Class Struggle # 134 Spring September/November 2020

It is 80 years since Trotsky was assassinated by a Stalinist agent in

Mexico. Today our task is to rebuild the 'World Party of Socialism'
on the foundation of the 1938 Transitional Program to fulfil the goal
of world socialist revolution against dying capitalism's drive to
destroy nature and humanity. In 1935 in ‘Open Letter for the Fourth
International’ Trotsky rallied his supporters for a new international
to fight the cause of world revolution (Cont. back cover)
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Class Struggle # 134 Spring
Against the OK sign we raise the clenched fist!
Brenton Tarrant, perpetrator of the Christchurch massacre, March 2019, makes the Alt-right sign
Tarrant makes the sign of the alt-right – the OK
symbol - above. Yes, he deserves to stay in jail
for life. But don’t imagine that his white
supremacy extremist ideology has not already
taken root here.
NZ began when Aotearoa was invaded by white
supremacists. The land wars that allowed the
theft of Maori land provides the economic base
for an economy that perpetuates white racism
today. White racism serves to denigrate non-
Euros and justify the right of Euro white
supremacy to conquer the world. NZ is a first
cousin of the other Euro white settler colonies
with the US as the biggest and brutal case.
The old white empires of Britain and the other
Euro powers, and the white settler colonies,
notably the USA, are in decline and with it the
cultural dominance of white supremacy. The
age-old fear that the Asian powers led by Russia
and China would come to control Eurasia has
come to pass.
NZ’s European population is in decline relative
to new migrants from Asia. This is a threat to
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September-November 2020
the Anglo-American settler culture that has
dominated NZ since colonisation as a ‘property-
owning democracy’.
Today the civil war between the old white
world powers and the rising new world nations
drives social divides along ethnic and
nationalist lines. These cut across social class
and create a mass base for fascism. The civil
war is now being televised on the streets in the
US right now.
Watch out kiwis, you are not a ‘team of 5
million’ but a nation divided along ethnic and
national lines. Ironically the reality is that NZ is
a neo-colony subjected to both US and Chinese
imperialism. So, race and national wars serve
only Anglo/US/Euro and Asian imperialist rule
of NZ.
The solution is to wake up and recognise that
fighting civil wars along these lines is a
diversion from the class war – that between the
80% that creates the wealth, and the 20% that
lives off that wealth – which is the only war that
the majority can win.
Class Struggle # 134 Spring September-November 2020

The Party that stole the name of ‘Labour’.

The New Zealand Labour Party must be elected to govern alone to be judged for
its failure to deliver on its promises to workers and the poor for decades. It got
away with breaking those promises by making concessions to NZ First party to
keep the coalition Government in power. As for the Greens keeping Labour
‘honest’, a pious hope when its co-leader James Shaw recently gave $11m to a
private school!
When social democratic parties tie themselves cut benefits and force a 26 week stand down for
to petty bourgeois or bourgeois partners, they the unemployed.
become part of a political popular front In 1993 two thirds of the electorate voted
dominated by the interests of international
against Rogernomics. Labour won almost the
monopoly finance capital. Promises made to same number of seats as National but it did not
workers are then sacrificed. As a result, they get a majority because the NLP (which had now
become in effect open bourgeois liberal parties formed the Alliance with the Greens and
without any pretense of representing workers. Democrats) split the vote in a number of seats.
Labour has long been moving towards an open The result was a hung parliament. Anderton
liberal party since 1984 when it was hijacked by refused to support a Labour plan to form a
the Roger Douglas rightwing who later split to government on a 5-point program which
found the ACT (Association of Citizens and included repeal of National’s labour ‘reforms’
Taxpayers) party, later rejuvenated under MMP and plans to privatise health and the ACC. This
on the extreme right of parliamentary parties. allowed National to stay in power until 1999.
Labour won the 1987 election with the support
of swinging voters in affluent National Party The split in Labour then ensured that the
seats. Disgusted by Labour’s right turn, in 1989 Rogernomics counter-revolution sped forward
its leftwing split behind Jim Anderton to form on steroids under the National Party. What
the New Labour Party leaving the Lange began as a bureaucratic split by the labour left
centrists in charge of the liberal rump of the now became a sell-out of NZ workers for the
party. whole lost decade of the 1990s. Moreover, it
marked the consolidation of the Blairite centre
The Split in Labour was a Disaster in the Labour Party and the failure of the Clark
The split in Labour was a disaster. The Left had and Ardern governments to repudiate neo-
roughly a third of the votes in the national liberal policies.
conference and a majority on the National Under MMP Labour has ruled only with the
Council behind Jim Anderton. But instead of support of the petty bourgeois Alliance, Greens,
using that support to launch a campaign to kick and NZ First. The 9 years of the Fifth Labour
out the Douglas right faction, Anderton left
Government (1999-2008) was a popular front
prematurely to form the New Labour Party. Gov’t that provided a Blairite fig-leaf over the
The NLP got 5% of the vote in 1990, proving that naked neo-liberal policies of the Fourth. It
the split was not only ill-judged but a top-down trapped workers in parliament while the world
left bureaucratic adventure. Labour suffered a headed for the financial crisis of 2007/2008.
major defeat retaining holding only 29 seats True to form, Labour had done no more than
allowing National to form an extreme right- prepared the ground for National’s 9-year term
wing government to impose the ECA, drastically in office from 2008 to 2017, dragging the
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Class Struggle # 134 Spring
country into period of austerity and
subservience to both Chinese and the US
imperialism.
Labour sneaked back into office in 2017 only by
forming a popular front coalition with the
bourgeois populist NZ First party, and a
confidence and supply agreement with the
petty-bourgeois Greens. Labour under its
Blairite Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, wanted
to prove that it could govern for the centre,
reconciling capitalism and socialism, and failed
to enact any major reform in the interest of
workers.
Labour has always been a Capitalist Party
The reason should be obvious. That Labour is
and always was a capitalist party that put
profits before people. Its only rationale to exist
was to present itself as the ‘nice’ face of
capitalism to corral workers off the streets into
parliament. But Rogernomics exploded the
myth of ‘niceness’.
Today the ‘missing million’ is the working class
that Labour has abandoned for the middle-
class, or more accurately the “class-less middle
of NZ”. When crises strike, Labour rallies the
nation against class which provides a mask for
the ruling class. It supresses the class
contradiction in the warm bath of nationalism.
Then the Covert crisis struck, Labour showed its
true colours. It formed a cabal of big
businessmen including Sam Morgan the face of
neoliberal marketplace, to get permission for
the ‘hard and fast’ lockdown. But the cabal
wanted to continue to pull the strings. The
‘plan’ was to eliminate the virus then find a
rapid high-tech solution to track everyone to
keep it out, and so open the economy up for
‘business as usual’.
This worked until the bureaucratic border
breakdowns that allowed the virus to sneak
back in. The cabal now with support from
National put the hard word on Labour to
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September-November 2020
abandon the strategy of elimination as too
costly for business. Labour balked at this plan
but compromised to try to keep the virus at bay
and lost little popular ‘trust’. Then with Judith
Collins running the naked face of capital
strategy, Sam Morgan spat the dummy when his
Covid Card failed to get rapid adoption. It is
game on with weeks to go.
With the election looming, the contradiction
between the expectations of Labour’s voter
base and its failure to meet those expectations,
has been over-ridden temporarily by the impact
of the pandemic.
The idea that NZ as united in one “team of 5
million” is fraying at the edges and looking
shaky. Business sentiment, especially SME
businesses, despite bailouts and wage
subsidies, has dropped between the first
lockdown in March and second lockdown in
August.
The desperation of the right National and
extreme right ACT, now backed by the rebellion
of the Morgan business cabal, and the corporate
media, threatens to destroy the trust in
Labour’s leadership in the fight against the
pandemic.
The 2020 election may yet see Labour returned
with a majority to govern on its own. But even
so in the Covid world it would rapidly cave in to
the kiwi comprador cabal and international
finance to give priority to the economy. But it
would be exposed to working masses as a
bankrupt social democratic party serving only
to make workers’ pay for the bosses’ crisis
ridden system.
To make this happen class conscious workers
must give critical support to the re-election
of the Labour Party with the objective of
splitting workers away to form an
independent workers party, that can
represent the 80% who work to replace the
rotten capitalist system with a socialist
system that serves their needs.
Class Struggle # 134 Spring September-November 2020

