Internationalist Group -- Reforge the Fourth International!

From the Current Issue

The Internationalist No. 53
(September-October 2018)
click above or on image
for full list of articles

Mobilize Workers Power to Stop Fascist Terror!
All summer long, there was a stream of violent provocations by ultra-rightist and outright fascist groups across the United States, and then in the run-up to the November 6 voting, a series of violent rightist and deadly racist attacks. While Republican president Donald Trump whips up deadly violence and race hatred, liberal Democrats want to use the explosion of fascist terror attacks call to step up state control, with government censorship of hate speech on social media and more stringent gun control – measures that will be used against the left and workers movement. Revolutionary Marxists instead seek to organize mass mobilizations of workers power to crush the fascists. The main enemy is not just the fringe of “alt-rightists” and assorted white supremacists and fascists who have proliferated in Trump’s America, but the capitalist state which protects the fascists, and which the liberals want to strengthen. Overwhelmingly, in one incident after another, in one city after another, the police defend the fascists against leftists. We seek to organize workers defense guards to defend all those threatened by the modern-day brown- and black-shirt thugs, whether they wear Perry Ellis polo shirts or olive drab fatigues. What is ultimately needed is a mass mobilization of the social power that can defeat both the fascists and their uniformed protectors. Mobilize Workers Power to Stop Fascist Terror! (28 October 2018)

Let Them In! Asylum for Refugees!
Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!
The Caravan of the Dispossessed
As the U.S. midterm elections entered the home stretch, xenophobic president Donald Trump hit on a new tactic for his standard campaign of fear and falsification: whip up hysteria about an imminent invasion by a caravan of immigrants from Honduras. The migrants who have decided to risk all to undertake the onerous trek of almost 3,000 miles are fleeing from deadly violence and extreme poverty made in U.S.A. The economy of Honduras has been devastated by “free trade” agreements while the gangs terrorizing its cities got their start in Los Angeles. The right-wing Honduran government which acts as Republican Trump’s toady is the result of a 2009 coup engineered by the Democratic Obama administration. The League for the Fourth International and its sections in the U.S. and Mexico have called to welcome the caravan, demanding asylum for refugees and full citizenship rights for all immigrants. And, as always, we seek to carry out actions in furtherance of our call. The Grupo Internacionalista/Mexico sent an activist-correspondent to accompany the caravan on its arrival in Mexico, while the Oaxaca local of the GI held a solidarity demonstration together with the militant teachers union. The Caravan of the Dispossessed (28 October 2018)

Brazil Elections: On the Second Round
The urgent task facing class-conscious workers and revolutionaries continues to be to mobilize powerful workers actions against the election fraud, the militarist danger and the attacks of the entire bourgeoisie against the exploited and the oppressed. Calls to form a “democratic front” and to vote for Fernando Haddad of the Workers Party, the candidate of the bourgeois popular front, only serve to undermine the necessary proletarian and revolutionary response to the danger posed by Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters who want to impose a militarist solution to the Brazilian crisis. In opposition to both bourgeois candidacies, the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brazil calls for casting a blank ballot in the second round of voting. Brazil Elections: On the Second Round (14 October 2018)

Cast a Blank Ballot and Take to the Streets to Mobilize a Class-Struggle Response to the Bourgeoisie
Brazil Elections: For Workers Action Against the Election Fraud and the Militarist Danger
The elections taking place in Brazil are the most explosive since the birth of the “New Republic” in 1988 following over two decades of military dictatorship. The blatantly anti-democratic characte3r of the vote begins with the veto by the judiciary of the candidate who, by all indications, would have won the presidency: former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, historic leader of the Workers Party (PT). At the same time, calls are mounting for intervention by the army, supposedly to fight against corruption. Military intervention in Rio de Janeiro has already led to the murder of councilwoman Marielle Franco, due to her criticism of the escalating massacres by the police. We warn that the bonapartist danger – of an authoritarian regime based on the repressive forces of the capitalist state – is very real, but it will not be banished through the ballot box. We also caution that the danger does not come solely from supporters of the military candidate, Bolsonaro. The entire Brazilian bourgeoisie is determined to impose by force its policy of “austerity,” and the bourgeois popular-front alliance around the PT will also be obliged to apply these anti-worker “reforms,” in one way or another. In the face of these fraudulent elections, manipulated by the judges and under military tutelage, the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brazil calls to mobilize the working class and all the oppressed in powerful workers actions. Brazil Elections: For Workers Action Against the Election Fraud and the Militarist Danger (5 October 2018)

