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SyriaAleppo: the Guernica of
the XXI Century
Nº 39 • October • December 2016 • IWU-FI
The electionsof the crisis
UnitedStates
Nº 39 • October • December 2016
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LayoutIsabel SanchezDaniel Iglesias
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Magazine of the UIT–FIInternational Wyorkers Unity – Fourth
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authors.
SummaryForeword ...................................1
Syria ...........................................2
Aleppo: the Guernica of the XXI Century ..2
Omrane and the battle for Aleppo ................6
The Syrian revolution at the crossroads.......7
Manifest by Syrian intellectuals .......................8
Turkey ........................................9
“We need to stop the repressive policies of Erdogan”...............................................................9
The failed coup d’etat .................................... 13
The regime after the Ottoman Empire ...... 17
Israel ........................................20
Living the apartheid in Jerusalem ................. 20
USA .........................................22
Elections of the crisis .................................... 22
The “American dream” has become a nightmare .......................................................... 23
Thirteen million votes for the “socialist” Sanders .............................................................. 25
Why did Trump win? ....................................... 26
Colombia ............................ 27Why did the NO win?.................................... 27
Mexico .....................................28
Peña Nieto at his worst moment ................ 28
Venezuela ................................32
“This is a starvation-causing and repressive government”..................................................... 32
Oil workers union elections suspended .... 34
On the Platform of People in Struggle and Critical Chavismo ............................................ 35
Argentina ................................36
Adjustment and wear of the government of the CEOs .......................................................... 36
Rally of the Left Front in Atlanta Stadium . 38
No to the criminalisation of protest! ......... 39
Chile.........................................40
Massive mobilisations against the AFP shake the country ....................................................... 40
Brazil .......................................42
Municipal elections and the collapse of the PT ...................................................................... 42
The PSOL and the elections ......................... 44
Split in the Brazilian PSTU ............................ 46
Global News ............................47
Addendum ..............................49
ContaCting us:Argentina: Izquierda Socialista: [email protected] – Bolivia: [email protected] – Brazil: Corrente Socialista dos Trabalhadores: [email protected] – Chile: Movimiento Socialista de los Trabajadores: [email protected] — Colombia: Alternativa Socialista: [email protected] – France: Groupe Socialiste Internationaliste: [email protected] – Mexico: MAS: [email protected] – Panama: Propuesta Socialista: [email protected] – Peru: Unios en la Lucha: [email protected] – Spanish State: Lucha Internationalista: [email protected]; – Turkey: Workers Democracy Party: [email protected] — United States: Socialist Core: [email protected] — Venezuela: Partido Socialismo y Libertad: [email protected] Sites: www.uit-ci.org / www.nahuelmoreno.org / www.izquierdasocialista.org.ar (Argentina) / www.cstpsol.com (Brazil) / www.unios.tk (Peru) / www.laclase.info (Venezuela) / www.socialistcore.org (USA) / www.mst-solidaridad.cl (Chile) / www.raetedemokratie.org (Germany) / www.luchainternacionalista.org (Spanish State) / www.iscicephesi.net (Turkey) / www.movimientoalsocialismo.org (Mexico) / www.gsi-qi.org (France)In Facebook: www.facebook.com/mst.solidaridad (Chile) / www.facebook.com/partidoobrerosocialista (Mexico)/ www.facebook.com/linternacionalista (Spanish State)/ www.facebook.com/idpgirisimi (Turkey)
Foreword“Aleppo: the Guernica of the Twenty-first Century”. The
title of this edition of International Correspondence wants to show the degree of genocide and barbarism that al-Assad and Putin, with the complicity of the United States and the European Union, have come to. Although the dimensions are not the same, the images of the destruction of Guernica and Aleppo are similar.
Guernica was a small Basque peasant village of 6,000 people that posed no military danger to Franco and his Nazi allies. They applied that genocidal bombing on the civilian population to demoralise the anti-fascist fighters. It was one of the earliest cases in history. It would then become generalised and reach extreme levels as the United States did in Hiroshima in 1945 launching an atomic bombing. In this twenty-first century, Putin applied it in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. Now Putin and al-Assad repeat that method of “scorched earth” in Aleppo.
On 26 April 1937, Guernica was set on fire by German bombings of the sinister Condor Legion of Hitler, who actively participated alongside Franco’s fascists to defeat the Spanish revolution. Nearly 40 aircraft bombed Guernica
with medium and small bombs. They also carried 250-kilo bombs, anti-personnel bombs and incendiary bombs. It was never known with certainty the number of dead and wounded, although the Basque government reported that affected a third of the population (1,645 and 889 wounded). Of the 500 buildings of the city, 400 burned.
The denunciation of the holocaust of Guernica became immortalised thanks to a painting by Pablo Picasso, who lived exiled in Paris. In his sketch, bulls, horses, men and women began to mix in the midst of destruction and the flames. The definitive oil of three and a half metres high and almost eight metres wide was presented on 4 June 1937 at the Paris exhibition and entered into history.
The forces of the counter-revolution want Aleppo to be a new holocaust and end the resistance. The fighting, in extremely unfavourable conditions, continues in Aleppo and in the rest of Syria. Our socialist current and the magazine International Correspondence will unconditionally continue to promote international solidarity with the heroic people of Aleppo and with the Syrian revolution against the dictator al-Assad. §
“Alepponica”: Portuguese artist Vasco Garbalo reinvented Picasso’s Guernica in homage to Aleppo
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Aleppo: the Guernica of the XXI Century
Over five years ago the people rose in Syria against the regime of Bashar al-Assad demanding freedom and social justice, as had been the case in Tunisia and Egypt. The strength of the people’s movement was so uncontrollable, so deep its potential for change in the heart of the Middle East, so dangerous to the stability of the region, that from the first minute all regional and international powers took up positions to keep the process under control. The systematically bombed Aleppo is the bastion of the revolution and the resistance.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar funded Islamist brigades, Turkey and the United States encouraged a bourgeois opposition in exile that had nothing to do with the internal reality and only sought their share in the new Syria. This divided and weakened the opposition on the ground, the real leadership of the revolutionary process, which nobody ever took into account and the only one who actually suffered the arms embargo imposed by the United States and the EU. On the other side, Russia and Iran, the two strategic allies of Damascus, came to the aid of the dictator to preserve their own interests in the area. Israel declared that it preferred the
continuity of the regime to the chaos on its northern border.
The regime turned a wave of mass protests into carnage and managed to stay in power by military force because it was able to contain dissidence within the army, which in Syria serves as a true praetorian guard of clan al-Assad. When it seemed that its hours were numbered, the military intervention of Tehran first and of Moscow later proved decisive. While al-Assad had an airlift of soldiers and military material of Hezbollah (the Lebanese Shiite militia), Iran and the Iraqi Shiite militias, and of Putin, the opposition was broken into factions receiving light
Genocidal al-Assad and Russia systematically bomb Aleppo
The siege is closing on the popular resistance in Syria
Layla Nassar, Lucha Internacionalista
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weapons in exchange for radicalisation or rations of prepared food and night vision goggles by US imperialism. The supply of anti-aircraft missiles to defend the population of the bombing by Syrian and later Russian aviation was never allowed. The regime dominates the sky and none of the 18 countries involved militarily in Syria questions this dominance: the martyrdom of the Syrian people falls from the sky and the main cause of the high number of deaths, refugees and growth of jihadism is the rain of explosive barrels and bombs on rebel towns and cities. This is how the regime survives: killing thousands from the air, thanks to the Iranian military support first and, when this was not enough, the Russian aviation. Thus, the revolution became a war and the war was increasingly of the geopolitical interests instead of the Syrians, who, as soon as they could, turn into the streets to demand the fall of the regime.