Revolutionary Lessons from the Pandemic

Growth has to stop. The pandemic proved that mass lockdown and economic
shutdown, was needed to stop it. It took a while for biological science to catch up
with Covid 19 because it was new and rapidly evolving. As the lockdowns brought
economies to a halt growth stopped and the next long depression loomed. The
world has been in recession since. As each quarter ticks over it will become
depression. The US leads the way since capitalism rots from the head down.

Things will have to get much worse before they get
better. Worse will be the effects of the huge debts
run up pumping life into a dying capitalism. Workers
will pay for that for generations if they survive.
Much worse will be the riots, uprisings and the
fascists, police and military unleashed to keep the
ruling class in power. Each attempt to prolong the
life of capitalism with rescue attempts only prolongs
the misery of the masses. Capitalism needs ‘growth’
to live like Covid 19 needs living bodies to survive.
Science tells us what we face with pandemics.
Science tells us what we face with climate change.
Science also tells us what we face if we do not end
capitalist growth. Never-ending depression, more
pandemics and more global warming until it is too
late. The problem is that against all science there is
a rising mob of unbelievers who reject science for
delusions about social reality. The mob is not
responsible for its ignorance. Its delusions are sown
by the mythology of capital.
The mythology of capital is that it is a moving
equilibrium that uses the market as a regulator of
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economic activity. This required a backstory like
Robinson Crusoe, where heroic capitalists arose by
saving the wealth from their own labour. We know
that is a lie. Man Friday was a slave. Capitalism was
born out of slavery. When capitalism developed
industry another myth rapidly followed. Workers
were now paid a wage and became the equal of
their employer as a buyer and seller of
commodities.
So, next myth. Workers, forcibly removed from their
land, sold their labour to employers for a wage so
as to buy the goods and services they needed to
continue working. Exchange of equivalents! Another
lie!
The economists of the day like Adam Smith knew
that without labour the profits of employers and
rents of landlords would not get paid. But they
disguised this fact by describing profits and rents as
the rewards for providing land and jobs. Sound
familiar? Economists have been singing from the
same hymn sheet ever since.
Class Struggle # 134 Spring September-November 2020

But this mythology never corresponded to real life The growth we need is not capitalist but socialist.
lived by workers and peasants, and was reflected in This does not mean emulating the failed ‘socialist’
the social science of the day by Chartists, socialists, states of the Soviet Union or ‘Communist’ China. To
and communists who recorded the reality and survive these states attempted to impose socialist
argued the case for some form of socialism. plans in isolation of the world economy. Their plans
could not compete with the capitalist monopolies
None however took apart the system scientifically
that dominate the world economy. Restoring
until Karl Marx. Marx showed that capital is no more
capitalism leaves them facing the same fate as
than expropriated surplus labour time (surplus to
monopoly capital.
the value of the wage) and that without profit,
investment stops and depression follows. That is, The socialism we need has to be based on
capital dies when it does not grow. scientific socialism that expropriates the stolen
material and technological wealth of capitalism
It follows that to stop growth capital must die. But
and applies it to the collective needs of the
that doesn’t mean humanity dies. Capital is
working people on a global scale.
different from most living systems in that it is not a
self-regulating system. It is an unstable crisis-prone Some people will object that this is a leap into the
system because it lives by sucking out the wealth of unknown. There are two replies to this. Do you know
nature including that of human labour. your own society? If not, you are already in the
unknown so good luck to you. If you do know
But there can be no equilibrium when the parasite
capitalism then you also know that we cannot
eats its host. Equally the parasite without its host
survive capitalism except as socialism. Do we need
cannot maintain homeostasis. By the late 19th
a working model to prove the infallible nature of
century capitalism could only survive by destroying
socialism? No. All we need is the knowledge of the
more wealth than it created in depressions and
fallible nature of capitalism. Nobody believes in the
wars. Typically, this destruction is seen as the price
perfection of any social system except in their
of ‘progress’ i.e. growth of profits.
dreams.
During the 20th century the market was replaced by
When reflecting on the pandemic, the lockdown and
monopolies as the bigger corporations ate up their
the coming long depression, what are our prospects?
weaker rivals, extracting rent or super-profits from
That scientific socialism is necessary for humanity
them driving down the wages of workers and
to overcome all these existential challenges. It
peasants. That is why the share of wages fell over
means ridding ourselves of the mythology of
the century. Rent accrues where monopoly prices
capitalism as the peak of human evolution,
are set when competition is suppressed by monopoly
understanding its threat to survival of the natural
power. The capitalist ‘growth’ that followed
world, and then working together to break the hold
became ever more parasitic as finance capital is
of capitalism over our lives.
blind to the fact that it is destroying its host by
sucking dry nature’s energy. All this puts the upcoming election in New
Zealand into perspective. None of the political
21st century monopoly capital proves that Marx was
parties standing has any conception of what is
right. Today the destructive effects of state
needed to embark on the struggle for socialism.
monopoly capital are clear. The gap between rich
At best it is “too little too late”. They highlight
and poor is widening. The billionaires profited
that failure and what must be done to replace
greatly from the pandemic. The big four tech giants
them. Looking to the future, to have a future,
profits surged as the US went into depression. Huge
those who create the wealth must take power and
numbers of the working poor and peasantry in the
build the new socialist society for our survival. We
semi-colonial world are dying of hunger and disease.
know what is possible only when we do what is
Monopoly capitalism cannot be reformed as its
necessary.
growth is backed by authoritarian states. To
overcome capitalism’s parasitic relation with nature
we have to restore the equilibrium with nature.