The Electoralist Campaigns of the Brazilian Left
In this panorama full of dangers for working people and the oppressed, what has been the response of groups that place themselves to the left of the PT? We can simply dismiss the PSTU (United Socialist Workers Party), which is once again a plaything in the hands of the right, applauding the arbitrary jailing of ex-president Lula, a move intended to prevent him from running for president in these elections. The PCO (Workers Cause Party), on the other hand, calls to “Go with Lula Until the End,” even after he passed the PT candidacy on to Fernando Haddad. The PSOL (Party of Socialism and Freedom) has from its birth functioned as a satellite of the PT. In the current election campaign, it is part of a bloc with the PT and other reformist and capitalist parties in a new popular front that subordinates the workers movement and the left to the bourgeoisie. The MRT (Revolutionary Movement of Workers) criticizes the PSOL for participating in “a front like that,” but is running its own candidates on the PSOL slate, and called to vote for its presidential candidate, Boulos. Genuine Trotskyists refuse to call for votes to any party in a class-collaborationist front. The Electoralist Campaigns of the Brazilian Left (5 October 2018)

The Left Front in Argentina: A Reformist Electoral Cartel
The Trotskyist Faction and its Brazilian affiliate, the MRT (Revolutionary Movement of Workers), put forward the Left and Workers Front (FIT) in Argentina as the road to follow. This is a reformist and opportunist electoral alliance, a coalition based on a lowest-common-denominator program, in which centrist parties who claim to be revolutionary abandon in practice the Marxist principles they claim to uphold. It is precisely the kind of propaganda bloc that Trotsky warned against in the 1930s. The parties involved themselves characterize the front as “opportunist” and admit that its slogan of a “government of the working people” could be a government of the capitalist state. The sharp internal differences were revealed when a police mutiny broke out in Córdoba and the components of the FIT found themselves on opposite sides of the barricades, some openly supporting the action of the cops. The League for the Fourth International, in contrast, says that police are the armed fist of capital, and consistent with that acts to expell them from the workers movement. The Left Front in Argentina: A Reformist Electoral Cartel (5 October 2018)

Why Big-Business Press Joined Reformist Left in Hailing Primary “Earthquake”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the Rescue
of the Democratic Party
The Democratic primary victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York over ten-term congressman Joseph Crowley, one of the pillars of the Democratic Party, sent shock waves through the bourgeois political milieu. The reformist left was ecstatic over the success of Ocasio-Cortez, a member of Democratic Socialists of America, while Republican right-wingers sought vainly to whip up a red scare. Yet the liberal Democratic establishment, far from seeing “AOC” as a threat, was nearly unanimous in hailing her victory. They realize that in order to win the mid-term elections, the Democrats need to expand the electorate by attracting young voters, and that the actual program put forward by Ocasio-Cortez is standard “progressive” Democratic fare. Tacking on the label “democratic socialism” might help to overcome disenchantment with the Democrats and increase market appeal among “millenial” youth. Plus it can serve to channel any potentially radical protest back into the safe confines of electoral politics. Faced with the electoral successes of the DSA, the rest of the social-democratic milieu is debating how far can it go in the Democratic Party. For revolutionary Marxists, in contrast, trying to put a more “left” face on the imperialist Democrats only serves to bolster the image and credibility of this party of the class enemy. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the Rescue of the Democratic Party (August 2018)

DSA Endorses de Blasio Democrat Cynthia Nixon (August 2018)

What “Social-Imperialism” Looks Like
Republican senator John McCain was an imperialist war criminal notorious for bombing civilians in Vietnam; war-mongering from Indochina to Afghanistan, Gaza, Iraq and Syria; and being an all-purpose racist reactionary. When McCain died on August 25, Democratic congressional candidate and DSA member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez placed a statement on her Twitter account praising McCain as “an unparalleled example of human decency and American service....” This is what Lenin called social-imperialism: socialism in words, imperialism in reality. What “Social-Imperialism” Looks Like (August 2018)

SAlt’s Sawant Backs Seattle’s Top Cop
A “socialist” voting to support the chief of police? Yes, it happened in Seattle, Washington, when city council member Kshama Sawant of Socialist Alternative (SAlt) “stunned” observers by voting on August 13 to confirm the city’s new chief of police. As capitalism’s guardians in blue murder black and Latino people every day, this shows how low fake-socialist groups are willing to go as they immerse themselves in bourgeois politics. SAlt’s Sawant Backs Seattle’s Top Cop (August 2018)

Supreme Court Seeks to Gut Unions
Life After Janus
Bust the Union-Busters With Hard Class Struggle!
Not Democrats or Republicans But a Workers Party
to Fight for a Workers Government!
On June 27, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its long-awaited ruling in the case of Janus v. AFSCME et al. Organized labor and public sector unions in particular have been dreading this moment for several years. The decision threatens to seriously weaken unions financially by cutting off “agency fees” paid by those who refuse to join the union but still benefit from union-negotiated wage agreements, legal representation against employers and other services. Across the country, would-be union-busters celebrated. Nevertheless, unionized workers have the power to make them choke on their cheers. Janus may be a turning point in the class struggle in the United States, but it is far from the death sentence that the present labor leadership fears … and did nothing to stop. Decades of bureaucratic deal-making, capitulations, building illusions in “labor-management cooperation” and support for the Democratic Party have led to this sorry state of affairs. The Janus decision sharply poses the need for a leadership with a program to play hardball, as the bosses are doing – to fight to win. Class-struggle unionists would call for union dues to be collected by the union itself. They would fight to break all ties to the Democrats, Republicans or any capitalist party, and instead to fight to build a class-struggle workers party. Life After Janus: Bust the Union-Busters With Hard Class Struggle! (14 July 2018)

