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"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.
While Chinese Workers State Contained Outbreak
Coronavirus Pandemic Ravages Italy, Overwhelms Capitalist Medical System
Italy is where the novel coronavirus hit Western Europe first and hardest. The exploding public health disaster reflects the massive cuts in health care that have been carried out over the last decade. The result has been devastating, dramatically exposing the inability of the capitalist system to protect the lives of the population, much less provide adequate medical care. In contrast to the bleak and terrifying picture of the situation in capitalist Italy where the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage out of control, by mid-March China had largely beaten back the pandemic. The scope of the successful actions and coordination in China against the coronavirus could only be done in a workers state with a planned economy. In Italy, there has been a wave of spontaneous strikes and walkouts across the country as workers refuse to labor without protective clothing and equipment and safe conditions. The structural chaos and anarchy of the capitalist economy is determined by production for profit, which renders it incapable of effective coordinated intervention. We call for workers control as part of the struggle for socialist revolution, in Italy and internationally. Coronavirus Pandemic Ravages Italy, Overwhelms Capitalist Medical System (4 April 2020)
Chelmsford, MA UPS Workers:
No Safety, No Work!
Job actions, walkouts and protests are breaking out in many workplaces around the U.S. against employers’ brutal indifference to elementary health and safety during the coronavirus crisis. At the Chelmsford, Massachusetts UPS facility, union officials and workers have denounced the fact that, while management plays company videos boasting about making lots of money during the crisis, the bosses at the round-the clock facility did not inform the 1,500 workers about COVID-19 cases there, nor did they provide any forms of protection for the workers. We print here a flier by Mike Gath, an activist in Teamsters Local 25 who has worked at the UPS facility in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. No Safety, No Work! (28 March 2020)
Coronavirus and Capitalism
Since the beginning of the year 2020, the world has been thrown into an unprecedented crisis by what is now the pandemic of the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19. First appearing in Wuhan, China, after some initial missteps it has largely been brought under control there by the extraordinary measures enacted by the Chinese government. But now COVID-19 is racing through the capitalist world, ravaging whole regions such as northern Italy, largely due to the criminal failure and outright refusal of the authorities, political and medical, to test widely and quarantine when the numbers of infected were small. Across the U.S., much of the economy has shut down. Meanwhile, the vast bulk of the $2 trillion in “rescue” funds will go to prop up giant corporations like Boeing, while workers get a few crumbs in jobless pay – and millions of immigrants get nothing but stepped-up threats and repression. Where in the centrally planned Chinese economy the shutdown can be temporary, under capitalism the devastation will be vastly greater. In these catastrophic conditions, communists insist that the class struggle continues, and the need for revolutionary leadership is even more acute. We print here the presentation, to a teleconference meeting of the Marxist Study Group in New York. Coronavirus and Capitalism (29 March 2020)
CSWP Calls for Workers Action in Coronavirus Crisis
Our brothers and sisters in Class Struggle Workers – Portland have issued a call for action by the unions and workers organizations in the face of the current coronavirus/economic crisis. Working people – and particularly those who live paycheck to paycheck – are being pushed into unbearable situations. The CSWP raised a series of demands including that all workers unable to work because of the virus should get full pay for time missed, all workers should be provided with needed personal protective equipment as they determine, all testing and medical treatment should be free and available on demand. Additional calls included for health and safety committees, to be elected at every workplace, free childcare facilities for all who need them, stopping the raids and deportations, shutting down the detention centers, as well as others. While the ruling parties are exploiting this crisis, with the lives and livelihoods of so many workers and oppressed people in the balance, the only way forward is class struggle. CSWP Calls for Workers Action in Coronavirus Crisis (18 March 2020)
A Militant Program to Win UC Grad Student Workers Strike
For months, graduate student workers across the University of California have been demanding a cost-of-living adjustment to offset skyrocketing rents. Grad students at UC Santa Cruz went on strike in early February, in defiance of the leadership of the statewide union, UAW Local 2865, which refused to authorize the walkout. UC president Janet Napolitano (head of Homeland Security in the Democratic Obama administration) has taken a hard line throughout, and on February 28 effectively fired 82 Santa Cruz grad student workers. The Revolutionary Internationalist Youth, Class Struggle Education Workers and the Internationalist Group have sought to build support for UC grad student workers from the outset. We present here a program to actually win the strike, by spreading the strike UC-wide and shutting the campuses down. What’s key is to mobilize working-class power. That means fighting politically, above all breaking with the Democratic Party. A Militant Program to Win UC Grad Student Workers Strike (4 March 2020)
The Internationalist No. 58
For Workers Mobilization to Defend China
(Winter 2020)
click above or on image
for full list of articles
Hong Kong “Democracy” Riots: Pro-Imperialist, Anti-Communist, Fascist-Infested
