Tag Archive: imperialism


donetskUkraine: Anti-Fascist Rebellion Grows,
Coup Government Attempting Violent Crackdown

By Steven Argue, 13th April
In nine cities in eastern Ukraine the government buildings, including security agencies, police stations, and administrative buildings, have been seized in an anti-fascist uprising. Barricades have been erected in the cities and anti-fascist checkpoints have been erected across the countryside. Those holding the barricades and checkpoints are largely the mine workers and industrial workers of the heavily industrial region. The uprising is calling for equality between nationalities. This is in opposition to the U.S. backed ultra-nationalist government in Kiev. Protesters are also demanding a referendum on some form of self-determination, allowing them to determine their own affairs independently of the illegitimate government in Kiev that overthrew Ukraine’s elected president in February.Cops and fascist paramilitaries from western Ukraine are mobilizing against the anti-fascist uprising.

The coup government in Kiev has declared the anti-fascists terrorists and attacked. In a joint operation of Ukrainian police and fascists of Right Sector in Sloviansk, the Kiev government has killed at least one protester and one fighting for the coup government has been killed as well. Sloviansk, however, remains under working class and not fascist control. The leadership of the neo-Nazi group Right Sector has called for a full mobilization of its forces to go to war in eastern Ukraine. In addition, Russian intelligence report that the private U.S. mercenaries of Greystone are on the ground and involved in repressive activities in Ukraine. These private mercenaries have also committed many crimes against the Iraqi people.Showing typical U.S. imperialist hypocrisy, U.S. spokesmen are backing this ultra-nationalist crackdown on protesters. Yet, during the Maiden protests the U.S. continually threatened sanctions to protect the ultra-nationalists who eventually came to power with U.S. aid in the February 22 coup. In that case, the U.S. repeatedly claimed that the ultra-nationalists were peaceful protesters, despite the fact that they were shooting and killing cops, lighting them on fire with Molotov cocktails, and beating them with clubs.

Ultimately, all evidence shows, the U.S. backed ultra-nationalists opened fire on their own men with snipers in order to blame the police of the elected government and create the crisis needed to overthrow that government. Today, the new U.S. backed coup government has a number of open neo-Nazis in key posts. Now that the working class of eastern Ukraine is rising up against this same ultra-nationalist government, the United States is somehow blaming Russia for a revolt that is, in fact, a result of the U.S. imperialist coup.

A tenth city was seized by anti-fascists on Sunday, the town of Mariupol.
 As usual, the New York Times echoed the official lies of the Kiev government with a headline saying,” Ukraine Forces Storm a Town, Defying Russia”. Yet later in the article they admit: “By Sunday afternoon, the government’s push to reassert its authority in a vitally important industrial and coal-mining region appeared to have made little headway. Pro-Russian protesters appeared to control not only the police station but also the entire town of Slovyansk, having set up checkpoints at major streets leading into town.”

 Fact is, reports from anti-fascist activists appear to be truthful when they say pro-coup forces (cops and fascists of the Right Sector) opened up with machine gun fire on a roadblock outside of Slovyansk, killing two people. One cop was killed in return fire and the pro-coup forces never made their way into Slovyansk. In addition, liberated Slovyansk has officially merged with the Donetsk People’s Republic.

For more on Ukraine:
Against Ukraine repression: ‘In Donetsk and Kharkov, The people continue to fight’ By Greg Butterfield (April 9th)
Support the Ukrainian Anti-fascist Rebellion; For the Donetsk People’s Republic By Steve Argue (March 31st)
Anti-fascists organize resistance as crisis grips Ukraine coup regime By Workers World (March 28th)

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VOAG-Logo-(Ukraine)Against Ukraine repression: ‘In Donetsk and Kharkov, The people continue to fight’

By Greg Butterfield, Workers World
 April 10 – Desperate to stamp out a popular uprising in Southeastern Ukraine, the fascist junta in Kiev -which came to power through a violent coup against elected President Viktor Yanukovich -is moving to crush the newly declared People’s Republic of Donetsk and rebellions in other cities.  But anti-fascists throughout the region continue to resist in the face of increasing repression by the U.S.-backed regime.

Arsen Avakov, the junta’s Interior Minister, arrived in the Southeast April 9, delivering a 48-hour ultimatum to protesters occupying government buildings in Donetsk and Lugansk to surrender or face military attack. The deadline expires at nightfall on April 11. Avakov, a leader of the far-right Fatherland party, was tasked with bringing the various neo-Nazi groups under the regime’s discipline. To this end he created a “National Guard” composed of members of the Right Sector, Euromaidan Self Defense Forces, and other racist gangs from Western Ukraine. The Communist Party of Ukraine’s headquarters in Kiev was set on fire April 9, just hours after a court ordered the Interior Ministry to remove fascists who’ve occupied it since the coup. Euromaidan Self Defense goons, now employed by the Interior Ministry, were photographed tearing up red flags outside the building shortly before it was torched. In the Southeast, police and military units unwilling to act against the local populace have been replaced by “special task forces” from Western Ukraine.

 According to Ukrainian and Russian sources, Avakov has also enlisted foreign mercenaries from the U.S.-based Greystone Ltd.  U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, in charge of NATO forces in Europe, told the Associated Press April 10 that U.S. troops could soon be deployed in the region. NATO has scheduled an “emergency meeting” on Ukraine for April 14.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy destroyer U.S.S. Donald Cook was expected to arrive in the Black Sea April 10 near Russian waters, where it will join other U.S., Bulgarian and Romanian warships in provocative “war games” aimed at Russia. All of these forces are now deployed against the popular resistance in the largely Russian-speaking Southeast, where the anti-fascist and working-class traditions of Soviet times still run deep, and where some look to Russia as a last line of defense against the neo-Nazi threat from Kiev.

 But instead of intimidating the resistance, the fight-back has continued and spread. After losing ground earlier in the week, anti-fascists in Lugansk held onto government buildings. Miners in the Donbas region have downed tools to go to the defense of Donetsk. Hundreds have remained in the streets of Kharkov despite a ban on protests. And even in the Western Ukraine city of Lviv, near the Polish border, activists briefly seized the local prosecutor’s office to protest a new appointment by Kiev.

Donetsk prepares to fight
In Donetsk, capital of the Donbas mining region, protesters seized the Regional State Administration building April 6 and declared an independent People’s Republic of Donetsk. The new people’s council, with the support of thousands of demonstrators in the main square, announced a referendum for May 11 to determine the future of the region. The demand for a referendum has gripped the masses throughout the Southeast, who want autonomy or independence from the fascist, pro-NATO regime in Kiev, which is in the process of imposing austerity in return for International Monetary Fund loans. Calling for a general mobilization of the populace, the People’s Council said April 9: “According to information from our activists at civilian roadblocks, Ukrainian armored vehicles are on their way to Donetsk. The Kiev junta has decided to solve the problem posed by our protest by military force.  “But their politicians and security forces are afraid of the presence of civilians near the building, where a large number of foreign journalists are also present.

 “Last night, thanks to the presence of thousands of people around the Lugansk state security headquarters, people formed a human shield around the building to protect it and the presence of militias barricaded inside prevented police from carrying out their orders to kill our comrades.  “Let’s be worthy of our comrades from Lugansk! Protect our militia guarding the building of the People’s Council! Let’s defend our independence and freedom!”

And the people responded. Activists and volunteers, including many youth and retirees, have built barricades around the RSA building and other protest strongholds, set up checkpoints on roads, gathered food, water and medical supplies, and joined defense trainings against the expected military assault.

 On the night of April 9-10, teams of activists blocked several military buses and prevented them from deploying troops near the RSA.  “We will be on duty here all night, because the assault could begin at any moment,” one activist on nightwatch duty told Ria Novosti.  Sergey Tsyplakov, deputy director of the People’s Militia of Donbas, said: “In Donetsk airport, about 100 people from the National Guard have been housed. Around 100 Right Sector bandits are also in the city, as well as a hundred employees from a private U.S. military company operating under contract with the Kiev junta. “In total, there are around 300 professionals or well-trained and motivated fanatics,” Tsyplakov said. “This is a major force, but we are ready to fight.”

Kharkov: ‘Resistance does not subside’
  In the city of Kharkov, where the struggle has been led by the People’s Unity coalition and the leftist Union Borotba (Struggle), protesters seized the local RSA building and declared a People’s Republic on April 7.  The People’s Council called for regional autonomy, including independence of NATO, re-nationalization of former Soviet industry, and priority to collective forms of ownership.

That night, hundreds of fascists and mercenaries wearing Special Forces uniforms attacked the building. They arrested 70 people and dispersed the protesters – but only temporarily. Kiev-allied city officials declared they would ban mass protests in Freedom Square and the city center.

But the next day, hundreds again gathered on the square and outside the fascist-occupied RSA building. On April 9, more than 500 people turned out to demand the release of the detained activists, Borotba reported. The fearful authorities had the courthouse surrounded by 1,000 police and refused to admit members of the public. People picketed the courthouse for several hours, chanting “Power to the people, freedom for the Kharkov defenders,” while parents shouted, “Free our children!”

 The activists were sentenced to two months imprisonment or a fine of 180,000 hryvnia – about $14,000 each. Simultaneously, hundreds more rallied at Freedom Square ahead of a court hearing on the planned demonstration ban. “The ban is aimed not only at us, but at all Kharkovites,” charged Borotba’s Svetlana Tsiberganova.  Borotba and People’s Unity have called for a major demonstration on April 12 in defiance of the ban.  “Despite the repression, the resistance does not subside,” declared Borotba coordinator Sergei Kirichuk.  “The people are going to continue the fight.”ukraine pics

VOAG-Logo-(Ukraine)Support the Ukrainian Anti-fascist Rebellion; For the Donetsk People’s Republic

By Steven Argue
On February 23, one day after taking power, the coup government in Kiev voted to take away the language rights of Hungarian, Romanian, Tatar, and Russian speaking minorities. Eventually the bill was not signed, due in part to large uprisings against it, but the chauvinistic intentions and priorities of the anti-democratic government were made clear. That coup government is made up of a closely knit coalition of three capitalist parties, one of which is the neo-Nazi party Svoboda. For neo-Nazi Svoboda leader, Oleg Tyagnibok, taking away the language rights of the Russian minority will be just the beginning. He recently spoke before supporters in Kiev calling for criminal penalties for speaking in the Russian language. In addition, he called for stripping all ethnic Russians of their Ukrainian citizenship, forcing them to become non-citizens in their own land. In 2010 the official Svoboda internet website included in its program their desire to “physically liquidate all Russian-speaking intellectuals and all Ukrainophobes (Fast, without a trial, shot. Registering Ukrainophobes can be done here by any member of Svoboda).”

Political leaders and people in the media who defend the oppressed Russian nationality have been violently attacked by these neo-Nazi fascists. This includes a neo-Nazi attack by the Svoboda Party that forced the acting CEO of the National Television Company of Ukraine, Aleksandr Panteleymonov, to resign. One of the neo-Nazi thugs participating in the attack is ironically the head of the government’s Freedom of Speech and Information Committee.russian bare ukraineAlso attacked by fascists in the Ukrainian parliament was Communist MP Petro Symonenko who declared of the fascists who carried out the coup in February, “You are today doing everything to intimidate people. You arrest people, start fighting people who have a different point of view…” As if to prove him right, he was then interrupted by fascists of the Svoboda Party who physically attacked him. Likewise, on February 25th, fascist paramilitaries of Svoboda searched Petro Simonenko’s house, looking for evidence of anything, and upon finding nothing, burned down his house using Molotov cocktails.

“Give the scum promises, guarantees and then hang them.”
The Obama administration used these chauvinistic neo-Nazis to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine and they now occupy many key posts in the coup government. In eastern Ukrainian regions where the Russian minority constitutes the majority, there have naturally been uprisings against the chauvinistic central government and its appointed governments in the east such as the deputy head of South Eastern Ukraine as appointed by the illegitimate government in Kiev. He is a wealthy capitalist and criminal named Boris Filatov. Of Nazi collaborator and Nazi mass murderer Stepan Bandera, Filatov states, “I am proud of Bandera. He is my Hero. Particularly, as I see that people are ready to die under red-and-black flags.” Filatov has also stated his recipe for the solution in the region saying, “Give the scum promises, guarantees and then hang them.” When questioned on this later he explained it was just something he said on social media and not an official statement.cboboda
In addition to fascist hatred, the Obama installed coup government in Kiev is agreeing to IMF austerity and other dictates, including a 50% increase in the price of heating fuel. This IMF austerity comes on top of mass unemployment and much lower wages that have happened since the overthrow of the socialist economy in Ukraine with the destruction of the USSR. Higher fuel prices will cause the poor to freeze to death. To impose this austerity, the United States and EU supported the fascists and other ultra-nationalists who took power in Kiev in February.

Naturally, the oppressed Russian nationality of eastern Ukraine has risen up against the new imperialist imposed fascist infested government in Kiev. In Crimea the people voted to get out of Ukraine while the getting was good, with 96.5% of the people voting for Crimea to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia.

russian bareLikewise, the oppressed Czech nationality is looking to get out of Ukraine as well. An estimated 20,000 Czechs live in the Volyn region of Ukraine. During the week of March 20th, Emma Snidevicova, leader of Czechs in Ukraine’s Volyn region, spoke before the Czech parliament appealing for repatriation of Ukrainian Czechs: “The situation in Ukraine is that we are afraid for our lives, families and children. The situation is getting worse every day and pushes us to ask the Czech people to take us back home.”

Czech MP, Radim Fiala, said of the situation: “Crime and banditry is on the rise in western Ukraine, and the local radical groups abiding by the legacy of Stepan Bandera are to blame. Apprehensions of our compatriots who have an experience of clashing with nationalists during the Second World War cannot be ignored.”

