Internationalist Group -- Reforge the Fourth International!

Defend North Korea and China Against Imperialism and Counterrevolution!
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)

Stop the Zionist Witch Hunt!
Defend Free Speech at Brooklyn College
The CUNY Internationalist Clubs denounce the thuggish campaign of slander and attempted censorship bearing down on Brooklyn College over a panel discussion on the campaign for “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) of Israel. Strident supporters of Israel and its guiding ideology (Zionism) have engaged in witch hunting – reminiscent of the notorious Joe McCarthy – on campuses around the country, and have repeatedly targeted Brooklyn College. Joining this hue and cry were 19 Democratic “progressive” elected officials and ten members of the New York City Council, whose leader went so far as threatening to cut off funding for the public university. As Marxist revolutionaries, we defend the Palestinian people. We see the working people of the entire region – Arabs and Jews, Kurds, Persians, Turks and of all other national and ethnic group – as tthe power that is key to defeating Zionism as well as the other oppressive regimes that enforce capitalist rule with blood and iron. Thus our strategy is very different from that of the BDS campaign, which is ultimately an appeal to the U.S. imperialists (the biggest and most dangerous mass killers on the planet) to get tough on their Israeli junior partners. At the same time, we militantly defend the right of BDS supporters to hold events free of intimidation and threats from Zionist hoodlums and their apologists. Stop the Zionist Witch Hunt! Defend Free Speech at Brooklyn College! (7 February 2013)

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now!

Click here for selected articles from The Internationalist and other
statements from the League for the Fourth International.

Redouble the Fight to Free Mumia Now!
Death Sentence Dropped Against Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mobilize Workers’ Power to Smash the Racist Death Penalty!
The Philadelphia district attorney has announced that he is giving up on the decades-long crusade by the state to carry out a death sentence against Mumia Abu-Jamal. But even after three decades in jail, the racist rulers are still dead-set on silencing this courageous defender of the oppressed who became known as the “voice of the voiceless.” Millions around the world have come out in support of Mumia, who has become the symbol of the struggle against the racist death penalty in the U.S. The determined international protest certainly played a key role in saving him from the state executioner. But instead, he is sentenced to life without parole. While the legal lynchers were set back, we cannot proclaim victory until Jamal walks free. Every day that he is in jail, his life is in danger. Rather than looking to the capitalist state with calls for a “new trial” and appeals to the Obama administration, we have called to mobilize the power of the working class to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. The fundamental fact is, there is no justice for the oppressed in the racist, capitalist courts. We must redouble our efforts to free Mumia now! Death Sentence Dropped Against Mumia Abu-Jamal (8 December 2011)

See also: Mumia’s Life Is On the Line: Mobilize Labor/Black Power to Free Him Now! (25 November 2009)

Brazilian Teachers Strike Again for Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal (May 2008)

“Anti-Austerity” Protest in Portland
Capitalism Can’t Be Reformed: The Only Solution, Workers Revolution
No Vote for Obama, Romney – For a Revolutionary Workers Party
On Saturday, November 3, a “Solidarity Against Austerity” protest was held under the auspices of a number of Portland-area labor, community and left groups, including offshoots of the Occupy movement and several trade unions. The endorsers are politically diverse, some proclaiming “Our dreams don’t fit in their ballot boxes” wwhile many of the unions are supporting Barack Obama and other Democrats in the elections. But independent of their formal positions, the protest amounts to pre-election pressure on Obama and the Democratic Party. A favorite demand of the reformist groups is “tax the rich,” which is also the program of Democratic Party liberals and even multi-billionaires like Warren Buffet. Yet taxing the rich won't stop austerity, because the attacks on poor and working people and the oppressed have nothing to do with a lack of dollars in government coffers. Many also want to return to Keynesian Keynesian “welfare state” policies. But the source of the war on workers, the poor and oppressed is capitalism, not a set of economic policies that can be changed at will. The Internationalist Group calls instead for a class-struggle fight against capitalist austerity. Capitalism Can’t Be Reformed: The Only Solution, Workers Revolution (3 November 2012)

“Hot and Crusty Workers’ Fight Is Every New York Worker’s Fight!”
NYC Unions Back Hot and Crusty Workers at Labor/Immigrant Rights Solidarity Rally
On Thursday, October 18, one hundred union, immigrant rights, student and community activists came out to the “Labor/Immigrant Rights Rally in Solidarity with the Hot and Crusty Workers.” The immigrant workers have been on the picket line for 50 days after the old owner closed the restaurant on August 31 in reprisal for the workers organizing their union, the Hot and Crusty Workers Association. In line with an agreement signed with a prospective new owner early last month, the workers are fighting to win their jobs back with union recognition and a union hiring hall, crucial to their job security. The event featured speakers and delegations from some of the city’s largest and most powerful unions, including TWU Local 100, Utility Workers Local 1-2, CWA Local 1101, AFSCME DC 37, UFCW Local 1500, PSC, LIUNA Local 78, as well were delegates, organizers and activists from the UFT, UAW, ROC-NY and other labor groups. Activists from community, immigrant rights and left groups also made up a key part of the rally. The impressive turnout showed that the workers have broad support, and reflected the growing recognition that the Hot and Crusty workers’ struggle is a key battle for New York City labor. NYC Unions Back Hot and Crusty Workers at Labor/Immigrant Rights Solidarity Rally (19 October 2012)