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Class Struggle # 134 Spring September-November 2020

A Covid Election, a Dying World & Rotten Capitalism

This is a Covid election in a dying world. A pandemic caused by capitalism in its

old age destroying habitats and forcing species to jump. Made worse by the
economic collapse after wrecking health systems or failing to provide them. Then
in desperation trying to isolate the masses from the mansions by locking down
people without jobs or food in the poorer countries. Yet its banks and corporates,
and even SMEs, got bailed out by central banks. In a word: capitalism is rotten.

So, let's call out all those who say the virus to blame
for the looming global bust. No, capitalism is the
enemy not the virus. The virus is merely a
messenger from mother nature to the arrogant
capitocene that our time is up. The bourgeois have
killed many hundreds of thousands of species in
their time including over 80% of all mammals, and
the kill rate is hitting 200 a day right now. We are
on death row ourselves but nature cannot wait until
we top ourselves. It sends a harbinger of our fate -
a clever little virus that has an IQ above that of the
flat earthers.
Therefore, keeping the borders shut will not save
the human race. We will wipe each other out
instead. There will be more pandemics, more wars,
drought and floods. Washing your hands
continuously will not remove the guilt. Joining the
Trump cult of fascist morons will end in more fascist
genocides. Being born again will not get you to
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planet B. Few have the bucks for a bed on Peter
Beck's spaced-out ships heading to Venus. They will
join Jim Jones in the annals of death cults. These
are all delusions against doom.
Covid is a tiny taste of the historical justice meted
out to those humans who have the hubris to put
themselves outside and above nature and who
cannot face the truth. We are doomed unless we are
redeemed by restoring nature and ourselves as part
of it. Marxists since the days of Rosa Luxemburg
have spoken of the fate of humanity being torn
between socialism and barbarism. Many of us have
preached salvation in the form of scientific
socialism but this is widely perceived as just another
cult. We are well down the road to barbarism so
how do we change tack to socialism?
Let's put this question into the frame of the Covid
Election. Yes, it’s a Covid election. The pandemic is
Class Struggle # 134 Spring
the immediate threat to our public health which
struggles after 40 years on starvation rations. The
way we fight Covid teaches us that we must fight
the climate emergency at the same time. And it
teaches us that rotten capitalism cannot save a
dying world, and that socialism is the only
alternative.
The Labour Party is not socialist, nor its leader
communist. It is a centrist social democratic liberal
party that believes in the classless society of the
“team of 5 million”. And its leader believes in a
“third way” between capitalism and communism –
(Tony) “Blairism”. Yet in the space of months it has
got on top of the pandemic more than any other
country in the world. Its classless ideology has works
to rally most of the nation behind the ‘elimination’
strategy. Its deficit spending of $50 Billion to bail
out profits and jobs reinforces the illusion that
Aotearoa is a classless team of ‘5 million’.
Labour's centrist ideology masks or minimises the
widening gap between owners of capital and
workers to keep alive belief in the sustainability of
capitalism. It follows that the elimination strategy
to save lives cannot arrive at a classless equal
society. It may rescue capitalism temporarily, but
cannot stop climate change and more pandemics. It
lacks any vision that capital is to blame for all our
crises. It rejects the urgent need for socialism to
defeat economic depression, global warming and
further waves of pandemics. But it does keep more
of us alive to fight for the future which is not
something we can say for the National opposition.
The National opposition and its ally the ACT Party,
are the champions of naked rip, shit and bust
capitalism. Like other extreme capitalist regimes,
like those of Trump, Bolsonaro and Modi, it will stop
at nothing to keep capitalism alive by sacrificing
workers. National's fight to save rotten capitalism is
to profit before people at the cost of destroying
nature. Collins and Brownlee are staking the survival
of the National Party on playing to people’s fears to
discredit the Government’s elimination strategy in
the interest of the survival of profits.
That makes the Covid election a critical junction.
The right fork leads to doom; the left fork leads to
survival. How should class conscious workers vote
come October 17th?
As Marx famously said:
"The Communists are distinguished from the other
working-class parties by this only: 1. In the
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September-November 2020
national struggles of the proletarians of the
different countries, they point out and bring to the
front the common interests of the entire
proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In
the various stages of development which the
struggle of the working class against the
bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and
everywhere represent the interests of the
movement as a whole."
In the context of the upcoming election this means
that the proletariat in Aotearoa is exploited by its
own bourgeoisie and by international finance
capitalists. It is in the common interest of that
proletariat to fight as an independent class towards
the end of capitalist social relations. The Labour
Party never allowed workers to organise
independently because it would challenge the
ideology of class compromise and unleash class
struggle.
Yet at this stage of the development of the struggle
in Aotearoa workers should give critical support to
the Labour Party that still has the support of the
unions. We should demand that it delivers on its
2017 promises to “transform” Aotearoa/ NZ and act
urgently on climate change as “the nuclear free”
moment of our age.
We need Labour to be re-elected to parliament as a
majority government so that it is not able to blame
the petty bourgeois NZ First or the Green Party for
its failure to deliver on its promises. We should
demand that it continues the elimination Covid
strategy, provides a fully funded public health
system to avoid unnecessary lockdowns, jobs for all
and living wage, and embarks on an immediate
economic plan for sustainable development of the
economy in harmony with nature.
Meanwhile, Marxists know that ruling class will
never allow any bourgeois government to enact such
a program. If as a result of this election we take the
left fork on the road to survival we will accompany
the working class as a whole in the development of
its "struggle against the bourgeoisie". Along this road
it will learn through experience that it needs its own
independent workers party, workers’ councils and
militias, and a program that guides it in the struggle
to make the socialist revolution and create a
Workers’ and small Farmers’ Government.
Class Struggle # 134 Spring September-November 2020

BLM, Capitalism and White Supremacy

Racism as it erupted into global consciousness in recent days to confront a growing
mass movement, is the surface manifestation of a much deeper problem – capitalism.
There is no aspect of genetic difference including skin colour that signifies the
natural inferiority or superiority of any given people. There is no biological thing
called ‘race’. Humans share the same genes. We are the Human Race. The ideology,
racism, that exists today was born of white supremacy and serves to reproduce it
today. It was the social invention of early European capitalists to provide a religious
alibi for the conquest of non-European peoples from the 15th century and remains
as the ideology of white supremacy today.