Besides Crimea which has now rejoined Russia, and Czechs who are looking to immigrate, there are now strong anti-fascist uprisings across eastern Ukraine, including in Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kharkiv. Buildings have been seized including facilities where weapons are stored. In Donetsk the rebellion has now organized a 12 member ruling panel, declared its independence, and renamed itself the Donetsk People’s Republic. They are asking for a Russian peace keeping contingent to defend them from the illegitimate government in Kiev.

Regarding the potential for an anti-capitalist program in Donetsk, People’s Republic Commissar Nikolai Solntsev has declared the economic policy of the new government would focus on supporting “the working class, not the bourgeoisie.” Unlike the United States, which continues to carry out measures like an economic blockade against Cuba, the Russian Federation already has close relationships with countries with socialist economies, including Russia’s close ties to Belarus. This flows in part from the fact that Russia is only a weak capitalist country with little direct foreign investment, even in neighboring capitalist countries like Ukraine. Russia’s interests in the region have more to do with maintaining good mutual regional trading relationships while the imperialist U.S. and EU are seeking to maximize foreign exploitation while they also seek to isolate Russia.

In response to the uprisings in eastern Ukraine, the Obama administration, EU, and Kiev government are blaming Russia. The reality, however, is that it is the imperialist imposed coup in Kiev and the chauvinism of that government are the cause the anti-fascist uprisings in eastern Ukraine, not Russian intervention.

Leninist-Trotskyists support the anti-fascist uprisings in eastern Ukraine and call for the continued building of non-sectarian self-defense militias to protect oppressed nationalities, Jews, women, unions, and opposition political parties from fascist attacks. In addition, we call for the building of Leninist-Trotskyist parties that fights to overthrow the capitalist system itself, ending IMF austerity, massive unemployment, national oppression, and other devastation capitalism has brought to Ukraine.

For more articles by Steven Argue on recent events in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, check-out:
US & EU Imperialist Hands Off Crimea, Ukraine, Belarus, & Russia! (In Depth)

http://www.class-struggle.com/2014/03/down-with-us-sponsored-neo-nazi-coup-in.html

Communist Party Wins Mayoral Election in Russia’s 3rd Largest City
http://boston.indymedia.org/newswire/display/220100/index.php

For Ukraine’s Self-Defense Militias! For Crimea’s Right To National Self Determination!
http://boston.indymedia.org/newswire/display/219919/index.php

Belarus: President Lukashenko Vows to Prevent a Coup Similar to Ukraine
http://boston.indymedia.org/newswire/display/219864/index.php

Imperialists Out of Ukraine! Stop Supporting Neo-Nazis! (An earlier article before the coup with in-depth analysis)
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/01/26/18749806.phpenemy-is-at-home

VOAG-Logo-(Brick)13Anti-fascists organize resistance
as crisis grips Ukraine coup regime

Workers World, March 28, 2014
Just a month after a U.S.-backed coup d’état in Ukraine brought to power a regime dominated by neo-Nazis and pro-Western capitalist politicians, the ruling junta finds itself in deep crisis.

Threats from the government in Kiev and its U.S. and Western European patrons were unable to intimidate the people of the Crimean autonomous region, who voted overwhelmingly to break away from Ukraine and affiliate with Russia on March 16. Russian President Vladimir Putin and local leaders made it official on March 18.

Now infighting has exploded among the fascist factions in the ruling coalition in Kiev.
The International Monetary Fund, meanwhile, has agreed to give the coup-makers an $18 billion loan — but only if they accept painful austerity measures. These are almost certain to throw Ukraine deeper into chaos.

Further, Kiev has been unable to subdue the rebellious eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, where anti-fascists are digging in to organize grassroots resistance.

People in these major working-class industrial and mining areas are rising to oppose the junta and demand political and economic autonomy. They reject the rule of the billionaire oligarchs appointed as new regional governors by Kiev. Some are even calling for re-nationalization of privatized industries.

Thieves fall out
Overnight on March 27-28, members of the neo-Nazi Right Sector gang surrounded the Ukrainian Rada [parliament] and threatened to storm it — much as they had done a month earlier, when the elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych was toppled.

But this time, the Right Sector was protesting its own erstwhile partners, some of whom were barricaded inside, including members of the far-right Fatherhood party and neo-Nazi Svoboda party. European television broadcast images of Svoboda politicians hanging out of windows shouting epithets while Right Sector goons hurled rocks at them from the street.

What happened?
On March 24, Right Sector leader Aleksandr Muzychko was shot dead during a police raid in the western city of Rovno. Muzychko had a long history of fascist terrorism and was on several international “most wanted” lists — a Ukrainian version of the anti-Cuba terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.

The assassination of Muzychko was followed by raids on Right Sector hideouts and seizures of weapons. The hit came on orders from acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, a representative of the Fatherland party associated with former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Avakov has established a “National Guard” under his command to deputize the fascist gangs and bring them all under the junta’s control. He also masterminded the joint neo-Nazi/police patrols that have suppressed any resistance in the western cities.

Avakov represents the coalition of far-right forces that control the commanding heights of police, military and prosecutorial powers of the new regime. Some forces in the Right Sector, like Muzychko, didn’t want to follow orders. Avakov and his colleagues decided that those who wouldn’t play ball must be eliminated.

The fascist street gangs served their purpose as the violent fists of the Euromaidan protests that ousted Yanukovych. But when it comes to investments and military strategy, Washington, Bonn and the IMF prefer to work with well-groomed, business-suited fascists like Avakov and Svoboda leader Oleh Tyanhybok.

Tymoshenko: ‘Grab a machine gun’
U.S. imperialism has big plans for Ukraine. First, it contains pipelines that control much of the flow of oil and gas between Russia and Western Europe. In addition, stationing NATO troops and weaponry there is also key to U.S. plans to isolate and dismember Russia.

Even after promising the Kiev junta $10 billion in loans, Washington is worried about the stability of the coup. Means have to be found to stabilize the country — that is, make it profitable for the Western imperialists. That means not only controlling the far-right factions in the western part, but quelling the anti-fascist resistance in the south and east.

While the inter-regime crisis was unfolding in Kiev, a leaked phone call posted online revealed more about the fires of war that the Obama administration and congressional leaders are furiously stoking. The call was from former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, considered a leading candidate in the presidential elections planned for May 25. Tymoshenko, a leader of the so-called Orange Revolution of 2004, was imprisoned for corruption before the coup.

Speaking with a former military official after the Crimea referendum, Tymoshenko urged her supporters to “take up arms and kill the fucking Russians along with their leader.” Tymoshenko also said she was ready to “grab a machine gun and shoot [Putin] in the head.” The recording ends with Tymoshenko threatening to use nuclear weapons against the 8 million Russian-speakers living in Ukraine. After the call went public, Tymoshenko claimed the part about using nukes was manipulated. The rest, she confirmed, was accurate.

Anti-fascists build resistance
In the cities of southern and eastern Ukraine, the leftist Union Borotba (Struggle) is one of the groups organizing anti-fascist resistance. Borotba’s central office in Kiev was ransacked after the coup and its activists forced underground. Outside Kiev, Borotba and other anti-fascists work in a hazy state of semi-legality, operating more or less openly depending on the level of organized resistance in each city.

This creates special challenges for organizers. For example, print shop owners refuse to print flyers or newspapers due to threats from the fascists. However, Borotba has managed to get help from sympathetic workers to publish its materials. A 10,000-copy run of “Front,” the first issue of a newspaper published by Borotba and the Antifascist Resistance Center, sold out in just three days. Borotba activists have set up tents and information tables to spread their message and recruit people to local anti-fascist defense committees composed of activists, workers, youths and former Red Army soldiers.

In Kharkov, where the Right Sector murdered two anti-fascists on March 14, Borotba plays a leading role in organizing mass resistance. On March 22, some 2,000 people defied a ban and rallied at Freedom Square for a people’s speakout initiated by Borotba. A major goal of the event was to recruit supporters for the local defense organization, People’s Unity.

The following day, hundreds marched down Rymarska Street to remember the two slain activists. They chanted: “Fascists kill! Power covers up!” Police then charged Borotba leader Denis Levin, a convener of the rally, with violating the ban and ordered him to appear in court on March 26. After a crowd of supporters picketed the court during his hearing, the judge dismissed the charge as “baseless.”

In Odessa, Borotba activists took up the case of Anton Davidchenko, a local resistance leader who was seized by the “Alpha” special police unit on March 17 and kidnapped to Kiev, where he is being held incommunicado. Some 1,000 people defied fascist threats and rallied at Odessa’s Kulikovo Field on March 23 to demand a referendum on autonomy. Led by Regional Council Deputy and Borotba activist Alex Albu, they marched to the prosecutor’s office to demand Davidchenko’s release and an end to the regime’s political repression.

Communist Party holds congress
The Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) has also been targeted by the junta. On its first day, the new regime threatened an outright ban of the KPU. The party’s headquarters in Kiev was trashed and is still occupied by the Right Sector. Party members have been attacked and beaten. KPU leaders have continued to assert their membership in the parliament although they have been effectively banned from Kiev since the coup.

On March 26, the KPU held its 47th Extraordinary Congress in the eastern industrial city of Donetsk. The party nominated its general secretary, Peter Simonenko, to run for president in the May elections. It is unclear whether the KPU will be allowed on the ballot, or what dangers party candidates might face.

Emphasizing the need of the party to preserve its cadres and organization, Simonenko said: “We have grounds for optimism. In a short time, the new regime showed its anti-people nature and incompetence, its inability to govern. The inevitable deterioration of the situation of workers as a result of the requirements of the IMF will inevitably create the basis for a new protest movement.”

Workers, youths and retirees alike are determined to defeat the far-right gangs and push back Western imperialism. They remember their history as part of the Soviet Ukraine, which defeated the fascist occupation during World War II, with support from the Red Army.enemy is at home

VOAG-LogoThe fight by Ukraine to defeat the EU and the US
accentuates the decline of “Pax Americana”

Statement by the Liaison Committee for the Fourth International
(From Socialist Fight No. 16)

Russia’s agreement with Ukraine temporarily dispelled tensions that have created the “EuroMaidan”, demonstrations in favour of the recolonisation of Ukraine by the European Union (EU) on “Maidan” Square (Independence Square) in the centre of the capital Kiev. But the current might not last months and can come back in the form of open civil war in the near future or already a conflict of global proportions, paving the way for a World War III.

UkraineA new diplomatic offensive by the European Union against Ukraine is scheduled for April. The furore was a response to the refusal of the current Ukrainian Government to accept the conditions of the country in November for the Summit in Lithuania, on the eastern flank of the EU, which wanted to celebrate the integration of six former Soviet republics in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus: Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan to 28 EU Nations block.

The Ukraine was the highest prize of the agreement, with their nuclear power plants, factories, farms and pipelines. The failure of the Summit dragged in Lithuania on the side of Russia and also Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus. Desperate, Angela Merkel, Putin warned: “we should overcome the mentality of we or they, the cold war is over” (AFP, 11/28/2013)

The dispute goes in the opposite direction to the false plea of the German Chancellor and will warm up even more and become more intense the more we approach the elections by the Ukrainian Government in 2015. The current battle was only the beginning of the election campaign where the Ukrainian parties represent different interests the world bourgeoisie.yanokovichIt is worth remembering that the “Orange Revolution”, a precursor to the current wave of protests, was unleashed just when European and American imperialism were rejecting the election results that led to the victory of the current President Viktor Yanukovych in 2004, overthrew him and imposed the victory of one candidate pro-imperialist Viktor Yushchenko. It is worth noting that the economic situation in which Ukraine has arrived is the product of the country’s EU integration by all Governments after the capitalist restoration, including Yanukovych.

Vasyl Gouliï, a businessman from 49 years of Ternopil (west) blamed Europe which, according to him, was not firm enough after the episodes of police brutality against demonstrators in Kiev in November. “Europe could have pressed the Government, but she abandoned the Ukraine “, he lamented. “The opposition must act more actively. They should tell you how to get the impeachment of President Viktor Yanukovych” declared 23 year old AFP Pantchuk Lessia, who comes from the region of Chernivtsi in the west.

russian bareThe signing in Moscow of economic agreements providing for a credit of $15 billion to Ukraine and the decrease by a third in the price of Russian gas, while the country is on the verge of bankruptcy, appears to have destabilized the leaders of the defence, unprecedented since the pro-Western Orange Revolution in 2004. After the Moscow agreements, “attempts to form a “technical” Government to sign an association agreement with the EU are no longer valid. The revolt of the oligarchs was drowned out by the cheap gas”, former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko said recently and he made an appeal in favour of the expansion of the defence forces which are stronger today than in 2004, when he was overthrown by the Orange Revolution, says Volodymyr Fessenko. (AFP, 12/22/2013)

Result of 2013 this battle of the new “cold war”
In the battle for the Ukraine, US and EU imperialism has suffered its third major defeat of 2013 for the composite block by Russia and China. The first defeat was in Syria, when Russia stopped the bombing was announced by a US-led military coalition and France against Damascus. The second defeat for the information war, with the asylum given by Moscow to Snowden, former CIA/NSA spy.

It is a war of positions. The Western hegemonic imperialism has been losing ground to the Eurasian pre-imperialist block. 2013 marked a trend which re-versed the imperialist offensive of 2011. The core Sino-Russian counter offensive began after the bloody occupation of Libya and they saw the eminent risk of repetition of the same defeat in Syria, with warmongering escalating in the Pacific Ocean, particularly on the Korean peninsula and retreat in favour of reconciliation between Venezuela and Iran with the United States. But by mid February Venezuela was back in the firing line and the western imperialist counter offensive had resumed in Ukraine.NazisBefore the three losses, the White House acted quickly to crush the anti-Western coup in South Sudan, the newest nation on the planet, arising from the division of Sudan by imperialism. All this accentuates the decline of world forces correlation established for the entire period of the Pax Americana. Decline that is leveraged by the rise of new block of pre-imperialist bourgeois in Russia and China, a kind of late imperial-ism which must be taken advantage of by the world proletariat in its favour against the whole world bourgeoisie.

