Class Struggle 129
Briefs
Only workers can ban fascism
In the aftermath of the March 15th Mosque massacre in
Christchurch, the NZ Government moved quickly to
impose bans on social media providing outlets for
extreme ‘hate speech’. A ban on semi-automatic assault
rifles took about a week. State bans are futile and
dangerous. They are used to suppress dissent and
empower the state forces against the masses. They serve
to trap workers in parliament and away from mobilising
to change the system. They are directed at 'extremism'
which includes the 'left', leaving the real extremists, the
capitalist patriarchal ruling class, untouched.
State bans don't stop evil because the capitalist state
gain taxes from the profits of porn, prostitution, and does
nothing to eliminate the oppression that criminalises
working people. It takes sides with capitalism which is
why it protects fascists. It was not a mistake on the part
of police and security agencies that they are reluctant to
criminalise white supremacists. The history of the NZ
state shows its existence is dedicated to white, male
supremacy. Like women, Maori are still very much
second-class citizens in NZ.
Yes, people power works up to a point. Winning the
women’s vote in 1894 was granted after much
campaigning because Seddon wanted women’s
temperance votes to pass legislation to prohibit
consumption of alcohol. Women, despite their votes, and
the economic success of some women, are still a long way
from equality with men. More than a century later
cannabis reform will go ahead only to make it profitable
for the corporates and carpet baggers. The black market
will continue to exist and be targeted by police. The
Treat Settlement industry has returned token amounts of
land and assets to Iwi are far from a fair compensation
for the history of racist colonial land grab and social
oppression. Women’s rights are being challenged and
removed as the current Govt plan to introduce sex self-
ID which if passed will allow anyone to sign a declaration
saying he is a woman and demand that the state enforce
that legal right against the protests of women.
The only bans that work for change are those imposed by
the working masses as it mobilises for revolutionary
change. We say to change the system (capitalism +
patriarchy) which enables among many evils,
pornography, child abuse, sex trafficking and both Maori
and women’s systematic oppression, working people (80%
of the people) need to be completely independent of the
bosses' state (representing the 10% comprising bankers,
gentry, big shareholders, property speculators, and a
range of petty exploiters) and replace it with a workers'
state.
For an independent Workers’ Party with a political
program to mobilise workers into democratic councils
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Winter (June-August) 2019
that create the social base for a Workers’ Government
that transforms capitalism into socialism!
Socialism can deliver Zero CO2
The Zero Carbon Bill is up for debate. It was born dead,
smothered by climate polluters. The second school strike
has taken place, and XR is now moving towards a global
general strike. Liberal commentators are even calling for
the end of capitalism. George Monbiot says XR means
"going straight to the heart of capitalism". But this means
nothing unless you find the heart and know how to stop
it. We can't spend time debating when the vast majority
knows we have to act yet as yet does not know how to
act.
XR have got the method. Mass mobilisations for non-
violent direct action (NVDA) at governments until they
act. But act how? You can be sure they will act to
suppress XR as soon as it looks like shutting down
governments. The Yellow Vest movement (YV) is the
evidence of this. Governments that are committed to
saving capitalism (in their dreams) must use all means
possible, bribes, co-option, and inciting divisions around
nation, race and sex, to smash all opposition movements
that pose a threat to their power.
Yet youth, and workers in general, mobilised by XR and
school strikes, are capable of testing that reaction and
learning from it. When the state abandons democracy to
label the opposition 'terrorists', they will learn that "going
to the heart" means giving capitalism a 'heart attack'. It
means overthrowing the power which flows from
ownership of the means of production and which forces
workers to make profits for the bosses. It means building
socialism within capitalism ready for the challenge to
stop capitalist destruction of nature and the terminal
crisis of capitalism which will lead to lead to the
extinction of many species including humans.
But how to do this? ER is preparing for the climate
general strike September 20th. It is time to build the
movement in the months ahead so that the strike is
effective and brings the global economy to a halt.
Beyond that we need to plan for an indefinite general
Class Struggle 129
strike where the power of the opposition will shift
from the streets and NVDA to sites were workers can
defend their power, to strikes and occupations of
workplaces, strategic organisation like the media, and
the creation of workers organs like assemblies and
councils with their own means of defence.
These sites allow workers to mobilise their class power
against the state in such a way as they can protect it
against the state forces thrown at them. They enforce
their power by closing down the economy and at the same
time building an alternative economy that expropriates
capitalist property and turns it into common property
that can be used to plan production for human need and
not profits greed.
That is why the only alternative to extinction is survival
socialism. However, beware the attempts by deniers to
discredit XR, especially the campaign to discredit Greta
Thunberg as a ‘privileged’ teenager funded by green
capitalists. (see ‘Greta’ article in this issue)
Australia: AFP raids the ABC
Australia has a fair go image. Both Australian and the rest
of the world perceive the country as one of freedom
where the state, the armed forces do not interfere in
freedom of the press or the rights of individuals. The
raids by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) on the
national broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corporation
(ABC) have exposed how limited this freedom in reality
is.
Why did the Federal cops raid the ABC? Because of some
investigative journalism into Australia’s participation
into the war in Afghanistan. This exposed Australian
troopers’ participation into the murder of civilians. Was
this investigation any sort of security threat? No! Of
course, it was an embarrassment. Well so it should be!
The Australian public have every right to know if troopers
in Australia’s name are guilty of such barbaric and illegal
acts.
It is not clear whether this raid was initiated by the
Morrison government or merely an initiative of the AFP.
Both have an interest in attacking the ABC and as well
investigative journalism. As Ita Buttrose, ABC
Chairperson, pointed out “These raids were meant to
intimidate” She is seeking talks with the government.
This raid has met strong opposition from all of the media.
News Limited is in opposition as it had one of their
investigative reporters raided also.
The ABC has been consistently under attack from right
wing forces. They are calling for an unbiased ABC. This
effectively means a right-wing ABC. There are plenty of
right-wing commentators who get their say on shows like
Insiders. But they object when pro-refugee activists get
their say. They objected when a young Muslim man got
to ask a question on anti-terrorist legislation. This raid
amounts to more pressure on the ABC to toe the right-
wing line.
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Winter (June-August) 2019
The Labor Party doesn’t like the raids and is prepared to
negotiate. They are in favour of raids if the national
interest is threatened. What they hope to achieve is
clarity. They seek more definition as to what constitutes
genuine investigative journalism as opposed to that
which threatens the national interest. They may get this
clarity. Nevertheless, the AFP have autonomy and whilst
they are supposed to consult with the minister if a raid
might be contentious, they can get away without doing
so. It is still not clear whether the AFP acted on behalf of
the Morrison Government or unilaterally. Irrespective of
who initiated the raid it shows that the system will clamp
down when it is threatened with exposure.
Revolutionaries have every interest in exposing
Australia’s barbaric military practices – in Afghanistan
and elsewhere. This police raid against press freedom
should be opposed unconditionally. The media have stood
up against it. They ABC has vowed that it will not expose
any whistle blowers. The workers movement must
actively oppose this serious attack on our democracy.
[From Communist Left of Australia]
Education Strike Called Off
Just as Class Struggle 129 goes to press, there is a new
turn in the protracted teachers' strike. The series of
rolling strikes were cancelled by the union leadership
without consulting union members. Instead of continuing
strike action, the union leadership opted for negotiation
with Chris Hipkins, Minister of Education.
The strike seemed unfaltering up to this point. Teachers
have had strong support from the community. According
to a poll commissioned by the unions, public attitudes
back teacher demands:
# Education a priority - more money for education
relative to other issues
# turn-around the shortage of teachers
# class sizes reduced
# support for pupils with special needs
# pay rise for teachers# more time for teachers to
teach# reduce administration, more time for planning,
preparation and assessment
Negotiations had reached an impasse with the
government refusing to budge. They failed to recognise
this widespread public support and claimed money was
not available, despite the government's kitty for a rainy
day. They did offer funding to replace school donations
in the poorest schools.
It has been a mega strike. It is the first time ever that all
teachers (including principals) in the compulsory
schooling sector have struck together. The primary
teacher union NZEI and the secondary teacher union PPTA
united and the action has appeared staunch. But strike
action has been tactical. Each strike day has been for
students in a particular year so teachers could continue
getting paid while they did work other than class room
teaching for the day. This is not a tactic to maintain and
Class Struggle 129 Winter (June-August) 2019

build on-going solidarity. It suggests the union leadership
didn’t want to disrupt education to pressure the Govt.
So as a tactic rolling stoppages produced the minimalist
response designed to get a settlement. The day-long
negotiations with Hipkins resulted in an offer which the
union leaders, Jack Boyle of the PPTA and Lynda Stewart
of the NZEI, think members will accept. The offer has
been sent to teachers to vote on next week.
The revised deal offers:
# pay parity for both primary and secondary teachers
(primary teachers like this)
# special deals for union members - a $1500 lump sum
payment plus starting the new deal before non-union
teachers get it
# new top step on salary scale of $90.000
# Reduced workload for secondary teachers
# $5m professional development fund
Reaction from teachers has been mixed. Already the
offer appears to be divisive with the leadership
unilaterally calling off the strike, and the focus on money
while new/young teachers are missing out on support for
them.
We say this looks like a backdown by the union leadership
in a deal with the Government that is using the neo-
liberal fiscal responsibility doctrine to claim there is no
more money for education.