The emergence of ISIS (Daesh, calling itself Islamic State in Arabic) in Iraq in 2012 was useful for the whole reaction. For the regime — which from the beginning encouraged the most reactionary elements to pretend
it was not facing a popular uprising but an Islamist plot — because it opened a new front against the rebels and against the Kurds, who took advantage of Damascus weakness to proclaim their autonomy in the north of the country. For Turkey, because it was not willing to allow the sister party of the PKK to have a pseudo-state across the border. For the United States to justify a new intervention in the area, although Obama’s priority was not to enter Syria but to defend the regime in post-occupation Iraq. For Putin because it allowed him to intervene more directly in favour of Damascus, with the blessing of Israel and the United States. In Syria all say to fight against “terrorism”, but under this umbrella, al-Assad and Putin refer to the rebels, Hezbollah to the Sunnis, Erdogan to the Kurds and the US to those who fight the corrupt puppet government in Baghdad. And as ISIS was useful to them all, it became a useful excuse that grew to unprecedented proportions, murdering, extorting and subjecting hundreds of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis who — let us not forget — have been the main victims of their barbarity.
And so we come to the events of July-August, in which all seem to have agreed to prop up a dictator who can only remain in power with foreign support.
Aleppo, the Guernica of the Twenty-First Century
Aleppo is Syria’s economic capital and a stronghold of the revolution from the first months. The old city and suburbs east of the city, where an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 people still live, are out of the control of the regime, which in early July managed to close the siege around it. It was the result of weeks of intense joint bombing by Syrian and Russian air forces that obliterated every night residential buildings, schools and hospitals. For some time that schools have been operating underground and hospitals are called in code to prevent further attacks. There are only eight medical centres left operating in the eastern zone, with a few dozen beds and all have been bombed. The outlook for the rebel neighbourhoods surrounded after the regime controlled the Castello highway is the blockade of hunger we have seen already in towns like Madaya,
Map of SyriaThe regime of al-Assad,
backed by Russian aviation and Iraqi elite troops and Hezbollah, is trying to recover the
north of the country, centred around Aleppo.
On the other hand, Turkish troops invaded
the area of the Syrian Kurdistan that occupy
the northern strip,, bordering with Turkey. They entered through Jarablus to drive the Kurdish militias from
Afrin and Manbij, which they had recovered
from the hands of the ISIS, west of the
Euphrates River. Raqqa was still controlled by
ISIS.
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Syria
Moauadamiya and dozens of other towns and cities of Syria. Putin offered “humanitarian corridors” that neither civilians nor combatants dared to use them to escape.
But against all odds, an offensive which also involved the Al-Nusra Front from outside the city managed to open a passage to the south in late July. However, the victory was mostly symbolic, since it did not allow the opening of a new supply route.
The image of small Omrane Daqnesh, bloodied and covered in dust in an ambulance after Russian-made Sujoy-24 planes bombed his house in Aleppo at the time that he was getting into bed, became a new symbol of the Syrian disaster. Once again front cover fodder, without the media pointing out to those responsible — the image of an irrational violence, blind, devoid of political meaning. It had already happened with the photo of little Aylan drowned on a beach in Turkey. Such a big spectacle as concealment of those guilty of the crime. No reaction, no condemnation of al-Assad.
Turkey wages its war in Syria The second important fact of
July–August has been the ground intervention of Turkey on the border of Jarabulus. After the failed coup and his triumphant counter-coup, Erdogan has had a free hand to intervene more directly in Syria. His first goal is to stop the advance of the Kurds of Rojava, who with American air support in their fight against ISIS had achieved important positions in northern Syria. But in mid-August the so-called Democratic Forces of Syria (controlled militarily by the Kurdish PYD but in which Arab groups also participate) began to go outside of the script and instead of continuing their advance towards Raqqa, the so-called capital of ISIS, they stopped to open to the west a corridor that connected the areas already liberated to the east with the canton of Afrin, west. This would have meant, in practice, Kurdish control over the entire border with Turkey. Something unacceptable to Erdogan.
The Turkish intervention was announced as a campaign against “terrorists” — the sack in which Turkey puts the ISIS and the PK —, but the fact is that, when closing this article, it is hitting more Kurds than jihadists, which, incidentally, fled in disarray without resistance. Demonstrating once again that if ISIS end was a really a priority for Ankara, Washington, Moscow, Tehran and Damascus, they would sweep them in a matter of weeks.
With the entry of Turkish tanks in Syria, Erdogan also achieved two other objectives. On the one hand, to realign his international alliances. Putin was among the first heads of state that called Erdogan the night of the coup and showed that he was more reliable than his European and American allies of NATO. After their meeting in Moscow in early August, Erdogan and Putin sealed a deal in which, although
all their differences in Syria were not properly resolved, they did agree on the main thing — to drown the Kurds and achieve a political entente with al-Assad. It is no coincidence that for the first time the Turkish Prime Minister spoke to recognise the role of al-Assad for the solution to the Syrian crisis, nor is it the visit to Damascus of the intelligence services. The third objective of Erdogan is internal — it shows who is the boss in the Army after the purges because of the attempted coup and sets him on an operation to which the generals, now dead or imprisoned, had been opposed.
We have seen the counterpart in Hassakeh, where for the first time the Syrian regime bombed Kurdish positions. Al-Assad showed Erdogan he is also willing to fight the Kurds if Turkey thus cuts the arrival of supplies to the opposition. This is precisely what
On 11 July, Javier Couso Permuy, from United Left of the Spanish State, proudly announced on twitter that he had travelled to Damascus to meet with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. He was accompanied by Tatjana Ždanoka, Latvian MEP of the European Greens–European Free Alliance, and Yana Toom of the Estonian Centre Party. They are not the only supporters that the butcher of Damascus has in Europe: he has already received representatives of Les Republicains, the party of Nicolas Sarkozy, who on their visit took advantage of the opportunity to take photos with the extreme right-wing group SOS Chrétiens d’Orient. The French National Front has also reiterated its support for the regime.
As Leyla Nachawatti and Joey Ayoub write in an artic le that we recommend (www.eldiar io.e s / t r i b u n a a b i e r t a / I z q u i e rd a -Unida-Asad-internacionalismo-europeo_6_539006122.html):
“As Alba Rico says, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish
between the right celebrating the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the left celebrating every Russian or Iranian victory. Opposing this vision of the world on two axes, there remains the solidarity of those who continue to challenge the world’s dogmatic visions, those who support the legitimate right of self-determination of peoples and their freedom from repression, whether in the form of foreign invasions or domestic tyrannies”. §
United Left visits al-Assad
Javier Couso Permuy
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we are seeing in Aleppo. Erdogan seems to have no problem in letting the city fall if everyone stops supporting the Kurds.