What is at stake in Ukraine?
After Russia, Ukraine is the richest and militarily powerful of the 14 former Soviet republics. The Ukraine depends on Russian natural gas, although it is self-sufficient in terms of electrical production, due to nuclear power plants and hydroelectric dams. In 2005, was the seventh largest steel producer in the world. The Ukraine has a huge high-tech industrial base; they inherited much of this from the USSR. It includes electronics, armaments and space articles, most of which are still under State control. In the manufacturing sector the country produces metallurgical equipment, diesel locomotives, tractors and automobiles.

The Ukraine is one of the European countries with the highest consumption of energy, in proportion to its GDP, Ukraine consumes twice the amount of energy consumed in Germany. 45% of the energy produced in the country is through its nuclear power plants. The largest nuclear plant in Europe, the Nuclear power plant of Zaporijia, is located in Ukraine.

The issue of Russian gas
25% of the natural gas consumed in the country is produced in Ukraine, but about 35% comes from Russia and the remaining 40% of Central Asia through transit routes controlled by Russia. 85% of Russian gas is delivered to Western Europe via Ukraine. There is one of the core issues which divides the country and the capitalists between west and east. The great economic importance of Ukraine to European imperialism lies in the fact that it’s through Ukrainian pipe-lines almost all Russian gas supplies to Europe pass.

It was precisely to prevent the installation of more NATO military bases in Ukraine and in exchange for control of the Ukrainian pipelines that Russia has agreed to invest $15 billion in debt securities of the Government of Ukraine and reduce by about one-third the price that Naftogaz, Ukraine’s national energy company, pays for gas from Russian State-owned Gazprom, the largest exporter of natural gas on the planet. While the IMF and the European Union require a 40% increase in the price of gas and the de-valuation of the Ukrainian currency, the Grivna.

east westWith the Russian-Ukrainian agreement the EU will be more directly de-pendent on the Russian blue fuel without being able to use Ukrainian pipelines that distribute Russian gas to many nations, as a bargaining chip against Moscow.The economic crisis and the austerity policies of the imperialists pushed the Ukrainian bourgeoisie into the arms of Russia. Until the Lithuania Summit in November, Yanukovych seemed sincerely focused on closer ties with the EU. The turnaround came when he realized that the Ukraine, in the hands of the “Big Three” would go through an intermediate crisis like that suffered by Greece and Spain.

Yanukovych said he needed 160 billion dollars over three years to compensate for the reduction of trade with Russia and Ukraine to help deaden the pain of austerity reforms required by the EU. The EU had little room for manoeuvre, be-cause they couldn’t follow a different road, requiring compliance with the austerity plans by other members of the block and throwing a lifeline to Ukraine. That’s why the EU refused to give the amount required by the Ukrainian Government, offering only half of it.

The Ukraine doesn’t want to follow the path of Greece, Ireland, Italy, Poland and Spain. The “reforms” required by the EU include the currency devaluation, the increase in energy prices for consumers, and cuts in salaries and pensions. The opening of its economy to competition from the west would break many industries Ukraine, especially in the east of the country.

The Ukraine is strongly divided between east and west. In the east is the Soviet-era heavy industry, industries that are threatened with going bankrupt if the wolves of imperialism are let loose on the Ukrainian economy. The New York Times reports: “this is how it works in Ukraine: the east makes money, and the west eats it”. This demonstrates the division; the WSWS reports: “A survey con-ducted by pro-EU European Centre for a Modern Ukraine recorded that only 13% of the population in the east of the country are supporting the protests against the Government, compared to 84% in the west. Yanukovych’s decision not to sign an association agreement with the EU, which was the impetus for the demonstrations, is rejected by most in the west, but supported by 70% in the east”.

Many of the protesters were wrong in the current economic crisis, induced to think that the EU would resolve their crisis, driven by the support given to them by Germany and the US in particular. It serves the economic interests of a few oligarchs who dominate politically Parliament and politics in Ukraine today. How-ever, a sufficient number of them fear Personal ruin if they accept the terms of the EU and remain in the opposition.The role of imperialism-vassal of Germany
The greatest imperialist economy in Western Europe, Germany, is a power exporter of capital to the rest of the planet, but militarily, even after the annexation of Eastern Germany, the country remains, since the end of World War II, a US military colony that hosts no less than 227 military bases and 50 thousand soldiers.

36% of the gas consumed in the country comes from Russia passing through Ukraine and the recolonisation of the latter by the EU would represent the liquidation of the Ukrainian industrial base and the dismissal of thousands of workers, destroying the main point of resistance to recolonisation of Ukraine.

The bourgeois interests of Germany are the spearhead of economic recolonisation of Ukraine. Also, the expansion of NATO to the east requires of imperialism take ownership of all the nuclear power, energy and Ukrainian space. In turn, a defeat of the imperialist interests in Ukraine can awaken the anti-imperialist democratic and anti-fascist struggle throughout the region and in particular in Poland and Austria.

Another openly pro-imperialist “revolution”
What we see today in Ukraine is a fraudulent pro-imperialist “revolution” like dozens of other contrived by the CIA during the cold war, in the processes of capitalist restoration of 1989-1991 and the “Arab spring”. The main claim of the “revolution” was the requirement that the country’s Government to sign a recolonisation agreement of “free trade” with the European Union.

The “popular movement” was triggered after the failure of the pressure exerted directly by the heads of the so-called “Big Three”, Merkel, Hollande and Cameron and the US threat to impose sanctions on the country if US “revolutions” directed by the CIA, the US Embassy, CEOs of multinational companies, NGOs, churches and neo-Nazi parties as the Svoboda (Freedom) which held the emblematic destruction of the monument to Lenin during the recent wave of pro-tests Ukrainian pro-EU [1].

While among organizations that claim to be revolutionary, the study of historical experience of proletarian revolutions of the 20th century is still something pre-dominantly amateur, within the intelligence services and military academies in the pay of big business tactics and the revolutionary strategy are subject to meticulous analysis. So much so that since the cold war imperialism has been improving its know-how in coups camouflaged as “revolutionary”.cbobodaThe first “pro-imperialist revolution” was orchestrated by the intelligence services of England and USA was in 1953 in Iran [2], with the overthrow of the democratically elected Government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh who had thwarted the imperialist interests of the multinational British Petroleum by nationalising it.

The behind-the-scenes description of the successful “Operation Ajax” is made by journalist Stephen Kinzer for the New York Times, in his book All the Shah’s men: An American coup and the roots of terror in the Middle East, he shows that “the CIA engineered a scenario that gives the impression of a popular revolt when in fact it is a covert operation. The highlight of the show was a demonstration in Tehran with eight thousand extras paid by the Agency in order to provide convincing photos the Western press,”(All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle east Terror, 2003).

Anti-imperialist tactic and long term strategy for the Ukraine
The Ukrainian industrial proletariat is the main bulwark against the recolonisation of the country in favour of a “Green Europe” with the spoils of the bureaucratised workers states, with Germany as the control tower of the interests of American imperialism.

How many times in history has capitalist economic crises put the issue of Ukrainian national aspirations on the agenda? The question returns again and again to play an important role on the arena of global class struggle. Here are combined elements of imperialist domination, anti worker and fascism, the anti-Communist eminence of a new imperialist war and a historical reckoning with the Stalinist anti worker policy disaster. On this last question, the greatest of all Ukrainian revolutionaries declared: “Toward the sections of the Ukraine now outside its frontiers, the Kremlin’s attitude today is the same as it is toward all oppressed nationalities, all colonies, and semi-colonies, i.e., small change in its international combinations with imperialist governments. (Leon Trotsky, the Ukrainian question, 2/4/1939)”.

Although the negotiation Putin-Yanukovych has benefited enormously the Ukraine with a reduction in the price of gas in relation to the Greek panorama which proposed the EU, the current Russian bourgeois Government uses much more to Ukraine as a bargaining chip than did the Stalinist bureaucracy in the past. And the current Ukrainian bourgeois Government, representative of regional oligarchies, appropriates part of the ad-vantage of reducing the energy costs that could benefit the people.

Even for democratic demagoguery of Putin in Russia, winter pre-Olympiads, the defeat of imperialism in this battle, cheered the struggle for democratic rights in Russia. However, the struggle for democratic rights in Russia, as it had been for a long time in the USSR, is not addressed by the Communist proletarian vanguard, is almost entirely deformed and influenced the politics of democratic reaction of Western imperialism. The first by-product of this new situation was the release of the members of the rock band Pussy Riot, activists from Greenpeace and the Russian oil Tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an ally of Western imperialism against Putin.

In this battle and the civil war that temporarily ebbed but that accentuate in the coming months, the Liaison Committee for the Fourth International (CLQI) believes that the only option for Ukraine is the struggle which combines the tactics of the Anti-Imperialist Front (AIUF) and the strategy of Permanent Revolution. So, join the methods and goals of permanent revolution in the struggle for national independence, i.e. Ukrainian self-determination against the European Union.

This fight is not about to align itself with the lesser of two evils, in the case with the Russian bourgeoisie, but to fight the greater evil, hegemonic imperialism across the globe. Therefore, tactically we’re with the proletariat of Eastern Ukrainian in a Anti-imperialist Front with the Yanukovych Government against the EU and its mercenaries and fascist agents.

But we denounce the Government of Yanukovych as bourgeois oligarch for having led the country to this situation by betting on a gradual plan of privatization and capitalist restoration. We demand the Government defends and restore the Soviet monuments, the statues of Lenin and the monuments that symbolize the victory of the proletariat over fascism, which now serve as inspiration against the imperialist resettlement already suffered by our Greeks, Irish, Italian, Polish and Spanish brothers and sisters.

The LCFI struggle for the construction of a Bolshevik-type party and inter-nationalist in Ukraine that has as its goals a new social revolution against the bourgeois oligarchies both pro-imperialist and pro-Russian. We fight for workers’ control and the Sovietisation of all the country’s economy, in particular the nuclear plants and alongside the tankers Ukrainians fought for control of exploration, gas production and distribution by the workers themselves, as well as the gas pipelines that the Government wants to deliver to the realm of Gazprom as part of the agreement with Putin.

Under the guidance of the most revolutionary of all Ukrainians, Leon Trotsky, we must fight the Ukrainian worker popu-lation to overcome all prejudices built up historically against communism thanks to bureaucratic centralization of Stalin on his country and that today are used by the fascist nationalism to seduce the masses in favour of imperialism. We are aware that in the words of Trotsky, but for the rape of Soviet Ukraine by the Stalinist bureaucracy there would be no Hitlerite Ukrainian policy. The Fourth International must clearly understand the enormous importance of the Ukrainian question in the fate not only of South-eastern and Eastern Europe but also of Europe as a whole. We are dealing with a people that has proved its viability, that is numerically equal to the population of France and occupies an exceptionally rich territory which, moreover, is of the highest strategical importance. The question of the fate of the Ukraine has been posed in its full scope. A clear and definite slogan is necessary that corresponds to the new situation. In my opinion there can be at the present time only one such slogan: A united, free and independent workers’ and peasants’ Soviet Ukraine. [3].

For us, the LCFI the program of independence of Ukraine at the time of imperialism is directly and inextricably linked to the programme of the proletarian revolution. The liberation of Ukraine from webs of bourgeois domination assumes the complete independence of the country in relation to the Russian bourgeoisie and the domestic fronts oligarchies of some large corporations block II. The real Ukrainian national independence can only be achieved through the fight for a Socialist and Soviet Ukraine as part of the struggle for a new Federation of Socialists and Soviet republics.

Notes
[1] In an interview reproduced on the site, a Ukrainian anarchist Freedom Journal describes how the Svoboda: Today, the main political force in the panorama of the extreme right in Ukraine is, undeniably, the Svoboda. If I had to provide some comparison, compare them with other right-wing parties present in Eastern Europe, as the Hungarian Jobbik party, with which I think the American listeners may be aware. There was a great scandal when a couple of years ago they received many votes in Hungary Svoboda is pretty much the same thing, is a political party that has its own design of a so-called “national” Constitution, which would bring a lot of horrible things, such as the death penalty for what they call “anti-Ukrainian” activities, without defini-tions of what are these “activities”. Basically, anything contrary to the spirit of that party could be considered “anti-Ukrainian”.

Today, in EuroMaidan, they are urging a political strike, but, in fact, what most people do not realize is that in their proposed the new Constitution Svoboda politics would make striking a criminal offence. The paradox is that they have become extremely popular among the educated liberal middle class of urban areas, especially in Kiev. So, today Kiev votes Svoboda, as the western regions of Ukraine make, why don’t they just say, “well, I don’t know what your program. I have not read anything about it, but they seem so hard, they’re good guys, and I’m sure that at least they would break the necks of the corrupt who are now in the ruling party.

This is of course a great reminiscence of his-torical situations in other countries in the 21st century. I don’t want to seem too panicked, but there are some similar features, because the middle class bourgeois people don’t see anything wrong with this. And, to some extent, they’re right, because, if the extreme right WINS across the country, these people will not feel any great difficulties in their lives. The main difficulties would be to the extreme left, against all the leftist parties and movements, and to ethnic minorities and to racial minorities.

