"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."
Thursday, February
8, 6:00 p.m. CUNY
Graduate Center
(corner of 34th St., NYC)
Room 5414
Presentation
the Internationalist Group/League for
the Fourth International, followed by
discussion. Event sponsored by CUNY
Internationalist Marxist Club.
click on image for
flier
Other Publications
(click on headlines to order)
Journal of Class Struggle
Education Workers
Internationalist pamphlet on the
history of the Democratic (Party)
Socialists of America.
Internationalist pamphlet with
writings by Marx, Engels,
Bebel, Zetkin, Lenin, Luxemburg and
Trotsky. Plus articles from Women and
Revolution
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. Read
more...
Argentina:
Drop the
Charges Against Polo Obrero,
Stop the Persecution of the
Piquetero Movement
Ultra-rightist Argentine president
Javier Milei’s “shock” program of brutal
austerity, massive cutbacks, layoffs and
wholesale privatizations1 has gone
together with criminalizing protest and
escalating repression against the left
and broader social movements. This
campaign to “retake” the streets from
protesters has been accompanied by a
judicial offensive targeting above all
organizations of the left. The most
prominent recent offensive has been an
indictment of leaders of the Polo Obrero
(Workers Pole), the mass unemployed
organization of the Partido Obrero (PO –
Workers Party). The left and labor must
solidly oppose all attempts to persecute
and prosecute those who resist the
depredations of the capitalist state,
including the deeply corrupt judicial
caste, both under the ultra-rightist
Milei government and its Peronist and
conservative predecessors. At the same
time, it is necessary to draw a balance
sheet of the “strategy” of acting as a
recipient of government funds. The
League for the Fourth International
calls to drop all charges against the
Polo Obrero, and for complete
independence of the workers movement
from the capitalist state. Argentina:
Drop the Charges Against Polo Obrero
(September 2024)
All-Purpose
Bigot Trump or Genocide Joe’s VP
Harris? The Only Choice:
Build a Revolutionary Workers
Party
After Joe Biden’s withdrawal from
the presidential race and
replacement by his vice president
Kamala Harris, the mood in U.S.
capitalism’s governing Democratic
Party turned from gloom to what it’s
hyping as an explosion of “joy.” In
Gaza, meanwhile, the explosion of
bombs provided by the Biden / Harris
administration to Israel continued
to obliterate schools, hospitals and
entire neighborhoods, burying whole
families under the rubble. While
Trump hurls racist rants and spews
vile misogyny with his sinister
sidekick JD Vance, from the
Democratic White House and
Democrat/Republican Congress in
Washington to state capitols, city
halls and university
administrations, a campaign of
vicious slanders and brutal police
repression was launched against
pro-Palestinian solidarity protests.
As the genocidal war on the people
of Gaza rages on, and U.S.
imperialism’s bipartisan drive
toward World War III accelerates,
the Revolutionary Internationalist
Youth and CUNY Internationalist
Clubs say no to the
Democrat/Republican war machine, no
to Harris and Trump, and raise the
program of workers action against
the U.S./Israel war on Gaza and t o
build a workers party that fights
for socialist revolution. The
Only Choice: Build a Revolutionary
Workers Party (August 2024)
Labor: All Out to Support
Boeing Machinists Strike!
On Friday, September 13, some 33,000 workers
of the aircraft manufacturing giant Boeing
near Seattle, Washington went out on strike
for the first time since 2008. The strikers
are members of the International Association
of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM),
and although the union leadership had
negotiated a tentative agreement with the
company, the deal was overwhelmingly voted
down (with over 94% of the members voting
against it while 96% voted to strike). This
is a key class battle for unions and working
people not only in the Pacific Northwest but
nationwide, and all of labor should pitch in
to help win it. Key demands are a greatly
increased pay scale (right now, starting pay
for Machinists is below that of fast food
workers in Seattle) and to bring back
defined-benefit pensions, which the IAM tops
negotiated away in 2013. A strike to restore
pensions would galvanize the labor movement
coast-to-coast. Given Boeing’s abysmal
safety record, another key demand would be
for union control of safety. Labor:
All Out to Support Boeing Machinists
Strike! (15 September 2024)
Israel Out of
Gaza, the West Bank and
Golan – U.S. Imperialists Out
of the Middle East!
Gaza Genocide
Made in USA
For International Workers
Action to Defend
Palestinians, Defeat
U.S./Israel Slaughter
Day after day, people around the
world see photos and videos of
harrowing scenes from the
Israeli invasion and gruesome
war on the Palestinian Arab
population of the Gaza Strip.
What is happening, and what
millions are witnessing, is an
actual genocide unfolding,
aiming at the destruction of an
entire population. The Zionist
militarists are waging a
one-sided war to drive out and
decimate the 2.3 million
Palestinians in Gaza – who for
decades have been locked up in
the tiny enclave on the shores
of the Mediterranean – while
preparing a possible sequel in
the occupied West Bank. And in
carrying out this slaughter, the
Israeli forces are dropping
monster bombs, manufactured and
supplied by the United States,
from fighter jets built and
supplied by the U.S. Without the
U.S. armaments, it would be
impossible for Israel to carry
out mass murder on this scale. A
detailed analysis of the planned
genocide underway in Gaza, and
the U.S. role in it. Gaza
Genocide Made in USA (10
August 2024)
For a
Class-Struggle Workers Party Break
with the Democrats,
Republicans and
All Capitalist Parties
From the beginning of July, the
world’s interest suddenly
shifted from the horror show of
the genocidal U.S./Israel war on
Gaza, and the continuing
U.S./NATO war against Russia
over Ukraine, to focus on the
upcoming elections in the United
States. The faltering, almost
paralyzed performance of
Democratic president “Genocide
Joe” Biden in the first
presidential candidates’ debate
on June 27 threw Democrats into
a panic. Under pressure from
billionaire financiers and
Democratic Party grandees, three
weeks later Biden withdrew from
the race. In two days, Vice
President Kamala Harris nailed
down the nomination. Meanwhile,
Trump picked a fascistic
ideologue, JD Vance, as his
running mate. So in November,
U.S. voters will have the
“choice” between
immigrant-bashing fascistic
Republicans preparing to
introduce police state measures,
and a Democratic ticket that
smears pro-Palestinian
protesters as “antisemitic” and
is careening toward a
thermonuclear World War III.
“Pick your poison” is no answer.