The United States also joins the operation and gives air support to the Turkish intervention while publicly ordering the Kurds to back off to the east side of the Euphrates, as required by Ankara. Imperialism has not hesitated to abandon the Kurds, who until now have been used as shock troops against ISIS due to its own weakness because Obama is not able to order a new landing in the Middle East. Justifying itself with the advances of Nusra in Aleppo, imperialism remains silent about the slaughter of the city at the hands of Putin and also yields about the Kurds, even at the cost of undermining the fight against ISIS.
After years of taking advantage of the contradictions among them, in which the Kurds have moved with the support of the US and also of Russia without being involved in the fight against al-Asaad and facing the ISIS, the Kurdish leadership has recovered
the old slogan “our only friends are the mountains”. Attacked on all fronts they can soon get to be as isolated as the resistance against al-Assad. It is now vital to resolve a problem that has weakened the revolution from day one: the inability of the Arab leadership to recognise the Kurdish issue and the refusal of the PYD to face with all the consequences the regime of al-Assad. The lack of cooperation has benefited both the regime and Turkey, which now sends Arab Syrians groups to fight under its protection the Kurds. They have to get mutual recognition once and for all based on the recognition of the right of self-determination for the Kurds and the coordinated fight against the regime of Al-Assad and rejection of Turkish interference because otherwise one and the other are lost.
The forces of the revolution and those of the reaction
We are thus witnessing a convergence of all the reactionary forces to quell the popular movement in Syria and enforce the peace of cemeteries preserving intact the regime. Never have the
United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar been on the side of the Syrian revolution. But there were tensions with the regime, Russia and Iran that forced them to declare at least against the regime. Today a front of all of them is forming to prop up al-Assad in order to bury what they most feared — the dream of freedom and social justice that brought millions of Syrians to the streets and for which they have paid such a high price. Everything points to a new round of negotiations on Syria without the Syrians in order to whitewash a regime that has murdered vand tortured hundreds of thousands and left homeless half of the Syrian population.
Most serious is the responsibility of the international left that by keeping silent on Syria directly defends the tyrant. The duty of everyone who wants the merit of being called revolutionary is to be next to the peoples and their struggle for freedom and justice rather than sacrifice them on the altar of malicious geopolitical pretexts.
4 September 2016 §
The destruction of Aleppo continues while the whole world looks away
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This summer the image of little Omrane Daqnesh, 5, bloodied and covered in dust, sitting alone, in silence, in an ambulance in Aleppo got around the world and became a new symbol of the Syrian disaster. He survived with his parents and two brothers (Ali, 10, died a few days later) a bombardment of the Syrian regime or of the Russian air force that destroyed his house when he had just been put to bed. The image went viral on networks and was front cover fodder worldwide, but it was forgotten even faster than the image of Aylan Kurdi, the small Kurdish-Syrian who appeared drowned on a beach in Turkey last year.
Mustapha Saroot, the photographer who shot the video of Omran in the ambulance, is part of Aleppo Media Centre, a group of activists who document the repression of the regime from within the city. In a conversation on Skype he explains that that night he heard on the radio that Sukhoi aircraft approached, the Su-24 Russian-made that both Putin and Al-Assad use in the bombings of Aleppo. “When I arrived everything was destroyed. The family of Omran was under the rubble. He was the first who could be removed; then, the brothers and the .parents. We see children injured and killed almost every day, but Omran struck me — he was the picture of innocence”. Saroot recalls the drama of being a child in Aleppo: “They cannot go to school or run through the parks, they have only learned to face the cruelty of war. They play with remnants of ammunition. Al-Assad and Russia have not left anything to live for”. Tens of thousands of children in the rebellious neighbourhoods east of the city are trapped by the siege of the regime and its allies: wounded,
sick, malnourished, unable to go to school.
Mohamad Abdumuhamadin was the doctor who attended Omran at the clinic M-10 — Aleppo health workers talk about their precarious hospitals in code to try to avoid the systematic air strikes by the regime and the Russian air force. Contacted through WhatsApp, the surgeon, one of the few who continues to resist in the rebel neighbourhoods to serve a population of about 250,000 people, recalls that “since the end of 2013 barrel bombs rain on civilians in Aleppo — every day we see massacres that are crimes of war. We have seen how a single bomb killed a hundred civilians. I’m a surgeon and I’m a father as well. Every day I treat dozens of kids injured at school, the market, parking, and bread ovens. The Syrian regime always attacks crowded places and often more than once. Our children deserve to live in peace and play in the street as yours do”. The doctor recalls that Omran “was lucky to get to a hospital with only a small wound in the skull; the whole world saw him in shock. He didn’t cry, his face was full of blood and dust. This image may be surprising for the international media, but in Syria, it’s repeated every day, with children and adults. People do not understand what crime they have committed to be killed or hurt”. The vast majority of the casualties he treats are civilians, and arriving at his centre daily are from 20 to 30 kids under 16 years wounded in the bombings.
The doctor has decided to continue working on what has become one of the most dangerous cities in the world and does not throw in the towel. “We are living a real holocaust of the twenty-first century: the regime, Russia and their allies commit all kinds
of atrocities against civilians. And they are using all kinds of prohibited weapons. The people who stood up peacefully five years ago demanding freedom and justice deserve to live with rights”.
Syrian activist Yasser Munif, of the Global Solidarity Campaign, denounced a media treatment seeking emotional impact while concealing responsibilities. “The images of Aylan and Omran are very powerful and arouse public opinion, but in neither case did they discuss the cause of the vast majority of deaths and refugees in Syria: the regime of Bashar al-Assad and his allies. Syria’s war is presented as an irrational violence, historical, devoid of political sense. As if it were an unavoidable natural disaster: the West has betrayed the Syrian revolution and all revolutions in the Arab world. They do not want people to topple dictatorships. Europe has only fear of refugees and the Islamic State, not of a war criminal who massacres a people.”
Layla Nassar
Testimonies of the doctor and the photographer
Omrane and the battle for Aleppo
Omrane Daqnesh
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Syria
The systematic criminal bombing of eastern Aleppo and the repeated announcements of possible advances by regime forces, backed by Russian military and Hezbollah militias over some neighbourhoods, would indicate that the situation of the rebels in Aleppo is difficult.
In this sense, we say that the Syrian revolution started in March 2011 is at a crossroads. The genocidal al-Assad and Russia are gambling to take all Aleppo and from there launch a counteroffensive on the north of the country which is not under their control. But the last word has not been said yet. For a year they have been announcing that they are about to take Aleppo and cannot make it a reality. The only explanation for the delay lies in the heroism and combativeness of the Syrian people of Aleppo: more than 250,000 people still resist in the eastern part of the city.
Surrounded for months, they continue to fight and survive the bombings of Assad-Russian aviation. How much more can they resist? The policy of al-Assad and Putin is that of “scorched earth”. This shows that they
have not yet had sufficient ground combat forces to defeat the rebellious people. They seek extermination by bombing, including the civilian population.
What is deplorable is that most of the world left refuses to mobilise and denounce the Aleppo genocide. Some say that there is an imperialist “war of aggression” and that al-Assad and Russia must be defended critically. Others say there is a “reactionary war” between Russia and the United States and its allies and that no “side” can be supported. Therefore, groups that support this tremendous mistake, for example, did not join the World Day for Aleppo on 1 October this year, boycotting a global unitary action against a genocide. Amazing.
