No. 45, September-October 2016  Table of Contents Selected articles linked Click on image to left for pdf version of complete issue.

Capitalist Parties = Enemies of Workers, Blacks, Latinos, Immigrants, Youth, Women… The Election From Hell: Whoever Wins, We Lose Build a Revolutionary Workers Party to Fight for All the Oppressed In the final stretch before voting day, millions of people across the country recoil in horror at the “choice” between the candidate most likely to set off a racist pogrom (Donald Trump for the Republicans) and the candidate most likely to start World War III (the Russia-phobic Democrat Hillary Clinton). Neither party of big business nor the Green and Libertarian parties which act as pressure groups on them, are a lesser evil for the exploited and oppressed, because they all represent the rule of capital. Donald Trump may outdo the Clintons in racist rhetoric (though they are prepared to stoop to it), but “Hill and Bill” have made it their specialty to push through legislation victimizing Africans Americans, Latinos, poor people and immigrants that would have raised a storm of protest if a Republican president tried it. The answer for working people and the oppressed to this “election from hell” must be to oust the sellout bureaucrats sitting atop the labor movement, break the stranglehold of the Democrats and Republicans, oppose all capitalist parties and build a workers party fighting for a workers government. The Election From Hell: Whoever Wins, We Lose (28 October 2016) Trump and the Central Park Five (28 October 2016)

Portland Painters Union Says To Hell with the Bosses’ Parties – For a Class-Struggle Workers Party! By Class Struggle Workers – Portland In a historic decision, the 17 August meeting of Painters and Drywall Finishers, IUPAT Local 10 in Portland, Oregon, voted unanimously to reject the Democratic and Republican parties or “any Party of the Bosses,” and to “call on the labor movement to break from the Democratic Party, and build a class-struggle workers party.” The resolution was introduced by CSWP members, the result of years of patient political education and struggle. Union members spoke passionately from the floor about the need to organize and rely on our own power as workers. Momentum for the resolution grew as members came up against the same bleak reality that people across the country are confronting: as the resolution states, “the 2016 presidential election offers us the ‘choice’ between a raving, bigoted clown and a career representative of Wall Street.” One factor contributing to the support for the resolution in Local 10, and its growing resonance nationally, is the disillusionment felt by many partisans of de facto Democrat Bernie Sanders’ “political revolution.” Now that the inevitable has happened, many Bernie supporters are deserting the Democrats for the Green Party ticket. But the Green Party is a capitalist party just as much as the Democrats and Republicans. And the class line is fundamental. Accept no alternatives: we need a party for the workers. To Hell with the Bosses’ Parties – For a Class-Struggle Workers Party! (August 2016)

"We Need a Workers Party" Challenging the UFT's Love-Fest for Clinton By Class Struggle Education Workers The October Delegate Assembly of the United Federation of Teachers, the largest union in New York City, was an election rally for Democrat Hillary Clinton. A motion by a member of Class Struggle Education Workers, denouncing the racist misogynist pig Trump and Wall Streeter Clinton, opposing the Democratic and Republican parties of capitalism and calling for a workers party won the support of several dozen delegates. For over a century, the labor tops in the U.S. have chained workers to the Democrats. They will continue to do so and throttle class struggle until they are defeated by a class-struggle opposition. Challenging the UFT's Love-Fest for Clinton (24 October 2016)

“Socialists” Play Ball with Minor League Bourgeois Party Left Green Dream of People-Friendly Capitalism In this “election from hell,” large numbers of youth and working people are repelled by the “choice” between two of the most unpopular and feared candidates ever. For Marxist revolutionaries, massive disillusionment with the capitalist duopoly poses big opportunities and challenges to argue for the only solution to capitalism’s crisis, a workers revolution. The bulk of the U.S. left, however, rather than fighting for the political independence of the working class from all bourgeois parties and politicians, is always on the lookout for the latest populist “movement” to tail after. In this election, the larger social-democratic groups first supported Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Party “socialist.” Now that he is campaigning for Democrat Clinton they are promoting the Green Party, a small bourgeois party that acts as a pressure group on the Democrats and whose candidate is running on a program to resuscitate New Deal liberalism. Some smaller left parties are running their own candidates on interchangeable programs to reform capitalism. In contrast, class-struggle trade unionists politically supported by the Internationalist Group have fought in the unions to oppose support to any capitalist party and called for a class-struggle workers party. Left Green Dream of People-Friendly Capitalism (25 October 2016)

Stop Exclusion and Deportation of Haitians! Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants! Haiti Hurricane Disaster: Workers Revolution the Answer On September 21, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it was resuming deportations of Haitians from the U.S. In response, the Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International called for internationally coordinated protests. The resumption of deportations was a cynical election ploy to bolster the chances of Democrat Hillary Clinton, by heading off the spectre of an influx of Haitian immigrants that could be exploited by Republican Trump. In fact, both capitalist parties are enemies of immigrants. Ever since the birth of Haiti, U.S. imperialism has treated Haiti as a neo-colony, installing and removing presidents, using and disposing of Haitian workers as cheap labor, arming war lords and death squads and periodically invading, as it did in 2010 in the guise of disaster relief. Beyond the endless abuses and invasions by U.S. imperialism, the torment of Haiti is the result of the relentless workings of imperialist capitalism in its semi-colonies. The League for the Fourth International calls for Haitian-Dominican workers revolution in a voluntary socialist federation of the Caribbean. Haiti Hurricane Disaster: Workers Revolution the Answer (20 October 2016)

Protests in U.S., Mexico and Brazil Demand: Stop Exclusion of Haitians! Stop All Deportations! Occupation Troops Out of Haiti!