Statue of Columbus beheaded at Boston’s North End Park

Some history classes/castes stratifying peasants at the bottom to

the aristocracy at the top where the unpaid labour
Prior to the rise of class society social relations were
of producers flowed upwards as ‘tribute’.
based on kinship in which labour was collective and
its products shared equally. When men overthrew In all of these pre-capitalist modes, physical
the kinship mode and took control of women’s characteristics including skin colour were incidental
reproductive power, they formed a ruling class, and irrelevant to the reproduction of the social
exploiting the unpaid labour of women as a sex-class relations of society. European capitalism,
– i.e. Patriarchy. succeeding these other modes, incorporated them
into itself as subordinate modes. But it alone had
The Slave mode of production followed. In ancient
the distinction of inventing racism to justify its
Greece for example, men who had become
conquest of non-European peoples and its
landowners, exploited the unpaid labour of slaves
occupation and plunder of their natural resources
and women. Feudal society (aka the Tributary mode
and wealth as the basis for founding a new and
of production) spanning most continents in many
expanding, global, capitalist mode of production.
forms from the middle ages, was a hierarchy of
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Class Struggle # 134 Spring
Why Europe?
China was the only Tributary mode in Asia with the
wealth to back exploration of new trade routes, but
it never went further than East Africa. There is no
evidence that Chinese reached the ‘new world’.
Was China sufficiently rich to not need new sources
of wealth? Not necessarily as the Emperors feared
the expense of such ventures. So, while China
siphoned ‘tribute’ upwards from the smaller states
under their influence which extended through the
Indian Ocean it did not venture further. The
explanation is probably that the Chinese form of
Tributary mode was highly integrated with a strong
warrior class and a Confucian bureaucracy
controlling commerce and trade and averse to
adventures.
The European feudal fiefdoms, by contrast, stuck on
a bleak peninsular jutting into the Atlantic, were
relatively impoverished, and gained little from
internal wars of conquest. This allowed the new
bourgeoisie, the middle-class merchants in the
market towns and ports, the freedom to trade
outside Europe and to expand their wealth. The
solution was for merchant adventurers to win Royal
patronage to ‘discover’ and invade ‘new lands’ to
enrich both the Monarchy and the rising bourgeoisie.
They sought sources of wealth, in particular gold
and silver that would boost the limited money
supply and stimulate European capitalism. Here is
the significance of Columbus, the Genovese sailor
who hired out his services to the Spanish crown to
sail to Asia and accidentally ‘discover’ the ‘new
world’ named after his countryman Amerigo
Vespucci. Europe now had its opportunity to turn a
faltering capitalist market into a world empire. No
wonder the white fascist mobs today are trying to
stop anti-racists and anti-fascists from knocking
Columbus off his pedestal wherever he is found
surveying the new Eurocentric world.
The origin of racism as we know it today
The feudal patrons of these European merchant
adventurers were blessed with the divine right to
rule under the Catholic church. Unlike the
Confucian bureaucracy, the Vatican backed these
voyages of discovery for new wealth as a ‘civilising
mission’. The plunder of nature’s wealth was
glorified as the saving of souls. When popular
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September-November 2020
resistance was met, the Church decided that the
inhabitants had no ‘souls’ and that genocide was
God’s work.
Such hypocrisy sanctioned the adventurers treating
the indigenous peoples as sub-human in need of
conversion to Christianity to save them from their
sins of laziness, violence, lack of intelligence
etc. Coincidentally, these ‘heathen’ were of darker
skin shade than the Europeans, so that dark skin
colour became a marker of racial inferiority in the
expansion of colonies. From that point on genocide,
slavery and other forms of oppression necessary to
guarantee profits was done in the name of the racist
white supremacy.
Indigenous peoples were exterminated, and their
lands stolen and the survivors enslaved. Africans
were captured and transported to the Americas to
perform slave labour. It is this history of the 500
years of racist oppression of blacks as slaves and
their ‘liberation’ as wage slaves that in the US today
leaves Blacks, alongside native Americans, the most
oppressed sections of the US working class. It is this
ongoing unresolved oppression, symbolized as
lynching, that led inexorably to the killing of George
Floyd and countless other blacks in the US.
The question arises: how can the Black Lives Matter
movement be turned into a mass movement that
reverses the process of European white supremacy
of the Americas including slavery, unless it destroys
the historic roots of the rise of capitalism and its
global terminal crisis today? It is fitting that those
who paid the highest price for the founding of
European capitalism should lead the fight to bring
an end to decadent capitalism today, made the
more urgent and necessary as that system is in
irrevocable decline and threatens to destroy
humanity.
What is to be done to make this possible?
To win, the black liberation struggle has to unite
with all other sections of the working class, most
importantly indigenous peoples, Asian workers and
women, and all others who today are the millions of
migrant and displaced workers who experience
historic and special oppression. As the awareness
grows, white workers who historically have shared
some of the economic advantages of white
Class Struggle # 134 Spring
supremacy have to reject racism and unite as allies,
rather than opponents of, black liberation.
Those who still subscribe to white supremacy, and
who today oppose the BLM movement, are a fertile
ground of recruitment by fascist vigilante militias,
and must be defeated. The division in the white
working class can only be overcome by white
workers uniting alongside black workers and their
allies to smash a fascist movement before it
becomes a major threat.
So far, in response to the lynching of George Floyd,
this unity is building, much more so than in previous
periods of struggle, and in much greater numbers
than those actively defending white supremacy. But
there is a long way to go. The capitalist state cannot
tolerate the rise of an anti-racist movement that
morphs into an anti-capitalist movement that
threatens its class rule. The police, the military and
fascist paramilitaries will be set against this
movement. To defeat the forces of reaction we
must work to resolve all divisions within the working
class that weaken its power to smash fascism.
Within the wider working class, comprising all those
who must live off their own labour, there are other
historic divisions that must be overcome to unite the
class. Of the pre-capitalist modes of production
incorporated into capitalism two are critical,
women as a sex-class of domestic labourers, and
petty commodity producers. Both forms of historic
exploitation persist alongside wage-labour and can
be ended only by uniting to overthrow capitalism.
Uniting Sex, Race and Class
As we have seen, women as a sex-class originated
when men took control of women’s reproduction
and consigned them to domestic slavery along with
male slaves in the Slave mode of production. The
fact that some women were wives of slave owners
did not mean they could escape their subordination
as a sex-class. In the Tributary mode, this
subordinate role continued, embedded in the class
or caste structure from bottom to top. Under
capitalism women have won equal rights to work
outside the home but are not equal in practice
because they remain largely responsible for unpaid
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September-November 2020
domestic labour and are therefore doubly
oppressed.
Petty commodity producers originated as a sub-
mode of the Tributary mode. They are the self-
employed who produce commodities with their own
family labour for sale on the market. They are not
small capitalists as they do not employ other
workers whose labour they live off. Under
capitalism they include peasants, poor farmers,
small traders, servants, contract workers, taxi
drivers etc and many are really disguised wage
workers. Most are self-employed only because there
is no secure wage-labour available. As individuals
they have no financial security or power to survive
economic crises and for that reason, have a class
interest in overthrowing capitalist social relations
and creating a socialist society.
Both forms of labour contain an unpaid element of
value that ends up as the profits of banks or
employers and are thus formally exploited labour.
Along with this economic relationship their political
and social rights are far from equal so that both
forms are also specially oppressed. As a result, they
have a strong interest shared by all other
components of the working class, to break with the
dominant social relations of capitalism by means of
socialist revolution.
All of these forms of labour have a common
denominator in that they all produce unpaid labour
value for capital and are subject to increasing
exploitation and oppression as capitalism faces its
terminal crisis. They share a common fate of having
their labour power stripped from them along with
their living standards. Their lives are all threatened
by the collapse of the capitalist system as the result
of a compound crises manifest as plague, flood, fire,
famine, and ultimately human extinction. The fight
against racism is the fight against white supremacy;
is the fight against gender oppression; is the fight
against capitalist exploitation and oppression!
Workers Unite! It is your historic destiny to
overthrow capitalism and build the socialist
future!
Class Struggle # 134 Spring September-November 2020