The reality is that these war crimes are endorsed by the US .and the United Nations. Obama and the UN “denounce” Russia and its bombings but do not move a finger to avoid them or really support the rebellious people. For example, imperialism and its allies (the European Union, Turkey, or Saudi Arabia) never took the plunge to arm the rebels in quantity, with
heavy armament and anti-aircraft to face the tanks and planes of al-Assad and Putin. This is what the rebels have been demanding and denouncing for years. Forever, Russia and the USA and its allies have had a common ground: to avoid the revolutionary fall of the dictatorship. They only press for a negotiated solution based on the “peace of the cemeteries”. This is why they are direct accomplices of this genocide.
This has recently been denounced by hundreds of intellectuals, journalists and artists in the “Manifesto condemning the US and Russian policies in Syria”.
To such a point there is no military confrontation between the United States and Russia, that, for example, during the fraudulent truce of September they established “a common intelligence centre”. For, “in this way the US and Russian forces will be able to precisely delimit the sites to be bombed. The targets will be the extremists of ISIS and Al Nusra” (Clarín, Argentina, 9 September). Russia and the United States, under the mantle of bombing “terrorism”, continue to endorse the bombing of civilian populations such as Aleppo and others, in which the
The Syrian revolution at the crossroads
Miguel Sorans
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Syria
Syrian and Kurdish rebel people are still present. The mutual attacks of the Russian and American foreign ministers are nothing more than “fireworks” to let the massive bombings run.
We are at a very difficult time in the process, but this does not mean that the Syrian revolution is over. There are still
large sections of the people still fighting and mobilising against al- Assad, Russia and against ISIS and the imperialist presence. Thousands in the world have mobilised on 1 October on the day of rage for Aleppo. We are part of that international movement, raising the banners of:
Stop the bombing of Aleppo! Let’s demand that the site be lifted! Russians and Yankees out of Syria! No to ISIS! Turkey and Iran out of Syria! Down with al-Assad! That the governments break diplomatic relations with the butcher al-Assad! Unconditional solidarity with the Syrian People! §
We the undersigned are democratic and secular Syrian writers, artists, and journalists who have opposed the tyrannical Assad regime for years, even decades. We are participants in the struggle for democracy and justice in our country, our region and in the world. We unreservedly, and in the strongest language, condemn the Russian and US approach of intervening in our internal Syrian affairs. At least since 2013, these two powers have been working to co-opt the Syrian liberation struggle under the rubric of the “war on terror.” This is a war that has failed to score a single success since its outset and has led instead to the destruction of a number of countries.
Three years ago the two imperialist nations signed a reprehensible deal on chemical weapons that resolved a problem for the United States, Israel, and Russia, and even for the Assad regime, which had just murdered 1,466 of its subjects. The deal, however, did not resolve any of the problems facing the Syrian people. Rather it gave free rein to an extremely criminal regime that kills Syrians, destroys their villages and communities, and drives them into exile.
Our feelings of anger over these agreements and their authors know no bounds. And we reject them absolutely. We are also disappointed in the United Nations, angered that, as was recently
revealed, it has been financing the criminal oligarchy of Assad and his cronies throughout their war against the Syrians.
As Syrian writers, artists, and journalists, we see the world today heading toward an unprecedented numbing of ethics. Levels of fear and hatred escalate in parallel with the increasing visibility of politicians who invest in the same feelings of fear, hatred, and isolationism. (…)
A destroyed Syria is the symbol of the state of the world today. The Syrian revolution was broken against the solid wall of the international community, and not only against the wall of the forces aligned with Assadist fascism. This international community allows politicians like Obama and Putin, along with their agents and clones—people lacking all sense of humanity—to take decisions that violate our right to self-determination, as individuals and groups but also as a nation. We have not elected them, and we have no access to any mechanism that can call them to account. This is an unfair system that fiercely opposes democracy. Therefore it must change.
This world must change. In just five and a half years, it has allowed the destruction of one of the most ancient cradles of civilisation. The world today is a Syrian problem, just like Syria today is a world problem. And for the sake of this world, for all our sakes, we call
for the condemnation of the politicians responsible for this disaster and for their exposure as nihilistic murderers and terrorists, similar to their arch-rivals in the Islamist nihilistic camp.
The Signatories: Ibrahim al-Jabin (novelist, journalist), Ahmad Barqawi (philosopher0, Ahmad Hasso (journalist), Ahmad Omar (writer), Ahmad Isha (translator), Usama Muhammad (film director, screenwriter), Usama Nassar (journalist, activist), ), Yasser Munif (academic), Yassin Suwayha (writer), Yassin al-Haj Saleh (writer), Islam Abu Shakir (story-teller), Badr al-Din Arudaki (writer, translator), Burhan Ghalioun (writer, academic), Bakr Sidqi (writer, journalist), Tammam Hunaydi (poet), Hasko Hasko (artist); Tammam Hunaydi (poet); Jamal Said (writer); Jamil Nahra (novelist); Khaldun al-Shamaa (literary critic); Khalaf Ali al-Khalaf (poet); Talal Daqmaq (photographer); Charbel Kanoun (photographer); Abdul Aziz al-Tammo (Syrian Kurdish writer, politician); Urwa al-Ahmad (journalist, actor); Fayez al-Basha (physician); Luay Skaff (engineer); Rustom Mahmud (Syrian writer, researcher); Dara al-Abdullah (writer); Hala Omran (actress); Zoya Bustan (journalist).
[For full text and signatories see www.thenation.com/article/syrian-writers-artists-and-journalists-speak-out-against-us-and-russian-policy/].
Manifest by Syrian Writers, Artists, and Journalists against US and
Russian Policies in Syria
9
Turkey
Leaders of Isçi Demokrasisi Partisi (IDP, Workers Democracy Party) of Turkey speak
“We need to stop the repressive policies of
Erdogan”
Recep Tayyip Erdogan
The government of Erdogan used the failed coup of 15 July to declare a state of emergency and deepen its repression, both on the Turkish people and its workers and on the Kurdish people. Then it entered militarily in Syria. Whither Turkey? We talked about all this with Murat Yakin and Atakan Çiftçi, leaders of İşçi Demokrasisi Partisi (IDP – Workers Democracy Party) the Turkish section of the IWU-FI.
How does the IDP assess the political situation in Turkey after the failed coup attempt? Is the political crisis over?
The first truth that the coup attempt uncovered is the falsity of the myth that in a Turkey integrated into the world and European capitalism the era of coups had already closed. The second reality that became clear is that Turkey is experiencing a long-standing crisis of the political regime. Although the putschists have been defeated, they have
managed to deliver with violence the message of their leader, Fettulah Gulen; the recipient: the country’s President, Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan, although he uses the new post-coup period as a good tool for his presidential ends, already knows that on the night of 15 July he was on the threshold of an execution by the putschists, and contrary to what seems, he entered the new period much weakened.
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Turkey
It has caused great concern in the hegemonic Turkish bourgeois sectors how the situation remained after 15 July; especially the tension between Ankara and the US and the EU. In addition, the crisis of the regime was not closed and the Kurdish problem can assume a new context.
The different hegemonic sectors, who took opposing positions during 15 July, now are trying to join forces with the slogan of “national reconciliation” to be able to remain to stand. After the putsch, two processes were launched at once and none of them has been yet able to gain supremacy.