The Internationalist Group,
which calls to defend Russia and
China against the U.S.
imperialist war drive, and to
defend the Palestinians and
defeat the Israeli mass
murderers in Gaza, says: no vote
to any capitalist party or
politicians. Break
with the Democrats,
Republicans and All Capitalist
Parties (20 August 2024)
Marjorie
Stamberg
(1944-2024)
Revolutionary
Trotskyist, Marxist
Educator, A
Leader of Struggles for
All the Oppressed
Our comrade Marjorie
Stamberg died on May 29
after a three-year battle
with ovarian cancer. She
was 79 and had been active
in the New Left, was a
pioneer fighter for
women’s liberation, a
Trotskyist activist and
leader since her ’20s, a
teacher for the last
quarter century, and a
revolutionary all her
adult life. Throughout,
she fought tirelessly for
the working class, for
black people, women,
immigrants and all the
oppressed. In different
arenas, she defended all
those exploited and
downtrodden by capitalism.
She was the candidate of
the Spartacist League for
New York state assembly
and New York City mayor.
Later, as an educator and
delegate of the United
Federation of Teachers,
she defended immigrant
students and families. Up
to her last days, as a
central leader of the
League for the Fourth
International and its U.S.
section, the
Internationalist Group,
Marjorie continued the
struggle for international
socialist revolution,
which was her life. She
never stepped back from
that goal. It was a
measure of Marjorie’s
fortitude that in November
2023, when it was
increasingly difficult for
her to walk, she
participated in three Gaza
solidarity protests in one
week. She was determined
to show her opposition to
the slaughter by the
Israeli Zionists and U.S.
imperialists; to refute
the slander by the
purveyors of genocide who
equate anti-Zionism with
antisemitism; to speak out
on behalf of the
Palestinian Arab people
under attack, and to
defend the rights of
others to do so as well.
Firm in her communist
convictions, she was also
a warm collaborator,
mentor and friend of so
many who worked with her.
Her comrades and
colleagues cherish her
great contributions, which
will continue to inspire
us and hopefully many
others in years to come.
Read an extensive account
of Marjorie’s
revolutionary life.
Marjorie Stamberg, Revolutionary
Trotskyist,
Marxist Educator Who Led
Struggles for All the
Oppressed (June
2024)
Women’s
Liberation and the
Class Line A
Voyage of
Discovery and
Rediscovery By Marjorie
Stamberg
A historical
account of the rise of
what is now called
“second wave feminism”
out of the New Left, and
what it meant in
practice. Marjorie
outlines how the most
class-conscious fighters
against the oppression
of women came to grips
with the contradiction
between feminism and
Marxism. Reading Engels
and rediscovering the
work of pioneering
communist women,
suppressed by the
Stalinists, they were
won to the program of
women’s liberation
through socialist
revolution. Women’s
Liberation and the
Class Line
(October
2015)
Marjorie
Stamberg Protests Gag
Order, Speaks Up for
Palestinians
In November
2023, when she was
already having trouble
walking, Marjorie went
to three Palestinian
solidarity events in one
week. She spoke at a
protest called by Class
Struggle Education
Workers on the steps of
the headquarters of the
NYC Department of
Education, against an
order by the schools
chancellor trying to
intimidate teachers,
students from protesting
the genocidal war on
Gaza. Here is what she
said (video link in
article). Marjorie
Stamberg Protests Gag
Order, Speaks Up for
Palestinians (16
November 2023)
Mobilize
Workers Action
Against
U.S./Israel
Genocide in
Gaza!
“BDS” Dead End: Liberal
Divestment
Schemes, No
Road to
Liberation of
the
Palestinian
People
Calls for
“boycott,
divestment and
sanctions”
(BDS) against
Israel were a
main demand of
just about all
of the 100+
encampments
that sprang up
on college
campuses
across the
United States
this spring to
protest the
genocidal war
on Gaza. The
encampments
served to keep
antiwar
protests going
and even, in a
certain sense,
represented an
escalation
from the
innumerable
marches
calling for a
ceasefire,
which did not
diminish the
relentless
slaughter.
Many in the
Gaza
solidarity
encampments
were
desperately
looking for
some way to
take action
against
Israel’s
oppression of
the
Palestinians.
But the
liberal
“divestment”
call, while it
provides a
“hook” to
raise demands
on local
authorities,
diverts
attention from
the most
immediate
issue: the
role of the
United States
in jointly
carrying out,
together with
the Israeli
warmongers, a
monstrous
genocide in
Gaza. And it
does not point
to a way
forward in
liberating the
Palestinian
people from
Zionist
domination.
The
fundamental
issue is what
force to look
to: the rulers
of U.S.
imperialism
who liberals
think can be
pressured into
being a force
for good, or
the power of
the
international
working class.
“BDS”
Dead End
(22 July
2024)
Women’s
Liberation
Through
Socialist
Revolution! Claudia
Sheinbaum,
Mexico’s First
Woman
President New Face, Same Old
Ploy of the Bourgeoisie
The landslide
victory of
Claudia
Sheinbaum,
candidate of
the National
Regeneration
Movement
(MORENA) in
Mexico’s June
2 presidential
elections, has
generated
enormous
enthusiasm in
vast sectors
of the
country. In a
country of
rampant
machismo (male
chauvinism),
in which the
oppression of
women takes on
blatant forms,
the fact that
a woman has
been elected
president
represents,
and reflects,
an important
social change.
Her election
victory also
reflects that
she is seen as
the guarantor
of the
continuation
of the
policies of
President
Andrés Manuel
López Obrador
(AMLO) and his
bourgeois
populist
government, in
particular the
increases of
the minimum
wage and the
welfare
measures of
AMLO’s social
programs.
Nevertheless,
in the Mexican
elections of
June 2, the
three
candidates for
the presidency
all
represented
the
capitalists.
Their
differences
are at most
tactical.
Their common
purpose is to
maintain the
system of
exploitation
of this
semicolonial
country, in
the service of
the
imperialists.
Thus the Grupo
Internacionalista,
Mexican
section of the
League for the
Fourth
International,
called for
“Not one vote
for the
bosses’
parties:
MORENA, PRI,
PAN, PRD, MC,
etc. Whoever
wins, the
exploited and
oppressed
lose. Forge a
revolutionary
workers
party!” Claudia
Sheinbaum,
Mexico’s First
Woman
President
(July
2024)
All Out in
Solidarity with the Palestinian
People!
May
Day 2024: For
International
Workers Action
Against the
Genocidal
U.S./Israel War on
Gaza!
With the barbaric war on
Gaza now in its sixth
month, it is utterly clear
that this is an actual
genocide, targeting the
entire Palestinian Arab
population of what has
been termed the world’s
largest open-air prison.