For the past eight months, the territory of Hong Kong, a former British colony and since 1997 a Special Autonomous Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), has been wracked by demonstrations and riots that have been almost universally hailed in the West. The protests are described as a “pro-democracy” movement, with “radicalized youth” in the lead, just as the Occupy Central or “Umbrella movement” of 2014 was portrayed. In reality, the mass marches led by middle-class professionals are seeking to preserve the special legal status of this capitalist enclave, while the black-clad offspring of Hong Kong’s bourgeois elite have launched violent attacks aimed at the working class (e.g., torching subway stations) and mainland Chinese. Many leaders call for separation from the PRC. Ultimately, they and their imperialist patrons are looking to spark counterrevolution in the Chinese bureaucratically deformed workers state. The opportunist left has desperately sought to cover up the blatantly pro-imperialist politics of this movement, which is a little hard to do when the protesters are waving U.S. and British colonial flags. Genuine Trotskyists call to extend the liberating gains of the Chinese Revolution to Hong Kong, to expropriate the capitalists and drive out the imperialists. Hong Kong “Democracy” Riots: Pro-Imperialist, Anti-Communist, Fascist-Infested (February 2020)
Washington’s Hand Behind Anti-China Riots in Hong KongOn Bolivia, Haiti, Puerto Rico…
The escalating and increasingly violent protests in Hong Kong, a capitalist enclave in southern China, are routinely referred to in Western media as a “democracy movement.” In fact, from the outset, the protests have been instigated, advised and funded by U.S. imperialism, fueled by virulent anti-communism and directed against the People’s Republic of China. In this article, we detail how this “astroturf” (fake grassroots) movement has been remote-controlled from Washington. We show how every one of the leaders have been sponsored by the U.S., through the National Endowment for Democracy, its sub-conduits including the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, Freedom House and others. The purveyors of anti-communist subversion are not only right-wing Republicans but in particular liberal Democrats. Washington’s Hand Behind Anti-China Riots in Hong Kong (February 2020)
SL/ICL Flip-flopping Toward Oblivion
Recently the Spartacist League and the International Communist League corrected its long-standing position that Bolivia supposedly has had no proletariat, an absurd claim about the South American country whose militant miners have historically been in the forefront of worker-peasant struggle, and continue to be despite rampant privatization. The correction in Workers Vanguard admitted that this position denied the possibility of workers revolution. But this is only the latest of a series of de facto corrections, this time explicit, of positions it has vociferously asserted for a decade (its denial that Haiti has a proletariat) or two decades (its refusal to advocate the independence of the U.S. colony of Puerto Rico). In each case they had reversed the historic positions of the ICL, which the Internationalist Group has upheld throughout. A main motivation for their now-vacated positions was to attack the IG/LFI as supposed apologists for Third World nationalism, but behind it was also a pronounced strain of imperialist arrogance. With its social-colonialist line on Puerto Rico, and its social-imperialist support for the 2010 U.S. invasion of Haiti, the ICL would never have been let into the Communist International. Yet far from representing a return to revolutionary Marxism, it now declares it would support statehood, i.e., annexation, which would destroy the Puerto Rican nation.The ICL is spinning like a top, wobbling ever more wildly on the way to oblivion. The degenerated SL/ICL, a caricature of Trotskyism, can never forge a genuine world party of socialist revolution. That task falls to the League for the Fourth International. SL/ICL Flip-flopping Toward Oblivion (February 2020)
Hail 75th Anniversary of Soviet Army Liberation of Auschwitz
Expel Zionist Occupiers from the West Bank –
Defend Gaza, the New Warsaw Ghetto
No to Trump/Israel West Bank Annexation Plan!
On January 28, U.S. president Donald Trump unveiled his phony Middle East “peace” plan in a joint appearance at the White House with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is actually a plan to escalate the imperialist-backed Zionist war on the Palestinians by annexing the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It is a naked Zionist land grab to crush and humiliate the Palestinians. All “two-state” plans that have been floated since the Israeli army’s conquest of the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 war have been frauds to the extent that they made any pretense of fulfilling the rights of the Palestinian Arab population under the boot of Zionist occupation. Trump’s “vision” is the most cynical of all. But while opposition politicians in both countries criticize its timing and ostentatiously one-sided nature, many of these same Democrats and “moderate” Zionists support the basic elements of the “deal.” Zionists of all stripes and their imperialist patrons are for imposing indefinite Israeli control of the West Bank. Against this the League for the Fourth International calls to drive the Zionist occupiers out of the West Bank, and for an Arab/Hebrew Palestinian workers state in a socialist federation of the Near East. No to Trump/Israel West Bank Annexation Plan! (2 February 2020)
To Drive Out Macron & Co., Fight for Workers to Power
French Strikers Challenge Attack on Pensions
Build a Workers Party Based on the Revolutionary Program of Lenin and Trotsky
The battle over the French government’s assault on pensions has entered its decisive phase. After a month on strike, French workers have already surpassed the record of the December 1995 strike (22 days) that defeated an earlier pension “reform” and the 1986-87 rail strike (28 days) to be the longest since 1968. As President Emmanuel Macron plays for time, trying to wear down the strikers, it is crucial that the action spread to other sections of the working class, especially the private sector. Above all, it is vital to raise a program, establish forms of organization (mass strike committees and workers councils) and forge a leadership that go beyond defense of the status quo to a fight for workers power. This is not an ordinary union battle – it’s a showdown between labor and capital. At issue is which class shall rule. French Strikers Challenge Attack on Pensions (6 January 2020)
From Obama to Trump: Down with U.S. Murder, Inc.
Defeat U.S. Imperialism – Defend Iran!