Defeat Lockout, Win Union Recognition... and Agreement to a Union Hiring Hall
“Hot and Crusty” Workers Show the Way
A groundbreaking and potentially historic step forward has been taken by immigrant workers in NYC’s food industry with the announcement by the Hot and Crusty Workers Association (HCWA) that bakery workers on Manhattan’s Upper East Side have prevailed against an employer lockout. A statement by the HWCA on the tentative agreement with the store’s new owners reported: “The Union announced that the company has agreed to recognize the union immediately and commence negotiations towards a collective bargaining agreement. In addition,the union has negotiated the institution of a hiring hall through which all employees must be referred by the Hot and Crusty Workers Association.” Workers at today’s rally expressed their determination to consolidate a solid union victory that can serve as an inspiring example to the many thousands who face starvation wages, employer abuse and anti-immigrant discrimination in “deli-sweatshops” throughout the city. Activists from several area unions participated in the daily pickets, as well as a number from the Occupy movement. The CUNY Internationalist Clubs, Internationalist Group and Class Struggle Education Workers have also been working with the HWCA and Laundry Workers Center activists. “Hot and Crusty” Workers Show the Way (8 September 2012)

Victory to the Electrical Workers! No Wisconsins in NYC!
Turn Up the Heat on Con Ed!
Bring Out Workers’ Power to Knock Out the Lockout!
The lockout of 8,500 workers by the Con Edison utility monopoly is a crucial battle for all New York City labor. A lockout is always a threat to break the union. Con Ed has assigned 5,000 managers to work as scabs and brought in strikebreakers from Virginia and elsewhere. The profit-hungry Con Ed bigwigs may think they can imitate Wisconsin governor Scott Walker in ripping up labor’s hard-won rights. We need to show them that there will be no Wisconsins in New York. The union has been looking to the state Public Utilities Commission and to federal mediation, and to Democratic Party politicians to rein in Con Ed. But bourgeois politicians will not win this fight for Con Ed workers. Democrats from Barack Obama in the White House to Andrew Cuomo in the State House on down have repeatedly sided with the bosses. The fight at Con Ed is a key battle against the capitalist assault on the unions. If the unions are to survive to fight and prevail in the sharpening class struggle it is urgently necessary to break with the Democrats and build a workers party to fight for a workers government. Bring Out Workers’ Power to Knock Out the Lockout! (17 July 2012)

Portland “Community Assembly to Create a People’s Budget”
Why Negotiating the Bosses’ Budget Doesn’t Work for Workers
By the Portland Trotskyist Study Group
Often in protests you hear the chant, “Workers are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back.” But the question is how, and here there are big differences. In late May, teachers in Reynolds, Oregon struck for five days and won; teachers in nearby schools who didn’t walk out got stuck with concessionary contracts. Earlier, a number of labor unions, community groups, trade unionists and leftists organized “Community Assembly to Create a People’s Budget.” The notion of a “participatory” budget process is based on the false concept that “the people” can all get together, that the solution is more democracy, when in fact there are fundamental class issues at stake. Suggesting to the bosses’ government how to raise money or what its priorities should be is a dead end. It’s not “our” government but theirs. By accepting budget “constraints,” various sectors try to defend their mouthful of bread. This sets one group of workers against another and makes them complicit in cutbacks. Instead what’s needed is a program of demands going beyond empty reforms in order to turn defensive struggles into a workers counteroffensive against the collapsing capitalist system.Why Negotiating the Bosses’ Budget Doesn’t Work for Workers (July 2012)

A “Declaration of War” Against the Student Strike
Mobilize Workers’ Power Against Quebec Police State Law!
The militant Quebec student strike, now in its fourth month, is under massive attack. Up to 300,000 students have struck against a huge tuition increase (originally 75%, now raised to 82%), braving vicious repression, including more than 1,600 arrests. On May 17 the Quebec government introduced Bill No. 78 which shuts down struck colleges and universities until mid-August (a lockout of the students and teachers) and gives police arbitrary power to ban pickets and any demonstrations. It intends to pass the law in one day. This is a frontal assault on democratic rights and a threat to labor: workers’strike pickets are surely next to be banned. Quebec students are in the front lines of an international battle against the capitalist assault on public education. They need our active solidarity and support. The three main Quebec union federations have condemned the new law, but what is needed is action, now, to shut down Montréal and other major Quebec cities over this vicious police-state law. Mobilize Workers’ Power Against Quebec Police State Law! (18 May 2012)

