutionary
Workers National Union of Euzkadi,
through our comrade Jesus Torres
Nuño. It is the only worker victory
in years in our country, which was
tested as leadership as we seek to build
everywhere, to guide their behaviour
based on principles such as honesty,
democracy, independence, militancy,
solidarity and internationalism. ◘
Venezuela
Venezuela and the
spectre of social unrest
Simón Rodríguez Porras
While shortages of essential goods grow, Maduro prepares a new adjustment.
Overwhelmed by the highest
inflation in the hemisphere
and shortages of essential
goods, especially food, millions
of Venezuelans face bleak
prospects as the government
prepares an upsurge of the
adjustment. The economic,
political and social collapse
of the country increasingly
brings to mind the events of
the Caracazo, the powerful
popular uprising that erupted
in 1989 against the economic
package of Carlos Andrés
Pérez, Fedecamaras and the
International Monetary Fund.
The government of Nicolas
Maduro and Diosdado Cabello not
only inherits the rhetorical script
of Chavez and his eagerness to
present himself as a socialist, it is also
heir to his methods, and to face the
crisis it applies the classic recipes of
adjustment to reduce the fiscal gap,
just as was the case in 2009, before
the fall of oil prices worldwide. So
far this year, the government has
implemented a new exchange system
wherein a currency devaluation of
more than 650 percent is implied, it has
increased prices of foods subject to
regulation by about 300 percent, public
transport increased by 40 percent,
and it is announcing the increase in
electricity tariffs, in a country that has
been experiencing a serious crisis in
the sector, with frequent blackouts
in the interior of the country, and it
is conducting a campaign to raise the
price of gasoline. These brutal blows
against the real wages of the working
majority, along with the increase in
subsidies to the business sector, are
yet another attempt to keep afloat
the dependent and semi-colonial
Venezuelan capitalism on the basis of
further impoverishing the majority of
the population.
“Economic War” of the
government and business
against the people
The inability of Chavism to
overcome the dependence is evident.
Between 1999 and 2013, the cumulative
inflation was higher than 2300 percent
and the depreciation of the currency
higher than 2000 percent; public debt
climbed to about $ 200 billion, and
the payment of interest and principal
consumes 20 percent of the 2014
budget, an amount much higher
than the combined figure for health
and education. Today the country is
more dependent on oil: in 1999, 68
percent of exports were oil, in 2013
this proportion was 96 percent. In
the same period, annual imports grew
236 percent, going from $ 16.7 billion
to $ 39.4 billion. More than half of all
wage earners in the country, and about
three quarters of public sector workers
earn between one and two minimum
wages. They cannot even cover the
basic staples basket. At the official rate
of exchange of Sicad II, the minimum
wage is less than $ 90 a month, one of
the lowest in Latin America.
The government has tried to
explain the super high inflation
attributing it to an alleged “economic
war” by the bosses. Beyond the
extortionate practices of big business,
it was the government which through
the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV)
in 2013 increased by 70 percent the
29
Venezuela
amount of bolivars circulating in the
economy, an increase which did not
correspond to the production and
therefore directly affects inflation,
which reached 56.3 percent last year,
destroying the incomes of the poor.
The decline in non-oil production,
combined with a decline in international
reserves of 29 percent in 2013, has
limited imports, increasing scarcity,
whose index stood according to the
BCV at 29.4 percent in March. In the
case of foods such as oil, sugar, milk,
coffee or cornmeal, scarcity is around
90 percent. Thousands of people have
to put up with queues of hours at the
doors of shops to purchase a limited
amount of food. State distribution
networks of subsidized food accuse
the same situation.
The combativity of
conflicts increase
The increasingly precarious
situation of millions of people has
been reflected in a rise of struggles,
expressed in more than 15 thousand
protests between 2011 and 2013. This
phenomenon frames the combativity
of conflicts following 12 February
this year, at whose root is discontent
with the economic crisis, an unrest
partially capitalized by the sector
further to the right in the partisan
coalition of the bosses’ opposition, the
Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD).