For International Workers Action – Drive the Imperialists Out of the Middle East
The January 2 assassination of Qassim Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, by a U.S. drone strike was a blatant “act of war” – but more than that, it was the opening salvo of a U.S. imperialist war on Iran. In ordering the murder of the second most powerful leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, U.S. president Donald Trump left the regime no choice but to retaliate against the marauding superpower that threatens its very existence. In this war, class-conscious workers and revolutionaries everywhere have a side: the Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International call to defeat U.S. imperialism and defend Iran. We call in particular for international workers action against Washington’s war. The Democrats, one and all, hail Obama’s 2015 agreement with Iran (as well the European Union, Russia and China) limiting Iran’s nuclear program. Yet this pact subjects Iran to blackmail by U.S. imperialism and the militarist Zionist regime which has hundreds of nukes, and whose leaders are crazy enough to use them. The LFI defends Tehran’s right to develop nuclear arms for its defense against these kill-crazy warmongers. We stand for defense of Iran against the U.S. attack, while giving no political support to its capitalist government. The LFI calls to bring out the power of the working class to bring down the Islamist, monarchist, militarist and Zionist regimes, drive out the imperialists and establish a socialist federation of the Middle East. Defeat U.S. Imperialism – Defend Iran! (3 January 2020)
Down with Stalinist Exclusion!
From Berlin: For Proletarian Opposition to the Coup in Bolivia
The League for the Fourth International has mobilized its sections in protests against the November 10 “civic-military-police” coup d’état in Bolivia that put ultra-rightist, virulently racist and even fascistic elements in power. In Berlin, Germany, the Internationalistische Gruppe joined protests with signs calling for “Bolivian Workers: Smash the Coup!” and “For Worker-Peasant-Indigenous Self-Defense Against Racist Rightist Attacks.” However, twice we have been physically excluded by organizers linked to the Stalinist DKP (German Communist Party), who threatened to call the police on our comrades, amid slanderous accusations of being racists because we give no political support to ousted president Evo Morales and his bourgeois populist Movement to Socialism (MAS). The Stalinists were not calling for unity in action against the coup but rather for political support to the ousted government. The sort of “unity” they seek is a popular front; that is, chaining the working class to the bourgeoisie. The League for the Fourth International stands for revolutionary class struggle against imperialism rather than popular-frontist class collaboration that paves the way for such coups. From Berlin: For Proletarian Opposition to the Coup in Bolivia (20 November 2019)
Whitewashing American History
The WPA Mural Controversy in San Francisco
By Jack Heyman
There has a been a controversy percolating the last couple of years over protests against the 13-panel “Life of Washington” murals painted in 1936 by Works Progress Administration (WPA) artist Victor Arnautoff that are on display at George Washington High School in San Francisco. These murals dared to challenge the patriotic stereotype of Washington, instead portraying him as a slaveholder and military commander overseeing the genocide of Native Americans. Yet now the San Francisco Board of Education has voted to obliterate this militantly anti-racist artist’s depiction of history that the racist rulers always sought to deny. The argument justifying this censorship is that the images were “disturbing” to students. The threat to freedom of expression and free speech is real, and its real targets are the left, labor and those who understand that historical truth is a weapon for the oppressed and exploited. Here it’s being undermined not only by white supremacists and Trump but by “identity politics” Democrats and “progressives.” Whitewashing American History (21 July 2019)
Urgent: Protest Arrest of Leftists in Bolivia
The rightist de facto government of Bolivia that seized power in last month’s “civic-police-military” coup has carried out a new act of repression, arresting Carlos Cornejo, correspondent of leftist Internet publication La Izquierda Diario, and the artist Leonel Jurado, charging them with “sedition.” They were seized yesterday afternoon in the city of El Alto, where they were helping prepare an event in solidarity with families of the at least ten people killed in the police massacre against a protest at the Senkata gas plant there on November 19. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International demand the immediate liberation and dropping of all charges against Carlos Cornejo, Leonel Jurado and all victims of rightist repression in Bolivia! Urgent: Protest Arrest of Leftists in Bolivia (17 December 2019)
For Labor/Black Mobilization Against Racist Police Attacks!
Cops Off the Trains and Out of the Stations!
Upwards of a thousand people have protested in recent weeks against a wave of racist police brutality in the New York City subways. Cellphone videos taken by bystanders have shown cops storming subway cars and brutally beating black youths. In response, first in downtown Brooklyn on November 1 and then in Harlem three weeks later, protesters marched through the streets chanting “being broke is not a crime” and “What’s our mission? Abolition.” The police assault has been defended by liberal Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio, while Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo has ordered 500 more police to flood the subways, trains and buses. The Revolutionary Internationalist Youth joined in the protests, calling for cops out of the subways, and to rip out the turnstiles – for free mass transit, run by the transit workers rather than the real estate speculators and Democratic Party pols who control the system today. TWU Local 100 representing transit workers is the stronghold of NYC labor, and if they were to intersect with the fight against cop terror in the subways it would produce a social explosion that would rock the city. But such a struggle must be waged politically and requires a fighting leadership prepared to take on the capitalist parties responsible for running the transit system into the ground. Cops Off the Trains and Out of the Stations! (November 2019)
The Internationalist No. 57
Against Trump and the Democrats – Build a Workers Party
(September-October 2019)
click above or on image
for full list of articles
Impeachment Crisis: “Deep State” vs. Bigot-in-Chief
After months of agitation by liberals, and months of resistance from the Democratic Party establishment, on September 24 House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi announced an official impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. Trump is certainly guilty of numerous crimes, of sadistic murderous cruelty against refugees at the border, of vicious persecution of immigrants in the U.S., of whitewashing anti-Semitic fascist killers, the list goes on and on. But that is not what Trump is being charged with. The Democrats are wrapping themselves in the flag, vituperating about national security, inveighing against Russia and complaining about the Republican “dirty tricks” against them. Both are parties of U.S. imperialism. Class-conscious workers, defenders of black rights, immigrants’ rights and democratic rights in general, and certainly revolutionary Marxists, must oppose both sides in this dogfight among capitalist politicians over who is betraying and who is upholding the class interests and national security of the U.S. bourgeoisie. Trump is being brought up on charges by the wrong class for the wrong crimes. While various opportunist leftists have climbed aboard the impeachment express, the Internationalist Group fights to build a revolutionary workers party against Democrats, Republicans and all capitalist parties. Impeachment Crisis: “Deep State” vs. Bigot-in-Chief (October 2019)
Defend the Kurds! Drive Out U.S./NATO Imperialists!