See also the web site of Class Struggle Education Workers on “Solidarity at CUNY with Quebec Student Strike ” (11 May 2012)

Gofers for the ILWU Bureaucracy
SL’s Wrong Lessons of Longview
In a recent article, the centrist Spartacist League joined reformists including the International Socialist Organization and Socialist Workers Party in acting as apologists for the bureaucracy of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. The SL goes even further, defending an attack by ILWU bureaucrats against ILWU speakers at a January 6 Occupy forum in Seattle to build solidarity with Longview longshore. We warned that the ILWU tops had made major concessions in the contract that capped that key struggle. Now that the terms of the concessionary contract (which has never been voted on by the Local 21 membership) have become known, it is even worse than feared: it allows the company to choose its workers, and a key clause threatens the very heart of ILWU power, the union hiring hall. SL’s Wrong Lessons of Longview (March 2012)

Showdown in Alma: To Win, Mobilize the Power
of the Entire Workers Movement
Quebec: Lockout at Rio Tinto Alcan
On January 1, the bosses of the Rio Tinto Alcan aluminum plant in the city of Alma, in northeastern Quebec, imposed a lockout in order to stifle the will to struggle of the 787 working men and women. By means of a sharp increase in subcontracting, the world leader of aluminum production wants to drastically reduce the wages of several hundred workers to less than half of what they earn today. The locked-out workers have received many gestures of solidarity, but what counts is action. It is necessary to strike and occupy all of the RTA installations in Quebec and the rest of Canada to cut off its profits at the source. For the workers to win, they must break the chains imposed by the bourgeois courts and undertake determined class struggle to impose the law of the workers against that of the bosses. Quebec: Lockout at Rio Tinto Alcan (20 February 2012)

Bloody Bogalusa, 1919: When Four White Unionists Died
Defending Their Black Comrades
In November 1919, black and white workers joined in struggle for their rights at the Great Southern Lumber sawmill in Bogalusa, Louisiana. The company, founded by Northern investors, was determined to defeat unionization at all costs and keep the predominantly black workers down. When a posse of lynchers came for the leading black organizer, Sol Dacus, he escaped and the next day marched down the main street of town accompanied by two white unionists with shotguns. The company dispatched a horde of 150 gunmen from its private army who attacked the union offices, killing four white members of the Carpenters union, J.P. Bouchillon, Stanley O'Rourke, Lem Williams and Thomas Gaines. The company won, but the example of black-white labor solidarity set the background for the rise of the Deacons for Defense and Justice in the 1960s and continues to inspire today. Labor cannot unionize the South without rooting out the bloody legacy of slavery and the Confederacy. Honor the heroes of Bogalusa 1919!! Bloody Bogalusa, 1919 (February 2012)

All Honor to Our Comrade Marília,
A Communist and Poet of Struggle
Sadly, comrade Marília Costa Machado died today, 15 February 2012. It was an irreparable loss of a communist comrade who during her career of 30 years as an educator was always in the vanguard of the teachers of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Marília had been a director of the SEPE teachers union and as a writer she published two books of poems. In 1997 she was named Muse of Poetry of the city of Rio de Janeiro, notably for her poems against the military dictatorship. As a member of the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil (Fourth Internationalist League of Brazil) and the Comitê de Luta Classista (Class Struggle Committee), her internationalism placed her in the forefront of the campaign to free Mumia Abu Jamal. All Honor to Our Comrade Marília, A Communist and Poet of Struggle (February 2012)

Poems and Photos of Comrade Marília Machado [in Portuguese] (February 2012)

Scabs Are Out, But ILWU Concessions
Longview: EGT Union-Busting Beaten Back, At a Cost
The drive to break International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) jurisdiction on Pacific Coast grain shipping has been beaten back after months of explosive labor struggle. A multinational consortium, EGT, built and began operating a new $200 million grain terminal with scab labor. Last week, EGT recognized the union as bargaining agent and on Thursday the membership of ILWU Local 21 approved a contract. But this has come at a cost, as the union leadership made significant concessions in the bargaining. This could set the stage for future battles as other shippers demand similar terms. Nevertheless, ILWU workers are in the plant and the scabs are out. Credit for this is due to the militancy of Longview and other longshore workers and their supporters who would not be intimidated by the capitalist courts and cops. The showdown in Longview is a harbinger of sharp class battles to come. Longview: EGT Union-Busting Beaten Back, At a Cost (12 February 2012)

