    |
"All talk to the effect that
historical conditions have not yet
'ripened' for socialism is the product of
ignorance or conscious deception. The
objective prerequisites for proletarian
revolution have not only 'ripened,' they
have begun to get somewhat rotten.... The
historical crisis of mankind is reduced to
the crisis of the revolutionary
leadership." |
Welcome! The Internationalist Group, section of the League for the Fourth International, fights for international socialist revolution, the conquest of power by the working class, led by its Leninist party, championing the cause of all the oppressed. After a decade and a half in which the ruling class trumpeted the supposed "death of communism," the imperialists are bogged down in losing wars of colonial occupation in the Near East while a global economic crisis shakes the foundations of the capitalist order. With mass unemployment, poverty and hunger ravaging the planet, once again there is talk of socialism and revolution. But as in the past, the key question is that of forging a vanguard to lead the struggle of the workers and the oppressed.
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The founding statement of the Internationalist Group is available on this site, as well as the LFI's declaration, Reforge the Fourth International, in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Tagalog.
Longshore Workers: Shut It Down!
ILWU Local 10 Moves to Stop the Fascists in San Francisco
On August 17, International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 voted an urgent motion for labor mobilization to “Stop the Fascists in San Francisco.” The dock workers, who have a long history of port shutdowns against racism, war and police terror, aim to prevent a repeat of last week’s murderous Nazi/white supremacist attack in Charlottesville, Virginia. Fascist groups have announced a weekend of potentially deadly provocations in the Bay Area on August 26-27. Some of those involved in the Charlottesville Nazi march are reportedly planning to attend. Pointing to the example of Portland, Oregon where members of 14 local unions mobilized against a racist/fascist provocation on June 4, ILWU Local 10 motion stated, that “the San Francisco Bay Area is a union stronghold and we will not allow labor-hating white supremacists to bring their lynch mob terror here.” By using the power of independent working-class action to stop the fascists, they can point the way for all labor and the oppressed at this critical moment. ILWU Local 10 Moves to Stop the Fascists in San Francisco (18 August 2017)
Solidarity with Charlottesville Anti-Fascist Protesters!
Honor Heather Heyer!
Labor/Black/Immigrant Mobilization to Smash Fascist Terror
Build Workers Defense Guards!
The racist terror bred in the bone of American capitalism struck again this weekend, in Charlottesville, Virginia. Local activist Heather Heyer was murdered and at least 35 people were treated for injuries, as Ohio Nazi James Alex Fields rammed his car into a crowd. Fields came there to join swarms of Klan, Nazi and other fascists at a “Unite the Right” rally built by fascist leader Richard Spencer. This is the latest in a series of deadly fascist and racist provocations and attacks that have escalated since Donald Trump’s election. It is urgently necessary to mobilize labor/black/immigrant power, in alliance with all those targeted by racist and fascist terror, to smash the fascist provocations. Portland, Oregon labor militants pointed the way with the June 4 Labor Against the Fascists mobilization, which brought out several hundred workers, including members of 14 unions, against the fascist/racist provocation there. But to do that, the power of labor must be unchained from its subjugation to the bosses’ politicians and parties, centrally the Democratic Party that paved the way for Trump. Solidarity with Charlottesville Anti-Fascist Protesters! (14 August 2017)
Trump and Crazed Liberals on the Warpath – Defend North Korea!
Lies, Dumb Lies, and Imperialist Whoppers
Donald Trump lies about pretty much everything great and small. But when it comes to lies, size matters, particularly as concerns the lies that serve as pretexts to launch wars. Those lies kill millions, and almost every imperialist slaughter begins with them. Now we are seeing the Big Lie in action over Korea, and while Democrats may be getting nervous about the megalomaniac Republican president with his finger on the nuclear trigger, liberals have been promoting warmongering Big Lies about Korea, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Vietnam and elsewhere for decades. Now they spread the truly dangerous Big Lie is that North Korea has nothing to fear from the U.S. military. Nonsense. If Kim Jong Un ever agreed to give up the North’s nuclear deterrent, imperialist “contingency” plans for counterrevolution and a new Korean War would immediately go live. All class-conscious workers and opponents of imperialism must stand with North Korea and its right to nuclear, or any other kind of weapons to defend itself against the imperialist behemoth. Lies, Dumb Lies, and Imperialist Whoppers (12 August 2017)
Capitalism Is Wrecking Mass Transit
NYC Transit Summer of Hell? What about Winter, Spring and Fall?