On the one hand, Erdogan tries to reassure the weakened system, saying “Here I am, do not worry” and promising that if he is supported the regime will survive without problems. On the other hand, the leader of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, is putting pressure to participate in the national reconciliation. Therefore, it is understood that the bourgeoisie is seeking a coalition government with AKP, CHP and MHP (Nationalist Movement Party, pro-fascist party).
How is Erdogan’s relationship with the US and the EU?
The “West” does not want Erdogan. After the coup nobody called him to offer their support, because his pragmatic and spontaneous policies have become a headache for imperialism. However, it must be taken with a grain of salt the opinion that Turkey will break the Western bloc to approach the Russian-Chinese axis.
Such breakdown is very difficult. Or rather, for a breakdown of this magnitude to occur, there must be very violent internal conflicts — perhaps even a civil war — between the bourgeoisie itself, with the participation of different sectors of the population. Erdogan seeks to exploit the gaps in the imperialist camp to expand its margin of manoeuvre in his relations with the West.
How to interpret the turn towards Russia and Putin and the surprising recognition of the role of al-Assad in a transition?
The improvement of Turkey’s relations with Russia and Iran, even with Syria with which it reached the threshold of a military war, are products of the search mentioned above. Let the current Turkish military intervention in Syria (Yerablus) not fool anyone. This intervention has the potential to drag Turkey into a war not only with ISIS and the Kurds but also with the Syrian regime, which can put an end to the power of Erdogan. With this military intervention, the president is now more susceptible to the control of imperialism.
What are the consequences of Erdogan’s the state of emergency?
If what defeated the coup had been the mobilisation of the masses, now Turkey would be in a process of democratisation. But it has not been the case; the putsch was dissolved because of fights and intrigues within state agencies (security, military) and the intervention of the apparatus of the AKP, in the streets, along with elements
of the police services addicted to the government.
After the failed coup attempt, in the public sector 76,597 people were laid off, of which 40,029 have been detained, and 20,355 imprisoned. The wave of arrests is extended to include trade unionists, socialists and Kurdish opponents. That’s what he uses the state of emergency for.
Erdogan thinks the best time has come for him to exclude from the political life the HDP (the People’s Democracy Party, pro-Kurdish) and restructure the state on the basis of enmity against the Kurdish people and the working class.
He is aware of the political vacuum created after 15 July. With fast and continuous moves he seeks to fill this vacuum for his benefit, weakening his already weak and confused opponents. On the other hand, to win the trust of the bourgeois sectors he is preparing a neoliberal package of unprecedented attack against the workers. He will try to defeat all the economic and social gains that still exist.
What position has the Kemalist CHP opposition? With what position did IDP go to the rally in Taksim Square called by the CHP?
The CHP took a position against the coup and thus had an opportunity to take a leading role in the democratisation of the country. However, this seems quite ephemeral because, on the one hand, it resists accepting the demands of the masses that mobilised during the revolt of Gezi two years ago, and on the other hand it supports the AKP
Turkey has just over 79 million inhabitants according to the 2015
census. The capital is Ankara, where four million live. In Istanbul there are almost 15 million. The population of
Kurdish origin is 15 million, or almost 20 percent of the total. Diyarbakır, which is considered the "Kurdish capital", has a population of over 600,000 inhabitants.
It is located southeast of the country, on the banks of the Tigris River, and is the capital of the province of the same
name.
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plans of the restructuring of the state and thus it loses legitimacy in the eyes of the masses.
After the coup attempt, the masses who staged the days of Gezi in June 2014 for the first time in two years came together in the demonstration of Taksim Square. And despite the will of the leadership of CHP, they showed themselves as a huge social force for freedom and as critics of the regime of Erdogan. However, this force has not yet built its independent leadership and program, nor has it been able to unite the Turkish and Kurdish workers. This is the most important handicap of the workers’ movement today.
IDP has participated in the demonstration organised by CHP with its own banners and slogans and was one of the few parties that mobilised to the left of social democracy. Our slogans were “No to the coup! No to the State of Emergency! Solution: workers’ and popular government”. We gave out thousands of fliers and sold our paper. We marched together with the Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions (DISK) and together we shouted in addition to the mentioned-slogans “Turkey out of NATO! Shut the Incirlik1 base!” and “Work, Bread and Freedom!”.
We participated in the demonstration with our slogans because we think that today more than ever it is essential to be on the streets against the coups, against the repressive regime, against the state of emergency and to participate in the mobilisation of the masses with our banners and program.
What is the policy of HDP? Is it different from the actions of the PKK?
In this process, HDP continues its reformist policy. After the failure of the coup, they expected Erdogan and the AKP to change their policy of war against the Kurds. They called on the government to resume the negotiation process and lift the gaol regime of solitary confinement for Ocalan, who has been enduring it for over a year and a half. However, after the defeat of 1 US military base in Turkey.
the elections of 7 June 2015,2 Erdogan began to build new political alliances and he is planning a reactionary power bloc based on the hatred of the Kurdish people. It was obvious that despite the coup not being successful, in the short term Erdogan would not change his anti-Kurdish policy. Thus, after the attempted coup, Erdoğan has called the main opposition parties (CHP and MHP3) to build a “national unity” against the coup, excluding the HDP, and he has intensified the repression of the HDP and the Kurdish people.2 In the national election of 7 June 2015, the
AKP gained 40 percent of the votes and was the first party of the election. However, for the first time since 2002, it could not win the absolute majority in the parliament particularly due to the electoral success of the HDP, which had 13 percent of the votes. It was a heavy blow for Erdogan’s capacity to continue in power.
3 MHP: Nationalist Movement Party, a Turkish ultra nationalist party.
In fact, the HDP had achieved a great electoral success on 7 June 2015 with 13 percent of the vote creating hope among the masses, beyond the Kurdish people, who want to stop the undemocratic and anti-worker policies of Erdogan. However, with the relaunch of the dirty war on the Kurdish people, after those elections, the HDP did not attempt to mobilise the masses against the war policy by Erdogan, nor could distance itself from armed actions of the PKK. Thus, the HDP froze under the pressure of repressive government policies and also for the policy of armed struggle of the PKK that facilitated the criminalisation and isolation of the HDP. In this frame, the terrorist actions of the PKK and the reformist policies of HDP weakened the struggle of the Kurdish people and hindered the unity of the Turkish and Kurdish workers.
Written on the banner: "No to military coup! That the state of emergency be aborted! The solution is the government of the workers!”
Workers’ neighbourhood of Istanbul, 23 July 2016
CHP rally in Taksim Square on 24 July. The banner of the IDP is on the bottom left
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What is the reaction among the workers? What position did the unions assume?
The repressive policies of the government also affect the workers’ movement. After the declaration of a state of emergency, the state intervenes in strikes and actions of workers’ resistance to crushing them. However, despite the intensification of repression, resistance and workers’ struggles still continue, albeit partial and isolated. The most affected sector by the repression is civil servants and education workers. The government attacks public workers under the guise of expelling the putschists in the public sector. In fact, the government, taking advantage of the coup attempt, tries to eliminate the gains of the public workers and dismiss the opposition workers of the left and the Kurdish movement. Especially it criminalises the progressive union (Confederation of Public Workers – KESK) even though the union had nothing to do with the coup plotters.