Although with significant weight of
the middle class influenced by the
sector of the MUD waving slogans
like “the solution is on the streets”, the
protests at the peak in intensity during
the month of February extended to
popular sectors of Caracas and other
cities, in the form of pot-banging. The
imprint of the leadership of the MUD,
divided between the sector negotiating
with the government and the sector
advocating their “exit”, has been felt
in the protests, not only because the
socioeconomic demands have not
been reflected in their demonstrations,
but also for their adventurism. Beyond
the intense rejection that the Maduro
g overnment has earned for its
economic policies and the repression
through the Bolivarian National Guard
and paramilitary bodies, it is also true
that the vandalism actions and in some
cases terrorist actions by activists of
the parties advocating the “exit” and a
healthy distrust of millions of workers
and residents of popular communities
to the leadership of the MUD, have
prevented the protests from spreading
with greater force in the grassroots,
in the absence of an alternative
revolutionary political leadership with
significant influence.
Trimming of democratic
freedoms in the service
of “peace”
The criminalization of protest is
a State policy that has deepened in
the past seven years. More than four
thousand people have open trials for
participating in protests, including
two hundred workers. An example
is the case of José Bodas, secretary
For a response of the workers and popular
sectors to the crisis
With the participation of about 150
union leaders, indigenous students and
activists of the popular movement, on
21 March was held in the Venezuelan
capital the Trade Union and Popular
Gathering convened by the Classist,
Unitary, Revolutionary and Autonomous
Current (C-CURA) headed by Orlando
Chirino and José Bodas, as well as the
National Union of Workers (Unete) and
other adherent organizations.
In the effort to articulate a response
to the crisis in an autonomous way,
C-CURA put forward the need to
postulate an Alternative Economic and
Social Plan starting with the demand
of a general increase in salaries and
wages, a minimum wage equal to the
basic basket, nationalization of the oil
industry without joint ventures, rescue
and development of basic industries in
Guayana, removal of VAT, the confiscation
of capital of the companies which
have made fraudulent imports with
30
preferential foreign exchange rates, the
cancellation of all trials against workers,
peasants, indigenous people, and in
general for all judicially processed for
protesting or defending their rights; and
an independent investigation into human
rights violations in the context of the
wave of protests that began in February
this year, among other requirements.
In a statement issued in April by
C-CURA and three other organizations,
it was ratified that “workers and
popular sectors cannot march behind
a government that criminalizes us
and downloads the economic crisis
on our shoulders, in agreement with
Fedecamaras. Nor can we march with an
opposition which seeks to appear before
the workers and the people as an option
to solve the economic and social crisis
of our country (...) Similarly, we reject
any imperialist interference (...) It is clear
that we must and need to mobilize in an
independent, autonomous and classist
way to confront the economic package
of the government and Fedecamaras,
which is also enshrined to in the MUD’s
economic program, while defending
democratic freedoms”. Currently,
C-CURA encourages participation in
union and popular gatherings by region
to give continuity to this effort. •
Venezuela
general of the United Federation of
Oil Workers (FUTPV) and leader
of the Socialism and Freedom Party
(PSL) as well as nine other oil workers,
who were arrested on 3 February for
performing a union meeting at the
gates of Puerto La Cruz refinery, and
then charged with resisting arrest.
Hiding behind his search for
“peace” discourse, Maduro pacts with
the businessmen of Fedecamaras new
adjustment measures and gives them all
kinds of benefits, while participating
in negotiations with the majority wing
of the MUD under the mediation of
the Vatican and Unasur, throwing to
the dustbin his previous allegations of
“economic warfare” and “soft coup”,
allegations to which at the time some
sectors of the international left gave in.
At the same time, he continues
criminalizing protest and imposing
restrictions on democratic freedoms.
Two o p p o s i t i o n m ayo r s we r e
deposed and imprisoned by expedited
procedures of the Supreme Tribunal
of Justice (TSJ). Congresswoman
Maria Corina Machado was removed
from her seat and Popular Will party
leader, Leopoldo Lopez, was jailed
for his alleged role in the violence
that followed the demonstration of
12 February.
D e s p i t e t h i s, d o c u m e n t e d
complaints about the responsibility of
repressive bodies in the violence forced
the government to imprison several
staff members of the Bolivarian
National Intelligence Service (Sebin)
for material responsibility for the
killings around the headquarters of
the Office of Attorney General.