New York governor Andrew Cuomo declared it would be a “summer of hell” for commuters, due to closures to repair tracks at Penn Station. But New York City subway riders have been enduring hellish conditions year-round with derailments and infuriating delays as the antiquated equipment of the largest subway system in the world breaks down at an accelerating pace. The bosses of the Metropolitan Transit Authority spend billions borrowed from Wall Street banks to build elegant stations that raise real estate prices but do nothing to fix the disastrous state of the NYC mass transit system. The sorry state of New York subways has been exhaustively studied, the solutions are known. They would cost tens of billions of dollars that the capitalists will not fork over because their system is bankrupt. A mass transit system serving working people rather than capital could be achieved in relatively short order, but the transformation would require nothing less than a revolution – a workers government to replace the capitalist system with production for social need, not profit. NYC Transit Summer of Hell? What about Winter, Spring and Fall? (7 August 2017)
Revolutionary Marxism vs. Sanders “Socialism” for Democrats
The ABCs of the DSA
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is proclaiming that it has surpassed 25,000 members. This would make it the largest self-styled socialist organization in the United States in decades. The sudden expansion of the DSA reflects the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination by Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who calls himself an “independent” and “democratic socialist” while being a long-time member of the Democratic Party caucus in Congress. Clearly, the DSA has picked up a significant number of disappointed Bernieites, who despaired when he lost the nomination to Hillary Clinton and even more when Donald Trump was elected president. The Democratic Socialists of America is perhaps the most successful of various opportunist leftist groups seeking to cash in on the crisis of the mainstream bourgeois parties. In good part this is because this staid social-democratic organization is so embedded in the two-party capitalist political system of the United States that it has long been known as the Democratic (Party) Socialists of America. Many of those joining Democratic Socialists of America are unfamiliar with what the organization really stands for and its history. The DSA's growth does not signify a break from bourgeois liberalism, or even from the Democratic Party. Even less is it support for socialist revolution to overthrow the capitalist system. With their talk of “democratic socialism,” the leaders of the DSA (including its “left” wing) are building a virulently anti-communist, social-democratic obstacle to revolution. The ABCs of the DSA (4 August 2017)
Class War on the Waterfront: Longshore Workers Under Attack
By Jack Heyman
The bosses’ Pacific Maritime Association wants to extend their contract with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) for an additional three years, making it an eight-year contract. Under the current contract employers have already eliminated hundreds of longshore jobs through all-round automation of marine terminals. Prolonging it to 2022 will cost thousands of jobs. The maritime employers are pulling out all the stops to push through this job-killing contract extension, including enlisting so-called “friends of labor” Democratic Party bigwigs to threaten dire consequences if the workers don’t buy it. No matter who leads it, the Democratic Party represents the employer class, Wall Street on the waterfront. In resisting the push for this contract extension and fighting for a short workweek with no loss in pay, ILWU waterfront workers can stand up for all workers. Class War on the Waterfront: Longshore Workers Under Attack (20 July 2017)
G20 Summit Police State Terror in Hamburg
On July 7 and 8, an army of police was brought in to “protect” the G20 international summit of potentates. The international press bought the story of rioters unexpectedly disturbing the “festival of democracy.” In fact, the whole event was an exercise in urban counter-insurgency. Police systematically attacked protesters in large groups or small, provoking outbreaks of rage. These summits are always accompanied by massive assaults on democratic rights. But this was not just business as usual. The “new world order” proclaimed by Washington upon the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Union is coming apart. The U.S./NATO warmongers have gotten bogged down in one quagmire after another and provoked a huge refugee crisis. Meanwhile, they are mired in a worldwide economic depression, with tens of millions of unemployed. The imperialists need to have the police/military apparatus at the ready to crush internal unrest, which they know is coming. That is behind the police state terror in Hamburg, and the “paramilitarization” of police forces around the capitalist world. The state of emergency imposed on Hamburg was announced well in advance. It should have been answered with a mobilization of workers power against the terror-summit. Instead, we are treated to the sorry spectacle of a housebroken social-democratic left parroting the complaints of the gutter press and law-and-order politicians. G20 Summit Police State Terror in Hamburg
(20 July 2017)
The Internationalist No. 48
There Is No Justice for Black People in the Racist Capitalist Courts
(May-June 2017)
click above or on image
for full list of articles
Black America Under the Gun
Workers Revolution Will Avenge Philando Castile
The acquittal of the cop who gunned down Philando Castile on 6 July 2016 as he sat in his car in suburban St. Paul, Minnesota, is proof positive that the whole system is rigged so that police can kill with impunity. Anyone who saw the heart-wrenching Facebook Live video by his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds, as millions did, knows. Anyone who saw the horrifying police dashboard camera video and audio, as the jury did repeatedly, of the frenzied cop pumping bullets into Philando with Diamond and her four-year-old daughter in the car with him, can have no doubt. Philando Castile was executed, the ultimate penalty of “driving while black.” And his executioner walked. It’s the way the system works. Kill-crazy cops are an expression of the fact that American capitalism is based on the oppression of black people, which has continued from the days of chattel slavery through Jim Crow segregation to today’s mass incarceration. Nothing short of workers revolution will change that. Changing which capitalist party is in office will not alter things. We must fight instead to build the nucleus of a multi-racial and multi-ethnic revolutionary workers party that can attack the scourge of racial oppression at its roots. Black America Under the Gun (27 June 2017)
Introducing Permanente Revolution,
German-Language Newspaper of the LFI
The League for the Fourth International announces the publication of the first issue of its German-language newspaper, Permanente Revolution. We take the name from the weekly paper of the German Trotskyists (Bolshevik-Leninists) in the early 1930s. The appearance of Permanente Revolution is the outgrowth of internal fights in the International Communist League (Spartacist tendency) during 2015 over the ICL’s increasingly social-chauvinist line over the European refugee crisis. This led a longtime member of the editorial board of Spartakist and of the Berlin local leadership of the ICL's German section to leave the ICL after hopes of self-reform of the centrist ICL proved illusory. After a period of discussions and common work, the LFI is undertaking, together with its supporters in Germany, the publication of a newspaper to intervene in class and social struggles and to win cadres in left milieus to the perspective of international socialist revolution. Introducing Permanente Revolution (June 2017)
It Will Take Workers Revolution to Get Rid of Austerity
Corbyn’s Labour Party Surges, But “Welfare State” Capitalism Is Dead
Last year it was the surprise vote to leave the European Union – “Brexit” – that led to the downfall of the Conservative prime minister and set off panic among the bankers of the City of London. Then this past June 8, a “snap election” called by a new Tory prime minister (Theresa May), led to a huge increase for the opposition Labour Party, whose leader Jeremy Corbyn, was said to be “unelectable” because of his mildly leftist politics. And only days after the vote, came the monstrous fire at Grenfell Tower that killed at least 79 people and crystallized the mounting fury at the Tories and their policies of rampant deregulation and privatization. Corbyn’s leadership of Labour has awakened hopes, particularly among young people who have known nothing but “neoliberal” austerity all their lives. But despite the euphoria of the reformist left, revolutionaries must drive home that the only way austerity for working people will be ended is through international socialist revolution, and more particularly through the overthrow of the capitalists’ EU by continent-wide workers struggles leading to a Socialist United States of Europe. Corbyn’s Labour Party Surges, But “Welfare State” Capitalism Is Dead (29 June 2017)
U.N. Get Out! Unite with Dominican and U.S. Workers to Smash Imperialism!