The main unions of the left as DISK (Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions) and KESK have repudiated
both the coup and the repressive policies of the government that declared a state of emergency for three months. However, the main problem is that the union bureaucracy has not mobilised its rank and file neither against the coup nor against government repression. A few days after the coup, leftist unions and the HDP, formed a platform called “Union of Labour and Democracy-Forces” against the coup and the state of emergency. It is true that the construction of this type of unity of action is positive to defend the economic and democratic rights of workers at this time. But the union bureaucracy and the direction of HDP have no perspective or willingness to mobilise the workers and the Kurdish people against government repression. Therefore, the unitary platform does not take steps to really mobilise. The union bureaucracy and the HDP orchestrate it for their own political manoeuvres.
What slogans is the IDP raising?As IDP, from the first moment, we
were against the coup without giving any support to the government or Erdogan. A successful coup would
destroy the last democratic and economic achievements of the working people. And now our focus is to stop the repressive and anti-worker policies of the government. Erdogan exploits the coup attempt to attack the workers and the Kurdish people. Through the state of emergency law, the government sets aside parliament and launches its repressive and anti-worker policies with law decrees. Thus, revoking the state of emergency is one of the most important tasks today. Also, fighting against the war and repression of the Kurdish people is essential. Without being able to defeat the government’s war policies, the defence of the main democratic gains and the unity of Turkish and Kurdish workers will not be possible. On the other hand, fighting the Turkish state military intervention in Syria is very important because the government intervenes in Syria for its expansionist and anti-Kurd policies. Another important axis is to debunk the anti-Yankee discourse that the government began to use after the coup attempt to consolidate their bases, pointing out that the US supported the coup against Erdoğan and the AKP government. But it is a total hypocrisy because, on one hand, the government uses this discourse in domestic politics, and on the other hand, it continues its full collaboration with imperialism. Against the hypocritical government policies, we defend the definitive break with imperialism, starting with exiting NATO and closing their bases in Turkey.
To accomplish these gigantic tasks, we need to build a united front of the trade unions, the socialist movement and the HDP. This front should not be an instrument for the reformist policies and short-term needs of the union bureaucracy and the leadership of the HDP, but a tool to mobilise the masses against the anti-worker, anti-democratic, expansionist, and pro-imperialist policies. Therefore, we demand that the unitary platform be restructured and reoriented on this axis.§
Turkey is part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) since 1952, and its armed forces are one of the ten largest in the world, with over 400,000 active troops and 185,000 reservists.
They have about 3700 tanks, over 7500 armoured vehicles, about 1000 military aircraft, 500 helicopters and nearly 200 ships. It has a growing military industry, which exports its equipment, including vehicles, weapons and technology, worldwide, with the US being the main customer.
With these armed forces, Turkey is the second largest NATO partner, behind only the United States but ahead of the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
Turkish army troops, composed of professional soldiers and conscripts
from compulsory military service (15 months), are deployed in northern Cyprus, which Turkey has held since 1974 after a military invasion.
Turkey has participated in NATO missions in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo.
The US has in Turkey the Incirlik Air Base. From there leave the planes bombing Syria. This base would hold the largest nuclear arsenal of NATO outside the United States.
Turkish Armed Forces and NATO
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The failed coup d’etatMuhittin Karkin
“Turkey has returned from the edge of a precipice, and this thanks to my people that have put themselves in front of the tanks”, said President Tayyip Erdogan on reaching Istanbul from his home in Marmaris, where he was spending his holidays and also from where the putschists wanted to remove him. If only the civilian masses had saved the constitutional government in the country! Had it been so, today Turkey would be celebrating a feast of democratic rights. But for now what reigns throughout the national territory is a fierce government repression on almost all sectors of the population and especially in state institutions.
Currently there are more than 18,000 people under custody, 10,192 of them arrested (853 army officers, 157 generals — more than half of the
total—, 898 privates, 751 policemen) in the administration, public enterprises and universities; and tens of thousands of officers and employees removed from their jobs (60,000), awaiting possible arrests and trials, for belonging, according to the Government, to which the President and judges call FETÖ (terrorist organisation of Fethullah Gülen).
In fact, what first deflated and then condemned the coup to defeat was the “betrayal” of the secular nationalist army generals. Although the Islamist Movement of Service1 is the largest brotherhood in Turkey, its military supporters form an almost insignificant minority within the armed forces, given the huge size of the second most powerful NATO army (650,000 1 Movement of Service: brotherhood
of Fethullah Gülen, the cleric living in Pennsylvania, USA.
troops). In fact, they planned the coup for September this year hoping to accumulate more forces against the government. However, they received information of the purge lists that the government had made and that the government would launch arrests from 16 July. This is why they decided to advance their project and put tanks on the streets in major cities. Coup organisers arrested the chief of staff and several generals who did not want to participate in the adventure, but they neither won the support of the nationalists, nor capture the President who was informed of the attempted coup and fled an hour before the coup troops arrived for him. After the President has addressed the country from his mobile phone and called people to the streets, especially after calls from senior military commanders
Coup tank at the entrance of Istanbul’s Airport
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for no-coup troops to withdraw to their barracks, the attempt failed.
Why did anti-Erdogan nationalists not participate in the coup?
For several reasons. First, because it was the own Fethullah Gülen, who in 2007 collaborated with the government of Erdogan and almost led through his sympathising Islamist public prosecutors and judges another purge, with the trial and punishment of hundreds of nationalist military Kemalists1 who spent years in prison . When Erdogan broke with Gülen stating that he had been “deceived” about the coup intentions of that military, justice freed the prisoners and acquitted them of any charges. None of them could return to his military career, but his colleagues retaliated on Gülen’s supporters for their collaboration in the repression of the Kemalist sector. Another reason is that the nationalists possibly calculated that a military government led by the Islamist Movement of Service would be much more anti-secular and extremist than the AKP.2
Why the split between Islamists?The curious thing is that it was a
sector of the Islamist movement (the brotherhood of Gülen) who carried out the coup attempt on another sector of the same sign, that of Tayyip Erdoğan and the AKP government. In fact, the two Islamist groups were up to eight years ago inseparable allies against the traditional economic and financial powers. The latter, the secular bourgeoisie, created and spoiled by the Kemalist bureaucracy always fed from the policies of state capitalism. But when the centralist economy, in the late 1970s, entered a process of structural crisis and because it had no choice but to integrate into the global market, the weak Islamist bourgeoisie 1 Kemalists: followers of Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk, the secular and nationalist leader who founded the Turkish Republic in 1923.
2 AKP: Justice and Development Party, the party of the President Tayyip Erdoğan, currently in power.
found new possibilities to achieve credit resources (Saudis, Qataris, etc.) and markets in the Middle East and Asia. It became stronger not only economically (becoming the so-called Anatolian Tigers), but also politically to contest power. Although the secular bourgeoisie held fast on the Kemalist military that punished several times the Islamist currents, finally the party of Tayyip Erdoğan, the Party of Justice and Development, came to power in 2003 with the support of Gülen’s current, and a discourse of democracy and freedom against an “executioner state”
Gülen, always without any official position, also encouraged Erdoğan to limit the powers of the army in
the regime by changing the ratio of the all-powerful National Security Council in favour of the members of the government against the military commanders, raising the rank of the most religious commanders and retiring others, etc. And in 2007 he collaborated with Erdoğan’s government (through its sympathising Islamic public prosecutors and judges) in the purge, trial and punishment of hundreds of supposedly nationalist military coup participants.