U.S. Immigration Policies Always Have Been Racist
and Always Will Be Until Capitalism Is Overthrown
Smash the I.C.E. Gestapo with Workers Revolution!
On June 30, hundreds of thousands of protesters joined rallies and marches across the U.S. to demand an end to the Trump administration’s grotesque policy of tearing apart immigrant families as they arrive at the border. Rage against the monstrous government child-snatching operation is heartfelt and deep, yet the June 30 marches and rallies were organized under the “Families Belong Together” logo by a plethora of Democratic Party front groups pushing for a big vote for Democratic candidates in the November elections. A prominent demand at the protests was “abolish I.C.E.,” raised both by left groups and mainstream Democrats. The Internationalist Group calls to smash I.C.E. as part of a workers revolution that will topple the entire repressive apparatus – the core of the capitalist state – that defends the brutal rule of capital over the working people and oppressed. But socialist revolution is hardly the aim of the liberal and reformist political forces today calling to abolish I.C.E. This slogan is being pushed by various “progressive” Democrats precisely in order to pin the blame for the anti-immigrant offensive on Trump alone … and to obscure the fact that Obama deported far more immigrants than any Republican. Smash the I.C.E. Gestapo with Workers Revolution! (14 July 2018)

While “Democratic Socialist” Ocasio-Cortez Chimes In
Bipartisan War Criminals Celebrate War Hawk John McCain
U.S. imperialism lost one of its most vocal and active warmongers on August 25 – Arizona Republican senator John McCain. Universally praised by ruling-class politicians as a “war hero” and “maverick,” McCain’s funeral at the National Cathedral was attended by some of the most infamous mass murderers of this and the last century, from Henry Kissinger to former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Far from being a “war hero,” a “man of honor” or paragon of “human decency,” Senator John McCain was a war criminal who bombed civilians. He was shot down over North Vietnam on a bombing run against a civilian factory. But McCain’s most valuable service to U.S. imperialism was as an inveterate war hawk in Congress. From Afghanistan to Iraq to Ukraine, Libya and Syria, he beat the drums for murderous imperialist intervention. What’s striking about McCain’s war crimes and endless warmongering is that in virtually all cases, he was joined or supported by Democratic politicians. And, notably, among those praising McCain was Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) superstar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Her eulogy was consciously paying the price of admission to the bipartisan imperialist club of the U.S. Congress. Bipartisan War Criminals Celebrate War Hawk John McCain (September 2018)

Unite with Dominican and U.S. Workers to Defeat Imperialist Attack!
Revolt in Haiti Against IMF-Dictated Austerity
On July 6 while Haitians were glued to the TV sets watching the World Cup, the right-wing government announced that, effective the next day, it was raising fuel prices by up to 50%. In Haiti, a deeply impoverished country, that spelled disaster for several million people living on the edge of survival. And it was ordered straight from Washington. To no one’s surprise but that of Haiti’s rulers and their imperialist overlords in the U.S., the country exploded in protest. In less than 24 hours the government announced the “suspension” of the fuel price hike “until further notice.” But that didn’t stop the popular uprising, as a general strike shut down transportation nationwide. It was the biggest upheaval in Haiti in years. The July uprising staved off the imposition of the IMF-dictated fuel price hike … for now. But given the powerful array of forces determined to keep Haiti under the imperialist boot, the Haitian masses cannot win on their own. Building proletarian opposition in major industrial countries, from Brazil to the U.S., is how to stop the arrogant imperialist economists from foisting their “soak the poor” policies on Haiti. But such a class struggle requires revolutionary internationalist leadership. Revolt in Haiti Against IMF-Dictated Austerity (August 2018)

As The Boss, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Blames Black Community for Violence
Chicago: Democrat-Led Cops Continue Racist Killing Spree
For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution
On July 14, Chicago police gunned down yet another black person, Harith Augustus, a barber. “Snoop” Augustus, known as a peaceful man, was stopped on the pretext of exhibiting the “characteristics of an armed person,” and was shot dead even though he had a valid gun license. For the police in this rigidly segregated city, and throughout this country founded on the bedrock of slavery, it is always open season on black people. And on Latinos, immigrants, Native Americans … the list goes on. Moreover, in Chicago and almost every other big city, Democrats are the bosses of the racist killer cops. This is all coming to a head in the upcoming trial of killer cop Jason Van Dyke for the murder of Laquan McDonald in October 2014. And Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel, running for a third term, is stoking racist reaction by blaming lax “morals” in the black community for the violence engendered by rampant poverty, unemployment and brutal police occupation. Yet some of the same themes are echoed in protests, where instead of denouncing racist police repression the focus is on opposition to “gun violence” in general. Talk of “reforming” the police or controlling guns only serves to divert protest away from a revolutionary perspective and to strengthen the repressive agencies of the capitalist state, while leading protesters into the dead-end of bourgeois pressure politics. The stark fact is that there is no solution to war, poverty and racist repression under capitalism. Chicago: Democrat-Led Cops Continue Racist Killing Spree (August 2018)