Polemic on China
We publish two documents about the relationship between our tendency and the
FLTI. This is part of a wider discussion with ex-Militants of the FLTI that documents
the history of that tendency. These refer specifically to the debate of the character
of China that blew up in the FLTI in 2009. The point of disagreement was whether
China was emerging as an imperialist power or not. As a result of the dispute our
tendency split from the FLTI as a relapsing national Trotskyist tendency
characterised by a bureaucratic centralist internal regime centred on the LOI-CI of
Argentina. The first document is an account of the way this dispute led to the FLTI
resorting to Stalinist methods in the formation of a Zimbabwe section. The second,
summarises the main points of the debate over China as a contribution to the
reflections on this issue among ex-members of the FLTI today.

Zimbabwe: From the New ISO to the RWG and the role of the FLTI
We broke with ISO (International Socialist
Organisation of Zimbabwe) in early 2009 after a
bitter and acrimonious fight with the then
leadership headed by GW. We agreed to identify
ourselves then as the New ISO pending a name
change, should that be warranted. The majority of
comrades followed us with a sizeable minority
remaining with GW’s group and others quitting all
together.
The break was preceded by a protracted political
fight that culminated in a huge defeat for the GW
slate at the 2008 ISO congress/National Members
Conference (NMC). The fight centred on the critique
of the Cliffite centrist method of adapting to the
labour bureaucracy as opposed to the rank and file,
a popular front approach and a bureaucratic centrist
regime.
The election was immediately followed by
persecution and victimisation resulting in the arrest
of three leading comrades (LM and myself initially
with AM rushing from South Africa to join us) at the
behest of the GW group.
It was during this period that we made contact with
WIVL (now WIVP) of South Africa led by Cde SM. We
agreed to start exchanging notes with the view of
finding answers to the political limitations we had
identified in ISO. The engagements involved
exchanging documents.
Soon, by around mid-2009, the FLTI was introduced
to us and we initiated engagement more or less on
the same level with WIVL, informal yet regular. This
later culminated in a trip to SA by AM and another
comrade with a view of establishing how best we
can relate and continue engagements. At this
meeting there were proposals for fusion made to us
and we stated that only a general meeting/congress
of comrades scheduled for later that year would
deal with that.
It was in South Africa that we also got to know of
a major political debate within the FLTI over the
nature of China and we resolved at leadership
level to probe the issue further and make a
decision at our congress, if possible.
AM used the trip (his second one after the first
personal one when he rushed back to join us in jail)
to South Africa to also get in touch with individuals
he wanted to work with to form an NGO, Zimbabwe
Action Trust. We only got to know about this later
on. This was to form the backbone of accusations of
working with NGO’s when the FLTI turned against
him towards the end of 2010.
We held our congress in December 2009 where it
was resolved to continue probing the issue of
China and maintain a fraternal relationship with
FLTI.
Soon after our congress, and becoming increasingly
impatient, FLTI quickly dispatched Cdes SM and MT

12
Class Struggle # 134 Spring
twice to Zimbabwe in early 2010 to ostensibly look
at how best they could help us but in actual fact
trying to identify hurdles to immediate fusion and
agreement on China.
It was during these visits that a proposal was made
for us to change our name and leadership structure
to reflect the tradition of FLTI. Little did we know
that AM had already made a commitment (during
the first official South Africa trip around October
2009) to the FLTI to fuse New ISO into FLTI and also
adopt the position of the majority on China.
This was to become apparent when AM returned
from Argentina in April of 2010 when we later
learned that he had, together with SM of WIVL,
doctored the minutes of our congress to appear as
if we had agreed on fusion, on China, and to
change our name. This was done during the
second organisational trip to South Africa enroute
to Argentina.
The FLTI/WIVL resorted to this method after
realising that their positions were in the minority
and could not allow for proper discussion. We can
only imagine that if they could do this to thwart a
majority view, how far would they go to thwart a
minority position as happened with comrades of
CWG-NZ/HRWS over the China issue?
The trip to Argentina (in April 2010) proved to be a
turning point in that our name, structure and
position on China was imposed on us with the help
of Mutero who was now acting unilaterally on key
issues taking instructions from FLTI.
Just a few days after AM had returned from
Argentina, I was to leave Zimbabwe for South
Africa. AM indicated to me that they had resolved in
Argentina for me to go to South Africa for a brief
period as a guest of the WIVL. Little did I know then
that it was a plot to remove me from the ground in
preparation for an imposition of a name, RIL-FI, and
majority position on China. I never got to meet SM
and when I was informed by other cdes of
developments back in Zimbabwe I quickly made
preparations to return and confront AM on the issue.
Upon my return, all leading cdes including me, had
been either stripped of their positions or demoted
using a new leadership structure imposed on us by
13
September-November 2020
FLTI to facilitate an unprincipled fusion and control.
We quickly began to mobilise for an extra ordinary
congress to primarily look at the issue of imposed
fusion, name and position on China.
The extra-ordinary congress, held in August 2010,
was attended by the majority of both the general
members and members of the leading organ, the
National Coordinating Committee (NCC). The result
of the congress, as per the published statement,
was to reject the imposed fusion, name, leadership
structure, position on China and other minor issues
resulting in AM being expelled and resolving to
continue calling ourselves the New ISO.
Whist in South Africa, after failing to meet SM, I
made contact with cdes of CWG (NZ) and CWG
(US), then HRWS, who constituted a minority on
the question of China and had recently broke with
the FLTI to form a Liaison Committee of
Communists (LCC).These comrades enabled us to
look at the Chinese issue intensively and openly
resulting in an agreement that China had become
an emerging imperialist nation. We became a
section of the LCC in mid-2011 after extensive
engagements, enough time necessary to look at
the issue given our Cliffite history, and launched
the RWG.
Soon after our congress in 2010 we heard that a
moral commission had been established by the FLIT
which had found that AM was working with NGO’s,
and was still following the Cliffite IST tradition of
holding an annual public meeting (called Marxism)
where even members of the reformist mainstream
parties were invited to speak, among other findings.
The real results of the findings remain unclear to us
save to say that SM and some FLTI cdes spent time
in Zimbabwe around this period. AM did not produce
any response to the findings that we are aware of
but the RIL-FI soon split in two with AM keeping the
name and most comrades, and Cde JS leading
another group soon to be named WIL centred on the
out of Harare comrades. RIL-FI died a natural death
as AM went on to be a leader of a food federation
working with the MST of Brazil.
Cde Tigwe (For RWG-Z) 29 August 2020
Class Struggle # 134 Spring September-November 2020

Some salient points on the China question

Comrades, as ex-Militants of the FLTI, you probably know that the CWG and HWRS
joined the FLTI at its founding conference in 2009. We immediately got into a dispute
about the character of China. Everyone thought it had restored capitalism, but we
were divided over whether or not it could become an imperialist power. We agreed
to a public debate on China. An exchange of documents began between the majority
(China cannot become an imperialist power) and minority (China is already an
emerging imperialist power). However, the debate was not conducted in a
democratic centralist way as it was diverted by CM into the Japanese adventure with
the JRCL. As you will know from our balance sheet on the FLTI written in early 2010,
we think that this episode was evidence of the emergence of a bureaucratic
centralist regime around CM. Both the Japanese adventure and the Zimbabwe
adventure in our view were driven by the wrong position on China taken by the
Majority. Here is a summary of the salient differences on the character of China.