But normal people don’t feel anything, at least for some time, and that’s the problem. Also another interesting fact about the Svoboda: they went through a rebranding and now they call themselves “freedom”. This is a generic word for the European right, but until 2005 or 2004, they called themselves Socialist National Party of Ukraine. [Transcriber’s note in original: in fact, the current leader of the Svoboda said that all Ukrainians must become Nazis]. http://www.diarioliberdade.org/mundo/antifascismo-e-anti-racismo/45455-ucr%C3%A2nia-anarquista-ucraniano-dissipa-mitos-que-cercam-os-protestos-do-euromaidan-e-alerta-sobre-a-influ%C3%AAnciafascista.html#.UuQqBaZLY6c.facebook

[2] http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operação_Ajax

[3] Leon Trotsky, Problem of the Ukraine (April 1939), http://www.marxists.org/archive/Voag-Logo-catapult2

SF Logo2As the situation in Ukraine worsens, the fascists become more violent, and the Crimea prepares to secede.

Meanwhile, the debate on the left is proceeding on drearily predictable lines. One side stresses the unarguably grim nature of Putin’s regime and plays down the [very] dark side of those it chooses to support, the other side does the same but the other way round. Both sides shamelessly cherry-pick such data as are to be had and are equally handicapped by knowing little or nothing about the region and even less about the EU. Rather than scooting off to do some work (read a book or two? perish the thought), name-calling becomes the order of the day and the discussion becomes increasingly sterile.

That said, there’s something odd about how everyone is banging on about Putin’s “invasion” of the Crimea without noticing one key point. By any reckoning, it’s a funny sort of invasion. Western incursions into e.g. Iraq typically involve the preliminary destruction of key targets in extensive (but “precision”) bombing of key cities, tens of thousands of troops crossing borders, columns of smoke over villages, pitiful streams of refugees, “collateral damage” and all the bizz. (It’s what you join the army for.)

All we had here was a few goons slipping out of the local barracks (handily, already sited in the “invaded” country), changing into scary uniforms c/w Halloween hats and standing outside the other side’s office looking very tough indeed. OK, it may have escalated a bit since then but not a single fatality can as yet, it seems, be blamed on the Russian military. What kind of invasion is that?

It occurs to me that the hysteria over Russian sabre-rattling is down less to the impact of military “atrocities” and more to the fact that there is little or nothing that the EU or the US can do about Russia’s not entirely unreasonable (and certainly predictable) defence of its interests. Sanctions? Forget it, the Germans would never wear/can’t afford them. Cut off the gas? Neither side wants that. Invade? C’mon. The EU/US axis has over-reached itself in its hubristic zeal to humiliate Moscow, itself a declining power. The Atlantic Powers are still smarting from their humiliation over Syria. And so on.

I wonder if the real risk is not that some dirty, face-saving deal will be struck, that the US will, as it usually does, declare a victory and leave and that the EU will pick up the tab for Ukraine’s unpaid bills and set about “liberalising” the economy (aka flogging off the silver and screwing the poor) to get its money back. Meanwhile, just as happened in the Balkans twenty-odd years ago, the fiasco has unleashed some very grim forces on both sides whose victims will be left to defend themselves with little by way of succour, the Eurocrats having scuttled back to Brussels and the US having found a new game to play. One has to hope that the Ukranian left is up to the challenge and that the western left does not move on with the same aplomb as its masters.enemy is at home

SF Logo2“Defeat imperialism and Nazism in Ukraine!
United Front with Putin, the devil and his grandmother!”

Statement by the Liaison Committee for the Fourth International. 8/2/2014
“Defence against fascism is not an isolated thing. Fascism is only a cudgel in the hands of finance capital. The aim of the crushing of proletarian democracy is to raise the rate of exploitation of labor power. There lies an immense field for the united front of the proletariat: the struggle for daily bread, extended and sharpened, leads directly under present conditions to the struggle for workers’ control of production.” Leon Trotsky, The United Front for Defence, A Letter to a Social Democratic Worker, (February 1933), http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1933/330223.htm

A Nazi-dominated government
Make no mistake; the recent events in the Ukraine signal that the international proletariat faces the most serious threat to its organised existence since the dark days of February 1933 when Trotsky wrote these words. Look at what Wikipedia reveals of the nature of the Svoboda party:

“In 2004, (Svoboda) party leader Tyahnybok was expelled from the Our Ukraine parliamentary faction for a speech calling for Ukrainians to fight against a “Muscovite-Jewish mafia.” Svoboda advisor Yuriy Mykhalchyshyn established a “‘Joseph Goebbels Political Research Centre” in 2005, later changing “Joseph Goebbels” to “Ernst Jünger.” Mykhalchyshyn wrote a book in 2010 citing works by Nazi theorists Ernst Röhm, Gregor Strasser and Goebbels. Elsewhere Mykhalchyshyn referred to the Holocaust as a “period of Light in history”.” Svoboda (political party), From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VO_Svoboda

There are seven ministers from the far-right in the new Ukrainian government; Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Sych is from the neo-fascist Svoboda party. The World Jewish Congress has called for the EU to ban this party but the EU has no problem with fascists when needed to crush the working class. Immediately after the removal of President Viktor Yanukovych from power on Feb. 22, the Ukrainian Parliament repealed a controversial law passed in 2012 that allowed the use of “regional languages” – including Russian, Hungarian, Romanian and Tatar — in courts and certain government functions in areas of the country where such speakers constituted at least 10 percent of the population. This is a list of other t acts voted through the Ukrainian parliament by the Nazi-led government: 4201 – Bill to ban Ukrainian Communist Party activity. 4217 – Bill to redress antecedents of the Soviet occupation of Ukraine. 4176 – Bill to repeal law penalizing Nazi propaganda. 4184 – Bill to place V. Avakov as minister of the interior and members of “Right Sector” party on ministry staff (Avakov also belongs to the party which many consider fascist).4215 – Bill to establish a “Pantheon of national heroes.”4203 – Bill to curb state spending.4215 – Bill to pay tribute to participants in the clashes during peaceful demonstrations.4197 – Bill to place “Svoboda” party member Α.Mahnitskogo as Prosecutor General.4204 – Bill delineating the duties of the President of the Uraine.4191 – Bill to place “UDAR” party member V.A. Nalivaychenko as overseer of Ukrainian Security Agencies4211 – Bill to fire incumbent officers and personnel of security forces and replace them with new personnel (the latter are believed to be members of extreme right wing groups).

U.S. imperialism is more consistent in defending the interests of finance capital and therefore prefer fascism rather than just an alternative right-wing who are pro-European. But Workers Power thinks: “This was the result of the USA’s successful efforts to frustrate the plans of German imperialism and its Ukrainian client Vitali Klitschko, whose Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform received nothing in the anti-democratic distribution of spoils. The US imperialists would rather have “their” people in power – even if that means getting into bed with the fascists of Svoboda.” http://www.workerspower.co.uk/2014/03/ukraine-kyiv-regime-rules-under-fascist-whip/ Ukraine: Kyiv regime rules under fascist whip, http://www.workerspower.co.uk

It is no coincidence that since the Second World War, the U.S. assumed the role of policeman of the planet and supplanted Nazism in the art of keeping control of the planet for the finance capital. Learning and applying an opposite and symmetrical method of permanent revolution, we find that only after the dictatorship of the proletariat can it crush fascism, as the USSR did against Hitler. Capitalist “democracy” is unable to perform a consistent struggle against fascism, because when capitalism feels threatened sufficiently it resorts to fascism. As Trotsky observed: “Moreover, if it often impossible to make the army march against the people. It begins by disintegrating and ends with the passage of a large section of the soldiers over to the people’s side. That is why finance capital is obliged to create special armed bands, trained to fight the workers just as certain breeds of dog are trained to hunt game. The historic function of fascism is to smash the working class, destroy its organizations, and stifle political liberties when the capitalists find themselves unable to govern and dominate with the help of democratic machinery.” The collapse of bourgeois democracy, From Whither France? 1934

Anti imperialist and Anti fascist United Front
We are for an Anti imperialist and Anti fascist United Front with Russia and Ukrainian workers and for armed workers defence squads and permanent revolution to win the struggle. This means a united front without political support with Putin, with the Eastern oligarchs or with the devil and his grandmother to smash these “storm troopers of finance capital”.

If Russia invades to seize the east of the Ukraine, thereby smashing the fascist there the working class should form a united front with them, knowing that on the morrow they would have to fight their former allies and whatever government the Russians might install in the east as representatives of the oligarchs there who would then form a new alliance with western Imperialism.

Thus did Lenin form a temporary cease fire alliance with Kerensky against the main danger, the Kornilov coup attempt in August 30 (12 September) 1917. It was a change of tactics forced by events and here is how he explained it: “Even now we must not support Kerensky’s government. This is unprincipled. We may be asked: aren’t we going to fight against Kornilov? Of course we must! But this is not the same thing; there is a dividing line here, which is being stepped over by some Bolsheviks who fall into compromise and allow themselves to be carried away by the course of events.

We shall fight, we are fighting against Kornilov, just as Kerensky’s troops do, but we do not support Kerensky. On the contrary, we expose his weakness. There is the difference. It is rather a subtle difference, but it is highly essential and must not be forgotten.

What, then, constitutes our change of tactics after the Kornilov revolt?We are changing the form of our struggle against Kerensky. Without in the least relaxing our hostility towards him, without taking back a single word said against him, without renouncing the task of overthrowing him, we say that we must take into account the present situation. We shall not overthrow Kerensky right now. We shall approach the task of fighting against him in a different way, namely, we shall point out to the people (who are fighting against Kornilov) Kerensky’s weakness and vacillation. That has been done in the past as well. Now, however, it has become the all-important thing and this constitutes the change.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/aug/30.htm

Whilst we recognise that any Russian military invasion would be primarily aimed at securing the privileges of the Russian bourgeoisie, nevertheless it would be in opposition to the main enemy, Western Imperialist finance capital and their Nazi-front government. The working class should fight side by side with the Russian troops and their supporters in the East against the Nazi-led government in order to defeat them and all the better to prepare the overthrow of their temporary allies on the morrow just as Lenin did in September 1917. And it is not a question of supporting the “lesser evil” but one of tactical orientation to face the main danger. As Trotsky explained in December 1931:

“We Marxists regard Brüning and Hitler, Braun included, as component parts of one and the same system. The question as to which one of them is the “lesser evil” has no sense, for the system we are fighting against needs all these elements. But these elements are momentarily involved in conflicts with one another and the party of the proletariat must take advantage of these conflicts in the interest of the revolution. There are seven keys in the musical scale. The question as to which of these keys is “better” – do, re, or sol – is a nonsensical question. But the musician must know when to strike and what keys to strike. The abstract question of who is the lesser evil – Brüning or Hitler – is just as nonsensical. It is necessary to know which of these keys to strike. Is that clear? For the feeble-minded let us cite another example. When one of my enemies sets before me small daily portions of poison and the second, on the other hand, is about to shoot straight at me, then I will first knock the revolver out of the hand of my second enemy, for this gives me an opportunity to get rid of my first enemy. But that does not at all mean that the poison is a “lesser evil” in comparison with the revolver.” Leon Trotsky, For a Workers’ United Front Against Fascism (December 1931) http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1931/311208.htm

The working class in the Ukraine must defend all ethnic minorities, Tartars, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Moldovans, Jews, etc. However we have no faith in Zionism to defend Jews here, as the Zionist leaders collaborated with Hitler during WWII the Zionist in the Ukraine are giving full support to the anti-Semitic coupists government. Ukrainian Chief Rabbi Alexander Dukhovny met US Secretary of State John Kerry on 4 March and said; “The bulk of the Jewish community supports the protests…The protestors fought for freedom and democracy, for European values and standards.” The Jewish News 6 March 2014 P. 2

If Russia does invade their army will not attack the workers and revolutionaries will urge Ukrainian troops workers organisations to fraternise with the Russian troops. We fight for the solidarity of the Russian working class with the Ukrainian working class against the Nazi-dominated pro-Imperialist government.

Workers United Front or Popular Font?
“Ah” but some have objected, “yours is not a Workers’ United Front because it contains Russia and the Eastern Ukraine bourgeoisie, the corrupt oligarchs. This is not the Trotskyist a Workers’ United Front but the Stalinist unprincipled opportunist Popular Front you are proposing here.” Ukraine is not an imperialist country but a semi-colonial country which formed part of the degenerated workers state that was the USSR until its collapse in 1991. Its capitalist class emerged in alliance with Boris Yeltsin and US imperialism as corrupt oligarchs. However the emergence in 2000 of Putin as Russian President marked an assertion of the rights of the national bourgeoisie to retain more of the profits from the exploitation of the workers in Russia in opposition the dominance of Wall Street’s and its allies’ finance capital. A similar process, took place in the Ukraine with the conflict between Yushchenko and Yanukovych during the Orange Revolution of 2004 and then between Yanukovych and Yulia Tymoshenko in 2010. Behind the conflicts of the oligarchs was the conflict between US/EU finance capital and the national bourgeoisie, a “semi-oppressed, semi-oppressing” class in the semi colonies, which Russia had then become. Therefore our tactics must be based not only on the Workers United Front but also on the Anti-Imperialist United Front as outlined by the Revolutionary Comintern at the Fourth Congress in 1922:

“The workers’ united front is the slogan advanced in the West during the transition period, characterised by the organised gathering of forces. Similarly in the colonial East at the present time the key slogan to advance is the anti-imperialist united front. Its expediency follows from the perspective of a long-drawn-out struggle with world imperialism that will demand the mobilisation of all revolutionary elements. This mobilisation is made all the more necessary by the tendency of the indigenous ruling classes to make compromises with foreign capital directed against the fundamental interests of the mass of the people. Just as in the West the slogan of the workers’ united front has helped and is still helping to expose the social democrats’ sell-out of proletarian interests, so the slogan of an anti-imperialist united front will help to expose the vacillations of the various bourgeois-nationalist groups. This slogan will also help the working masses to develop their revolutionary will and to increase their class consciousness; it will place them in the front ranks of those fighting not only imperialism, but the remnants of feudalism.” Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 5 December 1922, VI. The Anti-Imperialist United Front, https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/4th-congress/eastern-question.htm

But with the difference that today feudalism and its remnants are long gone and the working class in the more advanced semi-colonies are far more numerous, powerful and better organised than in Lenin’s or even Trotsky’s time. One only has to look at the TU federations in South Africa, Brazil, India or Egypt to appreciate this.