Drivers of Yellow and Green Cabs, Black Cars, Uber, Lyft and Others:
Taxi Workers Unite Against the Wall Street Attack!
Demand $25 Per Hour Minimum Pay
Only an Alliance of all Taxi Drivers of all Branches in a Single Union Can Give a Class Leadership to Our Struggle
No Confidence in Bosses’ Politicians
On August 8, the New York City Council voted overwhelmingly to approve two measures regulating “app-based” companies such as Uber and Lyft that have flooded NYC in the last three years. This has led to a drastic fall in income for drivers of traditional taxis (yellow cabs) and livery/black cars, as well for Uber/Lyft drivers. These measures have been hailed as the first action in the U.S. to crack down on the largely unregulated Wall Street-backed companies that seek to monopolize the taxi industry. However, with 100,000+ app-based vehicles already clogging the streets, these measures won’t substantially raise drivers’ incomes. On the eve of the City Council vote, Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas/Class Struggle International Workers leafletted rallies called by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance advocating a guaranteed $25 an hour minimum pay for all taxi drivers, in order to cut across divisions being exploited by the taxi bosses to set one group of drivers against another. At the same time, we emphasized that any real fight against the taxi monopolists requires sharp class struggle against the parties of capital who back them. Taxi Workers Unite Against the Wall Street Attack! Demand $25 Per Hour Minimum Pay (August 2018)

From the Previous Issue

The Internationalist No. 52
(May-June 2018)
click above or on image
for full list of articles

Drive I.C.E. Out! Shut the Detention Centers! Return the Kids! Let Refugees In!
Set Them Free, Let Them Stay! For Workers Action to Stop Deportations
Democrats, Republicans – Enemies of Immigrants: Build a Revolutionary Workers Party!
After a tidal wave of outrage, on June 20 Donald Trump was forced to make an about-face on his grotesque policy of stealing immigrant children from their parents. Instead, he issued an executive order to hold entire families in cages in abandoned warehouses and on army bases. This only served to intensify the protests. Five days later, the administration backed down again. There must be no illusions that the immigrant-bashing president and his child-snatching Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) have been stopped. Nor should anyone think that electing Democrats in November will bring relief to the more than 15 million undocumented immigrants living in fear in the United States, or to the desperate refugees camped out along the border. The monstrous deportation machine being used by Republican Trump was built for him by Democrat Obama, who threw a record 8+ million people out of the U.S. Both capitalist parties are enemies of immigrants. It is up to the working class together with black, Latino and other oppressed sectors to mobilize our power to wage a class war against the war on immigrants. The Internationalist Group calls for mass worker/immigrant mobilization in the streets to block deportations. We say: Stop the detentions! Return the children to their parents! Let the refugees in! Full citizenship rights for all immigrants! Set Them Free, Let Them Stay! (28 June 2018)

Defend Syria and Iran Against Imperialist Attack!
Regional War Looms in the Middle East
For an Arab/Hebrew Palestinian Workers State in a Socialist Federation of the Middle East!
As illusions of “peace” spread over the Korean peninsula as a result of a vague agreement reached by U.S. president Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at a summit in Singapore, the stage is being set for regional war in the Middle East. On May 8, Donald Trump withdrew from the so-called Iran nuclear deal, cementing an alliance with the Zionist militarists and Saudi war hawks. Three weeks earlier, the U.S. and its NATO partners Britain and France launched a missile attack on Syria, based on phony allegations of chemical weapons use by the Assad regime. Then on May 14, the U.S. relocated its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a brazen provocation against the Palestinian people. Simultaneously, Israeli Army snipers were picking off peaceful protesters inside Gaza, killing at least 129 and leaving thousands wounded. And in Yemen a mass slaughter of civilians by the U.S.-backed Saudi/Gulf monarchist invaders looms. The League for the Fourth International calls to defend Syria and Iran against imperialist attack, upholding Iran’s right to develop nuclear power and obtain nuclear or any other kind of weapons to defend against the Israeli and U.S. warmongers with their massive nuclear arsenals. To break the death grip of imperialism, Zionism and Islamism, the League for the Fourth International calls workers revolution throughout the region. Regional War Looms in the Middle East (28 June 2018)