(1) "The world is divided, there can be no more
room for imperialism powers."
Majority: From the start, this was the main
argument of the majority. It was argued, following
Lenin, that the world was already divided by the
imperialist powers, and thereafter could only be re-
divided in future inter-imperialist wars. Old
imperialist powers may fall and new ones rise, but
new imperialist powers can never be.
Minority: The minority agrees with this in the
context in which it was written. Imperialist
(oppressor) powers back their imperialist
monopolies, including banks, to extract super-
profits from the (oppressed) colonies and semi-
colonies. No oppressed country can accumulate
sufficient surplus-value to trigger growth that
would bring the LTRPF into effect and the export of
surplus profits as the necessary condition of
imperialism. To escape imperialist exploitation
would require the overthrow of imperialism and its
comprador bourgeois agents. A big task for a semi-
colony (or even a weak imperialist power such as
Tsarist Russia.
Resolution: This position is correct insofar as no
oppressed capitalist semi-colony has broken from
the imperialist world system forcing a repartition of
the world economy from ‘below’...except for
workers' or peasants' revolutions going all the way
to a break with the national bourgeoisie and
imperialism. The Russian revolution did exactly
this. We don't need to tell the whole story to those
who know it, it is sufficient to show that
these revolutionary breaks did not reject Lenin on
14
imperialism. Rather they confirmed his theory and
method. What’s more, Lenin's theory and practice
was instrumental in making the revolution that
broke free of the capitalist world by winning the
civil war in 1921, as did China in 1949.
(2) The workers states, isolated and backward,
could not escape their bureaucratic deformation
or degeneration. Without political revolutions
supported by world revolution, their fate was, as
Trotsky thought most likely, a state capitalist
restoration.
The majority and minority agree that this historic
defeat took place in Russia and China by 1992. In
China we agreed that restoration converted the
bureaucracy into the Red Bourgeoisie. But we
differed on the legacy of the bureaucratic workers
state in determining the outcome for the restored
state capitalist regime.
Majority: Starting from its assumption that no
imperialist powers can emerge once the world was
divided in the imperialist epoch, the restoration of
capitalism means that China would re-enter the
world economy as an oppressed country unable to
accumulate sufficient value to emerge as
imperialist. Whether China is semi-colonial, or some
'transitional' state, the point is it is oppressed and
fought over by rival imperialist powers. Massive FDI
in the free trade zones, big branch plants of most of
the big multinationals, and China's role as the
workshop of the world, all fit the 'profile' of a semi-
colony that serves the imperialist division-of-labour
by producing cheap imports of capital and consumer
goods for the world market.
Class Struggle # 134 Spring
Minority: The minority questions how can this be
true? China has accumulated massive surpluses since
2001 when it joined the WTO, and now exports
surplus capital to every continent as FDI or state-to-
state deals in competition with the established
imperialist powers. While China allowed the
controlled penetration of imperialism in the special
zones, it also imposed terms that required joint
ventures and intellectual property transfer unlike
any semi-colony. The legacy of the workers state
allowed it to control and limit the extend of
imperialist penetration, and thus to retain the
ability to accumulate capital and emerge as an
imperialist power.
Resolution: Abandon the dogmatic assumption that
Lenin's theory of imperialism cannot predict and
spark revolutions that allowed socialist revolutions
to re-partition the world economy! Further, failing
the world revolution, counter-revolutions forced
the bureaucracy to restore capitalism but not at the
expense of re-colonization. The legacy of the
workers' state proved to be the advantages of a
strong central state, a dominant state-owned
monopoly sector, and a centralised Communist
Party that could plan the economy. The minority
asserts that this legacy of the workers' state allowed
the Red bourgeoisie to accumulate capital sufficient
to trigger the LTRPF and the export of capital.
(3) The Character of China at the concrete
level
The two points above cover the theoretical
development of Lenin's theory of imperialism, the
victory of socialist revolution against imperialism,
and of the inevitable failure of an isolated
revolution in a single backward country. This is
consistent with the observed reality of the
character of China today. But we need to evaluate
the program and practice of the Majority and
Minority as a consequence of their method and
theory.
Majority: The majority theory of no new
imperialisms must be put to the test against the
observed reality today. At the time we had the
debate in 2009, the evidence of China's restoration
as a semi-colony, open to re-colonisation by
imperialism especially the US and Japan, was
superficially convincing. It required a program for
the socialist revolution, the defence of China,
especially from the US, and a bloc with the JRCL in
support of the socialist revolution in China. The
Minority was naturally cast as abandoning Lenin and
Trotsky in order to support the US ruling class in its
15
September-November 2020
attempt to recolonise China. At that time the
Minority held that China was an 'emerging'
imperialism with semi-colonial characteristics and
would have defended it from a US (or any other
imperialist) attack to increase the super-
exploitation and oppression of China. The Majority
today still argues that the growth of China is that of
an oppressed nation subordinated to imperialist
powers. Even the Belt and Road project that invests
$trillions in unprecedented global infrastructure is
interpreted as reducing labour costs for imports and
exports that serve the profits of China’s imperialist
masters!
Minority: For the Minority Lenin's theory of a re-
divided world applies to the workers states which he
had a hand in establishing. It can explain the return
of the workers' state to the capitalist world with the
legacy of state capitalism that avoids re-
colonisation and the lawful emergence of new
imperialist powers. It counters the unipolar world of
the fake left that delegates the workers revolution
to this or that imperialist dictatorship including that
of Xi Jinping, president-for-life. The program for
China that flows from this is dual defeatism in every
inter-imperialist war and defeatism in wars against
semi-colonies.
Resolution: In the decade since this debate began,
China has risen to become second only to the US as
a world power, and ahead on real GDP and capital
accumulation. Back In 2010 China was only
beginning the trajectory of its imperialist
expansion. But already it was accumulating a
surplus in trade much of which was invested in US
treasury bonds. No semi-colony ever did this. It had
virtually no external debt, unheard of for those of
us living in semi-colonies. It was becoming a banker
for the Bolivarians and the Castroists. The only
reason that the Majority did not see these trends as
contradicting its theory on China was the
preconceived schema misrepresenting Lenin which
saw the world revolving around only the USA. Back
then we referred to this theory as missing the
'elephant' in the room. Today there is no question:
the elephant has broken out of the room, trampled
on those who still do not see it, and is now
challenging the US for the lead in dominating the
world. As comrades look back at the FLTI to see
what went wrong and why, they should re-evaluate
the debate on China and the adventures in Japan
and Zimbabwe, which revolved around his question
China.
Dave Brown (for ILTT) 4 August 2020
Class Struggle # 134 Spring September-November 2020