It is also clear that this
is a joint U.S./Israeli
war. What’s desperately
needed is the mobilization
of power that can bring
the slaughter to a halt,
the power of the working
class, in the United
States and around the
world. So far, calls for
labor solidarity have been
mainly on paper, and what
port shutdowns there have
been were mostly called by
community groups rather
than the unions. This
coming May 1,
the workers
day, should
become a day
of militant
international
workers action
– including
strikes and
labor-led mass
mobilization –
to stop the
genocidal
U.S./Israel
war on Gaza. Recently,
the Palestinian General
Federation of Labor, Gaza
has issued an appeal to
unions in the United
States to do just that.
Class-struggle militants
should act now to organize
turn this into reality. May
Day 2024: For
International Workers
Action Against the
Genocidal War on Gaza!
(26 March 2024)
Defend the
Palestinians! Defeat the
McCarthyite Witch Hunts!
Gaza Solidarity
Encampments and Cop
Repression Spread Across
U.S.
Democrat Biden, Republicans
Smear Protests as
“Anti-Semitic”
Cops/Security Guards Off
Campus!
Labor: Defend Student
Protesters!
As the U.S./Israel war on the
Palestinian population of Gaza
reached its 200th day, with over
40,000 killed, the horror of the
genocidal slaughter mounts
relentlessly. While the
Democratic administration of
U.S. president Joe Biden
continues to supply Israel with
arms to carry out the butchery,
on the home front Democrats and
Republicans lyingly label
anti-Zionist protests
“anti-Semitic.” When the
president of Columbia
University, Nemat Shafik,
groveled before the
witch-hunting Congressional
inquisitors, vowing to crack
down on pro-Palestinian
protesters, a Gaza solidarity
encampment was erected on the
New York City campus. After New
York City police cleared the
camp, arresting over 100,
outrage swept across the
country. Solidarity camps
proliferated, as did police
repression, often brutal. Facing
the full weight of the
capitalist state, a virulent
slander campaign right up to the
White House and bipartisan
support in Washington for the
war on Gaza, liberal pressure
politics won't work. The student
protesters must look to the
power of the workers movement to
defend the Palestinians and
defeat the imperialist and
Zionist warmongers. Gaza
Solidarity Encampments and Cop
Repression Spread Across U.S.
(30 April 2024)
From the ICL-LFI
Debate
In Defense of the
Trotskyist Program
On January 13, a debate on the
subject of “The Fight for the
Fourth International Today” was
held in New York City between the
League for the Fourth
International and the
International Communist League.
(The LFI’s U.S. section is the
Internationalist Group; the ICL’s
is the Spartacist League.)
The background to the debate was
the ICL’s sweeping renunciation of
the historic program and
revolutionary continuity of the
Spartacist tendency, which the
“new” SL/ICL now dismisses as
“Deformed at Birth.” The new
management has declared that the
1996 expulsions that gave rise to
the IG and LFI were unprincipled,
that the smearing of the Brazilian
comrades was despicable, that what
the ICL wrote about us for 28
years was a lie, that the ICL
betrayed over and over, and much
more. But it has no real
explanation of what drove them to
it, and despite this record of
betrayal, it purports to be a
revolutionary leadership. The
debate underscored that the
historic program of the Spartacist
tendency belongs to the LFI, the
ICL has denounced it and thrown it
into the garbage. In fighting in
defense of the revolutionary
program of Trotskyism that was
upheld by the Spartacist tendency
for three decades beginning with
its inception in the early 1960s,
the League for the Fourth
International fights for new
October revolutions to open a
socialist future for the workers
and oppressed throughout the
world. Read here the
presentations, rebuttal and
summaries by speakers for the LFI.
In
Defense of the Trotskyist
Program (January 2024)
Debate
Between the
International Communist
League (ICL) and the League
for the Fourth
International (LFI) New York City,
13 January 2024 Video of full
debate
After upholding the
Trotskyist program for three
decades, a deep-going
political and organizational
crisis of the Spartacist
tendency, touched off by the
counterrevolutionary
destruction of the Soviet
Union, led to the expulsion in
1996 of longtime cadres who
went on to form the IG and
then to join with comrades in
Brazil, France and Mexico to
found the LFI in 1998. The January 13
debate – chaired by labor
historian Bryan Palmer,
biographer of U.S.
Trotskyism’s founder James P.
Cannon – consisted of a first
part, “The Fight for the
Fourth International Today,”
and a second part, “Permanent
Revolution.” Each part was
followed by a discussion
period in which supporters of
both organizations and from
other groups took part. Debate
Between the ICL and LFI
(video) (July 2024)
Revolutionary
Internationalist Youth at SL
Forum “Just
asking…”
At the debate between the
International Communist
League and the League for
the Fourth International,
held in New York City on
January 13, a leaflet was
distributed reprinting
remarks by activists of the
Revolutionary
Internationalist Youth
(youth section of the
Internationalist Group, U.S.
section of the LFI) at
earlier forums by the
Spartacist League (U.S.
section of the ICL). The RIY
supporters asked pointed
questions about the recent
line changes by the ICL,
which include admissions of
“unprincipled” actions
against supporters of the
LFI. The ICL still has not
explained how and why they
occurred. The text of the Revolution
leaflet is printed here. “Just
asking…” (13 January
2024)
A Weaponized Smear
for Witch-Hunting, Police
Repression and Thug Attacks
Genocide
Defenders Slander
Anti-Zionists as
“Antisemitic”
At a Holocaust Memorial ceremony
at the U.S. Capitol, Democratic
president Biden denounces a
fictitious “ferocious surge of
antisemitism” on campuses around
the U.S. In witch-hunting
hearings, Congressional
Republicans demand that
professors and teachers be fired
for expressing solidarity with
Gaza and opposition to the
genocidal war. In New York, the
mayor has sent police to
brutally break up
pro-Palestinian protests while
the governor has appointed
inquisitors to investigate
schools and universities. What
we are witnessing here is a
cynical, orchestrated,
bipartisan hysteria to justify
U.S./Israeli genocide by
smearing opposition to it as
“antisemitic.” And the
purpose of this vile slander is
to bring down capitalist state
repression to silence critics of
the mass murder being carried
out by the Zionists and
imperialists. Yet while
slandering the pro-Palestinian
protests and encampments as
“antisemitic,” the Zionists are
in fact making common cause with
antisemitic white supremacists,
fascistic elements and outright
fascists. Meanwhile, the
portrayal of Israel as an
“apartheid state,” is altogether
too generous and misleading. The
logic of Zionism is not
superexploitation of Palestinian
labor by denial of rights, as
under South African apartheid,
but “ethnic cleansing” by forced
population transfer leading to
what we are now seeing before
our eyes: genocide. The League
for the Fourth International
calls for an Arab/Hebrew
Palestinian workers state in a
socialist federation of the
Middle East. Genocide
Defenders Slander
Anti-Zionists as “Antisemitic”
(14 May 2024)
NYC
May Day 2024
May Day, the international workers
holiday, took place this year amid
a raging genocidal U.S./Israel
Zionist war against the
Palestinian people of Gaza, and
the continuing U.S./NATO war
against Russia over Ukraine. Both
wars are way stations on the road
to a a third world war, a looming
threat centrally aimed at
counterrevolution in China, the
largest remaining bureaucratically
deformed workers state. The League
for the Fourth International,
virtually alone on the left,
defends Russia and China against
the imperialist war drive and
calls for a binational Arab/Hebrew
Palestinian workers state in a
socialist federation of the Middle
East. In the United States,
May Day came at the height of
protest encampments of solidarity
with Gaza, with hundreds of
protesters arrested in New York
City in the early morning hours of
May 1. At the City University of
New York, CUNY Internationalists
quickly organized a protest
against the arrests at noon, and
then joined the Internationalist
contingent for the march. NYC
May Day 2024
Mobilize Workers
Power to Halt the Genocidal
War!