Against U.S./Turkey Attack on Kurds:
For International Workers Action!
For Workers Revolution from Turkey and Syria to Iran and Egypt
For a United Socialist Kurdistan in a Socialist Federation of the Middle East
The long-expected Turkish invasion of northeastern Syria began on October 9, two days after U.S. president Donald Trump gave Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the go-ahead. The immediate target of the attack is the Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units) militia, along with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) led by the YPG. In reality, the entire ethnic Kurdish population of northeastern Syria is threatened with mass expulsion and massacres. Tthis latest war on the Kurds is a U.S./Turkey/NATO combined operation, which class-conscious workers and opponents of imperialism everywhere must oppose and seek to defeat. The Turkish invasion is aimed at forcibly transferring 2 million Syrian Arab refugees to Kurdish regions and pushing the Kurds into the Syrian desert – “ethnic cleansing” on a vast scale. It is also the predictable outcome of the devil’s bargain of the Kurdish bourgeois leadership in enlisting as mercenary troops for U.S. imperialism in its war against the Islamic State. Now the Kurdish people are paying the price. The Kurdish people, numbering over 40 million spread over a contiguous, largely mountainous area of the Middle East, is the largest nation in the world without a state. The League for the Fourth International calls for a socialist republic of united Kurdistan, as part of a proletarian struggle against the imperialists and their Middle Eastern satraps and Zionist allies. Against U.S./Turkey Attack on Kurds: For International Workers Action! (13 October 2019)
Extend the Gains of the 1949 Revolution to Hong Kong – Expropriate the Bourgeoisie, Drive Out the Imperialists
Hong Kong: Defeat Pro-Imperialist Riots With Revolutionary Workers Mobilization
“One Country, Two Systems” = Stalinist Betrayal
For Genuine Communism Through Workers Political Revolution
For almost five months, Hong Kong has been convulsed by increasingly violent imperialist-backed protests and riots. Portrayed in the Western media as “pro-democracy,” their ultimate aim is to instigate capitalist counterrevolution in China. Leading spokesmen of the supposedly “leaderless” movement call for independence from China for the former British colony and appeal to the U.S. president Donald Trump to “liberate Hong Kong.” The protests have been marked by numerous U.S. and UK colonial flags and even the flag of Taiwan. The petty-bourgeois protesters, whether in suits and ties or masked and dressed in black, are virulently anti-communist. The Hong Kong protests, trumpeted by the imperialist media marching in lockstep, have brought together an anti-communist unholy alliance extending from outright fascists and right-wing conservatives to bourgeois liberals and most of what remains of an ostensibly socialist left. The League for the Fourth International, in contrast, warns that these protests are a threat to the remaining gains of the Chinese Revolution. They must be countered with a working-class mobilization on a revolutionary program to drive out the imperialists, expropriate the Hong Kong bourgeoisie and end Hong Kong’s “autonomous” status as a capitalist enclave. Hong Kong: Defeat Pro-Imperialist Riots With Revolutionary Workers Mobilization (31 October 2019)
The Havana Trotsky Conference: Notes of a Participant
On May 6-8, an unprecedented and important event was held in Havana, Cuba: the first “International Academic Event on Leon Trotsky.” The conference was sponsored by Cuba’s Institute of Philosophy and Juan Marinello Institute for Cultural Research. Those attending included Cuban researchers and students, together with scholars and activists from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Spain, Turkey, the United States and other countries. Supporters of the League for the Fourth International were among the presenters, as well as participating in the discussion. Our speakers spoke on Trotsky in Mexico and the history of Bolivian Trotskyism. There was important polemical discussion on essential aspects of the Trotskyist program, centrally on the “Russian Question” (the nature of the countries where capitalism was overthrown, and their defense against imperialism and counterrevolution), the fight against class collaboration, and Trotsky’s program of permanent revolution vs. Stalin’s anti-Marxist dogma of “socialism in one country.” The Havana Trotsky Conference: Notes of a Participant (October 2019)
Presentations and Comments at the Trotsky Conference in Havana (October 2019)For Workers Mobilization Throughout Spain Against Neo-Francoist Repression in Catalonia
Catalonia: Unconditional Freedom for Independentista Prisoners!