Haitian Workers Brave Repression in Fight Against Starvation Wages
On May 19, workers in several plants in the SONAPI industrial park in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince walked out demanding a raise of the minimum wage, presently around U.S. $5.50, to US$12.60 a day. More than doubling the present rate would not even remotely be enough to live on. But just to win such minimal demands and to combat the starvation wages imposed on Haitian workers by imperialist capitalism requires active solidarity by labor and working people in the United States. In 2009, the U.S. embassy mounted a major operation to roll back an attempt to raise the minimum wage. And when she was secretary of state, Hillary Clinton siphoned off millions in earthquake relief funds to fund construction of a sweatshop by a notorious South Korean wage-gouger and union-buster. Major retailers make superprofits based on the superexploitation of Haitian garment workers because Wall Street and Washington want it that way. Every turning point in Haiti’s history was the result of events in the imperialist centers, and it is there that crucial fights in the next Haitian revolution will be fought. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International have paid particular attention to Haiti since our inception. In every struggle, we seek to lay the basis for revolutionary workers parties on both sides of the border that divides Haiti and the Dominican Republic, in the heart of U.S. imperialism and internationally. Haitian Workers Brave Repression in Fight Against Starvation Wages (26 June 2017)
Social Democrats Organized Diversion Against Efforts to Drive Fascists Out of Portland
How Do You Spell Class Collaboration? ISO
When a June 4 white supremacist rally brought several hundred fascists and racists to Portland, Oregon, it was vastly outnumbered by up to ten times as many anti-racist demonstrators. But there were three separate counterdemonstrations. While the protest called by antifa (anti-fascist) groups and a union mobilization called by Portland Labor Against the Fascists sought to drive the racists out, the third, by social democrats and liberals, was called explicitly to avoid confrontation with the fascists. If it was not for the massive police presence and the “Portland Stands United Against Hate” diversion – the work of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), which organized the City Hall rally in coordination with the mayor/police chief – the racist provocation by white supremacists and Nazi lovers could have been dispersed. Not only did the ISO call its event to undercut the labor mobilization, even overturning a decision by the organizing meeting it convened to join with the union action, it sought to point the finger of blame for any violence that might occur at the labor and antifa demonstrations. This is what social-democratic class collaboration looks like. How Do You Spell Class Collaboration? ISO (28 June 2017)
Police Protect Vastly Outnumbered Racists
Portland Labor Mobilizes to Stop Fascist Provocation
Militants from 14 Area Unions Point the Way Forward
The June 4 rally of white-supremacist and outright fascist Trump supporters in Portland, OR was protected by triple lines of heavily armed police. However, it was surrounded by far greater numbers of furious protesters outraged by this brazen provocation barely a week after the double murder by a local Nazi. One of three protests, a mobilization called by Portland Labor Against the Fascists, brought out several hundred union members and supporters, including members of at least 14 area unions. The labor mobilization stood its ground to the very end, with non-stop chants and speeches that reverberated throughout the area for over six hours until the last of the racist and fascist scum exited on buses protected by the police. This marks the first significant working-class action in the U.S. against white supremacists in decades. June 4 points to the potential for organizing workers defense guards that could send the fascist vermin scurrying back into their holes. It was an important first step in bringing out the power of the labor movement in defense of working people, immigrants, Muslims and all those targeted by the all-round reactionary offensive coming out of Washington. And it sharply posed the need for a workers party fighting to overthrow the capitalist system that breeds fascism, and to replace it with the liberating rule of the working class. Portland Labor Mobilizes to Stop Fascist Provocation (8 June 2017)
(Español) Movilización obrera en Portland para poner alto a una provocación fascista (8 de junio de 2017)Defend Leftist Lecturer Eleonora Roldán Mendívil!
Germany: Anti-Palestinian Witch Hunt Targets
Leftist and Jewish Activists
In recent months, there have been several incidents of persecution of Jewish and leftist groups and individuals in Berlin, Germany for their pro-Palestinian views. The attackers range from right-wing German nationalists to the peculiar self-described (and grossly mislabeled) “Anti-Germans.” A case of anti-Palestinian censorship that gained international attention is the exclusion of Free University lecturer Eleonora Roldán Mendívil, who taught a class on “Racism under Capitalism.” University authorities canceled her teaching contract after rightist German nationalists slanderously accused her of anti-Semitism. This entire campaign is a Zionist witch hunt against a leftist, and goes hand-in-hand with attacks on Jewish and Israeli civil rights and gay rights activists. Trotskyists defend the proponents of boycotts, divestment and sanctions against right-wing and Zionist attacks and censorship. But rather than looking to the imperialists, we call for international workers action in defense of the Palestinian people, and for Hebrew/Arab workers revolution. Germany: Anti-Palestinian Witch Hunt Targets Leftist and Jewish Activists (22 March 2017)
The Internationalist No. 47
Break with Democrats, Build a Revolutionary Workers Party
(March-April 2017)
click above or on image
for full list of articles
All Out on May Day!
Strike In Defense of Immigrants and All Workers
For Worker/Immigrant Mass Action to STOP Deportations!