Bay Area ILWU
Local 10 Calls for Labor
Boycott of Arms to Israel
Meeting on May 1, International
Longshore and Warehouse Union
(ILWU) Local 10 in the San
Francisco Bay Area unanimously
passed an important resolution
denouncing “the genocidal war on
the Palestinian people in the
Gaza Strip,” and stressing that
“all the heavy bombs being
dropped on Gaza are supplied by
the United States, as are all
the warplanes from which they
dropped.” Recalling that the
“ILWU has a long history of
defending the rights of the
Palestinian people,” the
resolution for the union’s
upcoming convention declares
“the ILWU will refuse to handle
military cargo to Israel” and
“will honor picket lines
protesting the war on Gaza.” It
also recalled the union’s
actions refusal to load bombs to
the Pinochet dictatorship in
Chile and munitions to the death
squad junta in El Salvador, as
well as the ILWU’s May Day 2008
West Coast port shutdown against
the war on Afghanistan and Iraq.
Palestinian unions in Gaza,
under the bombing and murderous
attacks by vengeful Israeli
occupation troops, had appealed
to unions in the United States
in particular, to “be our voice”
and undertake action against the
slaughter. The call went out
from workers in Gaza, and ILWU
Local 10 answered, loud and
clear. The resolution, by a key
local of a powerful union with a
track record of fighting on
behalf of the oppressed, could
help spur workers around the
world to concrete action against
the Zionist and imperialist war.
Bay
Area ILWU Local 10 Calls for
Labor Boycott of Arms to
Israel (14 May 2024)
Germany: For
Workers Mobilization
Against the War Drive and
Police-State Measures! Against Social Democracy
(SPD, Die Linke and
Satellites) and All Brands of
Reformism – Build a
Revolutionary Multi-Ethnic
Workers Party!
Amid the vicious genocide by the
United States and Israel against
the Palestinian people in Gaza –
for which Germany, as Israel’s
second largest arms supplier, is
co-responsible – obligatory
support for Zionism has officially
been declared “Staatsräson”
(in diplomatic jargon raison
d’état, or a matter of state
overriding any other
considerations). The severity of
the repressive measures against
any and all defense of the
Palestinians stands in stark
contrast to the dwindling support
of the population for this
monstrous war crime. The list of
demonstrations and assemblies that
have been banned or attacked in
Germany since October 7 is long.
The most recent are the brutal
dispersal of the April 20 Berlin
demonstration against arms
deliveries to Israel and, a week
earlier, the protest against the
storming of the Palestine
Congress. Meanwhile, the ruling
class has thrown down the
gauntlet: it’s “pensions or
rearmament.” Against the war
hysteria, the
Internationalistische Gruppe calls
for workers mobilization against
repression and to stop the
transport of war material to
Ukraine and Israel. Germany:
For Workers Mobilization Against
the War Drive and Police-State
Measures! (1 May 2024)
Defend Michael
Pröbsting (RCIT) and Der Funke
(IMT) Stop Austria’s
Repression of
Pro-Palestinian Protest
On May 2, the trial of leftist
pro-Palestine activist Michael
Pröbsting in Austria for a video
statement expressing solidarity
with the Palestinian resistance
ended with a “guilty” verdict and
a conditional prison sentence of
six months. The prosecution cited
a leaflet of the Revolutionary
Communist International Tendency
from last October opposing the
Zionist state of Israel. Also
under attack are two Austrian
socialist youth leaders, Sonja and
Alex, affiliated with the
International Marxist Tendency.
This targeted repression against
leftists goes together with the
banning of Gaza solidarity
protests, including one in Vienna
on 11 October 2023, at which
criminal complaints were filed
against more than 300
demonstrators for violating the
ban. We reprint here a statement
by the League for the Fourth
International read at
demonstrations in New York and Los
Angeles calling for the charges to
be dropped. Stop
Austria’s Repression of
Pro-Palestinian Protest (26
April 2024) Dock Workers:
Block Military Cargo to
Israel
Against
the Genocidal War on
Palestinians in Gaza!
By Jack Heyman
The massacre of Palestinians
in Gaza is escalating as the
Israeli military continues its
carnage. The United States is
co-responsible for this
genocidal war, having supplied
the bombs, and the planes from
which they are launched.
Answering an appeal by the
Palestine General Federation
of Trade Unions for union
action to stop arms to Israel,
many unions around the world
have issued declarations of
solidarity with the embattled
Palestinians. In Italy
militant "rank-and-file"
unions have struck and stopped
loading of Israeli ships. But
the leadership of the
International Longshore and
Warehouse Union (ILWU),
representing U.S. West Coast
dock workers, refused to pass
a resolution merely calling
for a ceasefire n Gaza. The
ILWU was long considered a
beacon of labor solidarity,
having stopped arms to
Pinochet in Chile and the
military junta in El Salvador,
and initiating a 1984 boycott
of a ship from apartheid South
Africa. Now, although several
ILWU locals have passed
resolutions and many
individual members have
participated in protests
against the war on Gaza, the
leadership has put the kibosh
on opposition to the war as it
seeks a “seat at the table” in
Democrat Joe Biden’s White
House. The ILWU tops'
increasingly open embrace of
class collaboration is
likewise reflected in its
working for a year without a
contract and finally agreeing
to a contract with no
protection against automation
on the docks. What’s urgently
needed is a class-struggle
leadership . Dock
Workers: Block Military
Cargo to Israel (15
February 2023)
Against the
Anti-Picketing “Protocol” and
Milei’s Anti-Worker
Mega-Decree, Argentina:
Smash
the “Chainsaw” Assault
on Labor and the
Unemployed – Fight
for a Workers
Government!