Defend the Right to Self-Determination
On October 14, the Spanish Supreme Court pronounced draconian sentences against the nine Catalan independence leaders who were declared guilty in the trial against the independence movement. The sentences ranged from 9 to 13 years in prison simply for holding a referendum to decide on independence for Catalonia. That night in Barcelona thousands of protesters besieged the airportwhile the next day tens of thousands took to the streets to protest against the verdict and the rigged trial. At nightfall as they dispersed, police viciously set upon the protesters, leading to a pitched battle with flaming barricades, a scenario that was repeated in the following days. On October 18, a general strike and mobilization of more than three-quarters of a million protesters calling to defend civil liberties shut down the Catalan capital. There should be workers mobilization throughout the Spanish state against this neo-Francoist repression (unleashed by the Socialist Pedro Sánchez) and to defend the democratic right to Catalan self-determination. The League for the Fourth International fights for a federation of workers republics of the Iberian Peninsula that extends socialist revolution to all of Europe. Catalonia: Unconditional Freedom for Independentista Prisoners! (20 October 2019)
Mobilize Workers Power to Stop Fascist/Anti-Semitic Terror!
Halle Was an Attempted Fascist Massacre
The Targets: Jews, Muslims, Leftists, Women
On October 9, dozens of people gathered in a synagogue in Halle, in the eastern German federal state of Sachsen-Anhalt, to observe the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur narrowly escaped being massacred by a fascist gunman in an anti-Semitic attack. The attacker nevertheless killed two people, one on the street and another in a kebab takeout store. Since the killings, the media have exclusively labeled the attack as “anti-Semitic,” which it certainly was, while ignoring the killer’s extensive enemies list. According to his manifesto, he had originally considered targeting a mosque or an “antifa” meeting point. These days in Germany any criticism of the criminal repression of Palestinians by the Zionist state is labeled “hatred of Jews.” The upsurge in genuinely anti-Semitic incidents on the streets as well as actions by “lone wolves” are being egged on by racist propaganda, including tropes common to fascists and conservatives and propagated by sections of the “mainstream” media. The fascists must be defeated. This is a political struggle. What’s needed is a mass mobilization of workers power to crush the fascists, their uniformed protectors and their capitalist sponsors, part of a struggle to build a workers party that fights for international socialist revolution. Halle Was an Attempted Fascist Massacre (13 October 2019)
Almost 50,000 General Motors Workers Walk Out
For a Big 3 Nationwide Auto Strike!
Spread the Strike – Shut Down GM, Ford, Chrysler – Bring Out Unionized Parts Plants
The strike by some 48,000 General Motors workers at 33 manufacturing plants and 22 distribution warehouses is the largest industrial strike in the U.S. in over a decade. GM workers are pissed, as the company demands more concessions and announces plant closures in order to cut costs even as it rakes in billions in profits. But the business-as-usual approach of the United Auto Workers (UAW) leadership cannot win this key battle. The union ranks know perfectly well that what’s needed is to get rid of the whole “divide-and-conquer” tier set-up. GM’s obscene profits are a direct result of the two-tier work force that the UAW tops agreed to in the 2007-09 economic crisis, cutting wages for new hires by more than half, with no pension and inferior health care. In 2015, a third tier of even lower-paid “temporary” workers was created. To win, the GM strike should be turned into a nationwide auto strike to shut down the Big 3 and bring out UAW-organized parts plants. Tiered labor should be ended, and all workers in the plants should be covered by the GM contract. Above all, this strike must be waged politically. Democratic presidential candidates are grandstanding on the picket lines. But it was the Democratic Obama administration that bailed out bankrupt GM in 2009 and engineered the giveback contracts. The only way to take power, and put the wealth built up from our labor to serve human needs, is to build a class-struggle workers party to lead the fight for a workers government that would expropriate GM and all of the capitalist exploiters. For a Big 3 Nationwide Auto Strike! (25 September 2019)
Olli Weiss, 1985 – 2019, A Revolutionary Class Fighter for the Oppressed
Our comrade Oliver Weiss died on July 22. His utterly unexpected death was an incredible shock to everyone who knew him. Only a few weeks earlier he had celebrated his 34th birthday. The terrible death of Comrade Olli is a severe blow for the Internationalistische Gruppe/Germany, of which he was a founding member and a mainstay, and an incalculable loss for our League for the Fourth International, of which he was part of the international leadership. At the age of 16, and with the intention of fighting for the Bolshevik politics of Leon Trotsky, Olli joined the Spartakist Youth in early 2002 and a year later the Spartakist Workers Party of Germany (SpAD), the affiliate of the International Communist League (ICL). After years of internal disputes, in which he vainly hoped for a self-reform of the ICL, he came to the conclusion that with its chauvinist position on refugees, “the ICL was lost for revolution,” and in 2017 joined the League for the Fourth International. Olli deeply absorbed Lenin’s admonition in What Is To Be Done? that the goal of the professional revolutionary is to be a tribune of the people defending all victims of oppression and capitalist exploitation. Won to Trotsky’s program, Olli never changed his revolutionary spirit, but fought to put it consistently into practice. The working class worldwide has lost an enormously promising communist champion. Olli Weiss, 1985 – 2019, A Revolutionary Class Fighter for the Oppressed (August 2019)
You Can’t Fight Trump with the Democratic Party – Unchain the Power of Labor and the Oppressed! For a Revolutionary Workers Party!