Open Letter to Supporters of the ISO
“Socialist” Excuses for Disruption of Labor Solidarity Forum
The January 6 furor in Seattle has highlighted the increasingly charged relationship between the Occupy Wall Street movement and the official leadership of trade unions. The violent disturbance by officials of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) was directed not only against Occupy Seattle but particularly targeted ILWU militants speaking at the forum. Outrageously, several self-described socialist groups took up cudgels for the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy. The egregious apology for the bureaucratic disrupters by the International Socialist Organization (ISO) has caused an uproar, including inside the ISO. Basically, there was a clash of opportunisms: two different “constituencies” the ISO was tailing after (Occupy and labor leaders) came into conflict. The ISO came down on the side of the labor bureaucracy. From Wisconsin to Washington, these social democrats seek to push the bureaucrats ever so slightly to the left. But when the capitalists and the pro-capitalist bureaucracy crack the whip, the ISO obeys. “Socialist” Excuses for Disruption of Labor Solidarity Forum (February 2012)

ILWU Bureaucrats Target Union Militants, Attack “Occupy” Solidarity Meeting
January 6: An Outrage in Seattle
On January 6, 2012, a labor solidarity forum called by Occupy Seattle was held to support International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 21 (Longview, Washington) in its battle against union-busting by the giant EGT consortium. However, a couple dozen right-wing bureaucrats and hangers-on from the Seattle, Tacoma and Portland ILWU locals physically disrupted the meeting with yelling, pushing, shoving and punches, in attempt to prevent its democratic functioning. The bureaucratic union misleaders seek to intimidate solidarity actions by claiming they would violate the slave labor Taft-Hartley Act, which outlaws most effective strike tactics. Some Occupy activists falsely portrayed this attack as demonstrating the bankruptcy of unions. However, speakers and many in the audience made clear that these bureaucratic thugs did not represent the ranks of labor, chanting "ILWU, ILWU" against the disrupters. The meeting ended with an appeal for all supporters of labor rights to come to Longview to protest the anticipated arrival of a ship to load the scab grain. January 6: An Outrage in Seattle (January 2012)

Video: Seattle Labor Solidarity Forum Disruption (12 January 2012)

Solidarity with Longview Longshore Workers
Protesters in New York Slam Military Union-Busting
Chanting “What’s disgusting? Coast Guard union-busting,” some 75 protesters demonstrated for an hour and a half in soaking rain in front of the Federal Building in downtown New York City on January 23. The united-front protest brought together supporters of a number of area unions, student and left groups. They were denouncing the government’s announced plan to use the U.S. Coast Guard against the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in Longview, Washington. For the last year, the ILWU ranks have militantly fought against an attempt to break their union by a giant consortium, EGT, which has opened a new $200 million grain export terminal in the West Coast port which it is operating with scab labor. This government/employer attack on the strongest and most combative union in the U.S. is a threat to all labor. Protesters in New York Slam Military Union-Busting (23 January 2012)

Exchange with Spartacist League on the January 23 Protest (23 January 2012)

Following Dec. 12 West Coast Port Blockade
Longshore Workers, Truckers:
Shut the Ports, Coast to Coast!
Class War on the West Coast Docks
Ports up and down the West Coast were blockaded, from Seattle to San Diego. Despite a barrage of hostile propaganda in the media, opposition from union bureaucrats and heavy police repression in some places, overall the blockade was successful – this time. The blockade was called in solidarity with longshore workers fighting a union-busting assault in Longview, Washington and with port truckers seeking union recognition in the ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach. This support should have been greeted. Instead, the union bureaucracy attacked the port blockade, although longshore workers respected the picket lines. But now the class war on the West Coast docks is coming to a head, and it can’t be waged from the outside. Bay Area labor has called for a caravan to Longview. The goal should be a real occupation of the terminal by the workers to prevent the loading of the scab cargo. Longshore militants have called on the longshore unions to shut down every port on the West Coast, and the East and Gulf Coasts, to smash EGT’s union-busting. Can it be done? Yes, but only though sharp struggle against the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy. Longshore Workers, Truckers: Shut the Ports, Coast to Coast! (28 December 2011)