Capital Gains are an Opioid drip for Dying Capitalism

The debate about the Capital Gains Tax (CGT) is in full flow but it’s mainly hot air that ignores
where capital gains come from in the first place. The CGT was presented by Labour and the
Greens as an attempt to tax those whose incomes were not already taxed to allow a ‘fairer’
tax system and reduce the gap between rich and poor. So, while firms whose profits based on
turnover and output exchanging on the market are taxed, not taxed is the monopoly rent they
extract from the rising ‘unearned’ value accruing to property (farms, residential property,
industrial sites, IP etc).
It is common knowledge burden of tax from the
going back to the early days land onto income tax. The
of white settlement, that rising numbers of small
monopoly rents result from farmers backed this shift in
the ‘unearned increment’ in taxation because their
‘value’ of land etc. It is not indebtedness to the banks
the owners who earn this could be reduced by ‘rent
value, but the wider society farming’. As has been
that pays for the right of the pointed out often enough,
owner to expropriate value NZ’s class structure was
that is created by workers shaped by white workers
labour as profits. Farmers trying to escape the
earn an income from the Massey’s Cossacks, farmers as strike breakers during the 1913 General Strike working class into family
value of the commodities they produce. But part of the farming, creating a conservative middle class that ever
‘value’ is unearned because of the fact that the price of since has been the political enemy of industrial workers.
land includes monopoly rent – the excess profits that are
NZ workers attempts to defend their class interests in the
redistributed from other producers.
face of this urban rural divide were defeated. The land
This is the same monopoly rent that monopoly firms can tax became an income tax. The Red Federation of Labour
extract from the profits of non-monopoly firms. This is that had broken from the state Arbitration Court was
why the landless wanting farm land in the 1880s opposed by state forces and “Massey’s Cossacks”
campaigned for a ‘land tax’ and the breakup of the large (farmers on horseback) and the NZ Labour Party,
estates of the gentry. The Liberal Government policy to committed to managing NZs colonial economy in the
put the unemployed on the land as family farmers ‘national interest’ of NZ capitalists and British
indebted to the banks. The resulting rush of small imperialism, was founded in 1916.
farmers onto the land did not displace the gentry but
Nor did those on the land did not gain equally. Monopoly
created a new petty bourgeoisie of family farmers
rent attracts surplus profits from those who do not own
benefiting from large new areas of appropriated Maori
land. But that rent is not shared equally among
land (greater than the lands confiscated during the land
monopolists. Rent differs according to the quality of the
wars).
land and its distance from market. The result is
This was the fateful political compromise that allowed differential rent. Better land produces cheaper outputs
the gentry to dominate NZ politics ever since, shifting the because of less labour expended in production. Worse
4
Class Struggle 129
land uses more labour and forfeits some of its profits to
those on better land.
So, farmers have always been divided by the quality of
their land. A member of CWG recounts how both sides of
his family were dairy farmers who worked to break in
farms during the 20s and 30s. One side lost two farms in
the Bay of Islands due to falling prices and bank
foreclosures, and ended up draining part of the Kamo
swamp before walking off the land in the late ‘30s. At
the same time the other side of the family drained a a
chunk of Taranaki swamp, created a fertile farm, paid off
the bank after the depression and today employs farm
workers to help run a profitable farm.
The point is that farmers and banks have always relied on
capital gains from the unearned increment as a bonus to
make farming viable when prices fell during slumps.
Nevertheless, only those who were on the best land could
survive and grow while most
on worse land remained small
Caterpillar tractor ploughing pasture
farmers, sold up or walked off
the land.
What does that tell us about
the nature of conservative
politics in NZ? That hard
work on the part of
individual family farmers
was not sufficient to
succeed in farming. Survival
and success depended first
on the alienation of Maori
land, monopoly rent and
state subsidies such as
infrastructure that made
capital gains possible.
It is significant that in his resistance to the inroads of
settler land theft, Te Whiti understood that the problem
with the colonial economy was private ownership of land
and money exchange. The settlement at Parihaka was his
attempt to reject private ownership and money and
retain instead tribal ownership and collective labour.
This valiant attempt was defeated because of its threat
to the settlers’ access to land and the viability of colonial
capitalism.
We can see that historic showdown between Maori
economics and the colonial economics as the material
basis of a residual white racist culture. This explains
today’s existential contradiction between the inertia of
the dying capitalist economy claiming to represent NZ
‘values’ based on land theft and monopoly rent, and the
necessity of a new global economy that socialises private
property and plans production of collective labour in
harmony with nature for need and not profit.
That is why the CGT had it survived would not have made
a dent on inequality of incomes as taxes on the private
property of the rich are notoriously avoided and evaded.
It would have left the basic monopoly on land untouched
and the economy held to ransom by bankers, gentry and
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Winter (June-August) 2019
property speculators. (see article on the CGT in this
issue)
The blatant class propaganda of the bankers, farmers,
developers and small business to the CGT was that they
couldn’t survive the tax. But this did not mask the real
fear that their historic unearned monopoly wealth would
expose them as parasites and become a slippery slope to
expropriation. Hence the panic cry of the “End of NZ
Values”.
The irony is that such NZ ‘values’ based on monopolising
rent is in reality nothing but the value produced by
workers who produce the only value by transforming
nature, yet can’t buy houses to live in today. What this
tells us is that business in NZ is very fragile, facing a
global economic crash and a climate emergency, and is
desperate to hold onto its capital gains at all costs when
profitability world-wide is falling.
If the monopolists are
panicking about falling profits
then we need a debate about
what creates capital gains in
the first place. Maybe it is
time to explain why the fight
by the rich to retain their
gross wealth is a rational
response to their fear of the
collapse of capitalism.
Without a doubt it is
capitalism’s failure to make
profits from production that
threatens its collapse, and
makes capital gains an opioid
drip feed for a dying
capitalism.
The underlying cause of this decline in production is the
inability of capitalism to exploit workers enough to profit
sufficiently to justify reinvesting profits in new
production. Since 2008 we have seen massive subsidies
going to the banks and monopoly firms being hoarded
rather than reinvested in new production because the
conditions for renewed profits did not exist.
World capitalism suffers from chronic stagnation so that
surplus money capital seeks other outlets for investment,
in particular property speculation. Alternatively, big (oil,
ag, pharma, tech etc) monopoly firms which dominate
the market can extract extra profits from other firms that
have to compete against monopolies.
The most critical fact about dying capitalism is that it
is also killing the planet. Taxing the capital gains of
monopoly capital will neither allow capitalism to be
reformed, nor save the planet. We have to draw the
line against defending a system that is destroying all
living life to hold onto its ill-gotten wealth. We need to
end capitalism and the monopoly of private property,
expropriate unearned rents and profits as our common
wealth and fund collective ownership and production
for our human survival.
Class Struggle 129 Winter (June-August) 2019

Is Greta Thunberg a sock puppet for green capitalism?

Extinction Rebellion (XR) represents a new movement against climate change that promises
to become a revolutionary force for change. Why is the most inspiring leader of XR, Greta
Thunberg, now subject to intensive criticism which claims she is a mere trophy for green
capitalists who will exploit her power to rally the masses as consumers for not-for-profit
capitalism. Cory Morningstar in “Wrong Kind of Green” argues that Greta is the creation of
NGO’s and not-for-profit capitalism and is being used to sell sustainable capitalism. Is there
any truth in this claim, or is it a conspiracy theory, the symptom of a bankrupt Left failure to
credit how social movements can erupt without being ‘manufactured’ by elites? Is Greta a
tool of reaction or a key to survival and liberation?