Dangerous Racist Provocations in Pre-Election Maneuvering
Leading up to the 2020 U.S. elections, the maneuvering between the two main government parties of this imperialist country in deep social crisis has set off a virulent racist hate campaign, whipped up by Republican President Donald Trump, against first-term Democratic Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib ranting that they should “go back” to countries they “originally came from.” The “go back to where you came from” taunt is a threat of racist (and in this case, misogynistic) violence. In response, the Democratic-led House of Representatives passed a resolution denouncing the president for his overtly and blatantly racist attack, but filled the resolution with quotations from arch-racist Republican Ronald Reagan. Today, the intensity of the political clashes in Washington and the provocations of violent racist and outright fascist groups raise the spectre of civil war. Certainly, sectors of Trump’s most rabid base yearn to avenge the defeat of the vile Confederacy. Yet here is no sector of the U.S. bourgeoisie that will – or can – fight the wave of reaction. For the workers and oppressed to defend themselves, their most vital rights and needs – let alone move to actually win what has up to now been a “one-sided class war” – it is urgently necessary to break from the Democratic Party. Dangerous Racist Provocations in Pre-Election Maneuvering (24 July 2019)
“No Pay, We Stay” – Stop Blackjewel in Its Tracks!
Harlan Miners’ Fight: Inspiration for Workers Everywhere
Updated. Coal miners from Harlan County, Kentucky stood in the railroad tracks outside the Cloverlick #3 mine last Monday and stared down a CSX freight train laden with stolen coal. The miners have been laid off – and ripped off – by Blackjewel LLC, the sixth largest coal producer in the U.S, which filed for bankruptcy on July 1. The news from Harlan County has spread across the world. It strikes a chord with workers all over who know how the owners get away with murder, while they get lied to, ripped off and thrown on the scrapheap by the bosses’ profit system. To help win victory for the Harlan miners’ fight, the power of workers solidarity must be brought to bear to stop Blackjewel in its tracks. A massive union turnout in support of the Blackjewel miners that got their jobs back would shake the region and could spark an organizing drive as far away as Wyoming. After years of setbacks, it’s high time for a union counter-offensive. Harlan Miners’ Fight: Inspiration for Workers Everywhere (3 August 2019)
in Existential Crisis
An Internationalist Group Pamphlet
With the Bernie Sanders candidacy and the dramatic growth of the Democratic (Party) Socialists of America, the left reformists have been thrown into crisis.
This 84-page pamphlet features documents from oppositionists who fought inside left groups to uphold the revolutionary politics of Lenin and Trotsky.
To order a print copy of the pamphlet, click here
Publication of the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth and of students from the Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York (click on masthead to go to Revolution index)
Democratic Party: Faux Friends of Women
Women’s Liberation
Through Socialist Revolution!
“The extension of women’s freedom is the general principle for all social progress.” So wrote Charles Fourier in 1808. By that measure and so many others, society is getting more unfree and more oppressive by the day, under both Democrats and Republicans. In the U.S. today, immigrant kids are ripped from the arms of their mothers and thrown in child prisons; as we go to press, no less than five states have so-called fetal heartbeat laws on the books, which ban abortion once a cardiac pulse can be detected in a fetus. Meanwhile, the Democrats pretend to be friends of women’s rights, lauding the recent “blue wave” of women elected to Congress. Prominent among such faux friends of women are leaders of bipartisan U.S. imperialism such as Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, infamous for sponsoring Haitian sweatshops that pay women workers $5 a day and her role in designing the 1996 bill to “end welfare as we know it,” which threw millions of black, Latina and white poor women off AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children). This issue of Revolution consists in large part of presentations made at RIY’s Educational and Organizing Conference and at the March 8 forum organized by CUNY Internationalist Clubs, titled “International Women’s Day and Immigrant Rights: From the Origins to Today.” Women’s Liberation Through Socialist Revolution! (April 2017)
She Cred Liberation (April 2017)Spokane Marxist Group and Marxist Student Group
Magnus Hirschfield: A Pioneer in the Struggle for Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Rights (April 2017)
Fuse with Revolutionary Internationalist Youth
On March 8, International Women’s Day, the Spokane Marxist Group (SMG) in Washington state and the Marxist Student Group (MSG), leadership of the Marxist Student Union at Central Connecticut State University, fused with the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth, youth section of the Internationalist Group (U.S. section of the League for the Fourth International). The fusion followed a period of common work, a high point of which was RIY’s Educational and Organizing Conference in January. The SMG had its roots in Socialist Alternative, U.S. affiliate of the pseudo-Trotskyist Committee for a Workers’ International, while the MSG emerged from a youth group originally affiliated with Socialist Action, another organization misusing the name of Trotskyism. The fusion comes as most self-proclaimed Marxist organizations in the U.S. have been thrown into crisis by the growth of the Democratic Socialists of America after the 2016 presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders. This has led these groups to jettison just about every remaining pretense of upholding class politics in order to tail after “progressive” Democrats. In contrast, RIY seeks to train young revolutionaries to help forge a revolutionary workers party in intransigent proletarian opposition to all the parties and politicians of “our own” imperialist rulers. Spokane Marxist Group and Marxist Student Group Fuse with RIY (March 2019)
Massive Class Struggle Needed to Win “7K” for CUNY Adjuncts