Class Struggle Education League Fuses with Internationalist Group
On June 3, the Class Struggle Education League, based in southern New Hampshire, and the Internationalist Group joined together in a single organization, the Internationalist Group, U.S. section of the League for the Fourth International. The fusion took place following a CSEL-IG panel on “Revolutionary Regroupment vs. ‘Sanders Socialism’” at the annual Left Forum in New York City. The panel focused on the issues that led the CSEL toward fusing with the IG and on what revolutionary regroupment means, from Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolsheviks to today. The founders of the CSEL came out of Socialist Alternative (SAlt) where they had opposed its support for Sanders and any bourgeois politician. Further study, particularly of the writings of James P. Cannon, led them to reject as well the “sewer socialism” and Labourite reformism of SAlt's parent body, the Committee for a Workers International, which grew out of the Militant tendency in Britain. What’s needed, they concluded, is “not a ‘mass socialist party,’ not a ‘party of the 99%,’ not a ‘people’s party’,” but instead a Leninist revolutionary vanguard party built on the foundation of authentic Trotskyism. The regroupment with the CSEL follows earlier IG fusions with the Portland Trotskyist Study Group in 2012, and the Better-Late-Than-Never Faction, bureaucratically expelled by the Spartacist League/International Communist League, in 2016. As in those earlier instances, the fusion of the CSEL and IG was the result of a period of joint study and common work, notably on the strategy of black liberation through socialist revolution and in defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal. The fused IG will now have a New England local along with those in NYC, Portland and L.A. Class Struggle Education League Fuses with Internationalist Group (June 2018)

For a Revolutionary Party, Not the “Tagtail of Any Bourgeois Party”
An Open Letter to Socialist Alternative Oppositionists, Past and Present
By the Class Struggle Education League
“Our politics must be working-class politics. The workers’ party must never be the tagtail of any bourgeois party,” wrote Karl Marx in 1871. The Class Struggle Education League was founded in Fall 2017 by members of Socialist Alternative (SAlt). Growing disagreements with the organization came to a head over its blatant tailing of the Bernie Sanders campaign and the organization’s ever-increasing adaptation to the Democratic Party. “Our experience as members led us to conclusion that Socialist Alternative is a thoroughly reformist group that, for tactical reasons, internally pretends to be a revolutionary party that is just pretending to be reformist,“ the CSEL founders write in this open letter. Some of the former opposiiton have left SAlt for the Greens, or the DSA, or the Socialist Party; others have embraced Maoism, black nationalism, anarchism... But in their different ways, they (like SAlt) turn their backs on the principle of working-class political independence. An Open Letter to Socialist Alternative Oppositionists, Past and Present (31 May 2018)

PROTEST TORTURE ATTACK ON LABOR ACTIVISTS’ FAMILY IN MEXICO
On midday May 7, the teenage son of Dr. Arturo Villalobos and his wife, Patricia Méndez, was tortured and beaten unconscious by thugs who broke into the families' home. We hold the Mexican government and its imperialist overlords in Washington and Wall Street responsible for this vile attack on oppositional labor activists, which is a threat to the left and to all opponents of state control of labor. Protests have been called outside Mexican consulates in Boston, New York and Portland, Oregon and in Los Angeles. We urge defenders of workers’ and democratic rights to join us. Protest Torture Attack on Labor Activists’ Family in Mexico (9 May 2018)

URGENT CALL FOR SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN
Brutal Torture of Son of Grupo Internacionalista Leader in Oaxaca
On Monday, May 7, thugs entered the house of comrade Dr. Arturo Villalobos and his wife, Patricia Méndez in Oaxaca, Mexico. Both are prominent oppositional activists in the movement of health workers against government “reforms” that are gutting Mexico’s public health system. Not finding our comrade there, the attackers brutally tortured and beat the couple’s adolescent son, Nizván. After ransack the house, as the thugs left, they slashed the teenager and struck his head, leaving him unconscious. Arturo Villalobos is a well-known spokesman in Oaxaca for the Grupo Internacionalista, Mexican section of the League for the Fourth International. In addition, the attackers asked the whereabouts of two other family members who are also members of the GI. In 2016, Dr. Villalobos organized and led the courageous action by Oaxaca doctors in defying a police blockade to provide medical assistance to the surviving victims of the police massacre in Nochixtlán, Oaxaca on 19 June 2016 that left eleven dead during the militant three-month teachers strike. Not long after, the threats of legal action against him by the state attorney general began. We do not know at this time who perpetrated this heinous assault, but everything points to one conclusion: fue el estado (it was the state), as protesters chanted over the 2014 disappearance of 43 teachers college students from Ayotzinapa. Brutal Torture of Son of Grupo Internacionalista Leader in Oaxaca (8 May 2018)

Grupo Internacionalista Press Bulletin: Against Bourgeois Repression, Class Mobilization (7 May 2018)