Morningstar’s take on Greta is part of a wider world view

shared by Morningstar and others who reduce global
events to the actions of the big powers over pipelines,
and treat the masses as dupes and pawns without agency.
This a fake left conspiracy theory that lumps XR and
Greta together with other ‘actors’ who are supposedly
manipulated and duped by powerful elites into defending
capitalism. Or worse, that XR is a front for green
capitalism and paid to colonise the minds of radicalising
youth. The main argument is
the NGOs have teamed up with
the Rockefellers, Soros and
Gates to sell greenwashed
capitalism, ‘humanitarian
wars’ and 21st century
colonialism.
In a podcast with Vanessa
Beesley and Forest Palmer,
Morningstar reveals a full-
blown conspiracy theory that
neutralises the masses as
objects rather than the
subjects of history. They do not make history, elites
make history. Significantly, they discuss the Syrian civil
war. The war is all about the US and Russian blocs fighting
over pipelines. As if the majority of Syrians see pipelines
as the answer to their daily struggle for existence! What
is on their agenda, is fighting a fascist dictator backed by
imperialist Russia and its client states, Turkey and Iran,
who will kill the last Syrian child to grab the oil.
So, in this conspiracy theory, Hamza al Khateeb a 13yr
old boy who wrote a slogan against Assad on a wall in
March 2011 was kidnapped, tortured, castrated and
killed, is no different from Greta Thunberg, a 15yr old
girl who wrote a slogan on a placard to launch a campaign
criticising capitalism’s failure to stop climate change.
Both are the portrayed as dupes of ‘elites’ rather than
individuals with their own capacity (interests, morality,
intelligence) to question, oppose and challenge ‘elites’.
The only difference was that Hamza died as collateral
damage to Assad’s defence of Syrian democracy from the
CIA or Islamic fascists, while Greta won’t run the same
risk unless she rejects green capitalism and 21 st century
colonialism. She has been warned.
6
Deconstructing a Conspiracy Theory
Let’s deconstruct Morningstar’s argument. Since when
can capitalism be not-for-profit? By definition capitalists
expropriate surplus value for profit. NGOs serve
capitalism by defending its basic interests, growth of
profits. But while they are parasitic on capitalism, they
cannot hide from the fact that their host is dying and
destroying everything that
served humanity in the past
including the material culture
of the workers who produce
the wealth. It’s one thing to
argue with Morningstar that
capitalism will stop at nothing
to block the solutions we need,
many of us agree on that. But
it’s another thing to condemn
XY as a capitalist front because
it is backed by non-profit NGOs
like AVAAZ or Greenpeace. It
doesn’t follow that NGOs
interests in selling green capitalism will succeed in
winning XR acceptance of capitalist rule.
Do you think for one minute that Greta is “going to let
them [i.e. NGOs] get away with it”? If she can get support
from NGOs to promote her message of ‘system change’,
why not? Here is her message:
“If there really was a crisis this big, then we would rarely
talk about anything else. As soon as you turned on the TV,
almost everything would be about that: headlines, radio,
newspaper. You would almost never hear about anything
else. And the politicians would surely have done what was
needed by now, wouldn’t they? They would hold crisis
meetings all the time, declare climate emergencies
everywhere, and spend all their waking hours handling the
situation and informing the people what was going on. But
it never was like that. The climate crisis was just treated
like any other issue or even less than that... And we must
admit that we are losing this battle... Most of us don’t know
almost any of the basic facts because, how could we? We
have not been told. Or more importantly, we have never
been told by the right people. You cannot rely on people...
to read through the latest IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change] report, track the Keeling Curve, or
Class Struggle 129
keep tabs on the world’s rapidly disappearing carbon
budget. You have to explain that to us repeatedly, no
matter how uncomfortable or unprofitable that may be...
This is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced... For too
long, the people in power have gotten away with basically
not doing anything to stop the climate and ecological
breakdown. They have gotten away with stealing our
future and selling it for profit. But we young people are
waking up. And we promise, we will not let you get away
with it anymore.”
Young people ‘waking up’ are not the unconscious tools
of capital. Imagine when facing mass sackings, we are
inspired by one teenage worker who refuses to be sacked.
She appeals to labour law (i.e. law which reproduces the
exploitative social relations of capitalism) but quickly
realises that labour law blocks workers from fights and
winning their jobs. Instead of accepting her fate dictated
by the law, and neutralised by politicians and
bureaucrats, she argues for all workers to unite, strike,
occupy the work place, and fight for workers’ control.
It’s called class struggle, where isolated workers express
their energy and agency in workers’ solidarity and
workers’ power. Let’s credit the XR youth with the same
agency as workers who are can learn from their
experience and choose to act against extinction all the
way to the overthrow of capitalism.
Why does the left resort to conspiracy
theories and not join youth in a united front
against extinction?
The answer is that the liberal Left is bankrupt. One
characteristic of the moribund, defunct left that never
recovered from the end of the Soviet Union, is that it is
extreme in its dogmatism. One part of this doctrine is
that the failures of socialism are not due to the failure of
leadership already sold out to capitalism, but the
ideological ‘backwardness’ of workers. So, let’s blame
the workers. The ‘XR-as-dupes-of-green-capitalism’
conspiracy is an attack on the radical agency of XR
incapable of learning from its experience that capitalism
has to go. Instead they should to listen to those who
“know better” (given their sorry history of abject failures
and retreats from the class struggle – some record) that
for now, the “truth”, the “reality is”, that we are being
“progressive” in tinkering with “business as usual”.
In other words, ‘middle class’ kids cannot be
revolutionaries unless they follow the doctrine of the
bankrupt Left. Otherwise they are doomed to be the
dupes of this or that new reformist movement which
sucks out all their youthful energy.
OK, XR members may still be novices testing out radical
means of pressuring capitalist governments to respond to
their demands. We don’t expect them to hit the streets
as born-again revolutionaries. And for that we have
blame the bankrupt Left for failing to build a viable
socialist movement. They abandon class analysis for
careerist postmodern fantasies that replace class
struggle with personal consumer preferences. This
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Winter (June-August) 2019
softens up working people for the right’s attacks on
science and rationality and the siren songs of fake
populist, nationalist, racist, sexist movements.
Thus, the conspiracy theory of the Left ‘manufactures’
workers as fodder for the reactionary appeals of populism
and fascism. Far right movements are now going
‘environmental’ because there is no denying the weather
bombs that hit them and the need to compete with the
cosmopolitan, globalising, liberal, centre-left and left for
recruits to boost white ‘ethno’ nationalism. France’s
Rally National (RN) under Marine Le Pen now has a
climate program. Of course, it is reactionary nationalism.
‘“Borders are the environment’s greatest ally,” twenty-
three-year-old National Rally (RN) spokesperson Jordan
Bardella told a right-wing paper in April. “[I]t is through
them that we will save the planet.” Le Pen herself has
argued that concern for the climate is inherently
nationalist. Those who are “nomadic,” she said, “do not
care about the environment; they have no homeland.”’
Why capitalism left, right, or centre cannot
save us from extinction
Here is what we think can happen. XR will go through
climate emergencies and climate general strikes to then
discover they must lead to social revolution. Most
already know that despite the hype greening capitalism
won’t work. A recent study of the potential of Green
Capitalism rejects it as a contradiction in terms.
Capitalist ‘growth’ is the problem. It is necessary to
substitute socialist planning of ‘growth’ that stops the
exploitation and destruction of nature.
Hence the XR demand: “Change the System, not the
Climate”. Enlightened capitalists can shift their shares
into renewable energy, but they can’t shut down big oil
and gas and keep the carbon in the ground. The market
is part of the problem because the solution has to be
profitable. NGOs green-washing, alt right ‘climate
nationalism’, and tons of other hot air, becomes exposed
by the deepening climate crisis as a diversion from
climate revolution.
The next target for XR is the big polluters themselves who
also happen to be those with the power to directly
control and use the states to serve their interests. So how
to shut down the polluters? Here we arrive at the critical
point where climate justice demands a socialist
revolution. But what is a socialist revolution? Will it not
end up just like capitalism, with an autocratic elite in
charge and carbon emissions just as great or greater?
What about a revolution from within to reclaim the
‘commons’ – building a cooperative alternative society
within capitalism? Here we need to learn the historic
lessons of earlier attempts at building socialism to
evaluate which system will work best.
At this point we have return to Marxism as the scientific
basis for understanding capitalism as the Capitalocene.
We get rid of Anthropocene which holds humanity
responsible for destroying nature rather than the
capitalist ruling class. A Marxist workers’ party and
Class Struggle 129
program is needed to bring to life the lessons of the
Capitalocene in destroying nature, and how to make a
revolution to build socialism. We should remember the
existential question posed by Rosa Luxemburg – Reform
or Revolution? and the slogan of Vladimir Lenin - “All
power to the Soviets”. In a sentence - to take the power
from the polluters we need to smash the capitalist state
and plan for a workers’ state.
Yet before people are ready to accept that reforms
won’t work and that we need socialist revolution to
survive, they need to be convinced of the bankruptcy
of capitalism in every sense. And that something called
‘socialism’ is the answer. We have to be sure that no
reforms driven by green capitalism such as the Green
New Deal will work. On the contrary, delusions of this
kind only delay and weaken the ability of the
movement to break from bourgeois ‘growth’ ideology
that only capitalism (and its market) can find the
solutions to the threat of extinction.
Let’s deal with the most delusionary. These are those
who claim to be socialists or anti-capitalists who clearly
think that capitalism can be taken over from within,
modifying existing institutions with minimum disruption
by simply acting to defend and extend bourgeois
democracy. As if a democratic state can somehow
override the laws of motion of the dying capitalist
economy. Let’s start with the current Green New Deal.
a. The Green New Dealers
The Green New Deal (GND) proposed by Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is a left social democratic document
that proposes to clean up 100% of energy by 2030; a 50%
cut in the military budget, full employment and
comprehensive public health, and the end to war. It
proposes to do this by redirecting state subsidies from
carbon to a ‘green’ economy.
The Green New Deal is supported by left liberals and
social democrats. Of course, Sanders has signed up to the
GND (see below). What does it offer that is different from
new deal liberalism (Sanders) or even left Labourism
(Corbynism)? New Zealand’s recent “wellbeing budget”
comes nowhere near to the GND as ‘wellbeing’ under
capitalism means coping with alienation, wage labour
and a neo-colonial state. What it offers is the ‘hope’ that
capitalism is not doomed as long as there is the potential
for citizens to mobilise to throw out the elites and
introduced sustainable growth without eliminating
capitalism. This is exactly the ‘hopium’ that Morningstar
accuses Greta of pushing. So, it is important to compare
the GND to XR.
This is not a new kind of green. As well as referencing
the original New Deal of the 1930’s all these various
shades of green ‘solutions’ are basically Keynesian.
They rely on state spending on social investment in
jobs, infrastructure etc to incentivise capitalist
investment. One fashionable current version is MMT
(Modern Monetary Theory) which supports the state
printing money to see the investment-growth cycle
going. But MMT cannot escape the dilemma of
8
Winter (June-August) 2019
Keynesianism. Under capitalism state spending to
stimulate capitalist growth fails unless capitalists are
assured of a sufficient profit. Basically, the Marxist
critique of MMT is that underconsumption is not the
problem. The crisis is caused by falling profits. So,
what pretends to be a left social democratic solution
(‘socialist’ even) actually requires austerity attacks on
workers to drive down the costs of labour to make it
work. This is called ‘socialist pragmatism’ (see below).
Related to the GND and MMT is the movement to ‘reclaim
the ‘commons’. It is dependent on a social democratic
government to enable it to legally create ‘commons’ and
collectively owned property, and Keynesian policies to
implement it.
“My argument boils down to this: In order to save and
preserve what we have in common, the earth, we must
transition to a form of society that respects the
commons. It is not about passively waiting for such a
society to miraculously arise: the commons is already
here, although hidden from view by the ideologies and
structures of existing society. By fighting to reclaim the
commons—which includes not only the land but also the
social powers at our disposal to collectively organize our
lives without recourse to hierarchical forms of
domination—we can transition to a new society, at the
same as saving the earth itself. It seems to me that
working for this would be worth the effort.”
What is the Marxist critique of socialism in one commune?
First it is not anti-hierarchical because it assumes the
existence of the capitalist nation state which defends
private property. It faces the same problem of previous
revolutions which proved incapable of ‘changing the
system’ without overthrowing the state. Second, in a
globalised capitalist world, any isolated socialist
revolution would not be able to enter into an
international division of labour and economic plan that
harnesses sustainable energy as a global project to
restore nature. By adapting to global capitalism, any new
system to stop climate change would be aborted.
If the Green New Deal and its variants cannot work
because it remains dependent on capitalism’s survival, is
there another solution to the crisis of the capitalocene
that does not require the urgent transition to socialism?
a. Sanders, & ‘socialist’ pragmatism
Long-time ‘democratic socialism’ Bernie Sanders wants a
new, New Deal and has signed up to the GND. But that is
no advance on the ‘hopium’ offered by AOC as it fails to
get to the root of the problem – ‘progressive’ capitalism.
But ‘progressive’ for which class? Trotsky critiqued the
‘progressive’ tradition in the US as a left form of
‘pragmatism’, the popular philosophy which hold that
what is ‘works’ for capital is good for all.
Then, after decades of trying to redistribute wealth
Sanders recognised that new taxes to pay for it were
universally unpopular. Acting on advice from others he
now wants to shift the focus from distribution to workers
ownership of production. He wants to build on earlier
Class Struggle 129 Winter (June-August) 2019