On January 24, Argentina
experienced the first national
strike since 2019, as trade
unions, the left and community
organizations mobilized
against the avalanche of
anti-worker laws of
ultrarightist president Javier
Milei, who took office in
early December. In the strike
up to 200,000 demonstrators
marched in the capital, Buenos
Aires, plus another 150,000 in
all the main cities in the
country. The impact was
limited by the decision of the
unions to keep public
transportation running until 7
p.m., and above all by the
policy of the Peronist union
leaders who sought to pressure
the deputies and senators with
a nationalist appeal. After
the relatively small protest
of the left on December 20,
this time there were tens of
thousands in the streets,
enough to break the
“anti-picketing protocol” of
security minister Patricia
Bullrich. However, the
electoral left and allied
piquetero groups limited
themselves to asking the
Peronist union bosses for a
“plan of struggle” instead of
organizing a powerful
class-struggle mobilization
against all the capitalist
governments, and to break the
imperialist yoke by fighting
for a revolutionary workers
government. Argentina:
Smash the “Chainsaw” Assault
on Labor and the Unemployed
(23 January 2024)
Port of
Oakland Shut Down! All Out to
Defend the Palestinian
People! On
January 13, several thousand
protesters came out in the early
morning hours to the Port of
Oakland, California to stop the
loading of a U.S. military ship.
As a result of their mass picket
in solidarity with the
Palestinian people being
massacred with U.S.-supplied
munitions, workers were not
dispatched from the hiring hall
of International Longshore and
Warehouse Union Local 10. The
Internationalist Group issued a
leaflet and solidarity statement
calling on unions everywhere to
take action to stop the supply
of arms to Israel, which was
distributed to the Bay Area
protesters. Port
of Oakland Shut Down! All Out
to Defend the Palestinian
People! (13 January 2024)
Portland-Area
Unions Call
for Workers
Action Against
U.S./Israel
War on Gaza
As the massive
killing of the
Palestinian Arab
population of Gaza
by the Israeli
military continues
unabated, in
December two
construction worker
unions in the
Portland, Oregon
area passed
resolutions calling
for workers action
against the war. The
resolutions, by
Ironworkers Local 29
and Painters Local
10, stress that this
is a U.S./Israel
war, and call to
support and
encourage actions by
labor to refuse to
handle arms
shipments to Israel,
as appealed for by
the Palestinian
trade unions. The
resolutions are
reproduced on the
website of Class
Struggle Workers –
Portland, which has
been urging area
unions to adopt such
calls for action. Portland-Area Unions Call for Workers Action
Against
U.S./Israel War on
Gaza (December
2023)
Hunter
College Speak-Out Defies
Intimidation Campaign Defend Gaza – We
Will Not Be Silenced!
On
November 7,
more than 100
students and
faculty held a
speak-out and
marched around
the campus of
Hunter College
campus of the
City
University of
New York to
protest
attempts the
silence
protest
against the
U.S./Israel
war on Gaza
and to
regiment
universities
and colleges.
The protest
was initiated
by the CUNY
Internationalists,
who declared
that the drive
for
McCarthyite is
coming
straight from
the federal,
state and
local
governments,
the media and
Wall Street
investors, in
tandem with
professional
pro-Israel
witch
hunters.
Hunter
College
Speak-Out
Defies
Intimidation
Campaign
(12 November
2023)
Spartacist League:
A Weird and Desperate Frenzy
For
Mass Student/Labor Action Against
U.S./Israel War and NYPD
Repression By CUNY Internationalist
Clubs
In the early hours of May 1,
hundreds of students at Columbia
University and the City University of
New York (CUNY) were arrested, some
beaten and brutalized, by the notorious
New York Police Department (NYPD), as
university administrations called in the
cops to “sweep” campus Gaza solidarity
encampments. Within hours, the CUNY
Internationalist Clubs (four of whose
activists were among those arrested)
called an emergency speak-out at Hunter
College that drew almost 200 students
and faculty to protest the police/CUNY
repression. In the aftermath, the
Spartacist League put out a string of
fliers calling to “Strike the Campus!”
When there was no walkout, it tried to
explain away the failure to suck a
“strike” out of its thumb by bizarrely
trying to scapegoat the Internationalist
Club, even though the CUNY
Internationalists spoke at every meeting
the SL called. While the
used-to-be-revolutionary group going
under the misnomer Spartacist takes
refuge in gimmickry, flitting
erratically from one stunt to the next,
the Internationalists and class-struggle
activists in the faculty/staff union
fight for mass CUNY- and city-wide
union/student march against the
repression and witch hunts targeting
pro-Palestinian protesters. For
Mass Student/Labor Action Against
U.S./Israel War and NYPD Repression
(11 May 2024)
Argentine
Economy in Freefall, Brutal Austerity On
the Way Argentina
Elections: Mr. Chainsaw vs.
Washington’s Favorite Peronist Workers Left Front (FIT) Tailing
After the Peronists
On November 19, Argentine voters went to the
polls in the second round of presidential
elections in the midst of an economic crisis
that has hit the most vulnerable sectors of
the working class, while the dramatic fall
in purchasing power and real wages affects
all but the elites. The election was won by
Javier Milei, an ultra-conservative,
free-market economist and supporter of
dollarization, running against Sergio Massa,
the minister of economy of the incumbent
Peronist government and the official
candidate of “stability” (i.e., more of the
same). Milei is a supporter of former U.S.
president Trump (and of his Brazilian
counterpart Bolsonaro) while Massa has
collaborated closely with the Biden
administration. For the working class, the
programs of both bourgeois candidates would
result in an economic crisis even more
brutal than the current escalation of prices
bordering on hyperinflation. There was no
choice for the workers in the election.
However, in the face of the hysteria of
sectors of the government and the left about
a supposed “Argentine fascism,” not one of
the components of the Workers and Left Front
(FIT) called for a “no” vote (blank ballot).
This electoral cartel only serves as a left
pressure group on Peronist bourgeois
populism. Argentine workers should have cast
a blank ballot while preparing for sharp
class struggle against the coming austerity.
Argentina
Elections: Mr. Chainsaw vs. Washington’s
Favorite Peronist (16 November
2023)
Class
Struggle Education Workers Protest D.O.E.