Workers Call this Pussyfooting:

Socialist Resurgence and Left Voice tiptoe around
movement self-defense. Michael Forest Reinoehl Presente!
“...The petty bourgeois democrats – including Social Democrats, Stalinists and Anarchists – yell
louder about the struggle against fascism the more cravenly they capitulate to it in actuality. Only
armed workers’ detachments, who feel the support of tens of millions of toilers behind them, can
successfully prevail against the fascist bands. The struggle against fascism does not start in the
liberal editorial office but in the factory – and ends in the street. Scabs and private gunmen in
factory plants are the basic nuclei of the fascist army. Strike pickets are the basic nuclei of the
proletarian army. This is our point of departure. In connection with every strike and street
demonstration, it is imperative to propagate the necessity of creating workers’ groups for self-
defense. It is necessary to write this slogan into the program of the revolutionary wing of the trade
unions. It is imperative wherever possible, beginning with the youth groups, to organize groups for
self-defense, to drill and acquaint them with the use of arms.” - Leon Trotsky, “Transitional
Program - The Picket Line, Defense Guards/Workers’ Militia and The Arming of the Proletariat”

Barr and Trump ordered the execution of Michael

Forest Reinoehl as a warning to any leftists who
assert their 2nd amendment rights to self defense
against the fascist thugs. There was no attempt to
arrest him. It was an execution authorized from the
top. Trump and Barr ordered the hit and Biden gave
them permission with his Pittsburgh speech about
rioting and looting. The state has openly come out
in defense of white nationalism again: kid gloves for
Dylann Roof and Kyle Rittenhouse, bullets for AntiFa
defenders of Black Lives Matter protests.
Biden’s play to split the protest movement, trying
to drive a wedge between the “legitimate
protesters” and those who take advantage of the
federally promoted chaos to expropriate the
product of workers collective labor power back from
the corporate retail outlets. The petty bourgeois
left that has gone all-in for Biden need to
contemplate what he said. He is offering you the
same future as Trump, albeit legalistically
camouflaged. If you call yourselves Debsians, how
do you swallow this!
“I want to make it absolutely clear: Rioting
is not protesting, looting is not protesting,”
Biden says at the start of the 60-second ad,
which will air on cable news networks
nationally and in key swing states. “It’s
lawlessness, plain and simple, and those who
do it should be prosecuted.”………....“He
can’t stop the violence because for years,
he’s fomented it,” Biden says in the ad. “His
failure to call on his own supporters to stop
acting as an armed militia in this country
shows how weak he is.”
This is how Biden plays to the centrist Democrats,
the DNC and Blue Dogs. He lectures protesters on
street tactics, telling us rioting is not protesting.
This coming from one who has never protested for
justice and faced the wrath of the militarized
police. He says nothing about the role of
provocateurs initiating the breaking of windows
(which he calls violence) and the subsequent street
fighting, which we have known since long
before the Kerner Commission Report that riots are
initiated by police violence. Biden like Trump is
pointing at the protesters and yelling riot! Biden
along with Obama militarized the police prior to and
during the 2009 anti-austerity movement that
developed into Occupy. Today Trump and
Democratic mayors use the repressive state forces
built up and enabled by Obama/Biden to turn
protests against racist cop murders into police riots.
Socialist Resurgence’s article “Trump, Biden and
Far Right Militias” mentions nothing about the
necessity of building worker’s self defense guards,
a basic tenet of Trotsky’s transitional program and
the methods of revolutionary Marxism. The article
makes it sound like a few big mobilizations, like
Boston following Charlottesville, will put this to all
to rest. No doubt mass anti-fascist moblizations will
have an impact on the tactics needed for self
defense (linked arms of 10,000 may replace the
need for tactical equipment). Sorry, but all the
miseducation about ‘peaceful-legal’ protest as a
strategy you learned, in the then centrist YSA, has
got to go. It was not Marxism the SWP was teaching
it was an opportunist adaptation to the Gandhian’s
of the civil rights movement.