The Movement of Service controls hundreds of companies, some of them multinationals, has financial and industrial investments both domestically and abroad, is hegemonic in several domestic and foreign markets,
Police detaining university professors (above) and students (below)
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has a large network of schools and universities throughout the Middle East and Africa (more than 2000 schools in 120 countries, but half of them in Turkey), runs several media (45 newspapers, 16 TV channels, 29 publishing houses), etc.
On the other hand the new rich of the AKP benefit from state investments, privatisations, awards of large public works, have access to cheap credit from the Turkish banking and want to occupy a better place in the stock market. However, this division is not always peaceful or “fair” to them. The contradictions between the greater brotherhood and confederation of Islamic societies around Tayyip Erdogan were strained for some time and even more with the good results of economic growth. And the break came when the two sectors tried to impose themselves on the state institutions and especially with the recordings that Gülen supporters spread in December 2013, showing the corruption of several members of government and even the
very own prime minister at that time, Erdogan.
Now, what?And now the victors want to, in
their words, “remove the cancer from its root” with purges and arrests of thousands of suspected supporters of Gülen. Nevertheless, opposition parties, NGOs, trade unions and even business organisations fear the possible extension of repression to the democratic sectors. The state of emergency declared in the country, which authorises the government to rule by decrees, strengthens this suspicion. And this obviously creates an atmosphere of instability not only political but also economic. The price of the dollar rose from less than 2.90 Turkish liras to more than 3 in three days. The stock market lost more than 6 percent, which points to the exit of short-term foreign capital because of the mistrust in investments despite the reassuring statements by the Turkish Central Bank director. Standard & Poor’s lowered Turkey’s rating from BB+ to BB. And of course, after the terrorist attacks, the putschists finished off the already weak tourism.
It would be naive to expect that this wildfire will not burn the working class. It is a heaven-sent opportunity for the bourgeoisie grouped around the AKP, which wants to clean up what remains of the independent workers’ movement. The way is paved to characterise any attempt to organise,
any strike or resistance, or even the action of democratic workers, as an extension of FETÖ terrorism or as defenders of the coup. In this sense, Bonapartism has strengthened its political and ideological arguments and its administrative devices and makes it clear that if the latter is still insufficient, powers favourable to Sharia law could be mobilised. For example, the government, fearing the inadequacy of its police forces, had already expressed its intention to reduce arms control requirements that allow civilians to carry arms under license.
The ongoing process is clearly a class conflict. Some sectors of the bourgeoisie support the “constitutional terror” in the hope of sharing some of the spoils. Those who have integrated into the world economy, although they may say to feel embarrassed by the state of Turkish democracy compared to the EU and the US, cower and try to manage their businesses in the current conditions. The sectors of the petty bourgeoisie who went into a frenzy of rage with the effects of the crisis and now have a real opportunity to gain positions and get rich are ready to purge any worker below them, any progressive secular, any socialist or revolutionist, and any revolutionary and democratic organisation including the unions. These sectors have a leader and all they need is a sign from him. Some do not even wait for the sign and already have been trying to establish their own order in neighbourhoods and cities.
What is missing now is the leadership of the working class. The workers do not need democratic fronts of undefined character. Instead, they need a strong, determined and courageous leadership that can mobilise the masses, that promotes a political revolution and a resulting government of the workers. Those are the only conditions for the establishment of true democratic freedoms in Turkey. At the same time, to be conscious that this goal can only be built within and from the mass mobilisation. The Socialists must work tirelessly toward this goal.
30 July 2016v
Islamic opposition leader, Fettulah Gülen
The memories of the 1980 coup d’état are still alive
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With the r i se of the AKP government in 2003, a new Islamic bourgeois sector began to strengthen, benefiting from the policies of Erdogan.
This new group, known as the Anatolian Tigers, is composed of companies whose roots are anchored in the villages of Anatolia, traditionally rural, patriarchal and Islamic. Present in all sectors of Turkish industry (except in selling alcohol and pork) they represent about 25 percent of Turkey’s GDP and are the most loyal supporters of the current government.
The family emporium Kiler Holding, which until a decade ago was dedicated to the food industry, is now one of the largest constructors in the country, in addition to having interests in the energy industry, tourism and health, enabling it to triple its profits in barely a decade.
But Ki le r i s not the only businessman who in one generation succeeded in creating a great empire. Ahmet Çalik, president of Çalik Holding, was an unknown in Turkey with huge real estate interests in neighbouring countries. From 2003 his earnings began to increase and in eight years his profits increased fivefold, according to the daily Hurryet.
Kiler, Çalik, Ulker, Baykal Holding are among the companies that in the past decade have begun to overshadow the ancient dynasties as Sabanci — the largest producers of cement in the country, owners of several banks and with large interests in the textile industry—, or Koç Industrial Group, which controls the automotive industry (associated with Fiat and Ford) and domestic appliances, the second largest source of wealth for Turkey after construction.
The new breed of entrepreneurs gathers under the acronym of MÜSİAD, the Independent Industrialists and Businessmen Association, which this year celebrates its 24th anniversary. Its nearly 5,000 members are the counterpoint of TÜSİAD (Turkish Industry & Business Association), the association that brings together the old business elite and still amasses 70 percent of the Turkish GDP. “During the Ottoman Empire trade was carried out by Jews and Christians. When the Republic was established the regime wanted to create a new breed of Turkish businessmen, but with a secular bias. Its grandchildren are members of TÜSİAD”, says Mehmet Yalçintas, director of MÜSİAD. “We were born in response to a demand for small and medium entrepreneurs who could not enter TÜSIAD” he explains.
The so-called “crony capitalism” that dominated the country during the 1990s, has been reoriented, some analysts say, towards the new
“puppies” of Erdogan. The case of Çalik Holding is the best example.
Ahmet Çalik, chairman of Çalik Holding, witnessed the wedding of Ersa Erdogan, the daughter of the then prime minister, with a young manager of his company. At the time of the wedding, in 2004, Çalik, with an important portfolio abroad but with little interests in his country, was attempting to open a stake at home. The occasion came in 2007 when he won the tender for the second largest media company in the country. To finance the deal, worth more than one billion dollars, two state banks offered loans to Çalik of 375 million dollars each. Reciprocating, Çalik’s media became the most avid supporters of Erdogan. As if this were not enough, the company where Erdogan’s son-in-law worked won in 2011 one of the largest armament contracts, worth four billion dollars.
(Data from El País, 25 March 2012)
Who are the Tigers of Anatolia?
Entrepeneur Ahmet Çalık and President Tayyip Erdogan
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Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey
The regime after the Ottoman Empire
Muhittin Karkin
The founders of modern Turkey, when in 1923 it constitutes a republic, were generals (pashas) of the former Ottoman Empire, led by Mustafa Kemal (later Mustafa Kemal Atatürk). They belonged to the modernist stream of young Turks that ended with the absolutist monarchy, creating a national assembly (which included also representatives of Armenian, Jewish and Greek communities) in a frame of constitutional monarchy. However, the same current, that had assumed full power in 1912 under the Party of Union and Progress, aligned itself with German imperialism, dragging the empire to the First War and a fierce defeat where the Empire lost almost all its territories and was occupied by the victorious forces, especially the British.