BoT Meeting at Baruch: Cops Run Wild Against Student Protesters
CUNY Is Not a Jail! Cops Out of CUNY!
Abolish the Board of Trustees – No Tuition, Open Admissions!
On November 21, the City University of New York unleashed its campus cops on a crowd of several hundred students, shoving, beating and arresting 15. The protesters were clamoring to attend a “public hearing” of the Board of Trustees dealing with plans for a tuition increase, from which all but a few dozen people (many of them campus administrators) were excluded. Students chanted “CUNY is not a jail” and “Cops out of CUNY.” The police assault, following the NYPD eviction of Occupy Wall Street, is part of nationwide ramp-up of repression, including the sadistic pepper-spraying of student protesters at the Universithy of California Davis campus. CUNY Internationalist Clubs have long called for all cops off campus, for abolition of the Board of Trustees, for student-teacher-worker control of the university and for no tuition and open admissions. To win these demands, we have have called, in signs and chants, “Workers and students, shut the city down!” On November 17, thousands took up this chant. It will take convulsive student struggles in conjunction with a powerful mobilization of the working class and the oppressed to defeat the ruling-class attack. CUNY Is Not a Jail! Cops Out of CUNY! (22 November 2011)

“99%” Populism Is No Solution
Expropriate Wall Street Through Socialist Revolution
Occupy Wall Street: A Marxist Analysis
In the two months since Occupy Wall Street burst onto the scene it quickly swept the nation. There have been over 600 occupations in cities across the U.S., and many more around the globe. In New York City, “All day, all week, Occupy Wall Street” is not just a protest chant but an accurate description of local politics. The “Occupy movement” has crystallized a popular mood of anger and frustration as the world enters the fourth year of a full-fledged economic depression. Thousands of students burdened under a mountain of debt and college graduates unable to find work have taken to the streets to protest. Unions have given different kinds of support. But while denouncing the filthy-rich “1%” in the name of the other 99% of the population, it has not put forward any program for what is to be done. And the various demands and proposals floated by Occupy proponents do not challenge the capitalist system. While there are diverse tendencies among the occupiers, the ideological glue that has held them together is bourgeois populism. But in the course of the struggle, particularly under the blows of repression, political outlooks can change sharply. Expropriate Wall Street Through Socialist Revolution (14 November 2011)

Revolution
Publication of the Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York (click on masthead to go to Revolution index)

Revolution No. 9
(November 2011)
click above or on image to right
for full list of articles

Outrage! NYC Evicts Occupy Wall Street
Workers and Students, Shut the City Down!
At 1 a.m. on November 15 New York City police descended on Zuccotti Park in the city’s financial center to shut down Occupy Wall Street. Ordered by billionaire mayor Mike Bloomberg, the dead-of-night police attack is the culmination of two months of mounting pressure from NYC authorities and the recent unrelenting propaganda barrage against OWS from the media, both conservative and liberal. The eviction was part of a nationally coordinated crackdown, coming just a day after a similar attack on Occupy Oakland in California, and weekend raids in Portland, Oregon, Denver and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Democratic and Republican mayors have been united in their determination to put an end to the occupations. In the face of the cop assault on OWS, what is urgently called for is a massive mobilization of labor’s power to bring New York to a standstill over this police-state repression. Within hours of the police attack, the Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York (CUNY) together with Class Struggle Education Workers and the IG distributed hundreds of leaflets calling for “Workers and Students, Shut the the City Down!” Outrage! N Evicts Occupy Wall Street – Workers and Students, Shut the City Down! (15 November 2011)

Expropriate Wall Street Through Socialist Revolution!
NYPD: Guard Dogs of Finance Capital
Students and Workers: Shut the City Down!
On October 1, the New York Police Department lashed out at the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters, arresting over 700 demonstrators as they marched into a police trap on the Brooklyn Bridge. Coming after the arrest of 85 OWS protesters a week earlier, and the videotaped pepper-spraying of trapped women marchers by a top police official, the mass bust provoked outrage in the NYC population. On October 5, tens of thousands came out at the call of the labor unions in solidarity with the protesters and against the wanton police brutality. CUNY Internationalist Clubs marched, chanting “Students and workers, shut the city down!” Many OWS demonstrators have huge illusions in the police, calling on them to join the protests. Cops are not fellow workers but the armed fist of capital. Despite vituperation in the right-wing media, the vast majority of the protesters are not radicals but angry liberals. The occupation’s list of grievances points toward a slightly reformed, “green” capitalism, whileprotesters have been waving the American flag, symbol of U.S. imperialism. Yet tinkering with financial regulations will not solve mass unemployment, racist repression and imperialist war. Most of the left has written gushing articles about the occupation, refusing to tell the truth, that capitalism cannot be reformed to “serve the people,” it must brought down through a struggle for workers power. NYPD: Guard Dogs of Finance Capital (5 October 2011)

Video of Internationalist intervention at OWS protest against mass arrests

Isn’t That the American Flag They’re Waving? (6 October 2011)