Attempt to Ban Opposition to U.S./Israel
War Down
with the Gag Order Against NYC
Teachers! By Class Struggle Education Workers
Almost immediately after Israel launched its
massive bombing campaign against Gaza,
Israel’s imperialist backers went on the
warpath to squelch opposition to the
unfolding Zionist slaughter. In the United
States the repressive campaign was directed
at universities in particular, where support
for the Palestinians is widespread, but also
against K-12 schools. Any and all protests
against Israel’s mass murder were labeled
anti-Semitic. In New York City, as
Palestinian solidarity protests mushroomed,
ex-cop mayor Eric Adams and his schools
chancellor David Banks issued a joint
statement blasting “toxic rhetoric and
division at educational institutions.” Then,
on the day before a November 9 day of
action, walkout and after-school rally,
which was endorsed by several teacher
groups, Banks fired off an email decreeing
that teachers and staff “should not express
their personal views about political matters
during the school day” or while on school
grounds, or “even outside of the workplace
and via social media posts or otherwise.”
Class Struggle Education Workers responded
with a protest outside the Department of
Education headquarters on November 16.
Down
with the Gag Order Against NYC Teachers!
(30 November 2023)
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
archive)
Revolution
No. 20 (September 2023) click or
on image
for full list of articles
Imperialist
War Criminals Meet at Hiroshima Only Socialist
Revolution Can Defeat U.S.
Imperialism’s Drive To WWIII
This past May, the leaders of the
Group of Seven (G7) leading
imperialist powers, headed by U.S.
president Biden, held a summit
meeting, in Hiroshima, Japan. The
NATO military alliance and its Asian
allies grotesquely used the occasion
to plan an escalation of imperialist
proxy war in Ukraine and to send “a
strong signal ... to Russia and
China” from “the site of the first
atomic bomb attack,” as Washington's
official propaganda channel, Voice
of America, menacingly put it. The
United States remains the only
country to have used atomic bombs in
war. In 1945, its cold-blooded
murder of hundreds of thousands at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki sent the
message that the atomic bomb was
ready for use against the Soviets
and all who might stand in the way
of American imperialism’s drive for
world domination. In 2023, the mad
bombers in the White House and
Pentagon are driving toward a
thermonuclear Third World War. In
this and other articles in this
issue of Revolution, we draw
out the connection between U.S.
imperialism’s calculated mass murder
then and the escalating threat it
poses now. The key lesson: the only
way to prevent the cataclysm is the
revolutionary overthrow of this long
outlived and deadly system, by the
world’s working class. Imperialist
War Criminals Meet at Hiroshima,
Only Socialist Revolution Can
Defeat U.S. Imperialism’s Drive To
WWIII (September 2023)
A Review of Oppenheimer: Socialism
or Nuclear
Armageddon
The film Oppenheimer
was this summer’s
biggest blockbuster. The
fear of nuclear war is
certainly one reason
many have been flocking
to see the film. Oppenheimer
poses issues of great
importance, notably the
fact that the horrific
weapon was not used to
“save American lives,”
as is still taught in
the schools today. Japan
was already defeated, as
U.S. rulers knew.
Instead, dropping the
atomic bomb was a threat
directed against the
USSR: it was the first
blast of the anti-Soviet
Cold War. A central
theme of Oppenheimer
is the anti-communist
witch hunt in the
postwar United States.
Kicked off by Democrats,
this led to thousands of
people losing jobs and
passports, being
blacklisted, censored
and jailed. For the
film’s director, as for
so many liberals then
and now, the problem
with the red scare was
that it unfairly
besmirched those
“innocent” of actually
being communists. Yet
genuinely communist
revolutionaries –
Trotskyists – are what
is urgently needed to
lead the struggle to
overthrow the
capitalist-imperialist
rulers before they turn
the planet into a ball
of thermonuclear fire,
and instead bring about
a socialist world fit
for all of humanity. Oppenheimer
Review: Socialism or
Nuclear Armageddon
(September 2023)
Some Things They
Don’t Teach Us About Hiroshima
and U.S. Imperialism Today
An essay on
the 75th
anniversary of
the August
1945
atom-bombing
of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki
by Australian
journalist and
filmmaker John
Pilger pierces
the lies and
silences about
this horrific
U.S.
imperialist
war crime. It
is all the
more as
Washington
escalates its
anti-China war
drive, in
which the
U.S./NATO
proxy war
against Russia
is a way
station and a
testing ground
on the road to
a thermonucler
Third World
War. Some
Things They
Don’t Teach Us
About
Hiroshima and
U.S.
Imperialism
Today
(September
2023)
For
Open
Admissions, No
Tuition! Supreme
Court Axes
Affirmative
Action
On June 29, by
a vote of 6 to
3, the Supreme
Court of the
United States
declared
affirmative
action
programs in
college
admissions
unconstitutional,
in a racist
ruling tossing
out the last
scraps of
these already
minimal
measures. This
will
undoubtedly
mean a sharp
drop in
African
American and
Latino
enrollment at
elite American
universities,
public and
private. The
shredding of
basic rights,
partial
reforms and
even
tokenistic
steps like
college
affirmative
action plans
is a symptom
of
capitalism’s
advanced state
of decay. U.S.
schools today
are more
segregated
than they were
in the civil
rights era. As
part of the
Marxist
program of
revolutionary
integrationism
in all spheres
of social
life, we fight
to throw open
the doors of
the
universities
to all. To
make quality
higher
education
genuinely
available, we
call for open
admissions to
all
institutions
of higher
education, the
abolition of
tuition, and
state-paid
living
stipends for
students.
Supreme
Court Axes
Affirmative
Action
(September
2023)
From Portland,
Oregon Workers
Solidarity
Against the
Anti-Trans
Onslaught
Working-class
militants brought a
bold message to this
year’s Pride march in
Portland, Oregon: a
striking banner
reading “Defend
Transgender People,”
signed by and bearing
the logo of the
International Union of
Painters and Allied
Trades (IUPAT) Local
10. This labor
defense of the rights
of trans people is an
example of what
class-struggle
unionism looks like,
at a time when these
rights are under major
attack. The contingent
was initiated by
activists from the
building trades,
stagehands (IATSE) and
other unions who are
supporters of Class
Struggle Workers –
Portland (CSWP), who a
few years earlier had
initiated a
union-sponsored “Hard
Hats for Gay Rights”
contingent. In
numerous parts of the
United States, racist
groups are often
prominent among those
inciting anti-trans
bigotry. Thus the
fight to defend gay
and trans rights must
go together with
mobilizing workers'
power to stop racist
and fascist terror.
