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 No. 74, September-December 2024 Table
of Contents Click on image to left for pdf version of complete issue. |
AGA Regime: Billionaire “Populists” on the Warpath
Democrats Reap Bitter Fruit of Scorning the Working Class
Trump 2: Gearing Up
for Rule by Decree
2024 Elections: X-Ray of Decaying U.S. Imperialism
For Hard Class Struggle Against Capitalist Reaction
The 2024 U.S. election is a turning point in recent history, the end of an era. That is the era of U.S. global hegemony since World War II. The “American Century” is over. The victory of Donald Trump was against the Democratic Party of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and the Republican “establishment.” Their defeat reflects the long-term decline of the United States in the world capitalist economy, and now also in its failing military power. The Democratic Party lost a large part of the youth and many liberals over the genocidal U.S./Israel war on the Palestinian people in Gaza. The erosion of working-class support for the Democrats has reached the breaking point. But while Trump got 3 million more votes than in 2020, Harris got 6 million less votes than Biden in 2020. Rather than a sharp shift to the right of the U.S. population, the 2024 election was a vote – from the right and the left – against the Democratic Party. While Donald Trump adopts populist poses, he is now forming a government of billionaires. The world situation of extreme danger cries out for proletarian revolutionary leadership. Trump 2: Gearing Up for Rule by Decree (December 2024)
“Left” Electoralism and Coalitionism: A Dead End (December 2024)
The Man Who Would Be “Dictator on Day One”
Says Hitler Did Good Things
Is Donald Trump a Fascist?
A lot of people in the United States – and not only – are very afraid of what a second term for Donald Trump as president will mean. At the same time, many want to fight the looming catastrophe. In order to do so effectively, it’s important to have a clear understanding of the nature of the enemy we are confronting. There is a lot of talk about Donald Trump as a “fascist.” This loose use of the term mischaracterizes the fascist movement in Italy, Germany and elsewhere in the 1920s and ’30s, and fascist groups today. It also builds illusions in bourgeois “democracy,” which can be plenty repressive. Donald Trump is a would-be strongman, aspiring to command a one-man authoritarian regime that intimidates or crushes any potential opponents. The FBI, Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, armed forces and police are to be his personal army. His talk of being a “dictator on Day 1” tells you all about Day 2, and after. Is Donald Trump a Fascist? (December 2024)
Republicans and Democrats Declare War on Immigrants
Mobilize Working Class Power to Stop Deportations
A war is about to be unleashed on the working people of the United States by the government of the United States. Fueled by a hysteria whipped up against “illegal” immigrants, depicted as “the enemy within,” in reality it is an attack on the working class and the democratic rights of all. To carry out his threatened mass deportations, the incoming president, Republican Donald Trump, is planning to declare a national emergency. Constitutional rights, including to due process, will be “suspended” (that is, eliminated) for a huge sector of the population. This assault must be fought tooth and nail, in particular by unleashing the enormous power of the working class, of which immigrants are a key component, that can bring the deportation machine to a screeching halt. And that requires taking on both of the partner parties of U.S. imperialism, Democrat as well as Republican. Mobilize Working Class Power to Stop Deportations (December 2024)
October ILA Strike “Suspended” After Three Days,
January Showdown Over Bosses’ Automation Threat
ILA Longshore Workers: To Defeat Job-Killing Automation, Strike for Union Control of Tech!
After the brief strike of port workers on the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts in October, the unresolved issue was automation. On December 12, Donald Trump issued a statement supporting the union’s opposition to the introduction of automated machinery on the docks. But the shippers have not relented. Whatever the odds, any union “strategy” that banks on the whims of a multi-billionaire CEO of United States, Inc. can’t win lasting gains. With Trump, everything is “transactional.” What will the unions give up? A real victory in the battle over job-killing automation will take an all-out fight for union control of technology, and a political fight against the politicians, parties and government of the bosses. ILA Longshore Workers: To Defeat Job-Killing Automation, Strike for Union Control of Tech! (28 December 2024)
Deep-Sixing Their Own History
SL’s Latest Longshore Lies
For the last several decades, the latter-day Spartacist League has pursued an unrelenting vendetta against Heyman. Almost without fail, whenever he was leading struggles, the “post-revolutionary SL” would slander and/or boycott them. The successful picket of the Neptune Jade in solidarity with locked-out dock workers in Liverpool, Britain (1997); the shutdown of all West Coast ports to demand “Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!” (1999); the West Coast port shutdown against the U.S. imperialist war in Afghanistan and Iraq (2008); the struggle to unionize the scab Export Grain Terminal in Longview, Washington, when the SL grooved on the assault on ILWU activists and supporters by a bureaucratic goon squad (2012); the list goes on... Now a born-again SL feigns approval of an ILWU Local 10 motion for the union to boycott military cargo to Israel amid the genocidal war on Gaza, but then publishes a long account by a supporter slamming Heyman, the author of the resolution. His letter to the editor of the SL’s newspaper Workers Vanguard is printed here. SL’s Latest Longshore Lies (December 2024)
Jack Heyman, Letter to the Editor of Workers Vanguard (23 December 2024)Unionize Amazon with Class Struggle!