In late April, the Supreme Court
ruled, in an arbitrary interpretation
of the Constitution, that the right
to protest is subject to the issuance
of a permit by the municipal power,
dictating instructions for police
repression and the legal persecution
of unauthorized protests, including
fines and imprisonment.
The PSL has repudiated both the
repressive actions such as restrictions
on democratic rights as well as the
judicial arbitrariness. For beyond
Jose Bodas in the middle after being liberated together with other oilworkers. He
is still being processed.
that they incidentally affect MUD
leaders or activists, these measures
are part of a comprehensive policy
against the population to discipline
it politically to the government, and
not resist the economic measures that
Maduro is imposing at the service of
transnational corporations, private
banking and big business.
A revolutionary
alternative is needed
To the extent that the government
intends to shield its adjustment from
the population response with repressive
measures, it further erodes their social
base and feeds repudiation. The
MUD, divided and unable to oppose
the adjustment, mainly because they
agree with the economic measures,
is in its worst crisis since the defeat
of the 2002 coup and the 2004 recall
referendum. The recent impasse
between the US Secretary of State,
Roberta Jacobson, and MUD has
shown the subordination of both
wings of the bosses’ opposition
to the government of the United
States. Jacobson admitted at a hearing
before lawmakers that Obama had not
applied sanctions on the Venezuelan
government at the request of the
MUD. This exposed the differences
within the bosses’ coalition, as a sector
does agree to invoke sanctions by the
U.S. government, and launched violent
public criticism. MUD spokesperson,
Aveledo, was forced to clarify that they
were not opposed to the imposition
of sanctions against officials of the
Maduro government.
For the majority of the population,
the situation is becoming more and
more unbearable. The economic
disaster and its social consequences
are the main spur of discontent. In the
absence of an alternative with enough
influence, Chavism and the MUD
keep polarizing political support in the
country. In this context, it is necessary
to build a left reference, with the ability
to give organicity to the opposition to
the adjustment and the government
attacks on democratic rights such as
the right to protest and the right to
information. The rapid deterioration
of the economic situation, and the
inability of government and the bosses
opposition to present a strategy to
overcome the crisis, push the exploited
and oppressed masses towards forging
this political alternative and that before
a new social explosion as the Caracazo,
the rebellion be channelled towards a
fundamental solution, at the service of
the working majority. ◘
31
Global News
China
More and more strikes
On April 14 an indefinite strike
began in Dongguan (Guangdong
Province), which was extended to
seven cities and lasted two weeks.
It was staged by the 70,000 workers
(the largest number of strikers in the
history of the People’s Republic of
China) who produce sports shoes
for Nike, Adidas and other famous
brands, in seven plants of the Yue
Yen Group. It lasted 15 days and had
worldwide impact. The corporation
agreed to disburse the workers social
contributions and increase monthly
subsistence allowances.
This is part of the remarkable
increase in the number of strikes and
protests by workers in all industry
sectors and all regions of China in
recent years. Strikes are basically now
an everyday occurrence.
The world’s largest retailer,
Walmart, had an unpleasant surprise
this year when it tried to close a small
store, of low yield, in the Chinese city
of Changde (Huan Province). It did
not expect any problems when on 4
March informed the 143 employees
of store number 2024 they would
lose their jobs. This time the workers
blocked the store and unfurled banners
in protest. Trusting previous times
of apathy, Walmart had allowed the
unionization of its workers. When
Huang, a former teller who last
year was elected president of the
Changde store union, prompted the
unprecedented step of challenging
Walmart’s closure plan and demanded
negotiations with management over
severance pay, not only did this cause
a chain reaction to other stores, but
it challenged the pro-bosses national
union bureaucrats.
32
In March, more than 1,000 workers
of a Samsung supplier, Shanmukang,
also in Dongguan, went on strike
against a pay cut. The company
immediately agreed to increase
overtime pay and monthly benefits,
and workers returned to work.