May Day in New York City and Los Angeles
On May Day 2018, the international workers day, the Internationalist Group together with comrades of the Class Struggle Education League (CSEL) from New Hampshire, Revolutionary Internationalist Youth (RIY), the CUNY Internationalist Clubs, Class Struggle Education Workers (CSEW) and Tabajadores Internacionales Clasistas (TIC) organized a contingent of more than 50 demonstrators in the annual May Day march from Union Square in New York City. Chants for the demonstration included “Defend Syria, Defeat U.S. imperialism,” “Asian, Latin, black and white, Workers of the world, unite,” “Luchar, vencer, Obreros al poder” (Fight to win, workers to power) and, referring to the recent teachers strikes, “West Virginia, Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona, How about New York? Smash the Taylor Law!” Also “Not Trump, Not Democrats, Build a workers party!” Underscoring the struggle against police murder, marchers chanted “Stephon Clark, Saheed Vassell, Michael Brown, Shut the whole system down!” In Los Angeles, a group of students from Pasadena City College joined in marching with transport workers, whose banners called (in English and Spanish) for full citizenship rights for all immigrants and to unionize immigrant workers. Most of the workers wore bright red union-printed shirts with “Transport Workers Against Deportations” on the front and “La lucha obrera no tiene fronteras” on the back. May Day in New York City and Los Angeles (May 2018)

Aiding and Abetting the Capitalist Democratic Party
“Socialists” Chase After Anti-Gun Movement
The cynical exploitation of traumatized youth by the Democratic Party to further its agenda of gun control has provided an X-ray into the politics of a panoply of left groups. When key sectors of the most powerful ruling class in world want to disarm the populace, slashing a key democratic right in order to leave the oppressed defenseless, how do socialists respond? In the last few weeks, as liberals, police chiefs and Democratic mayors (“the bosses of the racist killer cops”) push for gun control, almost the entire U.S. left has marched in lockstep with them. Why? Because they are chasing after the young marchers who have been enrolled in this campaign to bolster the capitalist state. The bourgeoisie’s rule is made possible in large part by its ability to perpetrate violence against those it rules over. Gun control has historically been used to disarm black people and intensify racist repression. While some opportunist leftists voice qualms or reservations about some gun control measures, they all end up supporting them. A “left” that plays into the hands of the Democratic Party can only lead to defeat. A struggle for revolution is counterposed to this “movement” for gun control and for the Democratic Party of imperialist war, mass deportations and racist police terror. “Socialists” Chase After Anti-Gun Movement (April 2018)

Bourgeois Populism and Social-Democratic Reformism: A Dead End
Italy: Anti-Immigrant Election Hysteria
The campaign for the March 4 Italian elections has been dominated by vile xenophobic anti-immigrant chauvinism. All the competing bourgeois parties and coalitions attack the bogeyman of “illegal immigration.” The racist Lega (ex-Nord) rails about the “invasion of aliens, drug pushers, delinquents and illegals,” raising slogans such as “Italians first! Now or never! Stop the invasion!” With the populist Cinque Stelle (Five Star) movement running first in the opinion polls, its historic leader, Beppe Grillo, recently called for immediately deporting all “illegals.” The strategy of the Democratic Party government has been to put itself at the head of the anti-immigrant hysteria by aggressively extending the sway of Italian imperialism in the Mediterranean, Libya and to the south. This imperialist drive to the south is accompanied by a campaign of all-sided racist repression against immigrants and refugee seekers in Italy. What the domesticated left is counterposing to the three main bourgeois coalitions of Forza Italia/Lega, Cinque Stelle and the PD with its various appendages of homeless bourgeois politicians, is a mixture of bourgeois populism and social-democratic reformism. in the present climate of anti-immigrant hysteria and fascist attacks, what is needed are mass mobilizations bringing out the power of the working class to stop the fascists. Above all, we must forge a genuinely Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard. Italy: Anti-Immigrant Election Hysteria (24 February 2018)

(italiano) Elezioni del 4 Marzo: Isteria anti-immigrati (24 febbraio 2018)

Boston: Let Siham Byah Come Home! No Deportations!
By Class Struggle Education League
On January 27, hundreds of defenders of immigrant rights from many leftist organizations, labor unions, churches and sanctuary networks rallied in Boston to protest the deportation of Siham Byah. A prominent Occupy Boston activist and single mother, Byah was grabbed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) police last November 7, torn from her son, beaten in a local jail, driven to Virginia and then deported to Morocco. The Class Struggle Education League, based in Lowell, Mass. and New Hampshire participated in the protest, emphasizing the importance of mobilizing the power of workers action to stop the I.C.E. deportation machine. It also noted the parallel to the struggle against slave-catchers under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, a battle which came to a head in Boston and set the stage for the U.S. Civil War. The CSEL is undertaking joint work with the Internationalist Group. Boston: Let Siham Byah Come Home! No Deportations! (4 February 2018)