IBT Self-“Repudiation” Still Alibis Crossing Picket Lines Menshevik Tendency for the Promotion of Scabbing The picket line is the battle line of class struggle. It’s the class line: on one side are the striking or locked-out workers, on the other side are the bosses and those working for and with them. As we wrote 20 years ago, “No self-respecting trade unionist, no supporter of the workers movement, and certainly no communist, crosses picket lines, ever.” So what about a supposedly revolutionary group that  upholds, justifies and promotes scabbing? Two decades ago the grotesquely misnamed International “Bolshevik” Tendency put out a whole pamphlet to alibi the actions of an IBT supporter who crossed picket lines during the 1996 NYC janitor’s strike. Last month, the IBT placed a brief notice on its website announcing that it had “recently become aware” their then-supporter actually did the work of the striking janitors, and therefore it “repudiated” its previous defense of his record. But note that the repudiation pointedly does not repudiate crossing picket lines, and thus continues to uphold the IBT’s longstanding defense of going into a struck, picketed location and working behind picket lines – i.e., scabbing. Menshevik Tendency for the Promotion of Scabbing (25 September 2016)

Class Struggle International Workers Founded On August 12, Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas (Class Struggle International Workers) was founded in New York City. Working together with the Internationalist Group, the TIC set as its key goal winning the most conscious immigrant workers to the program of revolutionary class struggle, not only fighting for labor and immigrants rights but also encompassing the major issues confronting workers and oppressed sectors today. The TIC aims to be an organization of study and struggle, growing out of the IG’s regular weekly Spanish-language study group, work in union organizing campaigns and mobilizations in solidarity with Mexican teachers and against racist cop terror, from Ayotzinapa to police murders of black people in the United States. The founding members of the TIC include militants who participated in the nationwide strike by immigrant workers on May Day 2006. Immigrant women workers in the TIC were active in the protests over the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students. The TIC can play an important role in struggles of this huge, potentially militant but largely unorganized sector of the proletariat. Today they confront an election (in which they cannot vote) pitting a crazed anti-immigrant Republican bigot who threatens to deport 11 million immigrants, and a Democrat war hawk who continues the policies of the Obama administration which already deported over 5 million. With all talk of a path to citizenship through immigration reform a dead-end, Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas points to the path of intransigent class struggle leading to socialist revolution. Class Struggle International Workers Founded (August 2016)

Tens of Thousands Fired in Massive Purge Defend Kurdish and Turkish Teachers! An all-out assault on teachers in Turkey was launched on September 8, when 11,285 were suspended by the authoritarian government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his AKP (Justice and Development Party). The leftist Education and Science Workers’ Union, Eğitim-Sen, the largest union in Turkey, has been under constant attack by the rightist, Islamist AKP regime for over a decade, and before that under the military-backed government. Now, it appears Erdoğan wants to finish it off with wholesale dismissals. The government has already been using the failed coup of July 15 to eliminate all opposition forces, particularly Kurdish and some leftist organizations. The dismissed educators were largely from Turkey’s southeast, where a majority of the population are ethnic Kurds. The League for the Fourth International has since its inception defended the right of Kurdish independence, not only autonomy, and called for a socialist republic of united Kurdistan. Today it is urgent that militant trade unionists in Turkey and internationally come to the defense of Turkish and Kurdish teachers. The assault on Eğitim Sem is a flashpoint in the attack on educators and public education worldwide, from Mexico and Brazil to the U.S. and Europe. Defend Kurdish and Turkish Teachers! (23 September 2016)

Vote No on the Constitutional “Reform” Referendum Italian Capitalists Push Towards Institutional Bonapartism The rapacious EU bankers and IMF are demanding never-ending lowering of living standards and the gutting of basic services and rights. Their demand for “governability” is a push to sharply curtail any semblance of democratic control in order to ram through brutal anti-working-class measures. This is at the heart of the referendum called by premier Matteo Renzi for December 4, saying he would resign if it fails. The Democratic Party government sponsored “constitutional reform” is part of the push towards institutional Bonapartism to avoid “bothersome” democratic controls. Communists are not insensitive to bourgeois-democratic and working-class rights and we call for a “No” vote on this referendum, but we know that the democratic trappings of the bourgeois state mask the role of capital, and under imperialism the dictatorship of finance capital. While much of the reformist left is obsessed with the rigged bourgeois electoral game, revolutionaries seek above all to mobilize working class power in the factories and in the streets to undertake the fight to sweep away all the exploiters in a Socialist United States of Europe. Italian Capitalists Push Towards Institutional Bonapartism (September 2016)