Since the moment Donald Trump took office on January 20, a wave of raw fear has swept across immigrant communities that has not abated. The vicious offensive against immigrants has also produced anger and a determination to fight: for immigrant rights, for their rights as workers and for the better life for their children that millions have risked all to achieve. This May 1, there will in effect be a strike by hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers across the United States, perhaps upwards of a million as in 2006. What would be major is for key sectors of U.S.-born workers to walk out in solidarity with immigrants. It is also vital that the struggle to defend immigrants and all workers be waged independently of the Democratic Party. Since Trump’s upset election victory in November, sections of this capitalist party have begun pretending to be an opposition force for the first time in many decades. They’re getting an assist from opportunist leftists eager to be gofers for the latest mass “movement.” While Trump is the immediate enemy, the Democrats are the key strategic enemy whose stranglehold on labor, black and immigrant organizations and populations must be broken. All Out on May Day! Strike In Defense of Immigrants and All Workers (19 April 2017)
Defend North Korea Against Crazed U.S. War Threats
As we go to press, the United States has dramatically escalated its military provocations against North Korea. The actions of President Donald Trump and his erratic regime could at any moment touch off a war, which would rapidly escalate. This should make it clear to all that North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is its main deterrent against the crazed nuclear warmongers in Washington. It is crucial to defend North Korea and uphold its right to develop nuclear arms for its defense against predatory U.S. imperialism. Defend North Korea Against Crazed U.S. War Threats (17 April 2017)
Defend Syria! Drive U.S. Imperialism Out of the Middle East!
In the early morning hours of April 7, the United States launched a missile attack on a Syrian air base, supposedly in reprisal for a chemical weapons attack that killed up to a hundred people. There is no proof that the Syrian government launched this attack, and considerable circumstantial evidence suggesting otherwise. The U.S. imperialists are the biggest mass murderers on the face of the planet. This is the kind of incident they have typically used to launch their wars, from the U.S. invasion of Cuba in 1898 to the non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” used to sell the 2003 invasion of Iraq. War hysteria against Syria is being whipped up in unison by the imperialist media, retailing propaganda from jihadi groups in Syria and echoed by an array of capitalist politicians. Trump’s missile strike has united Democrats and Republicans in banging the drums of war. War hawk and (well-paid) defender of Wall Street Hillary Clinton called to destroy the Syrian air force. In the face of this blatant imperialist aggression, the Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International call for defense of Syria against U.S. attack, and to kick the U.S. and its NATO imperialist allies out of the Middle East. Defend Syria! Drive U.S. Imperialism Out of the Middle East! (7 April 2017)
Milo Yiannopoulos, “Free Speech”and the Assault on Universities
The election of Donald Trump marked a renewed push by reactionaries waging a “culture war” to cleanse America of “foreign” elements. With them, professional witch-hunters are revving up a drive to purge leftist and liberal professors from academia, salivating at the prospect of returning to the McCarthy era of the 1950s. A February 1 appearance by the self-described provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California at Berkeley was part of this operation. His speech was canceled after some 1,500 demonstrators came out to protest this provocation. Trump tweeted from the White House threatening to cut off funds to the university. Liberals and the mainstream media complained free speech rights being violated. Nonsense. Yiannopoulos’ declared purpose was to target undocumented immigrants. Such actions are not exercising free speech but deliberate provocations, targeting individuals and groups with the intent of causing injury to them. Yiannopoulos posed an imminent threat, and it was correct to seek to drive him out. But we do not call on university administrators, who represent the ruling class and its state, to ban them. We are for mobilizing mass action – by students, workers, immigrants and all defenders of democratic rights, including the right to free speech – to thwart such dangerous provocations and defend those who would be victimized. Milo Yiannopoulos, “Free Speech”and the Assault on Universities (April 2017)
Revolutionary Struggle for Women’s Liberation,
Not (Capitalist) Welfare State Feminism
Italian Trotskyists on International Women’s Day
A century ago, an uprising that began on International Women’s Day brought down the Russian tsar and led to the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the founding of the first workers state in history. The “global women’s strike” called by feminist groups this past March 8 had a very different character. This varied from country to country. In Italy, the main focus was on individual “masculine violence against women,” and the appeal was to the capitalist state. Non Una di Meno, affiliated with the Argentine Ni Una Menos, called on the United Nations and the European Court of Human Rights to protect women, and organized meetings with bourgeois women politicians. They call for “welfare for all, based on women’s needs,” and call on the government to exercise feminist censorship of the media. In short, what the organizers seek is a kind of capitalist welfare-state feminism. Theirs is a utopian reformist program that would subordinate the struggle for women’s rights to the capitalist state, the biggest enemy of women. And it ignores basic economic demands which go beyond the limits of capitalism, including collectivization of housework, childcare and food service, which are crucial to liberating working women from all-sided social oppression. Italian Trotskyists on International Women’s Day (April 2017)
Break the Corporatist Shackles to Unleash the Power of the Proletariat!