The City University of New York runs on a multi-tier academic labor system that pits tenured and tenure-track faculty against the majority of academic employees – adjunct instructors hired on a “contingent” basis – and relegates the latter to poverty pay, job insecurity and the lack of most benefits. As of fall 2017, CUNY employed 15,000 adjunct faculty compared to 7,000 full-time faculty. The struggle against this divide-and-conquer system has reached a boiling point over the last year and a half since the expiration of the union contract covering faculty and many staff members at CUNY. Going back well over a decade, CUNY Internationalists have played a key role in this struggle, linking it with our call for no tuition, open admissions, abolition of the Board of Trustees and student-teacher-worker control of the university. A key demand is to raise minimum starting pay per course to $7,000 for adjuncts, who are paid half that amount. The “7K” demand was initiated by comrades active in Class Struggle Education Workers and CUNY Contingents Unite (CCU), an organizing group within the faculty/staff union, the Professional Staff Congress. In recent years, a range of activists have popularized the slogan “7K or Strike.” But how can this be won? As opposed to the ivory-tower worldview of a graduate student-based grouping called “CUNY Struggle,” the CCU has emphasized the need for class struggle to unite with the power of NYC’s workers and oppressed. The clash over these counterposed perspectives led to an outright ban on leftist literature that wrecked a “7K or Strike” organizing conference which the class-struggle forces had initiated and intensively built. Massive Class Struggle Needed to Win “7K” for CUNY Adjuncts (April 2019)
How They Rammed Through Anti-Red Ban (April 2019)
Socialist Action’s “Solidarity with Solidarity”
How Fake Trotskyists Carried the Bags for Imperialism
While the reformist left in the United States is in profound crisis, tripping over each other as they chase after the Democratic (Party) Socialists of America, Socialist Action has remained relatively stationary and appears more red in comparison with those social democrats who are now being devoured by their own opportunism. In reality, SA’s program is pink social democracy. At every key juncture where defense of the degenerated/deformed workers states has been posed point-blank, Socialist Action has lined up with imperialism, from Poland in 1981 to the USSR in 1991 and continuing today. Poland was a key episode in the imperialist drive against the Soviet bloc, which led to capitalist restoration whose devastating consequences continue to be felt around the world. Today SA denounces China as imperialist and North Korea as capitalist while genuine Trotskyists defend them against imperialist threats and attack. And it’s not just words. When the chips were down, these fake-Trotskyists hailed their comrades’ direct and concrete role in delivering vital CIA-financed equipment to counterrevolutionary Polish Solidarność. Read the details here. How Fake Trotskyists Carried the Bags for Imperialism (April 2019)
“American Apartheid” by Design
A Review of Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
By Charles Brover, Class Struggle Education Workers
After more than a decade of hard struggle and the passage of laws in the mid-1960s against official Jim Crow segregation, the civil rights movement suddenly stopped. What was termed de facto segregation was deemed off-limits, or at least had to be left for another day. Rothstein’s book conclusively proves that rigid residential segregation and discrimination against African American, Latino and Asian minorities was always de jure, officially sanctioned. This has had a devastating effect on everything from school integration to murderous police repression. But while laying out key elements of the structural foundation of black oppression in the U.S., The Color of Law fails to go to their root in the system of racist American capitalism. In the United States in 2016 there were 2.3 million evictions: 6,300 a day, four every minute. And with over 3.5 million homeless people in the country, there are 19 million unoccupied dwellings. This powerful essay from Class Struggle Education Workers demonstrates that it will take nothing short of a socialist revolution to solve the housing question. “American Apartheid” by Design (21 November 2018)
While “Democratic Socialist” Ocasio-Cortez Chimes In
Bipartisan War Criminals Celebrate War Hawk John McCain
U.S. imperialism lost one of its most vocal and active warmongers on August 25 – Arizona Republican senator John McCain. Universally praised by ruling-class politicians as a “war hero” and “maverick,” McCain’s funeral at the National Cathedral was attended by some of the most infamous mass murderers of this and the last century, from Henry Kissinger to former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Far from being a “war hero,” a “man of honor” or paragon of “human decency,” Senator John McCain was a war criminal who bombed civilians. He was shot down over North Vietnam on a bombing run against a civilian factory. But McCain’s most valuable service to U.S. imperialism was as an inveterate war hawk in Congress. From Afghanistan to Iraq to Ukraine, Libya and Syria, he beat the drums for murderous imperialist intervention. What’s striking about McCain’s war crimes and endless warmongering is that in virtually all cases, he was joined or supported by Democratic politicians. And, notably, among those praising McCain was Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) superstar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Her eulogy was consciously paying the price of admission to the bipartisan imperialist club of the U.S. Congress. Bipartisan War Criminals Celebrate War Hawk John McCain (September 2018)
As The Boss, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Blames Black Community for Violence
Chicago: Democrat-Led Cops Continue Racist Killing Spree
For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution
On July 14, Chicago police gunned down yet another black person, Harith Augustus, a barber. “Snoop” Augustus, known as a peaceful man, was stopped on the pretext of exhibiting the “characteristics of an armed person,” and was shot dead even though he had a valid gun license. For the police in this rigidly segregated city, and throughout this country founded on the bedrock of slavery, it is always open season on black people. And on Latinos, immigrants, Native Americans … the list goes on. Moreover, in Chicago and almost every other big city, Democrats are the bosses of the racist killer cops. This is all coming to a head in the upcoming trial of killer cop Jason Van Dyke for the murder of Laquan McDonald in October 2014. And Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel, running for a third term, is stoking racist reaction by blaming lax “morals” in the black community for the violence engendered by rampant poverty, unemployment and brutal police occupation. Yet some of the same themes are echoed in protests, where instead of denouncing racist police repression the focus is on opposition to “gun violence” in general. Talk of “reforming” the police or controlling guns only serves to divert protest away from a revolutionary perspective and to strengthen the repressive agencies of the capitalist state, while leading protesters into the dead-end of bourgeois pressure politics. The stark fact is that there is no solution to war, poverty and racist repression under capitalism. Chicago: Democrat-Led Cops Continue Racist Killing Spree (August 2018)
Drivers of Yellow and Green Cabs, Black Cars, Uber, Lyft and Others:
Taxi Workers Unite Against the Wall Street Attack!