And it requires a
break with all the
capitalist parties to
build a class-struggle
workers party fighting
for the emancipation
of all. Portland:
Workers Solidarity
against the
Anti-Trans Onslaught
(September 2023)
Hands Off Students’
Rights – Abolish the Board of
Trustees!
CUNY
Administration Joins with
Racist NY Post in
McCarthyite Witch Hunt – Again
The witch-hunting spirit of Joseph
McCarthy is alive and well in the
administration of the City
University of New York. With a
decades-long record of attacks on
CUNY students and faculty, the CUNY
tops jumped on the bandwagon when
the New York Post and
Democratic machine politicians
launched yet another lurid campaign.
Their target: an immigrant student
leader from the CUNY School of Law
chosen by her classmates to give a
commencement speech for the
graduating class. The commencement
made news when students turned their
backs on New York’s pro-police
Democratic mayor Eric Adams. But
what most drew the ire of the witch
hunters was when the speaker, Fatima
Mohammed, referred to CUNY Law
students’ defense of the Palestinian
people and alluded to the renewed
bombing of Gaza that Israel had
launched that week. The day after
the Post published its
front-page smear, the CUNY Board of
Trustees and chancellor outrageously
accused her of hate speech! The CUNY
Internationalist Clubs and
Revolutionary Internationalist Youth
defend Fatima Mohammed and the right
of students to protest racism and
repression, and call to abolish the
administration and Board of
Trustees, replacing them with
elected councils of students,
faculty and staff. CUNY
Administration Joins with Racist
NY Post in McCarthyite Witch Hunt
– Again (September 2023)
Biden/“Squad”
vs. Workers’
Most Basic
Right
AOC
and the
Democratic
Strikebreakers
of America
Last December,
after working
three years
without a
contract, some
115,000
railroad
workers
represented by
12 unions were
poised to go
on a national
strike for
crucial
demands,
including the
right to paid
sick days. But
they were
stopped, by
legislation
engineered by
Democratic
president Joe
Biden (who
calls himself
the most
pro-labor
president
ever) and
Democrats in
both houses of
Congress that
banned a
strike. Among
those who
voted for and
played an
important role
in ramming
through this
strikebreaking
law were House
“progressives,”
including
stars of the
Democratic
Socialists of
America like
Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez.
Now AOC says
that Biden has
“done quite
well.” AOC
and the
Democratic
Strikebreakers
of America
(September
2023)
Voces del
Epicentro Un folleto
de Trabajadores
Internacionales
Clasistas
(click on image to
download pdf)
As the
coronavirus pandemic erupted in
the United States, the first
epicenter was in the neighborhoods
of New York City with the highest
number of immigrants, where
Trabajadores Internacionales
Clasistas (Class Struggle
Immigrant Workers) has been
active. Read the reports from TIC
activists and teachers in Class
Struggle Education Workers on the
impact of this capitalist
disaster, and the lessons to be
drawn from it. Also reports from
the strike of packinghouse workers
in Yakima Valley, Washington. (In Spanish)
Defend
Combative
Immigrant
Workers
Against
Repression
Italy: Draghi Government of Repression, Impoverishment
and Death
Mobilize the
Entire Working
Class to
Defeat
All-Sided
Attack!
No
to Dead End of
Reformism –
Forge a
Revolutionary
Workers Party!
In the ongoing
emergency of
this second
year of the
coronavirus
pandemic, the
Italian
bourgeoisie
decided to
dump the weak
and unstable
coalition
government of
the Democratic
Party and
Cinque Stelle
(Five Stars)
movement,
replacing it
with Mario
Draghi, the
former head of
the European
Central Bank.
The first
shots of the
Draghi
government
have been to
increase
repression
against the
workers
movement, in
particular
against the
S.I. Cobas
“rank-and-file”
union of
mainly
immigrant
workers. Some
of the most
deeply
exploited
sectors of the
working class
have
undertaken
trade-union
and solidarity
actions,
centered on
logistics. The
response of
much of the
ostensibly
socialist left
has been to
form an Action
Pact with
political
supporters of
S.I. Cobas, a
political
coalition of
heterogeneous
forces based
on a reformist
15-point
political
program. This
program
consists
overwhelmingly
of appeals for
the capitalist
government to
take action,
rather than
for workers
themselves to
enforce their
demands. What
genuine
communists
must say to
the masses in
the harrowing
coronavirus
crisis is that
the working
class must
establish its
revolutionary
class rule,
seizing and
collectivizing
the means of
production and
organizing
production to
satisfy human
need, not the
profits of the
few. This
fight requires
above all the
forging of a
revolutionary
workers party.
Italy:
Draghi
Government of
Repression,
Impoverishment
and Death
(26 April
2021)
For
Black Liberation
Through Socialist
Revolution!
Slavery
and the
Constitution:
Origins of
U.S.
Capitalist
“Democracy”
Long ago and
far away in
the B.C.
(Before
Coronavirus)
era, bourgeois
politics in
the United
States fixated
briefly on
impeachment.
The Democrats
leading the
lower house of
Congress did
not, of
course,
impeach Donald
Trump for his
crimes against
the oppressed,
for example
his vicious
persecution of
immigrants in
the U.S. After
all, the
record
deportations
under the
Democratic
administration
of
“deporter-in-chief”
Barack Obama
paved the way
for Trump.
Trump was
“brought up on
charges by the
wrong class
for the wrong
crimes,” we
noted at the
time. One
generation
after another
is brought up
with the
mythology of
the
Constitution
as an
embodiment of
“democracy” in
general, to be
worshiped
alongside the
“Founding
Fathers.” Yet
the authors of
the
Constitution
understood
very well that
they
represented
not “the
people” in
general but
the ruling
class of
planters and
merchants, and
wrote it to
safeguard
their
interests, in
particular to
bolster and
uphold the
power of the
slaveowners in
the newly
established
American
republic. The
U.S.
Constitution
established a
series of
institutions
that are
strikingly
anti-democratic.
They remained
so even after
slavery’s
abolition
through the
Civil War.
Revolutionaries
explain the
need for a
revolutionary
workers party
to lead a
socialist
revolution to
overthrow the
entire
capitalist
system. Slavery
and the
Constitution:
Origins of
U.S.
Capitalist
“Democracy”
(August 2020)
PSL
Targeted for
Marches Against
Cop Murder of
Elijah McClain Defend
Denver
Anti-Racist
Protest
Leaders!
On Thursday,
September 17,
police raids
were carried
out in Denver,
Colorado
against the
organizers of
protests
denouncing the
racist murder
of Elijah
McClain, a
young black
man, by police
in suburban
Aurora in
August 2019.
