Internationalist Group -- Reforge the Fourth International!

Teachers, Students, Parents, Workers – All Out to Defeat the Privatizers and Union-Busters!
Victory to Los Angeles Teachers Strike!
Picket Lines Mean Don’t Cross!
Break with the Democrats – Build a Class-Struggle Workers Party
By Class Struggle Education Workers
Some 34,000 educators in the second-largest school district in the country are poised go on strike in Los Angeles on January 14 for the first time since 1989. This is more than just a contract fight. It is a battle between capitalist union-busters hell-bent on privatizing schools, and the unions defending public education. The supporters of privately managed “charter schools” who run the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) are hard-lining it, to the point of forcing a walkout. But the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) has the massive support of its membership, and from students, parents and unionists throughout L.A. It is necessary to shut the schools down. To build massive picket lines that no one crosses, the active support of the entire L.A.-area labor movement is needed. Supporters of Class Struggle Education Workers and the Internationalist Group have fought for concrete unon action in solidarity with the UTLA strike. The teacher revolt which swept across the United States last spring has reached L.A – but with a key difference. Those strikes and walkouts were in Republican-governed states. UTLA, in contrast, is fighting the assault on public education where all major officials are Democrats. Calling to break with all the capitalist parties, the CSEW calls to build a class-struggle workers party. Victory to Los Angeles Teachers Strike! (8 January 2019)

DSA Members of Congress Vote to Fund “Homeland Security” Cops
Together with the rest of the Democratic Party caucus, the two Democratic Socialists of America members in the House of Representatives, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, voted last Thursday, January 3, to maintain the funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which, of course, includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) police and the Border Patrol. How much teargas, how many ice-cold detention cells, how much anti-immigrant brutality and imperialist depradation will it pay for? The DSA as an organization, as a whole and in all of its constituent parts, is responsible for the actions of its representatives in Congress, whose election its National Political Committee called the “rebirth of the American socialist movement” (sic). Only a few months ago, they were calling to “abolish I.C.E.” Now, as the capitalist Democratic Party politicians that they are, DSAers in Congress vote to fund the hated immigration cops (la migra) as well the DHS police (the Federal Protection Service) who with their heavy firepower are the front-line defenders of fascists, from Portland, Oregon to Washington, D.C. DSA Members of Congress Vote to Fund “Homeland Security” Cops (10 January 2019)

Nancy Pelosi, Icon of Female Capitalist Power
The New York Times (3 January) today ran a puff piece on “Nancy Pelosi, Icon of Female Power.” She is, actually – a symbol of female capitalist power. If you push for feminism in bourgeois politics, Pelosi is what you will get, or Hillary Clinton. Together with Chuck Schumer, the “Senator from Wall Street,” Pelosi claimed she had brokered a deal for the Dreamers with racist Donald Trump by throwing their undocumented immigrant parents under the bus. Now she claims to oppose Trump’s border wall while offering billions for increased “border security.” In her previous stint as House Speaker, Pelosi “delivered the votes” for the 2007-08 multi-trillion-dollar bailout of the banks for Republican George W. Bush, Democrat Barack Obama and the billionaire investment bankers and hedge-fund operators who financed both of them. Race, gender and national oppression are all rooted in class domination. The all-sided social oppression of this racist, xenophobic, misogynist, homophobic society will not end until an international socialist revolution throws the rotting capitalist system into the dumpster of history. Nancy Pelosi, Icon of Female Capitalist Power (3 January 2019)

From the Current Issue

The Internationalist No. 54
(November-December 2018)
click above or on image
for full list of articles