What type of Imperialism?
Nevertheless, as Trotsky explains: “We do not and never have put all wars on the same plane. Marx and Engels supported the revolutionary struggle of the Irish against Great Britain, of the Poles against the tsar, even though in these two nationalist wars the leaders were, for the most part, members of the bourgeoisie and even at times of the feudal aristocracy… at all events, Catholic reactionaries. …To speak of “revolutionary defeatism” in general, without distinguishing between exploiter and exploited countries, is to make a miserable caricature of Bolshevism and to put that caricature at the service of the imperialists.” Leon Trotsky, On the Sino-Japanese War, http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/10/sino.htm

”But at least you must concede that Russia is Imperialist” our critics object “Russia and China are Imperialists like the US, UK, France Germany and Japan surely?” They are not imperialist in the Marxist sense of the word, only in the sloppy sense of wanting to expand their sphere of influence, as Trotsky explains here in relation to the Former USSR in 1939:

“History has known the “imperialism” of the Roman state based on slave labor, the imperialism of feudal land-ownership, the imperialism of commercial and industrial capital, the imperialism of the Czarist monarchy, etc… However, in contemporary literature, at least Marxist literature, imperialism is understood to mean the expansionist policy of finance capital which has a very sharply defined economic content. To employ the term “imperialism” for the foreign policy of the Kremlin – without elucidating exactly what this signifies – means simply to identify the policy of the Bonapartist bureaucracy with the policy of monopolistic capitalism on the basis that both one and the other utilize military force for expansion. Such an identification, capable of sowing only confusion, is much more proper to petty-bourgeois democrats than to Marxists.” http://www.revolutionaryhistory.co.uk/state-cap/fourth-international/state-capitalism/again-and-once-more-again-on-the-nature-of-the-ussr.htm

Therefore we are not facing two imperialist blocs, the U.S. and EU, on one side, and the Eurasian bloc, Russia and China on the other. Russia is an immense bourgeois nation with military independence against Western imperialism, responsible for providing 30% of the gas to Europe, but the export of capital does not predominate over the export of goods (gas, weapons) in the Russian economy.

Beginning with the US/EU-sponsored attack on Yugoslavia in 1995 and 1999, Libya and Syria in 2011 and now in the Ukraine we are told by many on the far left that these are proxy inter-imperialist wars and so we must either support the pro-western Imperialist side fighting for “democracy” (which never comes) or we can take no side for the working class. This is in line with Marxist principles that we should be dual-defeatist in inter-Imperialist wars. But we cannot even fit it into that scenario, the best of these far left groups are third campists, the worst are unashamed supporters of their own ruling class. These are demoralised centrist forces who cannot see any alternative to ‘democratic’ Imperialism and now champion its every lie and every item of war propaganda in support of their regime change global offensive.

In 1916 Lenin provided a careful, 5-point definition of imperialism: “(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.” Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, A POPULAR OUTLINE, http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch07.htm

Since he wrote that a number of things have changed. The results of two world wars and the collapse of the USSR in 1991 have led to the global dominance of the USA as the sole world superpower. The ‘Imperialism’ of Russia and China are substantially different; pre-imperialist may be a better term.

Imperialism today
Today London continues to top the list of the world’s leading financial centres, with New York close behind in second-place, according the latest edition of The Global Financial Centres Index. Sometimes referred to as Ny-Lon, these two cities have dominated global finance for the past couple of centuries.

Hong Kong and Singapore rank third and fourth, with Zurich in fifth place. Tokyo, Geneva, Boston, Seoul, and Frankfurt round out the top 10. Cities in the United States and Canada take the next seven spots, with Chicago in 11th, Toronto 12th, San Francisco 13th, Washington, D.C. 14th, Vancouver 15th, Montreal 16th, and Calgary 17th. Moscow is nowhere and its “imperialism” is so far from that of the US that there is just no comparison.

If we look at a few other economic and military statistics we find that all those countries that some on the left call Imperialist just do not figure in the top flight at all; they either have puny economic and military might, have no multi-national companies in the world’s top 2000, have no foreign military bases i.e. they cannot compete in all spheres with the USA and its close allies UK, France, Germany and Japan.

1. Top 2,000 multi-nationals We have abstracted these details from Forbes 2,000 top companies which gives a good indication of the balance of global economic forces: Of the top 2,000 firms in the world on 17 April 2013 the USA has 543, Japan 251, China 136, UK 95, France 64, South Korea 64, Canada 64, India 56, Germany 50, Switzerland 48, Hong Kong-China 46, Australia 42, Taiwan 41, Brazil 31, Italy 30, Russia 30, Spain 28, Holland 24, Sweden 23.

Banks and diversified financials still dominate the list, with a combined 469 (down 9 from last year) companies, thanks in large measure to their sales and asset totals. The next three biggest industries by membership are oil & gas (124 firms), materials (122 firms) and insurance (109 firms). [20]

When the list first appeared in 2004 the US had almost 1,000 on it, but that decline, whilst real, is offset by the dominant position of the US dollar as the world’s reserve trading currency enforced by its military might and by locating company HQs abroad to take advantage of small economies with very favourable corporate tax regimes from which profits are repatriated to the US. For instance Ireland’s 17 companies apparently place it in the same league as South Africa, Mexico and Saudi Arabia, a ridiculous comparison. In reality up to half of those companies are not really Irish at all except in name. Take its top company, Accenture plc, which is “engaged in providing management consulting, technology and outsourcing services”. It is 318th on the list with a market capitalisation of $53.34 Billion and is clearly a US trans national corporation.

2. Top Stock Exchanges Here are the statistic for the top ten stock exchanges ($US billions) 1. NYSE Euronext, United States/Europe, $14,085. 2. NASDAQ OMX Group, United States/Europe, $4,582. 3. Tokyo Stock Exchange, Japan $3,478. 4. London Stock Exchange, $3,396. 5. Hong Kong Sock Exchange, $2,831. 6. Shanghai Stock Exchange, $2,547. 7. TMX Group, Canada, $2,058. 8. Deutsche Börse, Germany, $1,486. 9. Australian Securities Exchange, $1,386. 10. Bombay Stock Exchange, $1,263. Note the two US stock exchanges are as big as the next eight combined.

3. Ranking by Gross Domestic Product The ranking of countries by Gross Domestic Product, this time the top 20: (Millions of $US), World $70,201,920. 1. United States $14,991,300, 2. China $7,203,784, 3. Japan $5,870,357. 4. Germany $3,604,061. 5. France $2,775,518. 6. Brazil $2,476,651. 7. United Kingdom, 2,429,184. 8. Italy $2,195,937. 9. India $1,897,608. 10 Russia $1,857,770. 11 Canada $1,736,869. 12. Australia $1,515,468. 13. Spain $1,478,206. 14. Mexico $1,155,206. 15. South Korea $1,116,247. 16. Indonesia $846,834. 17. Netherlands $836,823, 18. Turkey $774,983. 19. Switzerland $660,762. 20. Saudi Arabia $597,086.

Again the US, with its close allies Japan, France and the UK outstrip all others by a huge margin:
4. Biggest military Expenditure: The top 15 for military expenditure. ($US billions): 1. United States $682.0. 2. China $166.0. 3. Russia $90.7. 4. United Kingdom $60.8. 5. Japan $59.3. 6. France $58.9. 7. Saudi Arabia $56.7. 8. India $46.1. 9. Germany $45.8. 10. Italy $34.0. 11. Brazil $33.1. 12. South Korea $31.7. 13. Australia $26.2. 14. Canada $22.5. 15. Turkey $18.2. Note the US expenditure is equal to the combined total of all the other 14 on the list.

5. Fleets, aircraft carriers and military bases worldwide The US has five battleship fleets, the Second Fleet in the Atlantic, the Third Fleet in the Eastern Pacific, the Fifth Fleet in the Arabian Gulf and Indian Ocean, the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean and the Seventh Fleet in the Western Pacific. No other nation gets a look in here. This is a list of the aircraft carriers in service in 2013: United States 10, Italy 2, United Kingdom, 1, France 1, Russia 1, Spain 1, India 1, Brazil 1, China 1 and Thailand 1.

6. The Transnational Institute reports on overseas military bases: Foreign military bases are found in more than 100 countries and territories. The US currently maintains a world-wide network of some 1000 military bases and installations (outside the US, 2,639 including US home bases in 1993). In addition, other NATO countries, such as France and the UK have a further 200 such military locations within the network of global military control. The biggest “host” countries are those that once lost a major war in which the US was involved. Germany, Italy, Japan and Korea are the four biggest ‘hosts’. France and the UK mainly have bases in the remains of their colonial empires. The UK is strong in the South Atlantic and around the Mediterranean; France is strong in the South Pacific and in Africa. Russia currently has six military facilities in former Soviet Republics and India has one in Tajikistan. China currently has no US-style overseas bases.

It is not sufficient to take just one index to determine whether a country is imperialist. For instance if we take GDP alone immediately the question of GDP per capita arises. It is the relationship between the nations that is the crucial question; is that nation oppressed by the big Imperialist powers or is its economy integrated into the world Imperialist structures to exploit other nations for the mutual benefit of both? These are sometimes called piggy-back Imperialist powers; they follow and penetrated markets opened up by the big powers. On all those indices Brazil, South Africa, and India are not Imperialist powers. Neither are Russia and China on the majority of them. Bur “how different is the relationship today between Russia and China to the world market and that of Russia in 1917, which Lenin was very sure was an imperialist power on the basis of economic statistics?” our critics ask.

In his Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism, the section on finance capital Lenin makes this differentiation which has enormously advanced since 1945. He points out that in 1910: “Together, these four countries (Britain, France, the USA and Germany) own 479,000 million francs, that is, nearly 80 per cent of the world’s finance capital. In one way or another, nearly the whole of the rest of the world is more or less the debtor to and tributary of these international banker countries, these four “pillars” of world finance capital.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch03.htm

What path for human liberation; hypocritical Christian morality or revolutionary Marxism?
It is not a question of supporting Assad or the Taliban or reactionary anti-Imperialist forces against their own working class or supporting women’s oppression at their hands. No, it is a question of fighting Imperialism and seeking its defeat. Of course it is true bourgeois nationalist regimes like that of Gaddafi in Libya or Assad in Syria would fight on behalf of Imperialism if it suited them. Remember the many favours Gaddafi did for the West; how can we forget that the terrible Tel al-Zaatar massacre during the Lebanese Civil War on August 12, 1976 was facilitated by Assad’s father Hafez al-Assad? And also fundamentalists fight on behalf of imperialism for instances in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation, in Libya, and now in Syria. But when they are fighting against it as in Mali, Palestine and the Hezbollah in Lebanon we must be with them.

The question is, are they fighting for or against Imperialism right now? Principled Marxists must fight Imperialism alongside those who are fighting it right now to the point politically of forming an Anti-Imperialist United Front in practice, either by means of formal agreement if possible but at any rate politically against Imperialism and its proxies. We insist this is an absolute imperative for every revolutionary socialist. Imperialism imposes an anti-human mode of production on the entire planet that causes the alienation that is so oppressive that it distorts all human relationships everywhere, it causes great personal unhappiness and mental illness, it brings war and famine to humanity whose material recourses and technological advancement are such that every reasonable want and need of every human being on the planet could be satisfied right now if these were deployed in a rational and planned manner. And that is before the great leap in human wealth and culture a global planned economy would bring. Imperialism gives humanity a glimpse of what is possible only to deny its benefits to the great bulk of humanity and leave us contemplating the obscene spectacle of the greatest gap between the poor and the rich the world has ever known; the richest 1% of adults alone own 40% of global assets and the richest 10% of adults account for 85% of the world’s total wealth. In contrast, the bottom half of the world’s adult population own barely 1% of global wealth.

If we understand fully what imperialism is we must take the side of all anti-Imperialist fighters, not uncritically, not foolishly to risk their own lives or concede to them the mantle of socialism or communism or indeed any consistent anti-Imperialism at all. But in a principled manner to fight together to defeat the central enemy of all oppressed humanity in order to expose the inconsistencies of the existing leaders of the semi-colonial masses and TU bureaucratic misleaders everywhere and thereby lay the basis for a true revolutionary internationalist anti-Imperialism, a reforged Fourth International. This will strengthen the internationalism and fighting capacity of the working class in the semi-colonial countries as they see revolutionary forces in the metropolitan countries fighting on their behalf against their own imperialists. And it will encourage the working class in the metropolitan countries to reject their own imperialist rulers and embrace the common cause of workers’ internationalism. Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains!

And what does Imperialism do? We can do no better that to quote William Blum from Killing Hope to establish the main enemy beyond any doubt: “Post-cold war, New-World-Order time, it looks good for the MIIC (Military Intelligence Industrial complex) and their global partners in crime, the World Bank and the IMF. They’ve got their NAFTA and their GATT World Trade Organization. They’re dictating economic, political and social development all over the Third World and Eastern Europe. Moscow’s reaction to events anywhere is no longer a restraining consideration… Everything in sight is being deregulated and privatized. Capital prowls the globe with a ravenous freedom it hasn’t enjoyed since before World War I, operating free of friction, free of gravity. The world has been made safe for the transnational corporation.” “If you flip over the rock of American foreign policy of the past century, this is what crawls out; invasions, bombings, overthrowing governments, occupations, suppressing movements for social change, assassinating political leaders, perverting elections, manipulating labor unions, manufacturing “news”, death squads, torture, biological warfare, depleted uranium, drug trafficking, mercenaries… It is enough to give imperialism a bad name.” — William Blum, Killing Hope

We have comprehensively demonstrated that US-dominated finance capital Imperialism is the main threat to the entire working class and oppressed on the planet. There are, of course, secondary enemies in the national bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations but in all of politics and all ward and threats of war we must identify this main enemy and seek to baulk its projects and defeat its aims by whatever tactical alliance with the devil and his grandmother are necessary. Such is the Marxist programme for world revolution. enemy is at home

French military oversees power-sharing deal in Central African Republic

By Patrick O’Connor, 31 January 2013
After deploying several hundred troops to the Central African Republic late last month, the French government has overseen the signing of a peace agreement between President François Bozizé and leaders of the rebel militias that had threatened to overrun the capital, Bangui.