Internationalists Protest Imperialism’s “Dr. Shock”
What the Hell Was Economic Hit Man Jeffrey Sachs Doing at Occupy Wall Street? On October 7, economist Jeffrey Sachs spoke at the Occupy Wall Street protest in the New York financial district. High-flying academic Sachs is notorious for implementing free market capitalism with a vengeance. He made his reputation with economic “shock treatments” that produced misery and death for untold numbers of working people in Bolivia, Poland and the former Soviet Union. When Internationalist supporters learned of his appearance at OWS, we rushed to the square to expose this economic hit man and inform those present of his crimes. Here is some of the evidence. The fact that this top capitalist privatizer and imperialist criminal was invited to spout off at OWS says a lot about the agenda of those who invited him. What the Hell Was Economic Hit Man Jeffrey Sachs Doing at Occupy Wall Street?(9 October 2011)

Georgia to Carry Out Legal Lynching
Troy Davis Case Shows: There Is No Justice in the Capitalist Courts
Mobilize Workers’ Power to Smash the Racist Death Penalty!
On September 20, the Georgia State Board of Pardons turned down the appeal of Troy Davis to commute his death sentence. Davis was convicted and sentenced to die for the 1989 shooting death of an off-duty Savannah police officer. There have been worldwide demonstrations demanding that he not be executed. Last week more than 630,000 letters were handed to the Board asking to stop the execution of Davis on the grounds that there is “too much doubt” about this case. In fact, massive evidence shows that beyond a shadow of a doubt Troy Davis is innocent. If Georgia carries out the death sentence, it will be nothing less than state murder, a legal lynching. It will show, as a number of black Georgians bitterly remarked to the press, that racist Jim Crow “justice” is alive and well in the state that was the lynching capital of the South in the 1920s. It will demonstrate that for the racist U.S. injustice system, innocence is not a defense –especially for a black man accused of killing a white cop. It will prove, once again, that there is no justice in the capitalist courts. But the legal lynchers can be stopped, by mobilizing the power of the working class. It will take nothing less than socialist revolution to sweep away this rotting system that lives on death. Troy Davis Case Shows: There Is No Justice in the Capitalist Courts (21 September 2011)

Not a General Strike, But 30,000 Occupied the Port...
And Then the Cops Struck Again
Tens of Thousands March to Defend Occupy Oakland
Following the brutal police raid before dawn on October 25 and the bloody assault on protesters later that day, Occupy Oakland called for a “General Strike” on November 2. Tens of thousands came out and blockaded the port in the evening, but the union bureaucrats refused to call strike action. This robbed the mobilization of much of its power. Soon after the demosntrators went home, an army of 400 police retaliated, attacking the occupation of an empty building. To answer this naked display of police power, it is necessary to show that the working class has far greater power, by striking at the cops’ capitalist masters where it hurts: the source of their profits. In the face of the continuing police threat, workers defense guards together with Occupy Oakland are needed, as well as real strike action to shut the city down in the face of a new attack. No “reforms” will change the character of the police as enforcers of racist bourgeois order. Since police are the backbone of state power, it will take nothing less than a socialist revolution to get rid of cop brutality, which is endemic to capitalist rule. Tens of Thousands March to Defend Occupy Oakland(9 November 2011)

The General Strike and the “Occupy Movement”

Militant Class Struggle Like You Haven’t Seen in Years:
ILWUers Defy Federal Injunction, Block Train, “Storm” Scab Terminal
Showdown on West Coast Docks
The Battle of Longview
Since early this year a bitter struggle has been waged in the small West Coast port of Longview, Washington. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union is fighting a vicious union-busting attack by a new grain shipping conglomerate. The battle got national attention when on September 8, some 800 union supporters “stormed” the new Export Grain Terminal, as the big business press put it. As security guards cowered, thousands of tons of grain were dumped on the tracks and railroad cars disabled. That morning more than 1,000 longshoremen refused to show up for work, shutting down the major ports of the Pacific Northwest. The day before, hundreds of ILWUers blocked a train carrying grain to the scab terminal and held off police. So far there have been more than 200 arrests in Longview. It all harked back to the militant union action that built the labor movement and which has seldom been seen in recent years. It gave a taste of workers’ power that needs to be mobilized in sharp class struggle today. This battle affects the entire maritime industry: to win it, the dock unions must prepare to shut down ports on all three coasts. The key is to build a class-struggle leadership. Showdown on West Coast Docks: The Battle of Longview(4 November 2011)

Oakland Port Shutdown
Workers Refuse to Work the Docks
Today thousands of working people are refusing to go to work in response to a call for a “General Strike” by Occupy Oakland. This includes many port workers who, in response to an appeal from rank-and-file members of International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10, refused to load and unload ships, effectively crippling the port. Many will be joining the late afternoon march on the port denouncing the brutal police attack on Occupy Oakland demonstrators last week, ordered by liberal Democratic mayor Jean Quan. Report from longshore activist Jack Heyman at the Oakland docks. Oakland Port Shutdown: Workers Refuse to Work the Docks! (2 November 2011)