For Workers Action to Defend the Caravan:
Border Flashpoint in the Racist War on Immigrants
We Say: Let Them In – Free Them All – Let Them Stay!
The war on immigrants reached a flashpoint on the border between the United States and Mexico on November 25. In two dozen cities around the U.S. there were demonstrations of solidarity with the caravan of migrants from Central America, mainly from Honduras, that has arrived at the border city of Tijuana. Meanwhile, hundreds of members of the caravan tried to enter the U.S., only to be repelled by joint action of the Mexican and U.S. immigration police. The U.S. Border Patrol fired scores of tear gas grenades into Mexico. But instead of protesting this blatant act of imperialist aggression, the servile Mexican government arbitrarily arrested several dozen migrants who sought to get around the police barricade. In the U.S., Internationalist contingents participated in caravan solidarity demonstrations in San Ysidro south of San Diego, California, as well as Portland, Oregon and New York City. While demonstration organizers focused protest exclusively on Republican Trump, the Internationalists denounced the “deportation machine of Democrats and Republicans. ” Border Flashpoint in the Racist War on Immigrants (November 2018)

Video of Internationalist contingent in November 25 NYC caravan solidarity demo

Break with All the Bosses’ Parties and Politicians!
Midterm Elections: No Win for Working People
So the Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, while the Republicans held onto the Senate. A “blue wave”? Hardly. And it’s no gain for poor and working people. The capitalist party that has presided over most of U.S. imperialism’s wars for the last century, the party that under Barack Obama shoveled out $16 trillion dollars (that’s $16,000,000,000,000) to bail out banks and corporations following the 2008 Wall Street crash while millions were being evicted from their homes, managed to update its image by putting more “diverse new faces in (some) high places.” This is a “victory”? That’s what the liberals and various “moderate” left groups are proclaiming. Not in our book. Meanwhile, Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi has called for bipartisanship and finding “common ground” with the Republican Party of reactionary bigot Donald Trump. With the capitalist government divided between the Republican-controlled White House and a split Congress, the likely outcome is more Washington deadlock … and frustration all around. In this perilous period, it is key to unchain the power of the workers and oppressed from the bosses’ Democratic Party. Midterm Elections: No Win for Working People (17 December 2018)

For International Workers Solidarity! Let Them In!
Central American Caravan: The Left Caught Between Chauvinism and Liberal Utopianism
Today, thousands of Central American caravan members are stranded at the border in Tijuana, Mexico, blocked from entering the U.S. and vilified by Republican president Trump who issued a lethal force (shoot-to-kill) order to U.S. troops stationed there (along with thousands more Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection police) to keep them out. They are facing an already existing wall built by Democrat Clinton. As an elementary act of international workers solidarity, the Internationalist Group/League for the Fourth International call to let them in and for full citizenship rights for all immigrants. Various opportunist left groups have embraced the call for “open borders,” which like the call to “abolish I.C.E.” – is an empty slogan intended to give a radical-sounding cover to the opportunists’ tailing after “progressive” Democrats who are for secure borders. Then there is the Spartacist League, which even after stating that the Hondurans and other Central American migrants in the caravan were “desperately fleeing” the “devastation made in USA” refuses to call for asylum or just to let them in. Against the liberal delusions of “open borders” under capitalism spread by social-democratic reformists and the chauvinist “no asylum for refugees” policy of the centrist ex-Trotskyists, a genuine struggle for immigrants’ rights can only be based on a program of international socialist revolution. Central American Caravan: The Left Caught Between Chauvinism and Liberal Utopianism (17 December 2018)

Against Officially Sponsored Xenophobic Attacks:
Mexico: For Workers Action to Defend Immigrants!
AMLO Offers to Act as Trump's Border Patrol
Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants – Asylum for the Refugees!
After traveling 3,000 miles from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, to Tijuana, thousands of members of the Central American caravan are now stuck at the U.S. border. There they are up against a border wall fortified with concertina wire, the Border Patrol and U.S. military forces with “shoot-to-kill” orders. On the Mexican side, they face the threat of attacks by xenophobic mobs egged on by Tijuana authorities, and raids by municipal police and agents of the Mexican migra. Now, a week before the Mexican president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador is to take office, AMLO’s interior secretary says the new government has agreed with the Trump administration for Mexico to be a holding pen for refugees requesting asylum in the U.S., a process that could take years. The Grupo Internacionalista in Mexico and the Internationalist Group in the United States call, as an elementary act of international workers solidarity, to let the migrants in, for full citizenship rights for all immigrants (both in Mexico and the U.S.), and for workers mobilization to protect the migrants against racist attack and official repression. Mexico: For Workers Action to Defend Immigrants! (24 November 2018)