As well as agreeing not to nominate for another term as president after 2016, Bozizé has sacked his government and appointed rebel-nominated Nicolas Tiangaye as prime minister. Tiangaye will soon establish a so-called national unity government ahead of fresh legislative elections next year.

The political realignment underway is being driven by the French government, which aims to reassert control over its former resource-rich colony and counter China’s growing economic and diplomatic influence. The operation in the Central African Republic forms part of a wider drive by US and French imperialism to bolster their strategic domination over Africa through direct military interventions. The latest involves a French-led ground offensive in northern Mali and the stationing of US drones and French troops in neighbouring Niger.

Bozizé, a former army general, appointed himself president in 2003 after leading a coup that was backed by the French government. He subsequently depended on French support to maintain power in the impoverished and chronically unstable country. In 2006 and 2007, French military forces stationed in the country launched air strikes and ground attacks on rebel militias, halting their threatened takeover of the capital and overthrow of the government. Last December, the loose coalition of anti-government militias known as Seleka (“alliance” in the Sango national language) launched a renewed offensive, capturing swathes of territory in the country’s north and east.

The French government responded by more than doubling its existing 250-troop deployment in the Central African Republic to nearly 600. But unlike in 2006 and 2007, Paris refused to back Bozizé against the rebels. French troops—together with those in the Central African Multi-National Force that was formed between several neighbouring states—instead secured the capital from a further rebel advance while the French government demanded peace negotiations.

The January 11 deal, signed in the west African country of Gabon, involved Bozizé making the first significant political concessions of his 10-year autocratic presidency.

The French government is developing new political mechanisms in the Central African Republic (CAR). US diplomatic cables, published by WikiLeaks, detailed the breach in relations between Paris and the Bozizé regime. Several cables in 2009 revealed French hostility toward various obstacles that were placed before French corporation Areva as it attempted to secure the rights to mine uranium at a site in the country’s south. On June 17, 2009, US ambassador Frederick Cook dispatched a cable, “French-CAR relations seriously strained,” that concluded: “Bozizé may believe that he has successfully rendered himself the least of the evils in the CAR political landscape. He thus appears to imagine himself indispensable to his neighbours and the French, an assumption that may be badly mistaken.”

Another cable sent five months later was headed “Growing Chinese influence in the CAR evident.” It detailed the extent to which both American and French interests were losing ground to Beijing, which was “ramping up its military cooperation, public diplomacy and development efforts.” The cable noted that whereas there were only four resident diplomatic agents in the American embassy in Bangui, the Chinese embassy had about 40 employees. It added that approximately 40 CAR military officers were being trained in China every year, compared to the two or three officers who went to the US and 10-15 to France.

Making clear the predatory calculations behind the US and French presence in the Central African Republic, the cable referred to the country’s “rich untapped natural resources” and warned: “With French investments moribund and French influence in general decline, the Chinese are likely positioning themselves as the CAR’s primary benefactor in exchange for access to the CAR’s ample deposits of uranium, gold, iron, diamonds, and possibly oil.”

The US ambassador also cautioned that Bozizé “is welcoming this relationship as an alternative to more restrictive relations with the French and the West” and would likely “increasingly embrace the Chinese as an alternative to the French and other Western benefactors.”

On December 27, Bozizé gave a speech in which he hinted that French opposition to the earlier issuing of oil exploration contracts to Chinese corporations was behind the crisis. “Before giving oil to the Chinese I met with [oil company] Total in Paris and told them to take the oil,” he declared. “Nothing happened. I gave oil to the Chinese and it became a problem.”

According to Voice of America, at the same time that Bozizé signed the power-sharing agreement on January 11, he declared that he would “work to strengthen ties with China, and to promote oil exploration and development.”

Bozizé likely remains in power only due to the absence of any viable alternative for the imperialist powers. The Seleka rebels are a fractious coalition, comprising various militias with different agendas. Some of the militias were formed by supporters of former President Ange-Félix Patassé, some purport to represent the country’s Muslim minority, while others were organised by different tribal communities, defending themselves against Bozizé’s brutal security forces. It is unclear whether all the militias will accept the terms of the January 11 deal, which involves the rebels relinquishing control of the towns they captured to government forces.The VOAG

Reply to Michael Pröbsting and the RCIT

What a strange but delightfully dialectical face ‘liberation’ has in Libya today! – By Gerry Downing, Socialist Fight.

The 10,800 word article by Michael Pröbsting Liberation struggles and imperialist interference in Revolutionary Communism News Newsletter of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (Rcit), No.12, 24.10.2012 deserves some consideration because it seek to defend their indefensible pro-imperialist position on Libya and attacks those who took a principled stance.[1]

However we reject the lumping together the positions of the Liaison Committee of the Fourth International with those of the ICL/Spartacists and the Internationalist Group/LFI. There are big differences; these two groups and the International Bolshevik Tendency, the third member of the ‘Spart family’, refused to defend Libya against the CIA-directed Benghazi rebels in their proxy war on Gaddafi from the outset and never took the principled orientation of the Anti-Imperialist United Front, adopting the softer and incorrect line of ‘military bloc’, as against the positions of the early Comintern under Lenin and Trotsky, which Trotsky defended until his assassination in 1940.[2]


However incorrect the label of ‘sectarian anti-imperialists’ might be for the first three groups mentioned it is at least arguable in terms of the political orientation of  the Rcit. But it is clearly a lying political amalgam to lump in the ultra-Stalinist Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) with the three; their leader Harpar Brar took a totally unprincipled position of uncritical political defence of Gaddafi himself, visiting Tripoli to implicitly express contempt for the oppressed migrant workers in particular who suffered so badly under the regime and the pacts with Imperialism on the detention of immigrants bound for Europe in concentration camps in the desert, etc.

And we reject also the suggestion that we hold the position of the old WRP under Gerry Healy and the present position of the WRP under Sheila Torrance who are similarly uncritical of Gaddafi albeit in the name of the objectively unfolding world revolution which found its unconscious agents in the form of Gaddafi, Arafat, Saddam and even Khomeini and not of the two stage revolution of the Stalinists, even if that is the ultimate logic of the Healyite position.

To substitute Gaddafi for Chiang Kai-shek in Trotsky on China in 1937 the LCFI defended the “remainder of the independence of Libya” – Gaddafi was not totally controlled by Imperialism.  “The Eiffelite imbeciles try to jest about this “reservation.” “The Trotskyists,” they say, “want to serve Gaddafi in action and the proletariat in words.” To participate actively and consciously in the war does not mean “to serve Gaddafi” but to serve the independence of a (semi) colonial country in spite of Gaddafi”.[3]

This consists of a long theoretical defence of the Rcit positions, drawn from the arsenal of Workers Power, from whom they split in 2011 with little political differences, and then a defence of their stance on Libya on the ridiculous basis that the current situation is a great step forward and the ‘democratic revolution’ is powering ahead. In the course of the theoretical defence Pröbsting either junks or contemptuously belittles great principles of Marxism, Leninism and Trotskyism.
 
He says, “We are anti-imperialist because we take the stance of the working class … and not the other way round” This is the position of the ‘Eiffelite imbeciles’ above. We must be anti-imperialist because Wall Street-dominated global finance capital controls all our lives. In claiming that they are taking the “stance of the working class” the Rcit mean supporting pro-imperialist workers in metropolitan countries who do not understand this, which is what all the Fifth Internationalist groupings which originated from Workers Power do. “The Bolsheviks-Communists support any real movement of the popular masses against the suppression of democratic rights” says Michael. But what is a “real movement”? As Trotsky says, “but the masses are by no means identical: there are revolutionary masses, there are passive masses, there are reactionary masses.”

Michael says, “In reality the imperialist meddling is no help for the revolutionary-democratic struggle, but threatens to undermine it. That is why we have supported progressive liberation struggles of the masses against dictatorships, but at the same time rejected sharply imperialist interventions. (e.g. the struggle of the Bosnians 1992-95, the Kosovo Albanians in 1999, the uprising against the Gaddafi dictatorship in Libya in 2011).”

But your ‘rejection of Imperialist interventions’ was purely verbal, you supported it and alibied it in practice by pretending it was not happening because it was a proxy war ‘confined’ to mass bombing in Libya and there were no openly admitted ‘boots on the ground’. If fact there were thousands of Qatari troops and US and UK Special Forces operating in Libya as they are today in Syria. And note the ‘threatens to undermine’ bit. As we will see he goes on to claim that they failed in this putative endeavour and the ‘revolution’ has succeeded as a ‘partial dual power’ situation.
Michael says, “Only when the imperialist intervention is becoming the dominant feature of the political situation, revolutionaries must subordinate the democratic struggle to the fight against such an intervention.”

When will we recognise that ‘imperialist intervention is becoming the dominant feature of the political situation’? When the leadership of the movement supports it unequivocally and Imperialism supply it covertly or overtly with weapons and total political support, as in all these cases and now in Syria, we suggest.

Michael says, “Our anti-imperialism is a consequence of our fundamental position on the class struggle and not an overriding principle, which resides above the class struggle.” If anti-imperialism is not ‘an overriding principle’ it follows that there could be some pro-imperialist struggles that better serve the interests of the working class than defeating global imperialism, like defeating the local tyrant with the support of Imperialism. This is a statement of gross opportunism and a forthright rejection of fundamental Marxist positions!

And now Michael tries to portray himself as a principled Trotskyist, “Our method is that during such just democratic or national liberation struggles we are on the side of the liberation fighters (who are mostly under bourgeois or petty-bourgeois leaderships) and support their military victory. We sharply differentiate between these progressive liberation struggles and the interests of the imperialist powers. While we support the first, we totally oppose the later. Hence we Bolshevik-Communists reject any imperialist interference and call for the defeat of the imperialist forces.”

But you did none of this. The ‘liberation fighters’ were reactionary pro-imperialist and al-Qaeda forces. You therefore supported Imperialist forces and called for their victory on behalf of Imperialism in all these conflicts and now in Syria.

Michael Pröbsting directly contradicts himself
Michael says, “However Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not conclude from this that one should not support their national liberation struggle. Which conclusion did Trotsky and the Fourth International drew from the fact that the imperialist and petty-bourgeois public opinion in Western Europe and Northern America was strongly in favour of the Republican antifascist government in Spain in 1936-39 or for the national liberation struggle of the Chinese toilers under Chiang Kai-shek’s leadership against Japanese imperialism from 1937 onwards? They certainly did not succumb to the imperialist and petty-bourgeois ‘public opinion’ when they gave critical but unconditional support to the Republican antifascist government or the Chinese struggles, but pursued the independent and internationalist working class viewpoint”.

Here Michael Pröbsting directly contradicts himself. Where was the ‘critical but unconditional support’ for Libya under attack by Imperialism and its proxy armies in these conflicts and now in Syria? You directly succumbed to the imperialist and petty-bourgeois ‘public opinion’ by supporting the ‘popular’ uprising without questioning in any serious way either its pro-imperialism or anti-working class character. You ended up ‘howling along with the wolves’ because you had no ‘over-riding principles’ and postulated an impossible political formation, a pro-imperialist struggle that served the interests of the international working class! It is a monstrous insult to compare the Benghazi rebels to either the Chinese Trotskyists of the 1930s [4] or even the later Maoists or the Spanish Trotskyists [5] or the ranks of the POUM [6] and anarchists [7]in Spain in 1936-9.

And now Michael repudiates another central tenet of Marxism, “Marxists must not start from the consideration: “How can we as revolutionaries fighting in Western imperialist countries best oppose the pressure of ‘our’ bourgeoisie.”

Oh but we must start from there if we are in an Imperialist country! That did seem to be good enough for Karl Liebknecht in his famous 1915 pamphlet, The main enemy is at home. It has become part of the arsenal of every serious Marxist since he wrote, “The main enemy of every people is in their own country! The main enemy of the German people is in Germany: German imperialism, the German war party, German secret diplomacy. This enemy at home must be fought by the German people in a political struggle, cooperating with the proletariat of other countries whose struggle is against their own imperialists.”

And why must we reject internationalism in favour of national chauvinism according to Michael? “This is one-sided and thus opens the door to serious mistakes. It would be anti-imperialism for fools. One must start thinking from the viewpoint “what is the independent class policy in the interest of the international working class and the oppressed people”. This is the ‘Eiffelite imbeciles’ third campist line yet again. We cannot EVER have a pro-imperialist movement that serves the interests of the international working class. Anti-imperialism must be in the DNA of ever serious Marxist on the planet, only thus can you serve the interests of the international proletariat.
Michael says, “The Libyan and the Syrian Revolution in 2011 also started as a democratic revolution as part of the Arab revolutions against the bourgeois dictatorships. So, contrary to interpretation of the sectarians, these civil wars started not as a conspiracy of imperialism – they were authentic liberation struggles of the workers and peasants.”

You can argue that there were uprisings for democratic rights (not ‘democratic revolutions’) in Tunisia, Egypt, the Yemen, Bahrain and even Syria but not in Libya. From the start the Libyan uprising was organised and orchestrated by pro-imperialist forces and CIA agents. There was never anything progressive or liberating about this Benghazi uprising except in the minds of a few deluded workers and peasants. The immediate lynchings of black workers gave the lie to that; this was an imperialist intervention to seize control of the ‘Arab Spring’ which they did all too successfully. In Syria there were some progressive aspects to the uprisings but Imperialist-sponsored forces quickly seized control and now have an iron grip on the opposition to Assad.