Although there are also repression
and detainees, the growing activism
of workers in China, and the rise of
militant labour groups at the head of
some of the fights are a challenge for
multinationals which have been doing
business without major obstacles in the
wild capitalism ruled by the dictatorship
of the Chinese Communist Party.
Cuba
New foreign investment law
The new law was published in
the Official Gazette on 16 April. The
official statement said that “it seeks
to provide foreign investors with full
protection and legal certainty” and
exemptions from taxes on personal
income “for foreign investors
partners in joint ventures or parties
to international economic association
contracts”, additionally they can
export their profits. The existing
restriction to the sectors of education,
health (excluding pharmaceuticals and
biotechnology, both important) and
defence remains in force.
For more than two decades
now multinationals, associated with
the State, have had an important
and growing activity in the island,
particularly in the areas of tourism,
nickel, oil, rum and snuff, as well
as in the trade in foodstuffs that
scarcely occur within Cuba. The
new law extends the provisions that
already existed in 1995 (Act 77) and
provides greater benefits, for example
installing companies with 100 percent
foreign capital. The government of the
Cuban CP led by the Castro brothers
seeks to hide capitalist restoration
with declamations on “update of
socialism”. But every day is harder
to hide reality. In January the first
phase of the deep water port of
Mariel opened, with Raul Castro and
Dilma Rousseff holding hands for the
photos. This mega-project is being
built by the multinational Odebrecht,
Brazil’s main construction company,
which is preparing to address the
construction of a new airport. A
Singaporean company manages the
operation of the port, which will be
the Caribbean’s largest.
The government will continue to
maintain its role as “contractor” of
Cuban labour using foreign companies.
Foreign companies will be exempted
for eight years from income tax, and
then pay 15 percent. If they reinvest in
the island the term will extend. “Cuban
style” capitalism continues to progress,
with its growing social inequality,
poverty and derisory wages of US$ 20.
USA
Fast food workers mobilise
Workers of fast food restaurants
in Miami and New York went on strike
on 15 May to demand a salary increase
and the ability to organize themselves
in a Union, a protest supported in
other US cities and the world.
The protests, which demanded
that workers get double the salary to
about US$ 15 an hour and allowed
to form unions without retaliation,
were convened in 130 cities in over 33
countries, said one of the organizers in
Miami, Muhammed Malik. ◘
Estado Español
Bolivia
Panama
Venezuela
Brazil
Mexico
Argentina
Turkey
Chile
Egypt
Down with the death sentence
to 720 political prisoners!
In April, a court in Egypt sentenced to death
680 political activists of the Muslim Brotherhood
(MB). The court produced the largest capital punishment of Egypt in modern times and of the entire
world in recent times. Meanwhile another court
decision revoked a March sentencing to death of
over 520 political prisoners, changing most of them
to 25 years in prison and leaving 37 sentenced to
death. This gives, for now, a total of 720 sentenced
to death.
Repression is not only against the MB, but also
dozens of activists on the left are being tried. A
court in Cairo, for example, ordered the banning
of the 6 of April Youth Movement, which played a
central role in the 2011 revolution against former
dictator Mubarak.
With these punishments the military intend
to frighten the masses and liquidate the revolution
started in January 2011 in Tahrir Square. But the
revolutionary process is still alive, and in February
there was a wave of strikes by textile workers and
other sectors that put the civilian-military government on the ropes.
Neither the civil-military government nor the
Muslim Brotherhood. Only the people, workers,
women and revolutionary youth mobilized and in
power, can achieve the fundamental changes that
have been in the agenda since the revolution began
in 2011.
The internationalist socialists we reiterate that
we have no political agreement with the MB, because it does not represent the revolution, on the
contrary, it is a reactionary apparatus of the Islamist
bourgeois trying to liquidate the revolution for its
own interests. But we reject the death sentence to
the MB militants and demand the immediate release
of all political prisoners in Egypt.
We call on the workers and the youth of the
world to repudiate this aberrant death sentence of
hundreds of political prisoners.