attempts to legislate capitalists giving shares to workers The modern concept of Ecology didn't exist in Marx's time
in a wealth fund managed by the unions. Workers will also because for him nature and society were symbiotic as a
participate on the boards of companies to share in co- contradictory historical mode of production in which the
management. forces of production (nature) and the relations of
production (society) were locked into a fight to the
Note that this is a pragmatic proposal because it may
death. Humans were on both sides of this contradiction,
work and it may derail XR into another ‘wrong kind of
as members of antagonistic classes – as capitalists vs
green’. It is popular with workers and some employers.
workers. Workers sold the use of their physical energy to
But it would take the passing of the Green New Deal in
work for a wage as the commodity ‘labour power’.
Congress to implement it. It is not a proposal based on
Labour power had the special property of producing more
principled socialism, that workers who produce the
value than its own value when the employer owns and
wealth should independently determine what their share
controls the means of production. Workers did necessary
is, not Congress doing pragmatic deals with bosses! Can
labour to create enough value to exchange for the means
Sanders’ reforms be turned into a real socialism within
of subsistence (food, energy, transport etc) but also
12 years to rescue humanity from extinction?
worked additional hours of surplus labour to create
Peter Gowan has suggested a Sanders Plan that includes surplus value as the basis of profits.
workers ownership, and moves to nationalise the banks,
Therefore, Ecology as a concept explains nothing unless
finance and fossil fuel industries. However, there is
integrated inside the general theory of capitalism and its
nothing new in the means for achieving this. Sanders as
logical successor, socialism. Ecology is already subsumed
President could do a ‘socialist Trump’ and use his
in the contradictory unity of nature and society. Ecology,
executive power to sideline a hostile Congress and Courts
as a practical problem, always existed in people’s heads
to legislate these reforms. Ironically, he calls this the
to ‘explain’ the daily struggle of humans as part of
‘Salvador Allende’ strategy. This may be a pragmatic
nature. But this ecology is not a ‘given’, or universal
‘socialism’ that could work for capital, though it hasn’t
constant. It is a ‘taken’. It changes with every new mode
elsewhere. But what about the principle of class struggle.
of production from slave society to capitalist society that
The ‘system change’ we and XR needs right now is not
‘takes’ from nature by exhausting its bounty. Marx’s
creeping state socialism along the historic lines argued
analysis of capitalism explained this fact.
by Mensheviks, but an international socialist party
leading XR that has world socialist revolution at the top Nature is continuously changing as a result of class
of its agenda. struggle between workers and capitalists. Nature-as-
labour struggles against society-as-capital constantly, as
Marx on Socialism and Ecology workers contest capital over the share of value they
While many people are convinced that capitalism is create. Why? Because for labour, its share, in the form or
the wage, is materially necessary to reproduce labour
doomed, they are so hostile to socialism they continue
power. This natural process becomes hijacked by capital
to look for a mythical ‘third way’ - neither capitalist
nor socialist. The main objection is that ‘socialism’ – when it exploits labour to produce more value beyond
the ‘actually existing’ socialism of the USSR. China or that of the wage. Therefore, the reproduction of ‘nature’
specific to the production of profit is determined by the
Cuba – are as much responsible for climate change as
‘use-value’ of labour power to the capitalists – i.e.
the capitalist world.
producing more value than its own value. Workers are
Here we are talking about Socialism as conceived by Marx reproduced only as wage labourers, not as humans.
as a stage between capitalism and communism where
The dynamics of ecology today are defined by nature
workers’ revolution creates a workers’ state based on
and capitalist society that leads inevitably to the
workers councils and plans production and distribution of
goods for need not profit. We reject the bogus destruction of nature (including human nature) with
‘socialisms’ attached by various bourgeois and petty the extreme consequences of the threat of extinction
of most species on the planet. Thus, Marx's theory
bourgeois currents to parliamentary socialism. We reject
predicted the inevitable destruction by capitalism of
the use of the term to describe the degenerated
the forces of production (including labour-power) as
‘socialist’ states that failed to build real socialism
because they were surrounded or invaded by global the pre-condition for the socialist revolution.
capitalist powers. Alienation from Self, Society and Nature
For Marx, socialism already exists in embryo trapped
In developing a theory of the Capitalocene, some
inside capitalism (workers produce the wealth as a force
Marxists revise Marx in the name of nature. Jason
of nature and struggle to control or plan production) so
Moore is one. He is among those who claim to be
that logically to return to nature it is necessary to remove
Marxists but who play around with Marx’s basic
capitalism and allow the socialist embryo to develop. The
concepts, even dropping the labour theory of value.
only way to reverse climate change and at the same time
Ecology as the nexus between nature and society must
plan for society to return to nature is real socialism based
be based on the labour theory of value. It is that which
on democratic workers councils backed by workers
predicts capitalism’s finite existence, necessary
militias on a global scale.
decline, and massive destruction of nature. And
9
Class Struggle 129
predicts why it is the working class, that produces
value, acts for nature when it revolts against
capitalism to bury it and build socialism.
Take John Bellamy Foster is a well-known Marxist writing
about ecology. He argues Marx accounted for the damage
capitalism does to nature and predicted increasing
environmental destruction. This is clear in the concept of
‘Metabolic Rift’. One can go too far and reduce the social
relations of capitalism to an objective
metabolic/physical process. The whole point of Marx’s
work was to show how capitalism alienates workers from
nature and yet nature fights back as class war to redeem
itself. Only by ending capitalism and building socialism
will alienation be overcome.
The concept of alienation is central to any Marxist
analysis of climate collapse. First, workers’ control
over their labour-power (nature) is alienated by the
owners of the means of production who dispossess
peasants of their means of subsistence. Workers figure
as no more than statistics in the capitalist books as part
of the Price of Production. Second, capitalists, by
depriving workers of their means of subsistence
(nature), can make them work for longer than is
necessary to earn a wage (necessary labour) to buy
their means of subsistence (nature).
All exploitation of nature requires the active agent of
labour-power to be exploited. Thus, big oil and gas
exploit nature by employing workers to extract and burn
carbon. This alienation of the value they create separates
workers from the product of their labour and makes them
appear as the equals of capitalists as buyers and sellers
of commodities. The exploitation and alienation of labour
during the production process now appears as an equal
exchange relationship in the market.
The end of alienation therefore means the end of class
society, specifically capitalist society. The capitalists
insert themselves into a natural non-exploitative
process to exploit nature for profit and create the
Capitalocene. That is why Marx viewed capitalism as a
historically limited form of exploitative society. The
contradiction between nature and society would force
workers, as part of nature, to revolt against its
destruction and unite to overthrow capitalism. To end
alienation workers must break with this exploitative
social relation and restore the harmonious unity of
nature and society!
What must be Done!
The trick today is to reject lip-service to greening
capitalism from the right, left and centre. They are
equally suicidal. Within the new social movements
that profess to fight climate change, Marxists need
to be part of the mobilisations with a program that
warns of the duplicity of capitalism in all its forms,
and explicitly states and wins the argument for
survival socialism.
10
Winter (June-August) 2019
Instead of writing off the masses who are mobilising
against climate collapse as dupes, we have to warn
them of the many various attempts to neutralise
class struggle. There are many would-be leaders of
XR on both Right and Left who preach capitalist
reform rather than socialist revolution.
As we wrote in “Are YV and XR the new Reds?”
these movements are reacting to an
unprecedented world-historic existential crisis.
For the first time humanity faces a terminal crisis
of capitalism which cannot survive without the
genocide of working people and the ecocide of
most life forms. This poses the question point
blank as human extinction or socialist revolution.
That is the objective reality. XR is learning the
lessons of climate science and rising
spontaneously against their fate as slaves or
corpses in the future horror story of capitalism.
Will the bankrupt Left rise to this challenge? No.
What is missing from the Morningstar Left critique
of Greta and XR is the Marxist science of society
about which most people remain ignorant. Not
because they are ‘backward’, but because of the
bankrupt Left failed to make Marxism the science
of workers’ life and culture. Marx called this
science ‘dialectics’ as it explains that nature and
society are a contradictory unity in motion,
motivated by the class struggle to resolve that
contradiction, revolutionising society in the
process to restore a harmony with nature.
The bankrupt Left has no understanding that the
same forces that are causing the terminal crisis of
capitalism today are those that incubate the
embryonic socialist society emerging within
capitalism to replace it. The old world is dying, but
the new world has yet to be born. It will not emerge
miraculously as the result of some external agency.
Only conscious class struggle can resolve the
contradiction between embattled nature and dying
capitalism in a new socialist world.
It is class struggle that will prove that capitalism has
to be overthrown by its alienated subjects waking
up and organising mass movements. And as their
demands are heavily repressed by the state,
fascism, and paramilitary gangs, these social
movements will transform themselves into
revolutionary councils and militias capable of
overthrowing capitalism and creating a socialist
society where the contradiction between society
and nature is replaced with harmonious unity.
Say no to war with Iran!
Down with Sanctions and the defacto Muslim ban!
The U.S. sanctions and threat of war against Iran come at a time when U.S. imperialism is in
global decline and facing an historical defeat at the hands of the new rising great imperialist
powers, Russia and China. Iran (and to some extent Iraq) now becomes the focal point of U.S.
foreign policy that seeks to break up the Russia/China bloc at its weakest point. This is
imperialist geopolitics, the rivalry between two hostile blocs for control of the Middle East as
a springboard to West Asia. Russia and China have strengthened their alliance with Turkey,
Iran and Qatar. Trump wants to break this alliance by testing how far Russia and China will go
to defend Iran, and maintain their interests in MENA. Trump’s working assumption seems to
be that the U.S. has the power to apply unilateral sanctions to countries from Russia and China
to Iran and Venezuela, and force his rivals to compromise, do separate deals, and weaken their
capacity to resist U.S. hegemony.