For Workers Action to Smash Trump Racism, and to
Block the Capitalist Deportation Machine Obama Built
LET HAITIANS STAY!
Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!
Donald Trump’s racist smear of immigrants from Haiti and Africa as well as El Salvador, calling their homelands “shithole” countries, has enraged millions. His vile words are not just an insult, they are an expression of his criminal cancellation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians, Salvadorans, Nicaraguans and soon Hondurans, leading to mass deportations of tens of thousands of immigrants. The racist rhetoric is tied to racist policies , and it’s not just the white supremacist in the White House who is an enemy of immigrants. Remember that Democrat Obama paved the way for Republican Trump by deporting a record 5+ million immigrants (over 8 million if you include the “voluntary departures”). The hated I.C.E. police are part of a bipartisan capitalist deportation machine. Class-conscious working people and defenders of democratic rights must not only denounce Trump’s blatant racism, but also call for mass worker/immigrant action to block deportations, to stop the attacks on TPS and DACA, and to demand full citizenship rights for all immigrants! LET HAITIANS STAY! (19 January 2018)

Revolution

Publication of the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth and of students from the Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York (click on masthead to go to Revolution index)

Revolution No. 14
(January 2018)
click above or on image
for full list of articles

Beware Trump/Democrat Deal
Defend DACA and All Immigrants!
By CUNY Internationalist Clubs and the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth
On September 5, Donald Trump rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Many of the estimated 800,000 young undocumented immigrants could face deportation as early as March 2018. The CUNY Internationalist Clubs joined protests, raising the call to defend DACA and ALL immigrants, and for mass worker/immigrant action to defeat the racist onslaught. In the Revolution leaflet printed here, we had warned that Trump would try to make precisely such a deal with the Democrats, using the immigrant youth registered under the program as bargaining chips. Sure enough, a few days later, Democratic senators Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi announced that they had made a “deal” with Trump, in which DACA recipients could stay in exchange for Democratic support for increased “border security” and immigration enforcement. Some immigrant activists saw right through the “deal,” and threw it back in Pelosi’s face at an event September 18 promoting the DREAM Act, chanting “we are not a bargaining chip.”As revolutionary Marxists, we warn that the Democrats as well as Republicans are enemies of immigrants, and deporter-in-chief Obama paved the way for Trump. We oppose any deal with Trump to “save” aspects of DACA at the expense of the millions of supposedly “less talented and deserving” immigrants. We demand: full citizenship for all immigrants. Defend DACA and All Immigrants! (7 September 2017, updated 27 December 2017)

Revolutionary Internationalist Youth Founded
This past August, the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth was founded as the youth section of the Internationalist Group, U.S. section of the League for the Fourth International. One hundred years after the 1917 October Revolution, the RIY aims to be a training ground for young revolutionaries, as part of the common movement of the IG/LFI, to carry through to victory the genuine communist program of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky. The formation of the RIY has involved extensive study of the history of Marxist youth groups going back to the Communist Youth International, founded in 1919 on the tradition of Karl Liebknecht and the Leninist principle of combining study with action. It is has been forged through sharp political struggles against the class-collaborationist politics of Maoism and the various brands of social democracy and for the program of revolutionary Trotskyism. We publish here the Founding Declaration of the RIY. Revolutionary Internationalist Youth Founded (August 2017)

For Labor/Black Mobilization Against Racist Cop Terror
Trump’s Racist Vendetta Against Black Athletes
Donald Trump has been on a racist tear this season, engaged in an furious vendetta against protesting black athletes of the National Football League. It started in 2016 when Colin Kaepernick, then quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, refused to stand for the “Star Spangled Banner” in protest against the ongoing racist police murders of black and Latino people. Kaepernick has been blacklisted by the NFL, but the “Kaepernick effect” hasn’t gone away. The protests of 2017 became more widespread in response to Trump’s blatant racism. Last year there were at least 1,188 people killed by cops. Part of the reason for the prominence of protests by black players has been the dearth of mass protests like those in 2014 and the beginning of 2015. Many of the main leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement have channeled support into the Democratic Party and diverted the protests into electoral politics. There should be tens of thousands in the streets mobilized against racist police murder. But to actually have an effect requires much more, above all breaking the political stranglehold of the partner parties of capital. Trump’s Racist Vendetta Against Black Athletes (January 2018)

NFL: Players Are Expendable, Profits Are Not (January 2018)

DSA Dodges Debate
“Socialism: What It Is (and Isn’t)”
Since the election of Donald Trump, the term “socialism” has been a popular topic of discussion among those disillusioned with the status quo. Although the word has gained currency, still fixed in the minds of many are the lies about socialism propagated by the bourgeois class. These lies have also been used by pseudo-socialist groups that want to reform an unreformable system, and by capitalist politicians like Bernie Sanders to funnel disillusioned youth back into the Democratic Party. On September 7, the Hunter College Internationalist Club issued a debate challenge to the Hunter College Young Democratic Socialists of America on the topic “Socialism: What It Is (and Isn’t).” Six weeks later the YDSA responded that they had “no intention of continuing to engage” with us. The Internationalist Club went ahead with the event anyway, holding a forum/“open chair debate” on October 19, leaving a chair on the platform open in case they changed their minds. We took the opportunity to explain our revolutionary communist perspective on socialism and how it differs from the junior social democrats. “Socialism: What It Is (and Isn’t)” (January 2018)