The Mexican Steel Workers Strike and the Struggle Against Corporatism
In March 2016, Section 271 of the National Union of Miners. Metal and Steel Mill Workers (SNTMMSSRM) at the ArcelorMittal steelworks in Lázaro Cárdenas in the state of Michoacán, Mexico struck without authorization by the government labor board. This was a strike that the Mine and Mill leadership didn’t want and did everything to avoid. They postponed it 16 times, and the walkout only occurred because “certain workers decided to occupy this workplace,” as the federal Labor Department complained. The strike was over threatened layoffs. But already in August 2015, the SNTMMSSRM leaders had given the company a list of 120 union workers who could be fired, supposedly for being “considered ‘troublemakers’ and low-productivity.” This is the outlook of “corporatist unionism,” subordinating and integrating the unions to the machinery of the capitalist state. Today the SNTMMSSRM is a semi-corporatist union, but the leadership has invariably demanded that the workers submit to the mechanisms of state control embodied in Mexico’s fascist-inspired labor law. This has led to fissures with traditionally militant sections, like the miners of Cananea and the steel workers of Lázaro Cárdenas. The strike underscores that the industrial proletariat must break out of the straitjacket represented by the corporatist apparatus of labor control, and forge revolutionary leaderships in struggle against all wings of the bourgeoisie. The Mexican Steel Workers Strike and the Struggle Against Corporatism (April 2017)
Bernie’s A-List
Guess Who’s Bernie Sanders’ Foreign Policy Go-To Guy, and What Power Bishop Is His Vatican Fixer
But, of course, one and the same Jeffrey Sachs who designed the post-counterrevolution “shock treatment” in Poland. Also in Bolivia where it led to tens of thousands of workers fired and brutal anti-union repression. In preparation for the no-photo-op pope-meet-and-greet, Bernie and Jeffrey dined with Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras, “the pope’s right-hand man and one of the Vatican’s top power players.” This is the same cardinal who helped engineer (together with Hillary Clinton) the 2009 Honduran coup, and before that covered up for bloody massacres and “disappearances” in the 1980s. But then, Pope Francis himself is a veteran of Argentina’s 1970s dirty war. Guess Who's Bernie Sanders’ Foreign Policy Go-To Guy, and His Power Bishop Vatican Fixer (17 April 2016)
A Question of Whose Class Interests Prevail
Flint Water Crisis: Capitalism Is Poisoning Us
The residents of Flint, Michigan have been living a nightmare ever since in early 2014 the city’s state-appointed “emergency manager” and the governor’s office decided to switch the water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River. As a result, the population has been subjected to lead poisoning, particularly affecting the very young and elderly. The levels of contamination are astronomical. For almost two years Republican state authorities and Democratic federal officials refused to do anything about complaints. Now an emergency has been proclaimed, but the water is still undrinkable. Meanwhile, the same “emergency manager” has been overseeing Detroit schools as they descend further into the abyss. The emergency has been created by decaying capitalism: industrial pollution, closing factories and a bipartisan attack on teachers and public education. The dictatorial managers must be kicked out, but changing parties will change nothing. The bottom-line issue is which class is in power. Capitalism is literally poisoning our futures. Flint Water Crisis: Capitalism Is Poisoning Us (3 March 2016)
Stop Union-Busting at Bröd/Hot and Crusty, Part 2
On February 19, over 300 people, including members of some 20 NYC unions, labor and community groups, turned out to protest union-busting at Bröd Kitchen. Addressing the crowd were fired Hot and Crusty Workers Association president Mahoma López; B&H Photo warehouse workers, and workers from the B&H store in Manhattan who four days later voted by 46 to 14 in favor of union representation. Also speaking were representatives of the Laundry Workers Center; Verizon phone workers (CWA); United Steel Workers; Teamsters Local 814; GSOC and UCATS at NYU; Domestic Workers United; Metro Postal Workers; Class Struggle Education Workers, CUNY Internationalist Clubs and Internationalist Group and activists who worked intensively to build the rally. Members of DC37, Local 768, TWU, Workers Center Federation and other unions and groups also came out, helping fill the streets with chants and speeches. See link below for a video of the February 19 protest.
Video: Stop Union-Busting at Bröd/Hot and Crusty (29 February 2016)The State of Pennsylvania Seeks to Bar His Lawyer
The Frame-Up of Corey Walker
By Charles Brover
Corey Walker was arrested in July 1996 on a bogus murder charge from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He has been behind bars ever since. Evidence of his innocence was withheld. He is the victim of prosecutorial misconduct and incompetent legal representation. Lorenzo Johnson, who was arrested in the same case, also remains in prison even though a federal appeals court recognized the insufficiency of the evidence against him, but was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court. Now the state is trying to deny Walker the attorney of his choice, Rachel Wolkenstein, who has defended Mumia Abu-Jamal. Pennsylvania authorities will stop at nothing to cover up lying and manufacture of evidence, coercion of witnesses and suppression of evidence of innocence by police and prosecutors. This requires silencing Corey Walker and short-circuiting his legal appeal. In seeking to disqualify Wolkenstein from representing him, the state attorney general's office cites her political views that the judicial system is an organ of racist oppression that must be overthrown by socialist revolution. This witch-hunting attack and the continued incarceration of Walker and Johnson go to the heart of Jim Crow “justice system.” Free Corey Walker and Lorenzo Johnson! The Frame-Up of Corey Walker (4 February 2016)
Jim Crow Justice and the Capitalist State (4 February 2016)Company Threatens to Close Restaurant,
Whose Life Is On the Line? Cop Stats (4 February 2016)
Bad Apples, Broken Windows, and Other Myths About the Police (4 February 2016)
Fires Union President Mahoma López
All Out to Stop Union-Busting at Bröd/Hot and Crusty!
In a blatant escalation of the anti-union campaign launched earlier this month, on January 29 Bröd Kitchen management fired Hot and Crusty Workers Association president Mahoma López and union activist Marcelino Cano. This retaliation came less than 24 hours after a mass protest in solidarity with the Bröd workers, where 200 unionists, immigrant rights activists and students demanded “Stop union-busting at Bröd Kitchen!” The company has announced its intention to shut down the store (formerly called Hot and Crusty) on Manhattan’s Upper East side, a tactic the owners also used in 2012 when immigrant workers waged a historic struggle that won union recognition and a contract including a union hiring hall. The turnout of union and student support at repeated protests at the company’s second, non-union, location shows that the Bröd/Hot and Crusty workers are far from isolated. In the face of the aggressive drive to destroy this combative union, all defenders of worker and immigrant rights must take up this vital struggle. All Out to Stop Union-Busting at Bröd/Hot and Crusty! (29 January 2016)
Video: Stop Union-Busting at Bröd/Hot and Crusty (3 February 2016)
There’s No Negotiating With the Couillard-Coiteux Gang – Extend the Mobilization to the Private Sector, Prepare a Real General Strike!
Shut Down Quebec to Bust the Union-Busters!
The Only Way to Get Rid of Austerity Is to Overthrow Capitalism
Build a Revolutionary Workers Party!