We have news for him; proletarian

the terminal crisis of revolution against
global capitalism is imperialist counter-
disrupting the status revolution, is the
quo so fast that the creation of a new
loyalty of the revolutionary
members of the U.S. leadership organized
Bloc is also being as a international
tested. Both Russia party of revolution.
and China are moving
Trump ups the ante
on their own deals
now when Russia is
with the EU and some
saying they’ve run out
of its members. The
of credit for Iran.
fate of the UK if it
Russia is already
goes with Brexit will
experiencing frictions
speed up the breakup
with the realities of
of Europe, and the
the Iranian
weakening NATO and the Atlantic Alliance. But more than
resettlement of Syria and the Tehran-backed Shiite
that the increasing trade wars between the two blocs is
militias in Syria, where Moscow has invested heavily in
the consequence of the revived Arab Revolution, in
Mediterranean naval and air bases, a geopolitical win
particular its development towards armed revolution.
that is historic from the Russian ruling class’ perspective.
When the ruling class look for the revolution they fear,
Russia remembers Afghanistan and its holy warriors and
they look to MENA. There are now active fronts not only
fears what they may do to Moscow infidels after an Assad
between members of the two blocs, Syria, Israel, Saudi
victory. Some of yesterday’s Mujahedin are nowadays on
Arabia, Iraq, Palestine, Turkey, but both the revolution
one or another of Tehran’s militia payrolls.
and counter-revolution are armed. Add to this the mass
struggles in Sudan and Algeria where the situation calls Iran is undergoing internal crisis with an upturn in class
for the masses to organize militias and win over the ranks struggle just when rightist warhawk Bolton gets Trump’s
of the armed forces, and we have a volatile pre- ear. Bolton frankly and loudly calls for regime change,
revolutionary situation. telling the world so in his May 5th speech. What he wants
is the return of the monarchy, and he has Giuliani, the
Trump’s latest adventure in Iran goes to the heart of this
President’s mouthpiece, organizing support for the MEK,
dynamic between revolution and counter-revolution in
ostensibly a liberal Islamist republican movement, in New
MENA. It shifts the frame of reference in the ‘war on
York. In the blink of an eye Pompeo is off to Moscow to
terror’ to the question of who is for, or against, Iran. In
try to sell a swap: Trump can acquiesce to Russians in
the last analysis, however, the inter-imperialist conflicts
Venezuela, but Russia has to cut the Ayatollah regime
are all about regime change to ensure that the semi-
loose and forget about making Iran a full member of the
colonial masses remain dominated and oppressed, so that
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the
the global crisis of falling profits can be resolved by
China/Russia alliance.
counter-revolution.
This full membership is Russia’s idea. Washington and any
Yet we are in a period when the bosses’ terminal crisis
blind man could see how China has been cool to it, and
means they cannot rule in the old way. Nor will
we see China calling upon Iran to respect the Joint
workers and peasants tolerate paying for the
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear treaty.
capitalists’ crisis with their lives and livelihoods. The
Pompeo can tell Putin Trump’s offer is the way to keep
vital factor that is missing to make it possible to win a
the Arab Spring away from Russia’s border. But even the
Class Struggle 129
offer of 120,000 U.S. troops will not look remotely
adequate to suppressing an Iranian revolution, and it
doesn’t help Pompeo’s sales effort that Bolton is
suggesting U.S. security requires regime change.
Congress got a report from Pompeo on May 20th,
presumably about this trip as well as whatever is real
about new, additional frictions with Iran, but the public
hears next to nothing because military and intelligence
experts have said all the provocations are on the U.S. side
and Iran is simply reacting with understandable self-
defense preparations.
We have been able to learn that Pompeo and Trump
believe Trump already has authorization to attack Iran
(euphemistically, to defend Americans and allies) under
the 2003 Iraq war force authorization! A war Trump has
claimed he opposed! Trump says he doesn’t want war, he
wants talks, then Rouhani says a war won’t happen and
then we hear Tehran is multiplying its enrichment of
nuclear material 400%, followed by another exchange of
threats. Two days after Pompeo’s briefing the collision
with Iran disappeared from the airwaves, buried with
every other concern foreign and domestic as the twin
capitalist parties wrestle with whether to start
impeachment investigations over Trump’s lawlessness.
The U.N. calls on the two countries to cool off, hoping
out loud Oman will mediate between them, as Oman has
done in the past. A move in Congress to deny Trump Iran
war powers has failed.
Into this mess Trump dumps a heated-up trade war with
China and heaps praise on Hungary’s quasi-fascist Viktor
Orban, an anti-Muslim, anti-Semite “illiberal democrat,”
in Orban’s own words. Trump says he and Orban are two
“controversial” guys defending their countries. Which is
to say white nationalism/ whiteness maintenance.[1]
Orban is certain not to object to greater U.S. sanctions
on Iran, or to more bellicosity with the threat of
dispatching 120,000 U.S. troops to stand behind the
Carrier Battle Group and the B-52 squadron already sent.
Orban is persona non grata in several NATO countries.
Worker revolutionists want to know why the U.S. borders
are open for visits by such neo-Hitlerite scum? We object
and don’t want him here at all, contrary to the idealist
ultra-open borders position of certain fake Trotskyists.
We want to rescue the refugees Trump and Orban want
dead! The Immigration and Naturalization Service 2019
quota for Syrians is 62 persons. We say that is a racist
and murderous Muslim ban, perpetrated on the sly.
The White House visit of this successful border-wall
builder was part of the racist message itself!
This racist message comes at a time when most
European states are on record as opposed to Trump’s
threat to Iran. European Parliament elections are
about to begin, and we call upon worker revolutionists
to organize labor actions to denounce Washington’s
war quest and any notions in European bosses’
governments to participate in it. (This would also be
high time for the RCIT to demand the withdrawal of
Austrian armed forces from the former Yugoslavia.)
12
Winter (June-August) 2019
Among the ironies operating in the present Iran case are:
1. Trump and Rouhani understand each other and don’t
want war, after threatening force, like the two mobsters
they are, and 2., the international players who DO want
this war and who have for years called for the U.S. to
wage it are Israel and Saudi Arabia!
And Trump could use a war. He may continue to have
Speaker of Congress Pelosi opposing his impeachment,
but he is beginning to lose court and state laws battles
where he fights to keep his finances hidden. And his
demonstration of his autarchic misunderstanding of trade
with China is not going to be popular, or remain so for
long. The farmers who voted for him are already feeling
the actual effects as commodity prices tank, while the
consumers generally will feel the pain in just a few
weeks, and in this season where even the Democrats (!)
begin to think about impeaching him, some begin to
remember that he swiped congress’ longstanding control
over trade policy, telling the twin party suckers a
national security emergency was caused by China’s
thieving of technology!
In Trump’s circumstances, where his racist supporters
care less that he has been clutching at increasing powers,
are glad he’s arranging for presidential pardons for war
criminals, and where he is himself a named unindicted
co-conspirator, he may require a war to “wag the dog”
like Clinton did successfully with a few dozen cruise
missiles in 1999. Generals appear on tv warning that an
Iran war would be much more like Viet Nam than
Saddam’s Iraq was. We hasten here to point out that this
is a greased slope we ought to recognize, having seen it
a few times before back in the days of “the draft.” Trump
would gladly send thousands to their deaths and not a
few GI’s as well to avoid prison, a reality almost certainly
waiting for him once – or is it “if”? – he leaves office in
January, 2021 or before. Increasingly, a second Trump
term appears to require a large scale successful Russian
electronic attack on county voter rolls and other forms of
vote suppression.
Trump wants to split Russia out of the SCO. He’d be glad
to “let Russia deal with Syria” if he can turn Russia
against Iran, and he can offer the Syria plum to Putin
because they’re either pals or forced to act that way by
compromising leverage Putin has. Trump got rid of the
policy traditionalist General Mattis and his new Secretary
of Defense Shanahan is a yes man from Boeing. Let Putin
go for this horsetrading and leave the SCO and Trump will
be free to attack China later. The big budgetary buildup
for the Pentagon has not just been candy for the Military-
Industrial Complex. Among the biggest capitalists a quick
decisive war with China is a popular wish as the U.S.
empire faces decline. WORKERS BEWARE! If your ruling
class and their international bloc figure out how to break
the SCO apart they will put you up to marching on Beijing!
We call for saving the planet and all the threatened
species from this cataclysm. We call for U.S. and
Chinese workers to wage war on their capitalist rulers,
making the socialist revolution and breaking humanity
out of the loop of wars and economic collapses.
Class Struggle 129
So far, we think Trump is more than a little loco, and his
Iran ploy is so far less than likely to work. There is the
chance that this very dangerous development comes to
nothing, like 2017’s “mine’s bigger than yours” nuclear
button bluster against Kim & the DPRK. But that was