Let Them In! Asylum for Refugees! Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!
For Workers Mobilization to Defend Migrants Against Racist Attacks!
With the Caravan of International Workers
By Ulises Méndez
Honduras is battered by sky-high levels of poverty, disappearances and murders by the police, and one of the highest homicide rates in the world. It’s the aftermath of the coup d’état of 2009, carried out with Washington’s blessing. Today its fruits are being harvested, causing fear, and sowing rage. Accompanying the thousands of young people and whole families in the Central American caravan as it passed through southern Mexico, we spoke with the marchers, offering internationalist solidarity. They spoke of the nightmare they were fleeing, of their dreams of a better life, about how the caravan formed, and much more. The caravan, which started out as one among many, ended up as an exodus of young Hondurans which all the bourgeois forces are seeking to use for their own purposes: Trump, in order to whip up his electorate; the outgoing Mexican president Peña Nieto and the incoming López Obrador seeking to confine the immigrants in Mexico; and the puppet president of Honduras, in order to attack the opposition. The Grupo Internacionalista calls for full citizenship rights for all immigrants and for workers defense against racist attacks, egged on by xenophobic commentaries on social media. What’s needed is to turn the fear into wrath that spurs on the struggle for socialist revolution that transcends all the borders of capital. With the Caravan of International Workers (November 2018)

Chicago’s First-Ever Charter School Strike
Could Rekindle Teacher Revolt Nationwide
By Class Struggle Education Workers/UFT
On Tuesday, December 4, some 500 teachers of the Acero charter network in Chicago walked out. This is the first strike by charter school teachers in the U.S. While nationwide barely one in ten charters are unionized, if that, in Chicago one quarter of these publicly funded but privately managed schools are unionized. In the wake of the explosive teachers strikes from West Virginia to Arizona last spring, this walkout by the Chicago Teachers Union could potentially set off a movement to organize charters nationwide. It is vital that the striking Acero charter teachers receive the support of class-conscious union supporters everywhere. But remember the lessons of the 2012 CTU strike, when militant pickets shook the city, but Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel hard-lined it and the union’s “progressive” leadership rammed a giveback contract down the throats of the striking educators. Chicago’s First-Ever Charter School Strike Could Rekindle Teacher Revolt Nationwide (5 December 2018)

The Tragic Death of Byron Jacobs, Hero of the EGT Longshore Struggle
By Jack Heyman
Byron Jacobs, a fifth-generation longshoreman, was killed on the job in the Columbia River port of Longview, Washington this summer. At the age of 34, Byron was a courageous young union leader and former secretary-treasurer of Local 21 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). He will be remembered for the exemplary leading role he played in the struggle in 2011-12 against union-busting at the Export Grain Terminal (EGT) facility being built in Longview. That battle reverberated across the country as longshore workers, men and women, fought tooth and nail with mass actions in a class war like those in the 1930s that built the union movement. This is the story of that monumental struggle that faced a hard-nosed employers’ cartel, the bosses’ state and a top union leadership that when the going got tough lined up against the militant union ranks, negotiating a concessionary contract when a decisive victory was possible. The entire ILWU paid the price for that. Byron’s example must be an inspiration to fighters for the cause of the working class everywhere. The Tragic Death of Byron Jacobs, Hero of the EGT Longshore Struggle (28 November 2018)

When the Lumbee Indians Ran Off the KKK (28 November 2018)

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

“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)

From the Previous Issue

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

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

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

(en español) La caravana de los desposeídos (28 de octubre de 2018)

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

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

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

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

DSA Endorses de Blasio Democrat Cynthia Nixon (August 2018)

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

Revolution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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