For more than a year, public sector workers in Quebec have been mobilizing to defend themselves against the abuses and anti-worker austerity policies of the Liberal Party government. After the massive mobilizations of the Refusons l’Austérité (We Refuse Austerity) coalition and the student marches this spring, throughout the fall there have been a series of rolling strikes, demonstrations and picketing in response to calls by the inter-union Common Front. Following the postponement of the strike planned for December 1-3, and faced with the refusal of the government to negotiate anything concerning wages and salaries, a strike by the 400,000 unionized public sector workers was called for December 9 in conjunction with a three-day teachers strike. In the course of the struggle against austerity in Quebec, there have been quite a few plans presented to redistribute wealth, for “more equitable taxation,” etc. They are all doomed to defeat. There is no solution to austerity under capitalism. The question of leadership is key. For a an all-out fight it is necessary to replace the pro-capitalist bureaucracy with a class-struggle leadership and to forge a revolutionary workers party. Shut Down Quebec to Bust the Union-Busters! (December 2015)
Occupation of Hundreds of Schools Blocks Threatened Closures
Student Revolt Shakes São Paulo, Brazil
By Class Struggle Workers/UFT
For the last three weeks, the city of São Paulo, Brazil has been convulsed by a combative upheaval of high school students protesting the state government’s plan to close 92 schools and order hundreds of thousands of students to change schools. When the state governor tried to ram through this plan without consultation, students responded by occupying almost 200 schools. Then, when military police began clearing out occupied schools this week, students took chairs and tables and set up class in busy intersections and highways. The students, backed by teachers, also refused to take high-stakes test. After several days, the governor backed down. This is a dramatic example of how the international capitalist offensive against public education should be fought – by mass action in the streets, bringing out students, teachers, parents and mobilizing the power of the working class. Student Revolt Shakes São Paulo, Brazil (4 December 2015)
Would-Be Witch Hunters Cannot Silence Protest at CUNY
On Thursday, November 12, a student rally was held at Hunter College as part of nationwide protests calling for free tuition at public colleges and the cancellation of student debt. Even before the rally occurred, a smear campaign was launched by rightist and pro-Israel groups and individuals slanderously claiming that it was some kind of anti-Semitic event. In response to an editorial in the rabid New York Post accusing protesters of being “hatemongers,” the Hunter College administration issued a statement smearing the student protest as supposedly presenting “bigotry, harassment, intimidation, exclusion and intolerance.” This menacing statement is part of a nationwide drive targeting critics of Israel on campuses around the country. The Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York (CUNY) call on all defenders of basic democratic rights to oppose this latest effort to whip up a Joseph McCarthy-style witch hunt against campus protest and dissent, and to defeat the attempt to silence defenders of the Palestinian people. Would-Be Witch Hunters Cannot Silence Protest at CUNY (14 November 2015)
“Million Student March”: Pressuring Democrats Is a Dead End
Getting an Education Seems Almost Impossible? It’s the Capitalist System!
The November 12 “Million Student March” targets the high cost of tuition, student debt and low-wage jobs. The official demands are supportable in themselves, but why is there no mention of the racist cop terror that brought tens of thousands into the streets last year, and why is this coming up now? Because election season has begun, and this latest would-be movement is designed to pressure the Democrats. The truth is, the Million Student March organizers are acting as student auxiliaries of the Bernie Sanders campaign, to put heat on Hillary Clinton and get students to vote for the Dems in 2016. Like the endless police killings of African American men, and women, and Latinos, the root cause of endless tuition hikes, unpayable student debt, low-wage, dead-end jobs is the capitalist system. The Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York call for open admissions with no tuition and living stipends so working-class students can afford to study. We call to abolish the Board of Trustees and for student-teacher-worker control of the universities. But we also tell the hard truth: that capitalism is decaying, and it will take hardcore struggle, based on the power of the working class and leading to a revolution, to get this. Pressuring the Democrats is a dead-end. Getting an Education Seems Almost Impossible? It’s the Capitalist System! (14 November 2015)
The Haitian Revolution and U.S. Imperialism
July 28 marks the 100th anniversary of the first U.S. invasion of Haiti in 1915, under Democratic president Woodrow Wilson. This led to an occupation of 19 years, as well as occupations of the Dominican Republic next door, of Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras and Veracruz, Mexico, and followed the 1898 U.S. invasion and occupation of Cuba, Puerto Rico and Philippines. But the occupations didn't stop there. In 1994, Democrat Bill Clinton invaded Haiti a second time, and in 2004 Republican George Bush II invaded a third time. Haiti today continues under imperialist occupation, this time outsourced to a United Nations “peacekeeping” force. As proletarian internationalist opponents of imperialism, on this centenary we republish articles from Workers Vanguard when it was the voice of revolutionary Trotskyism on the 1915-34 U.S. occupation, and a two-part series on Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution that led to the first black republic in history, as well as sparking slave revolts throughout the Caribbean and in the United States. (30 July 2015)
Yankee Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934Protest the Police Lynching of Sandra Bland
Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, Part 1
Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, Part 2
On July 10, Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old African American activist and education worker, was driving from Illinois to her new job at the historically black Prairie View A&M University in Texas, her alma mater. Sandra was pulled over by a Texas Ranger, supposedly for changing lanes without signalling. The trooper abusively demanded she get out of the car, theatening to use a Taser electric shock on her. After having her head slammed on the ground, Sandra was arrested for supposed “assault on a public servant,” for insisting on her rights. Three days later, she was found dead in her cell in Waller County, Texas. The authorities claim she committed suicide. We say the police are guilty. Sandra was lynched by the cops. On July 22, hundreds gathered in New York City's Union Square to protest the police murder of Sandra Bland. Class Struggle Education Workers, CUNY Internationalist Clubs and the Internationalist Group joined in. Protest the Police Lynching of Sandra Bland (22 July 2015) (video)
Liberato Lashes Out as Restaurant Workers Fight for Their Rights
On June 22, some 70 demonstrators came out for an emergency rally to defend three immigrant workers fired for leading a bitter fight against wage theft and sexual harassment at the Liberato Restaurant in the Bronx. At the protest, Mahoma Lopez, co-director of the Laundry Workers Center and leader of the successful struggle of workers at the Hot and Crusty bakery in Manhattan, received a death threat. The Liberato bosses are lashing out after suffering legal setbacks in their attempts to stop the workers’ campaign. Speaking of the struggles at Hot and Crusty and Liberato, an Internationalist speaker emphasized the need to bring out the power of all the workers to win these fights. Liberato Lashes Out as Restaurant Workers Fight for Their Rights (25 June 2015)
NYC May Day 2015
The Internationalist Group, CUNY Internationalist Clubs and Class Struggle Education workers had a spirited contingent in the May Day march in New York City. Leading the contingent was a group with red flags with the hammer, sickle and 4 of the Fourth International. Then came a banner made by the Hunter Internationalist Club, proclaiming:“Ayotzinapa-Ferguson-NYC, Smash the Racist Capitalist State, Workers to Power. Signs emphasized the call to Defend Black Baltimore following the occupation of the city by the National Guard to squelch the upheaval over the police murder of Freddie Gray, and to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, who faces execution in prison by deliberate medical neglect. Also highlighted was the call for workers action against police terror, noting the historic action by ILWU Local 10 that shut down the port of Oakland on May Day and marched on City Hall calling to stop police terror.NYC May Day 2015 video (9 May 2015)Drop the Charges Against Steve Kirschbaum,
NYC May Day 2015 photos (6 May 2015)
NYC May Day 2011 video
NYC May Day 2010 video
Reinstate Fired Boston School Bus Union Activists!
Boston: A Crucial Battle Against Racist Union-Busting
In Boston, a union leader is going on trial March 3 for the “crime” of holding a union meeting, and four union activists are fighting for their jobs. The Democratic Party establishment of Boston is pressing on with its years-long drive to break the school bus drivers union, United Steelworkers (USW) Local 8751. The felony charges against long-time union activist Stevan Kirschbaum, on top of the firing of him and the other union activists, stem from an October 2013 lockout of the drivers for protesting company contract violations, harassment and abuse. In response to a strike by the drivers the year before, the city hired a notoriously anti-union company, Veolia. This union-busting attack goes hand in hand with the drive by capitalist politicians in Boston to eliminate the last vestiges of busing for school integration. All of labor, education workers, supporters of racial integration and defenders of black rights have a stake in this fight. We urge unions and others to demand that the frame-up charges be dropped and the union activists reinstated. Boston: A Crucial Battle Against Racist Union-Busting (February 2015)
Publication of the Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York (click on masthead to go to Revolution index)
Uproot Racism – Only Revolution Can Bring Justice!
From Ferguson to New York: All Out Against Police Terror!
Across the country, hundreds of thousands anxiously awaited the news from Missouri. Then came the dreaded announcement: white killer cop Darren Wilson would face no charges for gunning down 18-year-old black youth Michael Brown in the St. Louis suburb last August. Mixed with the outrage, fury and indignation, many felt devastated by the inescapable truth: there is no justice in racist America. That night, November 24, thousands protested in at least 90 U.S. cities; by the next night there were tens of thousands of protesters in 170 cities nationwide. And they haven’t stopped. The grand jury gave a green light for police brutality and murder of black and Latino youth, particularly young men. Many chant that “the whole damn system is guilty.” We say that system is capitalism, which from the days of chattel slavery to Jim Crow segregation to mass incarceration today has been built on black oppression. And the only way to end cop terror is through revolution – socialist revolution – to bring this racist system down. The Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York (CUNY), along with the Internationalist Group and Class Struggle Education Workers, marched in the protests from the outset and called a speak-out the next day which drew over 100 students, faculty and workers at Hunter College. We put forward a revolutionary, working-class program, declaring “No Justice in the Capitalist Courts” and calling for worker/black/immigrant mobilization against police terror. We linked cop terror in Ferguson with the police massacre of students from Ayotzinapa in Mexico. While many repeated, “No justice, no peace,” we chanted “Only revolution can bring justice.”From Ferguson to New York: All Out Against Police Terror! (December 2014)
Racist Outrage: NYPD Cop Who Killed Eric Garner Walks
“Eric Garner, Michael Brown – Shut the Whole System Down!”