Succinctly Paul Wolfowitz [8] countered every word of the Rcit on Newsnight on 24 October when he was outlining how to bring the ‘revolution’ to victory in Syria and he said ‘Libya is very pro-Western now’! That goes straight to the heart of the issues. All principled anti-Imperialists and those concerned to forward the class consciousness of the international proletariat seek their defeat and the victory of Assad against them. They do so in order to prepare for the building of a principled anti-imperialist internationalist Trotskyist section of the Fourth International there.

Michael says, “One has to concretely analyze if a given democratic or national liberation struggle becomes fully subordinated to the imperialist manoeuvres and doesn’t possess any significant internal dynamic of a workers and peasant liberation struggle. If this is the case, Marxists must change their position and give up critical support for the national liberation struggle.”

Did not Imperialism get exactly what it wanted?
And that did not happen in Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya and Syria? Did not Imperialism get exactly what it wanted in the first three? Kosovo is practically a US colony run by mafia gangsters, Bosnia is little better and just look at the state to which your ‘revolution’ has reduced Libya! And a similar if not worse fate is looming for Syria. Just how bad does your ‘revolution’ have to get before you give up on it? Workers Power has never repudiated their support for the KLA and the Rcit is stuck with it too.[9]

Michael writes: “Such complications, amalgamations of different and contradictory interests in a given military conflict are likely to increase in the future. Why? Because of the increasing rivalry between imperialist power… Unfortunately this aspect is completely ignored by many sectarians who fail to recognize that in addition to the old imperialist power – in North America, Western Europe and Japan – there are also new, emerging imperialist powers, in particular Russia and China.”
There may be new Imperialist powers but it wrong to equate them like this. Now the dominant, war mongering imperialist forces on behalf of global finance capital are led by the USA and it is therefore correct for nations like Syria to get whatever assistance they can from Iran, China and Russia. Libya and Syria in particular getting support Russia and China is not to be equated with opposition forces who are the cat’s paw for the interests of this imperialist finance capital, centrally based in Wall Street. Syria is now attempting to defend what it left of its own right to self determination.

Of course if a direct imperialist war were to break out say between a US-dominated bloc and a Russia-China-German bloc then the dual defeatist tactic would be mandatory. With proper support for national liberation struggles that might break out during the course of the war, even if supported by one side or the other etc. Michael writes, “All this in addition to the well-known murderous suppression of the slightest sign of resistance of the Libyan people.”

The ‘Libya people’ would include CIA agents, those hired and bribed by them and those who had a desire to become the agents of Imperialist finance capital when it took over, not to mention the al-Qaeda fundamentalists who wanted to impose Sharia law and restore the oppression of women and agreed to be temporary allies of the USA, in an analogous to the duty of Marxists to be temporary allies of Gaddafi against Imperialist attack.  And now in the silliest and most indefensible part of the whole document, Michael writes, “Are the workers and youth today in a better or in a worse position than under the Gaddafi dictatorship?” Only a very naïve man would ask such a question and be surprised at getting the opposite answer to the one he expected. Consider the following quote, “The giveaway of Libya’s oil, the principal objective of the NATO powers, is no small matter. Libya’s oil was privatized in short order, with contracts allotted according to the number of bombing runs each country had made—France on behalf of Total, Spain on behalf of Repsol, Italy on behalf of Eni, England on behalf of BP and the U.S. on behalf of Marathon, Hess and ConocoPhillips. This will have the effect of reducing revenues to the new government, which will have to fill the funding gap by cutting social spending to the bone and taking out loans from the international financial institutions, like every other neoliberal state.

This is not to say that sectors of the Libyan population (or the Syrian or Iranian population for that matter) don’t have legitimate grievances against their nationalist dictatorships. However, when their countries are targeted for regime change by foreign transnational capital and their own emerging domestic transnational capitalist class, any military alliance that government opponents make with these globalizing interests is an act of treason against their own people. This is a global class war and the United States and other NATO powers represent the interests of the transnational capitalist class, not the Libyan working class.”[10]

It is of prime importance to note that nowhere does Michael or the Rcit oppose the recolonisation of Libya and the oil grab of the western companies. He did find space to attack Gaddafi’s lesser capitulation to Imperialism but the total prostration of the rebels as described above is a total irrelevancy in his eyes.

A partial dual power situation indeed!
He then goes on: The sectarian “anti-imperialists” claim that in Libya the counter-revolution – i.e. NATO imperialism and its agents, the supposedly “racist” rebels – has won the civil war. Consequently they consider the outcome as a defeat for the working class. We on the other hand think that the Libyan Revolution ended in a partial victory for the working class and the oppressed because it defeated the bourgeois-bonapartist Gaddafi regime. True, the bourgeois, pro-imperialist leadership around the TNC tries to hijack this unfinished democratic revolution and turn it into a democratic counterrevolution. However this process is far from completed. What we have today in post-Gaddafi Libya is a crisis-ridden regime which is divided by various factions. It is divided not only by power struggles but also – and to a large degree because of – the pressure of the masses. What we have today in Libya is a partial dual power situation. What constitutes this partial dual power situation?

This must be the most farcical paragraph in the whole document. A partial dual power situation indeed! The phrase was first used by the Bolsheviks to describe the situation in Russia after the February revolution of 1917 where massive workers councils (Soviets) effectively controlled the country, vying for power with the government itself. Eventually the Soviets abolished parliamentary democracy and instituted the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in which the working class ruled. This was replaced by the dictatorship of the bureaucracy under Stalin in about 1924. Maybe if he wrote a ‘potentially partial dual power situation’ we might get far enough away from reality to fail to notice that the working class has not got an ounce of influence here and only ‘dual power’ operating  is between the al-Qaeda fundamentalist militias and the pro-US forces.

Michael takes his information on Libya from Carlos Munzer and the Democratica Obrera. His claims for the revolution in Libya are hot air; we would recommend double-checking it all. However we must confess a lack of knowledge of the working class forces on the ground in Libya. If they are reviving as suggested by Munzer then intervention is clearly called fro to turn them against the pro-Imperialist influences they are under. Even if strikes are underway as he claims and “The workers have formed new trade unions and are organizing themselves in rank and file structures. They have more rights and power than under the Gaddafi regime.” Them these are pro-Imperialist organisations.

See for example his position on Syria where the main enemy is Assad, and Russian and Chinese Imperialism. There is absolutely no opposition to the US, the EU, Turkey, the Saudis or the Qataris. “In Greece and the whole Europe, it is necessary to paralyze all the ports and ships that transport weaponry and food to murderous al Assad, and instead ship food and weaponry for the heroic Syrian resistance! The Russian and Chinese working class has to revolt against the assassins Putin and Hu Jintao just now! It is urgent to stop the counterrevolutionary war machine of Putin and Hu Jintao’s that are arming to the teeth genocidal al Assad! It is urgent to send weapons, equipment and food to the masses that are fighting in Homs, Damascus, etc.!”

Revolutionary Combatants of the Libyan Militia; Internationalist Volunteer Workers Committee; Adhering: Fracción Leninista Trotskista Internacional http://www.democraciaobrera.org/pag_ingles/mediooriente/2012/carta_tunez_ delibia042012.html Maggie Michael of Associated Press tells us exactly what kind of ‘masses’ these are: “Some 30,000 people filled a broad boulevard as they marched along a lake in central Benghazi on Friday to the gates of the headquarters of Ansar al-Shariah. They carried banners and signs demanding that militias disband and that the government build up police to take their place in keeping security. “Benghazi is in a trap,” signs read. “Where is the army, where is the police. Other signs mourned the killing of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, reading, “The ambassador was Libya’s friend” and “Libya lost a friend.” Military helicopters and fighter jets flew overhead, and police mingled in the crowd, buoyed by the support of the protesters”.[11]

And so the last hope for the revolution is… Ansar al-Shariah! They will just have to substitute for the Bolsheviks! What a strange but delightfully dialectical face ‘liberation’ has in Libya today! Sound just like the days before the storming of the Winter Palace in 1917 Russia, does it not?

As we write this the town of Bani Walid is under siege. According to the Inter Press Service News Agency pro-government armed militias were trying to indiscriminately kill large numbers of people in Bani Walid, because of its history of support for Gaddafi. Amnesty International says many continue to be detained without being charged or put on trial across Libya, and have been tortured or otherwise ill-treated. The International Centre for Prison Studies (ICPS) says Libya holds the highest number of prisoners held without trial in the world at nearly 89 percent. Foreign prisoners, many of them from sub-Saharan Africa, account for nearly 15 percent of Libya’s prison population, and women for just over 2 percent. Nasseer Al Hammary, a researcher with the Libyan Observatory for Human Rights said that the human rights situation in Libya now was far worse than under Gaddafi.[12]
So the working class in Libya are on the brink of seizing power are they? Some ‘unfinished revolution’ with ‘partial dual power’ comrades of the Rcit!

Endnotes
[1] The Rcit statement is here: http://www.thecommunists.net/theory/liberation-struggle-and-imperialism/#ds

[2] See Stuart King, The anti-imperialist united front: a debate with the GOR,  30/03/1986 – “Clearly here Trotsky does not limit the united front only to questions of ‘military blocs’ against the imperialists or the Warlords. Indeed such a position makes a non-Marxist division between ‘politics’ and ‘war’-“war is the continuation of politics by other means”.” King and the whole Workers Power family have now repudiated these correct positions because of their need to defend their unprincipled position on Libya. http://www.fifthinternational.org/content/anti-imperialist-united-front-debate-gor

[3] We invite readers to check the LCFI statement itself on page 36 and the article on page 14 to see that the equation of the LRCI position with that of the ‘Spart family’ and CPGB (ML) is totally unfounded. http://www.scribd.com/doc/53607829/SocialistFightNo6-123

[4] See Interviews with Wang Fanxi by Gregor Benton, “Wang repeats what he has described elsewhere, that is, that the position taken by their group — and by Trotsky — was not one of ‘revolutionary defeatism’. The stated aim was to ‘transform the war against the foreign invaders into a revolution to replace the leadership of the resistance war and thereby to assure the victory of the war against the foreign invader…’ This policy… was in line with Trotsky’s declaration that the workers’ organisations had to ‘participate actively and in the front lines of the present war against Japan’. But because Chiang Kai-Shek could not assure a victory over the Japanese, the Trotskyists had to win prestige in the military struggle and the political struggle against the deficiencies and betrayals of the Guomindang.” http://revolutionaryhistory.co.uk/book-reviews/books/reviews/chinese-trotskyism.htm.

[5] See Felix Morrow, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain, New Park Publications, £1.25 / 75p. Earnest Mandel writes, “Felix Morrow’s Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain remains the best Marxist analysis of the Spanish revolution of 1936-37 and its tragic ending. Other works, written since and drawing upon extensive new source material, give a more detailed account of the events and struggles (social and political) which marked these dramatic years, and of those which led up to them. But none are equal, leave alone superior, to Morrow in their analysis of the basic class forces at work, the inevitable clash between them and the outcome of the contest, decided by the lack of revolutionary leadership or clear political consciousness on the part of the toiling masses. http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1974/xx/morrow.htm

[6] The Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (Spanish: Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, POUM; Catalan: Partit Obrer d’Unificació Marxista) was a Spanish communist political party formed during the Second Republic and mainly active around the Spanish Civil War. It was formed by the fusion of the Trotskyist Communist Left of Spain (Izquierda Comunista de España, ICE) and the Workers and Peasants’ Bloc (BOC, affiliated with the Right Opposition) against the will of Leon Trotsky, with whom the former broke. (wiki)

[7] Anarchists played a central role in the fight against Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. At the same time, a far-reaching social revolution spread throughout Spain, where land and factories were collectivized and controlled by the workers. All remaining social reforms ended in 1939 with the victory of Franco, who had thousands of anarchists executed. Resistance to his rule never entirely died, with resilient militants participating in acts of sabotage and other direct action after the war, and making several attempts on the ruler’s life. Their legacy remains important to this day,

particularly to anarchists who look at their achievements as a historical precedent of anarchism’s validity. (wiki)

[8] Paul Dundes Wolfowitz (born December 22, 1943) is a former United States Ambassador to Indonesia, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, President of the World Bank, and former dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is currently a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, working on issues of international economic development, Africa and public-private partnerships, and chairman of the US-Taiwan Business Council. He is a leading neoconservative. As Deputy Secretary of Defense, he was “a major architect of President Bush’s Iraq policy and … its most hawkish advocate.”(wiki). In fact one of Imperialism’s most important theoreticians.

[9] See Kosovo’s “Mafia State” and Camp Bondsteel: Towards a permanent US military presence in southeast Europe April 14, 2012 By F.William Engdahl. “Hashim Thaci the current Kosovo Prime Minister, got his job, so to speak, through the US State Department”. According to The Guardian, Tuesday 14 December 2010, Hashim Thaçi is identified as the boss of a network that began operating criminal rackets in the runup to the 1998-99 Kosovo war, and has held powerful sway over the country’s government since. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/14/kosovo-prime-minister-llike-mafia-boss.

[10] Libya Worse Off After NATO Takeover, June 26, 2012, http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=1043

[12] The abuse and mistreatment of prisoners in detention centres around the country, many of them run by militias, is an ongoing problem. http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/10/shadow-fighting-erupts-over-gaddafi.