before Bolton was National Security Advisor, and the
DPRK is seen by Trump as a personal opportunity for
capitalist penetration in the course of restoration,
whereas Iran is an object of his hatred of Islam. You
would think it would be otherwise, with the DPRK in
possession of actual nuclear weapons and ballistic
missiles capable of hitting allied and U.S. territory. His
demurring, matched by Rouhani’s stated preference for
peace is reported to have caused Bolton and Pompeo to
have an angry shouting match, doubtless over who is to
blame for the failure to start an Iran war!
Trump dreams of a triumphal Trump military victory
parade on July 4th, but his logic for an Iran war has
escaped the masses. There is no jingoism like Bush
enjoyed for his Iraq invasion in 2003. Not yet. Workers,
beware! He may still want to sell one to his base when he
announces pardons for accused and convicted war
criminals on May 27th, this year’s Memorial Day.
Trump must go, and go THIS year! The working class,
in defense of human life, in defense of itself and the
threatened 1 million species, needs to take his nuclear
“football” away and give him the boot. And not as a
single issue but as one class demand with a temporary
emphasis among all the workers’ demands for justice and
the political power, a dictatorship of the proletariat in
place of the fatal dictatorship of the capitalists, to get
and build and keep justice. Then, if after he is removed,
the reformists, whose opposition has so far been so
ineffectual, want to prosecute and jail him, we won’t
fret. We will be busy fighting the other Trumps with their
dreams of other paths to world domination. And we will
be busy building a recovering world and closing jails, not
building new ones.
Just as Trump’s tariffs largely punish U.S. farmers and
consumers, his Iran sanctions immiserate the Iranian
workers, for whom necessities become scarce with
soaring prices. The regime of the Mullahs has problems of
their own making besides, for which Washington is
blamed. The masses tire of this dodge. They know the
war in Syria is bankrupting the country, but our fake
left “anti-imperialists” don’t. Right along with the
Mullahs’ regime they support Assad and deny Iran’s war
crimes, their forced migration of Sunnis, confiscation of
the deeds to their land and homes, and even ethnic
cleansing, all of which these tools loudly deny.
With a clueless Russophile “opposition” like this and no
mobilized anti-war movement based in the working class,
Trump feels a complete freedom of action, despite
wholesale miasma in the military. He knows most
Democrat politicians always rally round the flag for war
profits once the bloodletting is begun. We demand an
13
Winter (June-August) 2019
end to the sanctions and an immediate withdrawal of
all troops from the region and abandonment of all
overseas U.S. military bases![2]
The Iranian workers have found the costs of the war in
Syria have not been offset by the proceeds remitted by
the settlers, the 1 plus or possibly two million Iranians
their leaders have moved into properties in Syria
confiscated from the refugees— the costs have not been
borne by any repatriated profits, all of which go to the
Mullahs and their henchmen and this occurs while
widespread class struggle breaks out across Iran itself.
The religious hierarchs thought they’d head off the
masses’ grievances by shipping the unemployed to Syria.
Washington’s new sanctions post Trump’s withdrawal
from the JCPOA aggravate the crisis of a regime
bankrupted by the intervention in Syria in support of
Assad and now threatened with fire and fury by the
egomaniacal son of a racist landlord. We stand with the
Iranian workers against war and for all of their
demands. Down with Giuliani’s connivance with the
capitalist MEK! Expose all imperialist secret
“diplomacy!” Open the borders to rescue refugees
from imperialism’s wars and counter-revolutions.
• Down with Trump This year!
• Say No to U.S. sanctions against Iran! No war
with Iran!
• No to the red/brown alliance! There is no
“anti-imperialist” bloc!
• For Labor Actions to stop imperialist war,
oppose all foreign interventions!
• U.S. Troops form rank and file committees to
build a COME HOME NOW movement!
• For enlisted service members union and
election of officers!
• Free whistle-blowers and expose secret
diplomacy and war crimes!
[1]
White nationalism today is the consequence of
terminal crisis throwing the ruling class back on the
most aggressive defence of imperialism, fascist
defence of white nations to smash the international
working class.
[2]
Earlier this week, officials said military planners had
outlined options that could have sent up to 10,000
military reinforcements to the region. Acting Defense
Secretary Patrick Shanahan later said planners hadn’t
settled on a figure.
The U.S. has about 70,000 troops across the Middle
East, including at a major Navy base in Bahrain and an
Air Force base and operations center in Qatar. There
are about 5,200 troops in Iraq and 2,000 in Syria.
Reprinted from http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=2310
Class Struggle 129
IBT on Russia and Venezuela
The recent split in the International Bolshevik Tendency’s (IBT) over the
question of Russian imperialism reveals the bad method on both sides of the
argument. While a minority thinks that Russia is imperialist, the majority
disagrees. We reply to an ex-IBT member, Alan, based in Ireland who supports
the majority.
Alan says imperialist powers can be judged on how they
support their allies. US does it by regime change to put
a compliant bourgeois regime in place and so is clearly
imperialist. Russia and China, etc do it by providing aid
against a US coup which is 'strange behavior' for
imperialism, hence they are not imperialist. But this
explanation already assumes what has to be proved:
that imperialism has a scientific definition, that of the
export of capital to
reap super-profits,
that may explain
many ‘strange
behaviors. Of course,
Russia, China and
Cuba come to the
rescue of their allies.
The BRICS+ and
military agreements
oblige them to do so.
The question is: what
motivates such an
alliance. If you see
Russia and China (R&C) as imperialist, as we do, then
they are motivated to defend their allies to advance
their imperialist interests. But if, like Alan and the
‘imps’ who have an empiricist/dogmatic definition of
Russia and China as not imperialist, then their
intervention in support of their allies must be
'progressive' because they are against the 'main enemy'
the US. Therefore, Russia and China are to be defended
against the US.
One of the lessons of 20th Century centrism, as
explained by Trotsky in IN DEFENCE OF MARXISM, is that
empiricism is the method of opportunists. Empiricists
do not grasp the totality as one of the unity of
opposites but scratch about for 'facts' until they can
justify their opportunism. Denial of Russia as
imperialist is social imperialist opportunism that
adapts to the cryptostalinist position that Russia is still
'progressive' against the US bloc (providing aid to
Venezuela rather than trying to overthrow Maduro). A
sort of post-Marxist Stalinophilia. This is the default
position of the petty bourgeois Eurocentrist left. And it
is an inversion of the Third Camp form of Stalinophobic
opportunism.
Thus, is it consistent with the anti-Marxist (anti-
Dialectic) method of opportunism/empiricism to
14
Winter (June-August) 2019
recognise Russia as imperialist while at the same time
holding China to be a deformed workers' state. This is
trying to have it both ways in adapting to the
Eurocentric left which sees both Russia and China as
'progressive' against the US.
The IBT provides the pseudo Marxist rationale for such
opportunism. Russia is progressive in relation to the US
because it is not
imperialist. China,
however, while
exhibiting the same
social relations and
the state that
defends them as does
Russia, (operating
under the law of
value in the global
economy, exporting
capital, creating
BRICS, SCOW, and
Asian Bank and
customs unions as its
sphere of interest and still has the MOST DYNAMIC
GROWTH inflating the bubble of global capitalism) is
RULED BY A COMMUNIST PARTY in a one-party state.
Instead of pointing out that it is not possible for a
ruling 'communist' bureaucracy to outstrip the
economic growth of established imperialist powers,
but rather that a state capitalist regime ruled by the
CP is exactly what Trotsky predicted would be the
easiest way to restore capitalism, the IBT hides
behind its empiricism/dogmatism.
It seems that the split in the IBT over Russia which
gives the background to this post, was over who had
the best reading of petty bourgeois opinion toward
Russia and China in the West. We are against ALL
imperialist intervention in Venezuela. Though we
would not call on workers in R&C to actively oppose
their ruling classes providing weapons and aid to the
Maduro regime that could end up in workers militias
and used to defeat both a US coup and the Maduro
regime and any intervention by R&C to prevent a
Workers and Peasants Government coming to power.
The Liaison Committee of Communists’ position on
Venezuela is found in Class Struggle 128 and here
http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=2264
Class Struggle 129 Winter (June-August) 2019

Aotearoa:

Transactivists vs Radical Feminists

A major dispute has arisen in the last few years over the right of transwomen to
claim the same rights as biological women. What might have seemed as a mere
disagreement between lesbians and transactivists over the meaning of the word
‘woman’ has turned nasty as liberal or social democratic politicians are using
state authority to enforce a law change that will allow transmen and
transwomen to self-identify by statutory declaration as men or women. Is this
just an unfortunate spat between members of the LGBT over ‘democracy’ and
‘human rights’ that can be resolved by goodwill, or does it have wider, long-
term ramifications for women’s struggle against patriarchy and capitalism?