Demand $25 Per Hour Minimum Pay
Only an Alliance of all Taxi Drivers of all Branches in a Single Union Can Give a Class Leadership to Our Struggle
No Confidence in Bosses’ Politicians
On August 8, the New York City Council voted overwhelmingly to approve two measures regulating “app-based” companies such as Uber and Lyft that have flooded NYC in the last three years. This has led to a drastic fall in income for drivers of traditional taxis (yellow cabs) and livery/black cars, as well for Uber/Lyft drivers. These measures have been hailed as the first action in the U.S. to crack down on the largely unregulated Wall Street-backed companies that seek to monopolize the taxi industry. However, with 100,000+ app-based vehicles already clogging the streets, these measures won’t substantially raise drivers’ incomes. On the eve of the City Council vote, Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas/Class Struggle International Workers leafletted rallies called by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance advocating a guaranteed $25 an hour minimum pay for all taxi drivers, in order to cut across divisions being exploited by the taxi bosses to set one group of drivers against another. At the same time, we emphasized that any real fight against the taxi monopolists requires sharp class struggle against the parties of capital who back them. Taxi Workers Unite Against the Wall Street Attack! Demand $25 Per Hour Minimum Pay (August 2018)
An Internationalist Group Pamphlet
(click on image to order)
A 70-page pamphlet analyzing the organizational and political history of the Democratic (Party) Socialists of America. Includes articles on:
The ABCs of the DSA (August 2017)
Imperialist Social Democracy
vs. Black Liberation (December 2017)
The Real Heritage of Michael Harrington's DSA
“Democratic Socialism” in the Service of U.S. Imperialism (February 2018)
DSA Debacle Over Cop “Union” Organizer (September 2017)
DSA Dodges Debate: “Socialism: What It Is (and Isn’t)” (January 2018)
Bernie Sanders and the Pressure Politics of the Opportunist Left (June 2015)
No, Bernie Sanders Is Not a Socialist (March 2016)
Yesterday’s “Obama Socialists,” Today’s Bernie Boosters (December 2015)
James P. Cannon on “Third Parties
Bourgeois Populism and Social-Democratic Reformism: A Dead End
Italy: Anti-Immigrant Election Hysteria
The campaign for the March 4 Italian elections has been dominated by vile xenophobic anti-immigrant chauvinism. All the competing bourgeois parties and coalitions attack the bogeyman of “illegal immigration.” The racist Lega (ex-Nord) rails about the “invasion of aliens, drug pushers, delinquents and illegals,” raising slogans such as “Italians first! Now or never! Stop the invasion!” With the populist Cinque Stelle (Five Star) movement running first in the opinion polls, its historic leader, Beppe Grillo, recently called for immediately deporting all “illegals.” The strategy of the Democratic Party government has been to put itself at the head of the anti-immigrant hysteria by aggressively extending the sway of Italian imperialism in the Mediterranean, Libya and to the south. This imperialist drive to the south is accompanied by a campaign of all-sided racist repression against immigrants and refugee seekers in Italy. What the domesticated left is counterposing to the three main bourgeois coalitions of Forza Italia/Lega, Cinque Stelle and the PD with its various appendages of homeless bourgeois politicians, is a mixture of bourgeois populism and social-democratic reformism. in the present climate of anti-immigrant hysteria and fascist attacks, what is needed are mass mobilizations bringing out the power of the working class to stop the fascists. Above all, we must forge a genuinely Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard. Italy: Anti-Immigrant Election Hysteria (24 February 2018)
(italiano) Elezioni del 4 Marzo: Isteria anti-immigrati (24 febbraio 2018)Boston: Let Siham Byah Come Home! No Deportations!
By Class Struggle Education League
On January 27, hundreds of defenders of immigrant rights from many leftist organizations, labor unions, churches and sanctuary networks rallied in Boston to protest the deportation of Siham Byah. A prominent Occupy Boston activist and single mother, Byah was grabbed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) police last November 7, torn from her son, beaten in a local jail, driven to Virginia and then deported to Morocco. The Class Struggle Education League, based in Lowell, Mass. and New Hampshire participated in the protest, emphasizing the importance of mobilizing the power of workers action to stop the I.C.E. deportation machine. It also noted the parallel to the struggle against slave-catchers under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, a battle which came to a head in Boston and set the stage for the U.S. Civil War. The CSEL is undertaking joint work with the Internationalist Group. Boston: Let Siham Byah Come Home! No Deportations! (4 February 2018)
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)
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)Occupation of Hundreds of Schools Blocks Threatened Closures
Whose Life Is On the Line? Cop Stats (4 February 2016)
Bad Apples, Broken Windows, and Other Myths About the Police (4 February 2016)
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)
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)
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)Sunset Park Fights Back Against Police Attack
NYC May Day 2015 photos (6 May 2015)
NYC May Day 2011 video
NYC May Day 2010 video
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)
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)
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@yahoo.com.br
GERMANY
To contact the Internationalistische Gruppe 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
MEXICO
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