Bring Out All Labor to Win Amazon Teamster Strikes!
On December 19, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters launched strikes at seven Amazon facilities around the U.S. after the company ignored a deadline to agree to begin negotiations for a union contract. Amazon is the world’s third largest corporation whose executive chairman, Jeff Bezos, is the third richest man in the world. The e-commerce giant is a hardline anti-union employer. Overcoming the Amazon bosses’ opposition will take hard class struggle. It is urgent that all labor – as well as students, immigrants and other union supporters – come out in large numbers to build mass picket lines to shut down the warehouses and stop the deliveries. The Internationalist Group, Revolutionary Internationalist Youth and class-struggle unionists came out to Amazon picket lines at several locations. Many picketers had illusions that the National Labor Relations Board could force Amazon to the table. But the NLRB is an agency of the capitalist government, set up in the 1930s to regulate and stifle militant class struggle and to hogtie union organizing with a web of bureaucratic processes. Strikes, unions and contract gains are not won by relying on the bosses’ government or the bosses’ parties. Class-struggle trade unionists oppose all government control of the workers movement and call to break with all capitalist parties, to build a workers party to fight for a workers government.. Bring Out All Labor to Win Amazon Teamster Strikes! (21 December 2024)
For Workers Action Against Imperialist and Zionist War
Greek Workers Block Arms to Israel and Ukraine
Brandishing red flares and chanting “Free Palestine!” on the night of October 17, dozens of dockworkers in Piraeus, Greece, blocked a container with 21 tons of ammunition from being loaded aboard a ship bound for Israel, to be deployed in the genocidal U.S./Israel war on Gaza. The ship departed without its death cargo. The action was carried out by the dock workers union ENEDEP, affiliated with PAME, the labor federation associated with the Greek Communist Party (KKE). A delegate of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, (PGFP), which has appealed to workers internationally to stop transport of military goods to Israel, thanked the Greek dock workers. Then on November 6 KKE-led demonstrators blocked a shipment of ammunition and rockets to the U.S./NATO puppet regime in Ukraine. Italy and Greece are the only countries where left-wing unions have actually blocked war cargo in response to the PGFP appeal. Stopping a container of ammo to Israel, a convoy of war cargo to Ukraine, a one-day strike or port shutdown – these are first steps, but they are vital in pointing the direction that struggle imperialist and Zionist war must take. Greek Workers Block Arms to Israel and Ukraine (26 November 2024)
Claims of Anti-Jewish “Pogrom” Are a Lie
Operation Amsterdam: Zionist Soccer Hooligans Stage Racist Rampage
On Friday, November 8, “mainstream” media around the world exploded with a story of supposed “antisemitic attacks” on Israeli football fans in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The showpiece supposedly illustrating this was a video that indeed showed a mob hunting and attacking defenseless individuals. But what the video actually showed was the exact opposite of what has been claimed: the attackers were actually rioting Israeli “fans” of the Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team, chanting anti-Palestine slogans, charging at and beating Arab local residents. There were no antisemitic mobs attacking Jews on November 7-8, there was no antisemitic pogrom. What there was, was an organized rampaging mob of Zionist hooligans marauding through central Amsterdam, tearing down Palestinian flags, spewing out racist filth, brandishing metal rods and makeshift clubs, throwing rocks at passers-by and buildings, threatening and assaulting Amsterdamers. And throughout this, they were escorted and protected by the police, who even led them to buildings with Palestinian flags. Operation Amsterdam: Zionist Soccer Hooligans Stage Racist Rampage (12 November 2024)
Mobilize Workers’ Power to
Free Anti-Austerity Protesters
in Nigeria and Kenya
In August protests in Nigeria against drastic austerity measures, including elimination of fuel subsidy leading to record price increases for food, 40 people were killed by police well over 1,000 arrested. Of those, three months later 29 children were still in jail, charged with treason and facing the death penalty. The Nigerian protests were inspired by huge anti-austerity protests in Kenya, in which police killed over 50 demonstrators. The presidents of both African countries are imperialist toadies. Kenyan president William Ruto dispatched several hundred police to Haiti, acting as mercenaries to put down unrest there. The League for the Fourth International supported protests demanding freedom for arrested protesters in Nigeria, and called for U.S. mercenary Kenyan police out of Haiti. Mobilize Workers’ Power to Free Anti-Austerity Protesters in Nigeria and Kenya (7 November 2024)
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)
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