U.S. Imperialism and British Colonialism in the Indian Ocean
The Chagos Archipelago, also known as the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), was excised from Mauritius (then a British colony) in 1965. Its largest island, Diego Garcia, has been home to a U.S. military base since 1971. The base on Diego Garcia is of great geopolitical importance for the British and U.S. imperialists, serving as a staging ground for imperialist attacks in the Middle East, a projection of imperialist power in Africa and South Asia, and a “black site” for their program of “extraordinary rendition,” moving “terror suspects” from country to country for detention and torture. In order to secure this prime location as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier,” the entire population of the archipelago was coerced into leaving the islands or forcibly removed between 1965 and 1971. This is the story of how this colonialist/imperialist crime took place. U.S. Imperialism and British Colonialism in the Indian Ocean (January 2018)

Hurricanes, Colonial Government, Wall Street and Washington
University of Puerto Rico Students, Faculty and Workers Under Siege
For All-Out Worker/Student/Teacher Action to Defeat the Assault on the UPR!
Following hurricanes Irma and Maria this past September, the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) was left in tatters. Meanwhile, several thousand UPR students have abandoned the island altogether. This mass migration of youth is a direct result of Puerto Rico’s economic crisis, exacerbated by the extortionate demands of Wall Street hedge funds and Washington bureaucrats. Today the bankers and U.S. imperialist government completely control the island’s finances through the Junta de Control Fiscal (Financial Control Board) put in place by Congress and then-president Barack Obama. And the University of Puerto Rico is tops on la junta’s hit list. What that means for the UPR is massive budget cuts. Upon hearing of plans for a budget-ax murder of their school, UPR students took swift action. After initial protests, beginning on April 5, students occupied the university for 72 days, blockading the gates. Today, with the mass of the population in desperate straits deprived of the basic necessities of modern life, the immediate struggle is for survival. But if that fight is waged with a political perspective taking aim at the ruling class that has condemned them to misery, this calamity can be a starting point for militant class struggle. The demand for free, quality public education for all, along with other democratic demands (including for the independence of Puerto Rico) will only be assured when those who produce the wealth take power and extend socialist revolution internationally. University of Puerto Rico Students, Faculty and Workers Under Siege (December 2017)

I Am Not Your Negro
James Baldwin in Racist America
I Am Not Your Negro is a documentary film based on two works by the great black gay novelist, playwright and essayist James Baldwin (1924-1987). It is directed by Raoul Peck, the Haitian-born film maker who also directed Lumumba, about the assassination of the Congolese independence leader, and The Young Marx. The film is important for young revolutionaries to see. It powerfully combines dramatic historical footage and Baldwin’s stirring, courageous denunciation of the centrality of racism to U.S. society. Thus, while the movie doesn’t put forward a revolutionary program – nor does it claim to – it vividly dramatizes why the “color-blind” liberalism and tepid reform schemes for a “juster” capitalism under a refurbished Democratic Party put forward by the likes of Bernie Sanders cannot overcome racism. The material reality of black oppression continually generates the racist ideology that America’s rulers use to divide the working people. As opposed to the lilberal integrationism of Martin Luther King, or the dead-end of black nationalism, we fight for revolutionary integrationism, to pull up capitalism’s system of racial oppression by its roots. That requires learning the lessons of history, and this honest film can be a powerful aid in learning those lessons. I Am Not Your Negro, James Baldwin in Racist America (January 2018)

The Bolshevik Revolution, Leon Trotsky and the New York Public Library
Here it was: the 100-year anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and the New York Public Library had organized an exhibition. So when the Library announced a symposium on the Russian Revolution with some academic “experts,” we in the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth decided to attend. All five of the speakers were decidedly against the October Revolution (big surprise). Lenin and Trotsky were demonized, misquoted and slandered. The gains of the October Revolution were not mentioned at all. They even retailed an apocryphal story about Lenin calling to compromise with capitalists to get American financing. For all their made-up stories, it was curious that nobody mentioned a real story about Leon Trotsky and the New York Public Library. The night that Trotsky got off the boat in January 1917, Nikolai Bukharin dragged him and Natalia Sedova up to the 42nd Street library where the lights were blazing and any worker could come and read until almost midnight. No longer. Lenin also admired the NYPL. But in this epoch of decaying capitalism, public services are cut to the bone. The Bolshevik Revolution, Leon Trotsky and the New York Public Library (January 2018)