Democrats and Republicans Push Reactionary Response Horrific Anti-Gay Massacre in Orlando On June 12, a deranged and hate-filled gunman murdered 49 people and wounded 53 more at the gay Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, which was holding a Latin music night. For many it was a deeply painful reminder that virulent homophobia has deep roots in this profoundly violent and irrational society. The capitalist politicians saw the events as grist for their mill of hypocrisy and repression. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Clinton seized the occasion of the Pulse massacre to call for increasing police-state measures at home and ramping up wars abroad, while Republican Donald Trump shamelessly exploited the massacre for his anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim demagogy. Obama and liberals generally saw it as a golden opportunity to push for more gun control. Marxists, in contrast, uphold the right of self-defense and point out that gun control means giving a monopoly on armed force to the police and military, the repressive forces of capitalism which are a far greater danger to the oppressed. The capitalist system of exploitation feeds off of and continually reproduces every form of oppression, backwardness and bigotry that lead to such horrors as the Orlando massacre, and it will take socialist revolution to put an end to it. Horrific Anti-Gay Massacre in Orlando (21 June 2016)

Courageous Kaepernick Protest Inspires Youth Defying Racist Repression On August 26, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a courageous stand against racist oppression by refusing to stand up for the national anthem at a pre-season game. Whipped-up flag-waving outrage followed fast and furious. But instead of being cowed into silence, more and more fans and players showed solidarity with Kaepernick to give voice to the outrage of millions. One of the most inspiring examples is that of the Woodrow Wilson High School Tigers in the desperately poor city of Camden, New Jersey, where the football team and its coach stood with their fists raised in a defiant gesture recalling the stand taken by black champion athletes John Carlos and Tommie Smith in the 1968 Olympics. The supposed “tradition” of NFL players standing for the national anthem is a recent invention to whip up a patriotic fever, for which the U.S. military has paid out millions of dollars. As for the “Star-Spangled Banner,” it was written in celebration of the 1812 war of expansion, in which Indian tribes fought the U.S. in defense of their lands and many blacks took up arms for the British  in return for their freedom against the slaveholders who ruled the American republic. Courageous Kaepernick Protest Inspires Youth Defying Racist Repression (September 2016)

Defeat Union-Busting Drive at Long Island University! As Long Island University’s unprecedented lockout of unionized faculty at its Brooklyn campus enters the second week, the stakes are clear. This is a vicious attack not only against the faculty, students and staff at LIU Brooklyn, but against everyone who works in higher education, and on the entire New York-area labor movement. The power needed to defeat this union-busting assault must be brought into play before it’s too late. On the first day of the lockout, unionists picked up the chant initiated by activists from the CUNY Internationalist Clubs and Class Struggle Education Workers: “Picket lines mean: Don’t cross!” But hard class struggle is totally alien to the misleaders of American labor, who bank everything on class collaboration. The faculty fighting for their jobs and against this blatant union-busting must demand that all the unions at LIU, together with students, respect their picket line. NYC labor must show up and defend the line, starting with the 150,00-strong United Federation of Teachers. To actually win this battle, students and faculty should shut down not only the Brooklyn campus but also the Post campus – and the bosses’ rules be damned! Defeat Union-Busting Drive at Long Island University! (14 September 2016) Knock Out the Lockout at LIU Brooklyn! (9 September 2016)

Se funda Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas El 12 de agosto, se fundó en la Ciudad de Nueva York la organización Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas. En colaboración con el Internationalist Group, el TIC se ha fijado como objetivo el ganar a los trabajadores inmigrantes más conscientes al programa de la lucha de clases revolucionaria, luchando no sólo por los derechos laborales y de los inmigrantes, sino también abarcando las cuestiones más acuciosas que enfrentan los trabajadores y sectores oprimidos en la actualidad. El TIC se propone ser una organización de estudio y lucha, que nació del círculo semanal de estudios marxistas en español del IG, del trabajo en campañas de sindicalización, y de movilizaciones en solidaridad con los maestros mexicanos y en contra del terror racista de la policía, desde Ayotzinapa hasta los asesinatos policíacos de afroamericanos en EE.UU. Entre los fundadores del TIC se encuentran militantes que participaron en la huelga nacional de trabajadores inmigrantes el Primero de Mayo de 2006. Trabajadoras inmigrantes del TIC participaron activamente en las protestas por la desaparición de los 43 normalistas de Ayotzinapa. El TIC puede jugar un importante papel en las luchas de los trabajadores inmigrantes, un sector enorme del proletariado, potencialmente muy combativo, pero en gran medida no sindicalizada. Hoy enfrentan unas elecciones (en las que no pueden votar) que disputan un demente fanático antiinmigrante republicano que amenaza con deportar a 11 millones de inmigrantes, y una belicista demócrata que sigue la política del gobierno de Obama que ya ha deportado a más de 5 millones de inmigrantes. Toda palabrería con respecto a una “vía hacia la ciudadanía” ha desembocado en un callejón sin salida. Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas apunta hacia otra vía, la de la intransigente lucha de clases hacia la revolución socialista internacional. Se funda Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas (agosto de 2016)