The Greens Bill to legitimize Sex Self-ID

‘Terf’ as a term of abuse for gender critical radical
feminists seems to have been around for some time,
but it blew up on social media in Aotearoa last year
in response to the Green Party’s Sex Self-ID Bill
(Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships
Registration Bill or BDMRR Bill) that allows
transgender people to have their identity as born
men or women altered in law by simply making a
statutory declaration.
Many fear that if this bill becomes law then it will
be a big defeat for women. At the least it replaces
biological and social science concepts of sex and
gender with individuals subjective feelings,
conflating gender and sex causing serious potential
harm to transgender people and others. At worst it
also allows transwomen existing women’s rights to
hard-won female-only spaces and exposes women to
male violence.
Concern over this Bill was behind the split in the
LGTB ‘community’ over the leadership of the Pride
Parade. Ostensibly the split was over the decision to
exclude the police in uniform. This seemed to line
up young trans people and their supporters against
more conservative, corporate interests sponsoring
the Pride Parade.
The police ban was, on the face of it, radical. Police
as enforcers of bourgeois law should never have
been included in Pride Parades in the first place as
Emilie Raakete’s statement about police abuse
statistics of LGBT amply demonstrated. But this
This became clear, as Renee Gerlich pointed out,
radicalism against the cops in uniform turned out to
when Louisa Wall said showed she was not fussed by
be masking the real target for exclusion, biological
the ban on police in uniforms. What she really
women, namely lesbians.
wanted to exclude ‘terfs’ from the parade. The
police ban was an over-reaction on the police
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Class Struggle 129
headquarters, not Pride. The cops were supposed to
accept criticism of their abuse of LGBT, not walk
away from the parade. As a result the 2019 Pride
March turned out to be a ‘radical chic’ celebration
with a bit of pseudo Marxist-Leninist pink washing
to mobilise ‘progressive’ youth against the
opponents of the Sex Self-ID Bill, especially lesbians
and their allies.
Transactivism is not Marxism
Certainly, transactivism has nothing whatsoever to
do with real Marxism, Leninism or Communism.
First, Marxists never negotiate with police. They are
agents of the bourgeois state who enforce bourgeois
law, including the Bill in question which if passed
will allow transwomen to invade women’s spaces
and inflict male violence and probably get away
with it. NZ Corrections have reported that six
women are ‘alleged’ to have been assaulted in
women’s jail by transwomen over the last 2 years.
Yet Corrections do not seem to have tested those
‘allegations’ yet.
Second, any transactivist who claims to be a serious
Marxist would reject trans-ideology outright and
support all women, including transwomen, against
oppression unconditionally. But taking a stand on
that would require a rudimentary understanding of
the history of women’s oppression and right now
trans-ideology has trouble acknowledging the
existence of the female sex other than reducing it
to body parts.
So, in ignorance of that history, transactivists
choose to bully those who criticize trans-ideology
for ‘hate speech’ to shut down debate about the Sex
Self-ID law before it becomes law. At this point in
the argument, we are forced to the conclusion that
far from fighting the patriarchy, transactivists have
joined the patriarchy to attack the historic gains of
the women’s movement. The next step is to explain
why.
The logic of the argument is as follows. Trans-
ideology is best understood as the ideology of a
state and corporate sponsored transactivist
politics reflecting the post-modern individualism
of neo-liberal capitalism facing its terminal
crisis. It promotes individual ‘free choice’
against the solidarity of gender and class
politics. It conflates sex with gender, allowing
men to pose as women in taking the side of men
in the historic oppression of the female gender at
a critical point in human history when women are
standing up for humanity and nature against the
threat of extinction.
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Winter (June-August) 2019
Where does trans-ideology come from?
It seems that most Radical Feminist accounts of the
recent emergence of 21st century trans-ideology
tend to blame the corporate interests of big pharma
in promoting gender transition. No doubt this is
correct as far as it goes. But it doesn’t explain the
rapid adoption and acceptance of a movement that
challenges the rights of women. Two recent articles
attempt to go further in tracing a causal link
between neoliberalism and trans-ideology.
The first by Heather Brunskell-Evans is excellent at
the cultural level of analysis but doesn’t explain
neoliberalism as a response to the onset of the
structural crisis of global capitalism from the 1970’s
onwards. For Marxists, neoliberal ideology emerged
in the 1980s, as a reborn early 19th century
liberalism, to shift the burden of the crises of
capitalism onto workers as a whole. But trans-
ideology did not burst on the scene until the new
millennium, when capital’s crisis had become
terminal, and was desperate to clawback the
historic gains of women to restore the rate of profit.
To overcome women’s resistance, trans ideology
had to target politically progressive women,
especially radical feminists, in order to divide the
working class and weaken its ability to mobilise
against the patriarchy and capitalist class rule.
The second is an article just published by Renee
Gerlich that develops Naomi Klein’s ‘shock doctrine’
from her book Disaster Capitalism to account for
the rise of trans ideology. Gerlich brilliantly extends
Klein’s structural analysis showing that the
emergence of trans-ideology coincides with the rise
of neoliberalism from the 1970s on, rising to a
crescendo in the last few years.
We agree with Gerlich that the attacks of neoliberal
capitalism on women over this period were
disproportionate and devastating. As a result. more
women sought refuge from these attacks in
changing their gender. The motivation of men to
change their gender is less clear but it does create
the conditions for a new form of male violence
against women. Gerlich’s view supports the reality
that trans-people were and are clearly trying to
escape neo-liberal oppression. Following Klein, this
requires an organised fight back against the shock
doctrine. However, the message that trans-ideology
is promoting is that transwomen have no obligation
to join women in fighting neoliberalism or
capitalism, let alone fight the historical and
material causes of gender oppression, but instead
demonises those women most able to lead that
fight.
Class Struggle 129
Trans-ideology and Capital’s End Game
But how to fight? The problem with Klein’s theory is that
the shock doctrine is strongly associated with the neo-
liberal period of structural crisis without explaining the
cause of the structural crisis in Marxist terms. It does not
show how capitalism’s exploitation of disasters of its own
making is a desperate attempt to overcome its structural,
and now terminal, twin crises of falling profits and
climate catastrophe. It leaves open the possibility that
‘neoliberalism’ is symptomatic of a ‘fundamentalist’
policy that can be ‘corrected’ by progressive politics,
rather than by overthrowing its root cause, a dying
capitalism.
A case in point are the Christchurch
earthquakes of 2010/2011 which
many saw as an example of Disaster
Capitalism at work. Yet the disaster
while triggered by nature itself,
revealed the advanced decay of
capitalist society in the poor design
and build of structures and the
state/corporate takeover of the
rebuild under the National Coalition
Government.
From a Marxist standpoint, trans-
ideology has to be the child of the
neoliberal counter-revolution
against women as workers during
that period of structural crisis,
stagnation and decay. The end of
the post-war boom and onset of
structural crisis could be overcome
by capital only by means of a
counter-revolution to ramp up
austerity against workers,
particularly women workers, to restore its profits. This
caused a long backlash against the gains of the 2nd wave
of feminism of the 1970s to promote equal rights, equal
pay, abortion rights etc., to claw back and ultimately
destroy these gains to restore the conditions for a return
to adequate profits. It was no accident that neoliberalism
targeted especially the most exploited and doubly-
oppressed element in the working class, women both as
unpaid domestic labourers and as part of the wage-labour
force.
Further, among working class women, it was minority
coloured, migrant and lesbian women, the victims of
special oppression who suffered most. Along with
members of the wider reserve army of labour they were
used to drive down wages and conditions of the whole
working class. This counter-revolution was uneven, as
‘third-world’ women suffered massive losses through
infanticide, trafficking, slave labour, and prostitution as
well as systematic rape and murder by males. However,
minority women in the imperialist heartlands of North
America and Europe were also cruelly demonized, and
stereotyped as black, brown, migrant and/or welfare
“solo mothers” to weaken their resistance to their
oppression.
17
Winter (June-August) 2019
Postmodernism, and trans-ideology
Which brings us to the question of how and why the
neoliberal counter-revolution deepened around the
millennium to give birth to a trans-ideology capable of
driving transactivist politics. This is not the place to
account for the historic origins of bourgeois ideology. For
Marx, ideology is the effect of production relations
appearing as exchange relations and masking the
exploitative nature of capitalist production. Marx
explains this in his theory of commodity fetishism.in
Capital Vol1, Part 1. It’s enough to say here that the
‘new right’ revival of neoliberal ideology returns to the
classic liberal notion of the bourgeois individual as
determined by market (exchange) relations rather than
by their social relations of
production as unpaid domestic
workers and/or members of the
productive working class.
Neoliberalism, as classic bourgeois
ideology, is modified in the form of
postmodernism to suit the needs of
late 20th century capitalism to
restore the conditions for a return to
the post-war rate of profit. In the
attempt to make workers’ pay for
the crisis, it justifies free market
reforms, cuts to the welfare state,
and attacks on the unions to weaken
worker resistance to further losses of
rights, conditions and living
standards. It funds academics and
intellectuals to counter socialism
and social class identity with the
post-Marxist fiction that socialism
has been defeated and capitalism
can be ‘humanised’ as a free and equal society. Hence
the grip of commodity fetishism in the guise of
postmodernism still continues to act as an ideological
antidote to individuals taking collective action as
members of the working class rooted in resistance to