A week after the grand jury decision in Ferguson, Missouri, a Staten Island grand jury announced that no charges would be filed against the NYPD cop who chokeholded Eric Garner to death in late July. The fact that the murder of Eric Garner was caught on video and still the murderers got off exposes all the phony talk by NYC Democratic mayor de Blasio and Democratic president Obama about “retraining” police and putting body cameras on cops. As tens of thousands went into the streets nationwide in the next days, protesters chanted Eric’s last words, “I can’t breathe.” The CUNY Internationalist Clubs joined in the protests from the first hour and held a speak-out the next day to denounce this racist atrocity. Our chants, “Eric Garner, Michael Brown – Shut the whole system down!” and “Only revolution can bring justice!” were widely picked up. The stark fact is that to do away with racist police terror for good, we must kick out the racist ruling class that the police “serve and protect.” “Eric Garner, Michael Brown – Shut the Whole System Down!” (December 2014)
Bourgeois Feminism vs. Women’s Liberation
Democratic Party: Faux Friends of Women
As the 2014 election campaign got down to the wire, the Democrats appealed to their base, desperately trying to get out the black and women’s vote. Yet attacks on women’s basic democratic rights have accelerated with Obama in the White House, and not just because the Republicans are determined to undermine the Democrats. There have been 231 state laws restricting abortions in the last three years alone. What is behind the Democrats’ faux-passionate appeals to “feminism” and women’s rights? The Democratic Party poses as the “friend” of women, labor and every oppressed group in order to control their struggles in the interest of capital. While capitalist politicians hack away at these basic democratic rights of women, the Democrats “triangulate” by posing soft-core versions of Republican policies, and then cynically trying to get votes as defenders of women. A prime example is Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton a friend of women? Ask the women workers at the Haitian sweatshop she sponsored. Democratic Party: Faux Friends of Women (December 2014)
CUNY Students, Faculty Speak Out Against Racist Repression
The heinous police murder of Eric Garner in Staten Island, followed by that of Michael Brown and the military/police occupation of Ferguson, Missouri, brought a wave of outrage across the United States and around the world. Thousands of anti-racist young and working people of all ethnicities took to the streets in solidarity with the besieged African American population of Ferguson, and with the families of Brown, Garner and others targeted by deadly police brutality. On September 3, the CUNY Internationalist Clubs got a strong response to our call for a “Speak-Out Against Racist Repression” at CUNY’s Hunter College in midtown Manhattan. Here is a report on the protest, with photos and excerpts from the remarks of participants. CUNY Students, Faculty Speak Out Against Racist Repression (8 September 2014)
Sunset Park Fights Back Against Police Attack
It’s been only two months since Eric Garner was chokeholded to death in Staten Island by the racist cops, and barely a month and a half since the police murder of 17-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. But despite the national outcry and a thousands-strong march in New York in late August, two incidents in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn show once again the face of racist police violence under liberal Democratic NYC mayor Bill de Blasio. The first involved a heavy‑duty arrest of a vendor after a festival in the park; in the second, a cop slammed a pregnant woman on the pavement on her abdomen and her son and husband were arrested. The residents of this heavily immigrant neighborhood feel singled out for aggressive enforcement under NYPD chief William Bratton’s “broken windows” strategy of massive arrests for minor infractions. On Saturday, September 27, some 300 people came out to protest against the brutal police siege. While many called for Bratton’s resignation, racist cop terror is endemic in capitalist America. To put a stop to it will require nothing less than workers revolution. Sunset Park Fights Back Against Police Attack (28 September 2014)
A Victory for Workers Solidarity
Wyatt McMinn Not Guilty!
At a trial today, June 27, in Clark County District Court in Vancouver, Washington, Wyatt McMinn, the vice president of Local 10 of the Painters Union and a class-struggle trade unionist, was found not guilty of first degree criminal trespass. He stood up to an anti-union lobbying outfit which under the phony slogan of “right to work” would take away workers’ right to unionize. This is a victory for labor rights, democratic rights and workers solidarity. Wyatt McMinn Not Guilty (27 June 2014)
Drop the Charges Against Wyatt McMinn Now! (January 2014)Defend North Korea and China Against Imperialism and Counterrevolution
Defend Wyatt McMinn, Defeat “Right to Slave”! (November 2013)
U.S. War Provocations Push Korea to the Brink
For the Revolutionary Reunification of Korea, North and South!
Over the last month and a half, the United States and South Korea have engaged in an escalating series of military provocations against North Korea. Simultaneous “war games” have simulated a nuclear aerial bombing of the North, a ground invasion from the South, annihilation of the leadership and the “insertion” of tens of thousands of U.S. troops searching for nukes. While the imperialist media are, as usual, strenuously demonizing the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and playing up blustering statements coming out of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, the Pentagon has been laying the basis for a military strike against the North. The whole operation is part of detailed plan elaborated by the Obama administration, dubbed “the playbook,” for U.S. shows of force. But this is no football game. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International defend North Korea, a bureaucratically deformed workers state, against the war provocations, economic blockade and any attack by U.S. imperialism and its South Korean junior partners, no matter how it starts. We also defend North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons, its main deterrent against a war by the power which laid waste to the North in the Korean War. U.S. War Provocations Push Korea to the Brink (13 April 2013)
The founding statement of the League for the Fourth International
La Declaración de la Liga por la IV Internacional se encuentra aquí en español.
La Déclaration de la Ligue pour la Quatrième Internationale se retrouve ici en français.
A Declaração da Liga pela Quarta Internacional é disponível aqui no português.
Deklarasyon ng Liga para sa Ika-Apat na Internasyonal.
Introducing
The InternationalistEl Internacionalista
es el órgano en español de la Liga por la IV Internacional.Vanguarda Operária
é o jornal da Liga Quarta-Internacionalista
do Brasil.Liga für die Vierte Internationale
Artikel und Erklärungen der LIVI auf Deutsch.Contact us at the following addresses:
U.S.A.
To contact the League for the Fourth International write to: Internationalist Group, Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY, 10008, U.S.A. Tel (212) 460-0983. Fax (212) 614-8711
E-mail: internationalistgroup@msn.comBRAZIL
To contact the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil write to: Caixa Postal 084027, CEP 27251-970, Volta Redonda, RJ, Brazil
Caixa Postal 3982, CEP 20010-974, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
E-mail: lqb1996@hotmail.com
GERMANY
To contact the League for the Fourth International in Germany, write to: Postfach
80 07 21, 21007 Hamburg, Germany
E-mail: permanenterevolution@posteo.de
ITALY
To contact the Nucleo Internazionalista d’Italia, write to: Anna Chiaraluce, Casella Postale N. 6, 06070 Ellera Umbra (PG), Italy
E-mail: it_internazionalista@yahoo.com
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To contact the Grupo Internacionalista/México write to: Apartado Postal 12-201, Admón. Postal Obrero Mundial, CP 03001, Mexico D.F, Mexico
E-mail: grupointernacionalista@yahoo.com.mx
We would like to hear from you. If you are interested in learning more about the Internationalist Group and the League for the Fourth International, contact us at: internationalistgroup@msn.com