Hands Off Occupy Oakland!
Mobilize Labor’s Power Against Racist Police Repression!
Workers and Students, Shut the City Down!
In the pre-dawn hours of October 25, police in Oakland, California violently evicted protesters camped out in Oscar Grant Plaza in front of city hall, and from a near-by satellite camp, arresting close to 100 people. That evening, facing an angry protest demonstration of several thousand the cops responded with repeated volleys of tear gas as well as concussion grenades, bean bag canisters and wooden slugs and possibly rubber bullets. The Oakland police are the same force that attacked an antiwar demonstration at the Port of Oakland in April 2003, firing the same sort of potentially lethal munitions and injuring at least six longshoremen. This is also the city where Oscar Grant was murdered by BART police on New Year’s Day 2009. The workers movement in the Bay Area, with the powerful International Longshore and Warehouse Union in the lead, should use its muscle against a threatened attempt to evict Occupy San Francisco and to enable Occupy Oakland to reestablish its camp. An injury to one is an injury to all! Hands Off Occupy Oakland! (26 October 2011)

This Is What U.S. Imperialist-Sponsored “Democracy” Looks Like
The Assassination of Muammar Qaddafi
Serial Killer in the White House Carves Another Notch in His Gun
On the morning of October 20, former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was captured, brutally beaten and executed in cold blood by the victorious imperialist-sponsored “rebels” who have taken over the North African country. The murder was quickly celebrated by U.S. president Barack Obama and other NATO leaders, whose warplanes massively bombed Libyan cities under the guise of “protecting civilians.” The victory of the competing gangs of Islamist and monarchist cutthroats armed, financed and “advised” by the Western powers is hardly a blow for democracy but the establishment of neo-colonial rule. The ugly face of that regime can be seen in the grisly cellphone videos of the lynchers as they tormented and then assassinated Qaddafi. The Assassination of Muammar Qaddafi (21 October 2011)

Internationalist Solidarity with Chilean Students!
The New Battle of Chile
For Free, Quality Public Education
Workers to Power!
Chile is currently experiencing the largest and most sustained mobilization in two decades against the regime inherited from the Pinochet dictatorship. For four months straight, hundreds of thousands of Chilean students and workers have taken to the streets fighting for free, quality public education. They seek to bring down the market-based educational system imposed by the military rulers and the governments of the “democratic transition.” Since May, hundreds of secondary schools and the main universities have been occupied. Hundreds of thousands of people have repeatedly marched in Santiago and the main cities in enormous protests, with thousands of arrests and sharp street battles against the militarized police (carabineros). The response of the right-wing government of Sebastián Piñera has been to intensify the repression and to attempt to divert the protest into a treacherous “dialogue.” In this they have counted on the aid of the reformist leaders of the movement, above all those affiliated to the Communist Party and the “center-left” coalition, Concertación. However, more militant sectors of the student movement have opposed the sellouts by the “moderates”. The students have broad popular support, but the government is not backing down. A revolutionary leadership is required to mobilize the power of the working class to achieve the democratic demands of the student movement in the framework of a struggle for socialist revolution. The New Battle of Chile For Free, Quality Public Education (16 September 2011)

Chile: Constituent Assembly and Workers Power (October 2011)

“Civic” Revolution or Workers Revolution?
Ecuador Needs a Workers, Peasants and Indian Government
Forge a Leninist-Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers Party!
For an Andean Federation of Workers Republics!
For the last two decades, Ecuador has found itself in an almost constant state of upheaval and revolt. Yet practically nothing has changed in the direction the country is headed: it is still subject to the dictates of Yankee imperialism, the dollarization of the economy, the U.S. Southern Command’s occupation of the Manta Air Base... By all accounts, Ecuador needs a revolution. But the question is posed, what kind of revolution? President Rafael Correa, a bourgeois populist, calls for a “civic revolution.” However, he ferociously opposes any class actions, particularly the struggle for a workers revolution to bring down the capitalist system. He called a Constituent Assembly in order to “refound” the couintry. Yet on the very day the Assembly was inaugurated, he unleashed a brutal repression against peasants of the Amazonian parish of Dayuma for shutting down production at an oil well. The Ecuadorian working masses need a struggle for a workers, peasants and Indian government, which launches international socialist revolution. Ecuador Needs a Workers, Peasants and Indian Government (25 December 2007)

En español: Ecuador necesita un gobierno obrero, campesino e indígena (25 de diciembre de 2007)

Craft Divisions Endanger Labor: Build a Single Media Union
Don’t Let Writers Stand Alone – All Media Workers Should Join the WGA on Strike!
All Media Workers Should Join the WGA on Strike! (22 December 2007)

The World Socialist Web Site, a/k/a Socialist Equality Party, is trying to attract WGA writers. What the WSWS/SEP doesn’t mention is that they oppose unions, even telling auto workers to vote to keep unions out. Far from being some kind of ultra-leftists, these scab “socialists” are doing the bosses’ work.