16
Class Struggle # 134 Spring
That is why today the spin offs of the SWP are ill
prepared to lead any workers in struggle. In the face
of a counter-revolutionary insurgency, Trotskyists
recall the methods of Farrell Dobbs and the fighting
Teamsters who beat back the ‘Silver Shirts” the
anti-labor fascist mobs akin to white citizens
militias that terrorized the Black and Brown
communities. Today these scum re-emerge flying
the Confederate Flag and Trump Banners in the
guise of Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer, Boogaloo Bois,
etc. Where Trotsky said acquaint the fascists’ heads
with the pavement, the Barnes crowd famously
defended free speech for fascists in Skokie, IL in
1976 and in 2013 in Kansas City as well.
To defeat the
violent counter-
revolutionaries in
the streets we
need labor, Black
and Brown self
defense guards
training in every
union hall and
assemblies of the
specially
oppressed to
organize defense
of strikers and
anti-racist actions
and anti-fascist
mobilizations. But
Dobbs did not just refuse to put out a call for such
self defense; the Trotskyists had to struggle for the
leadership of the Teamsters and defeat the class
collaborators and pacifists in order to arm the
workers both theoretically and tactically to win
their strike. The labor leadership prevents this. Only
a direct challenge for the leadership of the Trade
Union movement and their class collaborationist
political strategy, a challenge based on a
transitional program, can alter the political
landscape in favor of our class.
We are prepared to be smeared by these stealth
pacifists. We recall the SWP’s COINTELPRO lawsuit,
where the Barnes’ group’s lawyers called the
Internationalist Tendency (IT) members
“terrorists,” just as the “Friends of the FBI” did in
the Congressional Record. We recall the lie that
ITers were calling for arming the party. We recall
the Barnesite denunciation of the Argentine and
Bolivian workers’ militias who fought fascist
dictatorships, arms in hand. We recall how they
refused to raise the demand “Solidarity with the
Chilean Resistance.” For cover, Socialist Resurgence
17
September-November 2020
(SR) gives backhanded praise to Black self-organized
self-defense of the 1950s and ‘60s. But within the
logic of the article, as well as the historical record,
they are saying, “we approve”, but from a safe
distance--an idea you can’t pin on them!
In 1974 the predecessor political tendencies of
Socialist Resurgence and Left Voice were in
nominal unity in the United Secretariat of the
Fourth International. At that time, they were
members of the Leninist Trotskyist Faction (LTF)
which united the Jack Barnes wing of the SWP with
the Nahuel Moreno wing of the Argentine PST
against the International Majority Tendency (IMT)
led by Ernest Mandel, Livio Maitan and Pierre Frank.
The crisis at the
time was the
looming counter-
revolutionary
coup in Argentina
which would
result in the
murder and
disappearance of
thousands of
worker militants
and
revolutionaries.
The IMT was
warning of the
impending right-
wing movement
onslaught which would result in continental
warfare, while the LTF saw this as a petty bourgeois
retreat from the working class. Or so they put it, not
taking a side in a battle already in progress.
While the LTF was correct about the need for an
orientation to the working class they were already
poisoned by their opportunist orientation to
Ghandianism and the trade union bureaucracy. So
they were ill prepared to counter the “guerrilla
mania” of the IMT with the method of the
Transitional Program for workers self defense
militias, which defend the workers movement and
become the armed basis for the workers’
government. The orientation to electoralism and
legalism resulted in the slaughters, imprisonment
and the break-up of the trade union and socialist
groups across Latin America for decades. They
junked the Transitional Program.
Left Voice, in “Federal Police Gun Down Black Lives
Matter Activist in Washington” adds their own view
of working class self-defense:
Class Struggle # 134 Spring
“So in this moment of continued uprisings
against racism and racist police violence, it
is more important than ever that working
people learn to watch out for and protect
each other from right-wing attacks, whether
it be vigilantes or uniformed police, and we
unequivocally defend the rights of the
working class and oppressed to defend
themselves against these forces. However,
while protest security groups like the one
that Reinoehl was involved in are one way of
doing this, they are insufficient. A few
armed BLM protesters are no match for the
weapons of the police and right-wing
militias. Further, self defense is not only
about armed militias, but crucially, depends
upon the political and social support of the
masses. The real power of the working class
can only be realized in numbers, through
mass self-organization in the workplaces and
neighborhoods and through the use of
working class methods of struggle such as
general strikes. This is why the fight against
police violence cannot be separated from
the other struggles of working people during
this crisis. Only by uniting the fight against
police violence and racism with the struggles
of the unemployed, immigrants, tenants,
organized labor, and against all forms of
economic and social exploitation can the
working class truly find its power.” -
“Federal Police Gun Down Black Lives
Matter Activist In Washington”
To which we respond “where is your criticism of
the labor bureaucracy? This could have been
written by SOLIDARITY, who deny the
bureaucracy is parasitic and privileged based on
3rd world super-exploitation.” The trade union
tops completely abdicate to the police union
position, apart from a banner on the DC HQ building.
Left Voice, the American section of La Izquierda
Diario / Left Voice, calls for mass self-organization
of the working class. So does the CWG, except that
in the face of fascist and police murder and
violence, we explicitly call for organized working
class self-defense. Armed, trained, militant and
disciplined Labor, Black and Brown Self-Defense
Guards are urgently needed now, organized out
of our union halls and community centers.
The Union movement has a responsibility to ensure
that existing self-defense organizations of the
oppressed, such as the Huey P. Newton Gun Club,
18
September-November 2020
the Not F***ing Around Coalition, the John Brown
Gun Clubs do not stand isolated, but will be linked
to the social power of the organized labor
movement. Labor, Black and Brown Self-Defense
Guards are needed to defend every demonstration,
along with mass trade union contingents to drive the
fascists and white supremacists from the streets.
For United Front self-defense of the workers and
the oppressed!
The more organized, militant and resolute the
workers are, the more likely are the capitalist state
forces of repression, the cops, CBP, ICE, etc. to
hesitate, to not attack the demonstrations and to
stand aside rather than defend the fascists. Workers
self-defense, patrolling the Black and Brown
communities, will also put some restraints on the
rampant racist cop terror that will never end so long
as capitalism exists. The liberal methods of
defunding the police, rewriting police policies,
civilian review boards, more training, and
community policing will do nothing to curb the
racist police violence that is endemic to American
capitalism.
Build armed, trained, and disciplined Labor, Black
and Brown Self-Defense Guards from out of our
union halls and community centers to defend
against racist cop and fascist terror!
No platform for fascists or white supremacists!
For mass Labor, Black and Brown mobilizations
with organized trade union contingents to sweep
the fascists and white supremacists from the
streets! Defend immigrants! Drive ICE and the CBP
from the workplaces and communities!
For Labor political strikes in response to racist
cop terror and violence! “They shoot us down, we
shut them down!” For Worker/Oppressed
tribunals to find justice for all victims of racist cop
violence and murder!
Cops and prison guards are not workers! Kick the
cops and prison guards out of our labor unions,
councils and labor federations!
Build a fighting Workers/Labor Party, a class
struggle combat party of the workers and
oppressed to organize and coordinate struggle!
Fight for a workers’ government to put an end to
racism, cop and fascist terror, anti-immigrant
attacks and capitalist exploitation once and for
all! For workers rule and socialism!
Reprinted from CWG/USA website
International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency

Class Warrior: Theoretical Journal of ILTT http://www.cwgusa.org/?page_id=594

Revolutionary Workers Group of Zimbabwe (RWG-ZIM)

Email: rwg.zimbabwe@gmail.com
Website: www.rwgzimbabwe.wordpress.com
Revolutionary Worker (Paper of RWG-Zimbabwe)

Revolutionary Workers Group of Brazil (RWG-BR)

Email: gtrevolucionarios1@gmail.com
Site: https://grupodetrabalhadoresrevolucionrios.wordpress.com
Guerreiro da classe Trabalhadora (Paper of the RWG-BR)

Communist Workers Group – USA (CWG-US):

Email: cwgclasswar@gmail.com Website: Class War http://www.cwgusa.org/?page_id=16

Communist Workers Group- New Zealand/Aotearoa (CWG-NZ)

Email: cwg006@yahoo.com Class Struggle (paper of CWGANZ)
Websites: http://redrave.blogspot.com http://livingmarxism.wordpress.com

Class Struggle is online at https://www.redrave.blogspot.com

Archive of publications before 2006 http://communistworker.blogspot.com/
Phone +64272800080 cwg2007anz@hotmail.com

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Class Struggle # 134 Spring September-November 2020

Continued from front cover

Police mugshots of Trotsky when arrested as Chair of the St Petersburg Soviet of 1905

“The new parties and the new International must be built upon a new foundation:
that is the key with which to solve all other tasks. The tempo and the time of the
new revolutionary construction and its consummation depend, obviously, upon the
general course of the class struggle, the future victories and defeats of the
proletariat. Marxists, however, are not fatalists. They do not unload upon the
historical process those very tasks which the historical process has posed before
them. The initiative of a conscious minority, a scientific program, bold and ceaseless
agitation in the name of clearly formulated aims, merciless criticism of all ambiguity
those are some of the most important factors for the victory of the proletariat.
Without a fused and steeled revolutionary party, a socialist revolution is
inconceivable. The conditions are difficult; the obstacles are great; the tasks are
colossal; but there is no reason whatever to become pessimistic or to lose courage.
Despite all the defeats of the proletariat, the position of the class enemy remains a
hopeless one. Capitalism is doomed. Only in the socialist revolution is there salvation
for mankind.”
Open Letter for the Fourth International: To All Revolutionary Working-Class
Organizations and Groups (Spring 1935)

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