Six of the
protest
leaders were
arrested,
including four
members of the
Party for
Socialism and
Liberation
(PSL), which
has played a
leading role
in the
protests. They
have
outrageously
been charged
with multiple
serious
felonies,
including the
absurd charge
of
“kidnapping.”
Following
Trump’s failed
attempt at
imposing
martial law in
Washington,
D.C. and the
subsedquent
the dispatch
of federal
agents to
Portland,
Oregon, and
Kenosha,
Wisconsin, the
Denver arrests
mark a new
escalation of
police-state
measures that
are a threat
to the civil
liberties of
all. The
Internationalist
Group
and
Revolutionary
Internationalist
Youth denounce
this ominous
attack on the
right to
protest. We
demand that
the arrested
activists be
immediately
released and
that all
charges
against them
be dropped. Defend
Denver
Anti-Racist
Protest
Leaders!
(18 September
2020)
“We’re All in
This
Together.” You
Think?
Top
Ten Lies in
the Time of
Coronavirus
and Mass
Protests
By Charles
Brover
U.S.
capitalism is
in the midst
of a triple
whammy crisis
– economic,
social, and
public health.
Inspiring
massive
protests
against racism
and cop terror
not seen in
their size and
scope since
the 1960s have
set this
nation’s
cities aflame
day after day,
and have
spread
internationally.
The historic
protests are
occurring
against the
backdrop of
unconscionable
government
delay,
deception,
ignorant happy
talk, and
anti-scientific
incompetence.
Official
public health
malpractice
has driven the
confirmed
death toll
from COVID-19
to over
160,000. This
plague is
disproportionately
ravaging
black, Latino,
and immigrant
working class
communities.
For Marxist
revolutionaries
the racist
system that is
at the root of
the oppression
of black
people in the
U.S. (and
elsewhere) is
class-based
capitalism.
While the
cities are in
paroxysms of
rage, grief
and plague;
while millions
are fighting
to save their
livelihoods
and their
lives, the
capitalist
rulers, their
politicians,
and tamed
pundits
promote lies,
damn lies, and
even more
murderous
lies. Here are
our top ten
picks. Top
Ten Lies in
the Time of
Coronavirus
and Mass
Protests
(8 August
2020) Millions of
Undocumented
Immigrants and
Their Families
Facing the
Abyss
New
York: We
Demand Equal
Treatment and
Emergency
Support for
Excluded
Workers!
Declaration of
Class Struggle
International
Workers (TIC)
In the sixth
month of the
health crisis
unleashed by
the COVID-19
pademic,
infections are
spiking in
much of the
country while
mass
unemployment
continues to
grow and
marches
against racist
police
brutality
continue. New
storms of
crisis are
coming for the
working class,
and for
immigrants in
particular,
beginning with
a threatened
wave of
evictions.
Nationally,
undocumented
immigrants are
denied
“stimulus”
aid,
unemployment
benefits or
any official
support. In
New York some
200,000
undocumented
workers have
lost their
jobs or cannot
find work,
while over a
million
workers
considered
“essential,” a
majority of
them
immigrants,
receive
poverty wages
while running
great risk of
contracting
the virus.
Class Struggle
International
Workers
demands that
the state of
New York
include all
workers,
particularly
the
undocumented
and those in
the “gig
economy,”
among those
eligible for
unemployment
benefits; that
state and city
governments
make up for
the exclusion
of immigrants
from federal
support; and
that rent be
canceled and
all
residential
evictions be
prohibited
during the
pandemic. New
York: We
Demand Equal
Treatment and
Emergency
Support for
Excluded
Workers!
(11 August
2020)
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)
Left
Reformists
in Existential
Crisis An Internationalist Group Pamphlet
(click
on image to download
pdf)
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.
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)
DSA: Fronting for the
Democrats An Internationalist Group Pamphlet
(click
on image to
download pdf)
A 70-page
pamphlet
analyzing the
organizational
and political
history of the
Democratic
(Party)
Socialists of
America. Includes
articles on:
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)
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)
Occupation
of Hundreds of
Schools Blocks
Threatened
Closures
Student
Revolt Shakes
São Paulo,
Brazil
By Class
Struggle
Workers/UFT
For the last
three weeks,
the city of
São Paulo,
Brazil has
been convulsed
by a combative
upheaval of
high school
students
protesting the
state
government’s
plan to close
92 schools and
order hundreds
of thousands
of students to
change
schools. When
the state
governor tried
to ram through
this plan
without
consultation,
students
responded by
occupying
almost 200
schools. Then,
when military
police began
clearing out
occupied
schools this
week, students
took chairs
and tables and
set up class
in busy
intersections
and highways.
The students,
backed by
teachers, also
refused to
take
high-stakes
test. After
several days,
the governor
backed down.
This is
a dramatic
example of how
the
international
capitalist
offensive
against public
education
should be
fought – by
mass action in
the streets,
bringing out
students,
teachers,
parents and
mobilizing the
power of the
working class.
Student
Revolt Shakes
São Paulo,
Brazil (4
December 2015)
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)
Protest
the Police
Lynching of
Sandra Bland
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.
Sunset
Park Fights
Back Against
Police Attack
It’s
been only two
months since
Eric Garner
was
chokeholded to
death in
Staten Island
by the racist
cops, and
barely a month
and a half
since the
police murder
of 17-year-old
Michael Brown
in Ferguson,
Missouri. But
despite the
national
outcry and a
thousands-strong
march in New
York in late
August, two
incidents in
the Sunset
Park
neighborhood
of Brooklyn
show once
again the face
of racist
police
violence under
liberal
Democratic NYC
mayor Bill de
Blasio. The
first involved
a heavy‑duty
arrest of a
vendor after a
festival in
the park; in
the second, a
cop slammed a
pregnant woman
on the
pavement on
her abdomen
and her son
and husband
were arrested.
The residents
of this
heavily
immigrant
neighborhood
feel singled
out for
aggressive
enforcement
under NYPD
chief William
Bratton’s
“broken
windows”
strategy of
massive
arrests for
minor
infractions.
On Saturday,
September 27,
some 300
people came
out to protest
against the
brutal police
siege. While
many called
for Bratton’s
resignation,
racist cop
terror is
endemic in
capitalist
America. To
put a stop to
it will
require
nothing less
than workers
revolution. Sunset
Park Fights
Back Against
Police Attack
(28 September
2014)
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)
To contact the League for the Fourth
International write to: Internationalist
Group, Box 3321, Church Street Station,
New York, NY, 10008, U.S.A. Tel (212)
460-0983. Fax (212) 614-8711
E-mail: internationalistgroup@msn.com
BRAZIL
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
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