domestic and social production.
The influence of postmodernism produces identity
politics where individual choices in the market fragment
the working class by gender, ethnicity, nationality and
sexual identity, or combinations of these. The effect of
postmodern theory then is to render as ‘different but
equal’ individuals who are able to freely choose identities
independently of the influence of social class or gender
relations. Social relations, and gender relations,
expressing historic contradictions that are fundamental
to the development of capitalism and which determine
our social being, consciousness, and prospects for social
change, are suppressed by fetishized market relations of
personal choice, including what is, or is not. ‘true’. It
follows that postmodern ‘identity politics’ means that
political activity is confined to the participation of
bourgeois citizens in parliamentary democracy and
distributional reforms.
Class Struggle 129
Transactivism is an attack on women
By pitting identity politics against class solidarity, our
struggles for rights and social gains are channelled into
actions that do not challenge capitalist social or gender
relations. Yet prolonged social and economic crisis
brings the fundamental contradiction of capital
between nature and society to the surface. The
experience of growing austerity spontaneously
produces resistance in the working class engaged in
production and
reproduction. The big
threat to capitalism is
that women, especially
minority women, who
have the least to lose
and most to gain from
social revolution, will
unite to fight against
misogyny and
homophobia in the
working class and lead
the revolution against
class exploitation and
gender oppression.
Neoliberal ideology, dressed up as postmodern identity
politics, is most likely to fail in regard to women where
the contradiction between nature (production and
reproduction of life) and crisis-ridden capitalist austerity
is the most acute. Moreover, the minority women who
are politically primed to rise up against the triple
oppression of class, gender and sexuality are lesbians.
Lesbians’ sexual orientation rejects heteronormativity in
the patriarchal family. They are perceived, correctly, as
the biggest threat to gender ideology, and as most
capable of defeating new attacks by men, as their
current resistance to transgender ideology proves.
Furthermore, they have an inherent political solidarity
capable of taking a leading role in the labour movement.
This is where transactivism enters the picture as
postmodern identity politics, deliberately turning a
justifiable and harmless self-identity as transgender, and
as a potential ally of women, into the homophobic and
misogynistic weapon of sexual self-ID. As a consequence,
heterosexual men masquerading as transgender are
licensed to attack lesbian sexuality and enter women’s
spaces (toilets, refuges, prisons etc) to directly assault
and dominate women. Facing this new threat, it is radical
feminists, many of whom are lesbians, who have fought
most strongly for safe spaces independent of men, and
who are leading the resistance to trans-ideology.
Why women will lead the revolution
Neoliberalism has failed so far to overcome the
cause of capitalism’s structural crisis because of
widespread worker resistance to paying for it with
their livelihoods and their lives. Profits have never
returned to the pre-1970s levels. A number of mini
boom bust cycles in the 1990s culminated in the
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Winter (June-August) 2019
2008 Global Financial Crisis and the Long Depression
– the relatively stagnant global economy up to the
present. Capitalism’s crisis of falling profits cannot
be resolved unless wages and conditions are driven
down by mass unemployment and other austerity
measures to raise the rate of exploitation. So far
this too has failed and spontaneous uprisings are
now building world-wide most notably the Yellow
Vest movement. This means we can expect the
global economic crash
we are heading for to
come all the sooner.
To complicate its
problems, capitalism
now faces the backlash
of nature as
exponential global
warming forces a
collapsing ecosystem.
Humanity is part of that
nature since social
labour is integral to the
biological and social reproduction of human life. It
is the threat to the reproduction of life that
motivates the Extinction Rebellion or the ‘fight for
life’ initiated by young people that is spreading as a
global rage against the system. This movement
proves that ordinary people are realising that
capitalism is in terminal decline and is destroying
nature. Hence the solution must be ‘system change
not climate change’, conceived as a democratic,
post-capitalist, socialist, collective, sustainable
people-centred economy and society.
Capitalism, on its last legs, has to use every means
at its disposal to prevent the solidarity of women
uniting with men and posing a revolutionary threat
to its class rule. Revolutionary system change is on
the top of the agenda today because we can’t
solve any of our problems if dying capitalism takes
us down with it. Without a victorious women’s
struggle against the patriarchy there can be no
system change. It is young women who are leading
the climate emergency charge because it is women
as a sex-class who have the least to lose and most
to gain in challenging the oppressive, exploitative
and ultimately destructive rule of capital and
climate collapse. That is why the fight for women
against trans-ideology and the transactivists
attacks on lesbians, is a pre-condition for unity and
solidarity necessary for the working class globally
to make the social revolution, end patriarchal
capitalism and create a post-capitalist,
sustainable, human, world.
Reprinted from: Situations Vacant Blog
What We Fight For
Overthrow Capitalism
Historically, capitalism expanded world-wide to
free much of humanity from the bonds of feudal or
tribal society, and developed the economy, society
and culture to a new higher level. But it could only
do this by exploiting the labour of the productive
classes to make its profits. To survive, capitalism
became increasingly destructive of "nature" and
humanity. In the early 20th century it entered the
epoch of imperialism in which successive crises
unleashed wars, revolutions and counter-
revolutions. Today we fight to end capitalism’s
wars, famine, oppression and injustice, by
mobilising workers to overthrow their own ruling
classes and bring to an end the rotten, exploitative
and oppressive society that has exceeded its use-by
date.
Fight for Socialism
By the 20th century, capitalism had created the pre-
conditions for socialism –a world-wide working class
and modern industry capable of meeting all our
basic needs. The potential to eliminate poverty,
starvation, disease and war has long existed. The
October Revolution proved this to be true, bringing
peace, bread and land to millions. But it became the
victim of the combined assault of imperialism and
Stalinism. After 1924 the USSR, along with its
deformed offspring in Europe, degenerated back
towards capitalism. In the absence of a workers
political revolution, capitalism was restored
between 1990 and 1992. Vietnam, China and Cuba
then followed. Today only North Korea (DPRK)
survives as a degenerate workers’ state. We
unconditionally defend the DPRK against capitalism
and fight for political revolution to overthrow the
bureaucracy as part of world socialism.
Defend Marxism
While the economic conditions for socialism exist
today, standing between the working class and
socialism are political, social and cultural barriers.
They are the capitalist state and bourgeois ideology
and its agents. These agents claim that Marxism is
dead and capitalism need not be exploitative. We
say that Marxism is a living science that explains
both capitalism’s continued exploitation and its
attempts to hide class exploitation behind the
appearance of individual "freedom" and "equality".
It reveals how and why the reformist, Stalinist and
centrist mis-leaders of the working-class tie workers
to bourgeois ideas of nationalism, racism, sexism
and equality. Such false beliefs will be exploded
when the struggle against the inequality, injustice,
anarchy and barbarism of capitalism in crisis, led by
a revolutionary Marxist party, produces a
revolutionary class-consciousness.
For a Revolutionary Party
The bourgeois and its agents condemn the Marxist
party as totalitarian. We say that without a
democratic and a centrally organised party there
can be no revolution. We base our beliefs on the
revolutionary tradition of Bolshevism and
Trotskyism. Such a party, armed with a transitional
program, forms a bridge that joins the daily fight to
defend all the past and present gains won from
capitalism, to the victorious socialist revolution.
Defensive struggles for bourgeois rights and
freedoms, for decent wages and conditions, will link
up the struggles of workers of all nationalities,
genders, ethnicities and sexual orientations,
bringing about movements for workers control,
political strikes and the arming of the working class,
as necessary steps to workers' power and the
smashing of the bourgeois state. Along the way,
workers will learn that each new step is one of many
in a long march to revolutionise every barrier put in
the path to the victorious revolution.
Fight for Communism
Communism stands for the creation of a classless,
stateless society beyond socialism that is capable of
meeting all human needs. Against the ruling class
lies that capitalism can be made "fair" for all; that
nature can be "conserved"; that socialism and
communism are "dead"; we raise the red flag of
communism to keep alive the revolutionary
tradition of the' Communist Manifesto of 1848, the
Bolshevik-led October Revolution; the Third
Communist International until 1924, the
revolutionary Fourth International up to 1940 before
its collapse into centrism. We fight to build a new,
Fifth, Communist International, as a world party of
socialism capable of leading workers to a victorious
struggle for socialism.
Class Struggle 129 Winter (June-August) 2019

For the World Party of Socialist Revolution!

Liaison Committee of Communists

Class Warrior: Theoretical Journal of LCC http://www.cwgusa.org/?page_id=594
Revolutionary Workers Group of Zimbabwe (RWG-ZIM)
Email: rwg.zimbabwe@gmail.com
Website: www.rwgzimbabwe.wordpress.com
Revolutionary Worker (Paper of RWG-Zimbabwe)

Communist Workers Group- New Zealand/Aotearoa (CWG-NZ)

Email: cwg006@yahoo.com
http://redrave.blogspot.com )
Websites: Class Struggle
http://livingmarxism.wordpress.com
Revolutionary Workers Group of Brazil (RWG-BR)
Email: gtrevolucionarios1@gmail.com
Site: https://grupodetrabalhadoresrevolucionrios.wordpress.com
Guerreiro da classe Trabalhadora (Paper of the RWG-BR)

Communist Workers Group – USA (CWG-US):

Email: cwgclasswar@gmail.com Website: Class War http://www.cwgusa.org/?page_id=16

All issues of Class Struggle are online at https://www.redrave.blogspot.com

Phone +64272800080 cwg2007anz@hotmail.com
Archive of publications before 2006 http://communistworker.blogspot.com/

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