SEP/WSWS: Scab “Socialists” (22 December 2007)

Workers Strikes Against the War! Hot-Cargo War Materiel!
Defeat US Imperialism With Workers' Revolution!
Boston: How To End The War?
Reformist Movement Leaders Have No Answer
The Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition (STWC) recently held a meeting on “Ending the War: Peace Movement Leaders Ask, ‘Which Way Forward’?” Good question, to which they have no answer. Although the “movement” is divided between a variety of “coalitions,” they all have the same basic political makeup: one or two socialist groups at the core posing as “just us peace folks”; a minimum “democratic” program aimed at attracting support from mainstream liberals; one or another bourgeois politician dragged onto the speakers platform to gain the desired veneer of “respectability.” These popular fronts for peace chain opponents of the war to sections of the bourgeoisie, that is, the “bipartisan” imperialist war party. What they don’t have is a program to mobilize power to stop the warmongers in their tracks: the power of the working class. immigrants is the “home front” of the imperialist war on Iraq. The Internationalist Group says: The only “anti-war movement” that succeeded in stopping an imperialist war was the Russian revolution of 1917, led by the Bolshevik party of Lenin and Trotsky. Boston: How To End The War? (18 May 2007)

Button available from Mundial Publications. $1 each (Click here to order)	Button available from Mundial Publications. $1 each (Click here to order)
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Philippines Crackdown: Fight Arroyo with Workers’ Power!
Not Another EDSA "People's Power" Fraud, Fight for Workers Revolution!
Build the Nucleus of a Philippine Trotskyist Party!
Once again the Philippine political landscape reverberated from the noise of police banging up their shields and tanks rumbling through the streets, reminiscent of the martial law years of the 1970s. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo proclaimed a state of emergency on February 24, then lifted it a week later. But the crackdown continues as the Philippines is undergoing “creeping martial law.” Most protests called for ousting Arroyo with “people power” – i.e., for mass mobilization behind the civilian/military bourgeois opposition such as brought down the dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. The League for the Fourth International warns that this is a program for defeat of the working people. The LFI calls to drive the U.S. out of Iraq and Palestine, and to sweep away the Arroyo regime with workers power.

(English) Philippines Crackdown: Fight Arroyo with Workers’ Power! (23 March 2006)

(Pilipino) Crackdown sa Pilipinas: Labanan si Arroyo sa Pamamagitan ng Kapangyarihan ng mga Manggagawa! (23 Marso 2006)

Palestine: For Arab-Hebrew Workers Revolution

Selected articles from The Internationalist and other
statements from the League for the Fourth International.

U.S. Prepares New Desert Slaughter
Defeat U.S. Imperialism! Defend Iraq!
Pentagon’s “First Strike” Strategy:
Careening Toward World War III

Imperialist war criminals are about to launch an Armageddon on the Tigris and Euphrates. The Pentagon now has a “bipartisan” green light to carry out the wanton slaughter that the White House had long since ordered. After the ritual debate and rubber-stamp approval from Congress, there will be a similar charade in the United Nations. The League for the Fourth International and its U.S. section, the Internationalist Group, call on the international working class to defend Iraq and fight to defeat the imperialist war, “at home” and abroad. As opposed to bourgeois pacifism, we communists call instead for class war against the imperialist war. And we warn that the endless “war on terror” proclaimed by the U.S. will be a prelude to a third imperialist world war. Defeat U.S. Imperialism! Defend Iraq! (17 October 2002)

(français) Pour la défaite des impérialistes ! Défense de l'Irak ! (octobre 2002)

(español) ¡Derrotar a los imperialistas! ¡Defender a Irak! (octubre de 2002)

(japanese)

To see the contents of previous issues and read articles available online, click on the buttons below

Marxist Readings

Iran and the Left:
Why They Supported Islamic Reaction
(April 1979)

Index of Marxist Readings

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 Internationalist

El 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.com

MEXICO

To contact the Grupo Internacionalista/México write to: Apartado Postal 12-201, Admín. Postal Obrero Mundial, CP 03001, México D.F, México

E-mail: grupointernacionalista@yahoo.com.mx

BRAZIL

To contact the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil write to: Caixa Postal 3892, CEP 2001-0974, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
E-mail: eliqb@uol.com.br

E-mail: lqb1996@yahoo.com.br

GERMANY

To contact the League for the Fourth International in Germany, write to: Postfach 74 06 41, 22096 Hamburg, Germany

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