The VOAG is everywhere - The VOAG is watching

                               Theses on the AIUF

Jim Padmore, November 2011. 
1. The tactics of communists in relation to bourgeois and petit-bourgeois led movements coming into struggle with imperialism was outlined in essence at the Second Congress of the Communist International (CI). Lenin’s theses put forward the possibility of forming an ‘alliance’ with these forces on two conditions. One, that they were in practice leading a struggle against imperialism and two, that such an alliance placed no restrictions on the communist’s independent activity aimed at organising the workers and peasants against imperialism. The theses sowed no illusions in either the willingness or the ability of the ‘national revolutionary’ movement i.e. the bourgeoisie, to take the struggle through to the end, to break the stranglehold of imperialism. They emphasised that ‘a determined fight’ needed to be waged against painting these movements in communist colours. Independence of propaganda, organisation and action was necessary because the national bourgeoisie would vacillate and compromise in the struggle against imperialism.

2. The tactic of the united front in the colonial and semi colonial world was developed more fully at the Fourth Congress of the CI. Its development was part of the discussion and elaboration of the united front tactic undertaken between the Third and Fourth Congresses, in particular in relation to the social democratic parties and their trade unions in Europe. In the period directly after the Russian Revolution and during the revolutionary crisis which gripped Europe after World War I there was little stimulus to develop the Bolsheviks’ 1917 practise into generally applicable tactics for the CI, since the mass influence of the social democratic leaderships appeared to be on the point of collapse. As Trotsky said 1f we consider the party is on the eve of the conquest of power and working class will follow it, then the question of the united front does not arise.’ Within the CI the creation of communist parties, the building of soviets and the armed insurrection were the tasks central to a revolutionary situation. By 1921, however, it was clear that this revolutionary situation had passed. Capitalism, aided and assisted by the treacherous social democratic and labour leaders, had managed a temporary stabilisation. Recognising the changed situation and the strength of reformism in Western Europe, CI launched the united front tactic at the Third Congress under the slogan ‘to the masses’. After this Congress the ECCI developed the tactics that became known as the united front.

3. The workers’ united front was a tactic, or a series of related tactics, aimed at winning the mass of the working class to revolutionary communism, to the programme of the revolutionary party and for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Not through propaganda alone but through action, and in struggle:

‘Only by leading the concrete struggles of the proletariat and by taking them forward will the communists really be able to win the broad proletarian masses to the struggle for dictatorship.’ (Theses on Tactics 3rd Congress). As a tactic the united front was subordinate to this strategic goal. To turn the united front from a tactic to a strategy, where bringing it into being (or its maintenance once achieved) becomes the perpetual long term goal, can only lead to the liquidation of the revolutionary programme; a necessary consequence of the continuation of a long term alliance with the non-revolutionary parties or organisation.

4. Not withstanding the common method of the united front which underpins both the workers united front and the anti-imperialist united front (AIUF), there are important differences between them. The workers united front in the imperialist nation rests on the unity in action of the workers organisations and their parties. Communists fight within such united fronts, however limited, to develop the demands of the common struggle, through the use of transitional demands, to a struggle to overthrow capitalism. This necessitates the fight to develop the united front, in acute periods of class struggle, into soviets and the struggle for the workers government. The AIUF however develops on the terrain of minimum or democratic demands-the struggle against imperialist domination, for national independence and unity, for democracy and democratic rights. Into this struggle it seeks to draw, not only the workers’ organisation, but those of the petit­ bourgeoisie-the organisations especially of the peasantry, the small urban property holders, the professionals, teachers etc-and even sections or elements of the national bourgeoisie itself, where ever the latter is compelled to resist imperialism by the pressure of the masses. The fight by communists to win the workers, poor peasants and the urban petit-bourgeoisie to the perspective of socialist revolution, to transform the struggle for democracy and against imperialism into a struggle against capitalism and for the dictatorship of the proletariat, to the extent that it is successful, must break up and replace the AIUP. The fight to win the masses from the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois leaders and their parties, the struggle to create workers soviets in the towns and soviets of poor peasants and agricultural proletarians in the countryside, is part of the struggle for a workers and peasants government; a government where the peasants have been broken from their bourgeois and petit-bourgeois leaders and won to the support of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

5. The united front by its very nature is a temporary agreement. Nine times out of ten, where there exists no especially favourable relation of forces or political situation, the reformist or nationalist leaders will refuse it and do their utmost to prevent their rank and file from participating. Where it is struck it will be around clear, precise and limited objects of real struggle. Its primary aim is not to produce joint propaganda (if it did it would be a propaganda bloc not a united front) but agitation around the action goals of the united front.

6. The Communist International made clear that the united front was not just an ‘appeal to leaders’; even less was it a proposal for a purely parliamentary combination or bloc: The united front means the association of all workers, whether communist, anarchist, social democrat, independent or non-party, or even Christian workers, against the bourgeoisie. With the leaders if they want it so, without the leaders if they remain indifferently aside, and in defiance of the leaders and against the leaders if they sabotage the workers united front.’ (ECCI April 1922). Thus the appeal for the united front was both from ‘above and below’. But, ‘the real success of the united front depends on a movement “from below”, from the rank and file of the working masses’ (Theses on Tactics 4th Congress).

7. The striking of the united front does not for one moment mean agreeing to end criticism. For the CI there were to be no diplomatic silences or glossing over of past or present vacillation and betrayals by the reformist leaders. Communists within the united front; ‘While accepting a basis for action must retain the unconditional right and possibility of expressing their opinion of the policy of all working class organisations without exception, not only before and after the action is taken but also if necessary during its course. In no circumstances can these rights be surrendered.’ (ECCI December 1921) Further more to maintain the united front in a bloc with reformist leaders during or after a betrayal in action, would be to become complicit in it. If it is important to know when to make a united front, it is equally important to know when to break it and thus issue an immediate warning to the rank and file workers that treachery is afoot.

8. The type of organisation appropriate to the united front is an organ of struggle not of propaganda for a programme. As such, a trade union is in one sense a united front. More correctly a united front creates ad hoc fighting bodies commensurate to the task in hand. These may be strike committees, councils of action and at the highest level soviets. Such bodies, vital for the struggle, strengthen the pressure on the reformist leaders to ‘break with the bourgeoisie’. A united front can therefore take many forms, it can be extremely episodic-for a single demonstration, rally, strike—or it can be of a ‘higher’ form, involving a series of actions and agreements-a military bloc, a rank and file opposition in the trade unions like the British ‘Minority Movement’ of the 1920’s. Whatever form it takes, it is a block for action in defence of working class interests, in which the communists neither boycott nor submerge their own programme, and they ‘march separately, strike together’.

9. The united front is not limited to defensive trade union or extra-parliamentary struggles. It is taken on to the electoral arena where reformist parties dominate the working class. It also takes up the question of government and governmental demands. The resolution on tactics at the Fourth Congress makes clear that the slogan for a workers’ government ‘is an inevitable consequence of the united front tactic’. The partial struggles of the working class inevitably run up against the structures of the capitalist state, against the government of the day and its policies. The communists have to provide society wide answers to the problems facing workers, they place demands on the workers’ leaders, put forward a programme for a workers’ government. But these are not just left as demands; they are fought for within the rank and file of the working class belonging to all workers’ parties and none, in a united front struggle to implement them via workers’ control in the factories, through the fight for soviets, via the general strike etc.

10. The basis of the anti-imperialist united front rests on the clash of interests between the peoples of the imperialised countries and the imperialist bourgeoisie. Imperialism promotes industrial development in the imperialised countries but in a stunted and lopsided form. The imperialist banks and monopolies dominate their economies, extracting super-profits in the form of repatriated profits and usurious interest payments on loans. They impose their constrictions on the economies through the imperialist agencies such as the IMP, World Bank, etc, and inevitably because of the impossibility of imposing such exactions democratically over any period, in alliance with the most reactionary elements tied to imper­ialism-the military hierarchy and landed oligarchy. The demand for ‘independent economic development’, for alleviation from debt, for state capitalist industrialisation, protectionism, land reform, and constitutional democracy, reflects the needs of those sections of the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie which suffer most from the straight jacket of imperialist domination. These demands can lead to episodic clashes between the bourgeoisie of the semi­ colony and the imperialist bourgeoisie (or its agents within the country) as in the case of the struggle against Somoza in Nicaragua.

11. However, because of the weakness of the bourgeoisie in the semi-colonial world, the degree to which important sections of it are tied economically to imperialist capital itself, and most importantly, because of its fear of the revolutionary mobilisation of the masses, which threatens its own rule as well as that of the imperialists, the national bourgeoisie only exceptionally leads or throws its weight behind serious struggles against imperialism. As a result in many countries in the twentieth century the leadership of the anti-imperialist movements has fallen to the petit­ bourgeoisie. But in the vast majority of cases its programme has remained faithful to that of the bourgeoisie despite the attempt to delude the workers by cloaking itself in socialist or communist colours – Nyrere’s ‘African Socialism’, Mugabe and the Ethiopian Derg’s ‘Marxism-Leninism’, the FSLN’s Sandinism, etc.

12. Where the bourgeoisie or sections of it, or the petit­ bourgeoisie, enters into a struggle with imperialism it is obliged to draw and lean on the mass of workers and peasants. In such cases it is the duty of communists to enter such a struggle alongside these forces. The anti ­imperialist united front aims to break the hold of the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois nationalists over the masses, in struggle. The communists neither stand aside in a sectarian fashion nor do they hide their criticisms of these leaderships or the goals for which they struggle. Unlike the popular front which is a cross class coalition subordinating the interests of the working class to the programme of the bourgeoisie, the AIUF confines itself to concrete joint actions, specific agreements which take forward the struggle against the imperialists, within which the communists retain both freedom of criticism and propaganda. Such united fronts, given the compromising role of the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois nationalist, are likely to be extremely episodic and temporary. There is no question of tailoring the slogans of struggle to those considered acceptable to the bourgeoisie, let alone ‘reserving a seat’ in the united front.

13. The conclusions Trotsky drew for the International Left Opposition from the Chinese revolution of 1923-7 were not that the tactic of the AIUF had to be abandoned but that its opportunist distortion led to disaster. Under the leadership of Bukharin and Stalin the tactic had been gutted of its revolutionary content The Chinese Communist Party abandoned its independence and submerged itself inside the bourgeois Koumintang (KMI). It had, under the guidance of the Comintern painted up the KMT leadership in communist colours, lauding its anti-imperialist credentials and abandoning all criticism of it. It had boycotted the demands of the workers and peasants which threatened to rupture its alliance with the bourgeoisie. It had turned the AIUF into a popular front which delivered the Chinese proletariat into the hands of the counter-revolution.

14. Stalin and Bukharin were aided in this by the lack of clarity of the governmental slogans put forward by the CI in its discussions of the AIUF tactic. The Chinese revolution proved the slogan of the ‘Revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry’ not only redundant but capable of being perverted into a call for a separate bourgeois stage of the revolution. In this sense, in Trotsky’s words, the slogan became a ‘noose’ hung round the neck of the proletariat. It implied that a bourgeois solution to the struggle against imperialism was the goal which the proletariat fought for with the united front The Chinese events reaffirmed the necessity of the perspective of the permanent revolution, the struggle for soviets and the workers and peasants government Such a perspective does not mean that the AIUF can only be struck around such demands. In periods of defeat or where the masses are emerging from long periods of dictatorship, the united front may well be agreed around democratic demands, rights of free speech and demonstration, release of all political prisoners etc. The fight for a democratic constituent assembly can become an important goal of an AIUF where it is part of the struggle to overthrow an imperialist backed dictatorship. The fight for the expropriation of the landowners and for an agrarian revolution would figure centrally in the struggle for such an assembly in most parts of the imperialised world. The fight for these demands are above all conducted to strengthen the independence of the working class and its organisations alongside those of the peasants-via demonstrations, strikes, committees of struggle, soviet type organisations, etc.

15. The AIUF in no way implies giving support to so called ‘anti-imperialist governments’. Communists give no support to bourgeois governments. We support any serious action of such governments taken against imperialist interests, e.g. the nationalisations or expropriations of imperialist holdings. Communists would support and participate in military actions taken against imperialism i.e. in Nicaragua against the contras and US advisors, in Argentina against Britain in the Malvinas, fighting in such a struggle for the arming of the workers, for democratically controlled workers militias. Similarly where the political struggle reaches the stage of civil war against a dictatorship, communists might enter a military united front, whenever possible as an independent armed force accepting a common discipline in battle, making agreements under a common discipline. Aiming to strike a united front around common goals of struggle-immediate elections to a constituent assembly, legalisation of trade unions and strikes, etc. We recognise that military blocs are one form of the united front-a form not qualitatively different to united action for political goals, ‘war is nothing more than the continuation of politics by other means’. When we call for the military victory of such movements as the FMLN, FSLN, etc, fighting against imperialism, its agents or a dictatorship, normally a slogan raised where the civil war or revolutionary crisis has reached a decisive stage, we are not endorsing the victory of their political programme. Within such a united front we struggle for our programme, to break the workers and peasants from the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois leaderships and enter onto the road of struggle for a workers and peasants’ government

16. It is therefore not permissible to give the AIUF in a governmental form since the proletariat cannot share with bourgeois forces the goal of a common government. While we can join a common struggle for the convening of a constituent assembly along with petit-bourgeois and even bourgeois forces, our governmental slogan remain the workers and peasants’ government. No bourgeoisie will tolerate a genuine working class government i.e. one that rests upon the armed workers and serves their immediate and historic interests, and the proletariat must under no circumstances support a government of its own exploiters. Any government which claims to be ‘above classes’ or to represent ‘the people as a whole’ is a deception. The proletariat can indeed defend or seek to bring about a democratic regime, utilising democratic slogans insofar as these mobilise for a struggle against dictatorship and for the rights of the workers, poor peasants and the oppressed petit-­bourgeoisie. But such struggles and slogans should never be erected into a self-contained or self-limiting stage. Soviets must replace the freest parliament, and the workers’ dictatorship the democratic republic. From the moment that democratic liberties have been won-de facto as well as de jure – they become an arena for the proletariat’s struggle for power.
The VOAG is watching, the VOAG is everywhere!