The Treaty of Sevres, on August 1920, imposed by the United Kingdom and France established the imperialist division. The Ottoman Empire had ceased to exist.
Kemal and other military broke with the Party of Union and Progress, rejecting the treaty and organising resistance to the occupation (against the English, French, Italian and Greek). They took the capital from Istanbul to Ankara. In March 1921 they signed a friendship treaty with Soviet Russia, presided by Lenin, of mutual recognition. They constituted a National Assembly and after the withdrawal of imperialist forces from Anatolia, they declared the Turkish Republic (1923) within the current borders. They abolished the monarchy
and the theocratic state, banned Islamist brotherhoods, created a new secular bourgeois state which suppressed and controlled all religious activity. Also, the new state forced the Greeks and Armenians to emigrate and heavily oppressed the Kurdish movement.
In turn, with the establishment of a secular democratic republic, a set of political concessions were granted that gave a popular social base to “Kemalism”. They promoted among other measures, several reforms of language, of writing, of clothing, the vote to women; free and secular education and compulsory primary education was established. Kemal sought the westernisation of the country and to promote a nationalist culture to “recreate the Turkish nation”.
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The regime built by the Kemalist military had authoritarian features from the outset. It was based on a single party regime, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) founded and led by Kemal Ataturk, the president of the republic until his death in 1938. The nationalist-bourgeois regime in the early years, tried to mount a liberal market economy, however, due to the lack of capital accumulation of the weak Turkish bourgeoisie and lack of foreign investment because of the great crisis of 1929, it went on to build a state capitalism based on state enterprises. The investments were financed through taxes on agriculture and trade that a little later would lead to the great discontent of peasants and small traders, who would manifest their resistance to the secular state through an opposition from an Islamist ideology and politics.
Who took advantage of state capitalism was the bourgeoisie of the big cities, which began to form around state enterprises, also benefiting from the cheap credit granted by the state banks. Thus the Kemalist Bonapartist1 regime 1 Bonapartism: the term comes from Karl
Marx’s book The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. It is a Marxist term that defines a regime with certain dictatorial characteristics based on the army and the state bureaucracy rather than the parliamentary parties. Usually it has a “strong man” who, in times of bourgeois political crisis, rises as supposedly independent arbitrator and above classes. There are various forms of Bonapartist regimes, some more totalitarian and others with certain freedoms. In the backward and semicolonial countries sometimes there is
(permanently monitored and controlled by the army) was the generator of the big industrial and financial bourgeoisie, both being insatiable supporters of a secular bourgeois state.
The “multi-party” systemAfter World War II, in which Turkey
was not involved, the Kemalist regime became aligned with the winners, especially with the US, and entered NATO in 1952 joining the “cold war” against the Soviet Union. In that pro-US turn, the regime produces a political change. It allows the formation of different parties and calls for free elections to parliament. The Kemalist Party (CHP) fractures. A dissident pro-US faction, in the service of the landowners and the agricultural and commercial bourgeoisie, form the Democratic Party (PD). In 1950 they come to power with an absolute majority, including the votes of millions of peasants and the rural small bourgeoisie impoverished by the capitalism of the Kemalist state. The government of the PD favoured agricultural production and domestic trade, loosened state control over religious practice, strengthened relations with US imperialism and tried to limit the powers of the military and the state bureaucracy.
a “sui generis” Bonapartism — which was studied by Trotsky — which emerges as arbiter between the masses and imperialism. Nahuel Moreno gave as examples of that kind of Bonapartism the regimes headed, for example, by Nasser in Egypt or Peron in Argentina.
However, the army allowed only ten years to the government of the Democrats and in 1960 took power with a coup d’état, applauded by the industrial and financial bourgeoisie. It made a new constitution with broad freedoms that favoured not only the bourgeoisie of the big cities but also the formation of a working class that would support a regime that promoted rapid industrialisation through five-year plans.
The next 20 years were a period of industrialisation destined for the domestic market, protected from import products, and also of the construction of new progressive and independent trade unions, of strikes, of struggles and mobilisations. At that time dozens of parties and revolutionary currents of all signs were formed. In the second half of the 1960s, the class struggle and the struggle of the Kurdish people against the governments advanced so much that the army again gives a coup in 1971 to repress the working class, the unions and revolutionary parties, and thus reorganise the bourgeois leadership.
However, the scheme was repeated in the 1980s. This time, it took a look of quasi-civil war between the workers and revolutionary organisations on the one hand, and the fascist gangs organised around the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) on the other. Furthermore, the internal market driven economy showed signs of exhaustion. Dollar reserves were depleted, preventing the import of the technology and raw materials needed by industry and creating a shortage of
General Ataturk 1922, General Ataturk (third from the right) together with officers of the Red Army of the Soviet Union
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basic products in the market. Foreign debt grew to such an extent that it became unbearable. The world crisis of capitalism in the late 1970s drowned the Turkish economy, and the IMF pressed governments to liberalise the economic regime. In February 1980 the government declared a liberalisation program to integrate Turkey into the global capitalist economy, eliminating tariffs and directing production to foreign markets.
This project which included the privatisation of public enterprises and falling wages sparked a wave of mobilisations of the working class (strikes, sit-ins, demonstrations, etc.) that caused the adjustment to be only partially applied. In this situation, in September 1980, the military retook power and installed a harsh dictatorship, banning strikes, outlawing progressive unions and all parties. They imprisoned tens of thousands of workers and revolutionaries, executed dozens of fighters and began a dirty war against the Kurdish people. They developed a new constitution devoid of basic freedoms and strengthened the control of the army on the regime and the governments.
Neoliberal TurkeyThe projected conversion of the
national economy in a liberal economy integrated into the world market was carried out by the dictatorship. In 1983 the dictatorship drafted a new constitution with very limited freedoms, guaranteeing the army control over parliament and the executive. It declared a parliamentary pre-election period and
allowed the formation of new parties which could not bear the names of the old parties. The military created a party under the leadership of a former general. However, in elections the following year, the Motherland Party, a neoliberal party won an absolute majority. It was led by the minister who in February 1980 had launched the program of the globalisation of the economy. The industrial and financial bourgeoisie were quickly settled in the new situation, taking advantage of loans and grants received from the liberal government. It also used its ties with imperialist capital that began to flow to a country where the price of labour was cheaper than ever and where union activity was banned by the regime.
However, while the traditional bourgeoisie helped itself to cheap credit, subsidies for export, from foreign capital and the privatisation granted by governments, small provincial companies also accumulated capital and expanded their investments, even exporting to nearby countries in the Middle East. Thus, this second sector became known as the “Anatolian Tigers” competing with the bourgeoisie of the big cities, seeking to obtain the same privileges of the traditional bourgeoisie (see box: Who are the Tigers of Anatolia?.)
The economic fight of the “Tigers” took a different political form under different Islamist parties (Welfare Party, Virtue Party, and later the Justice and Development Party — AKP —, the current party of Erdogan). The provincial bourgeoisie, to cut the
umbilical cord between the state and the traditional bourgeoisie, developed a “democratic Islamist” discourse against the militarist regime and against the “Western culture” (notwithstanding, wishing to enter the European Union for economic reasons), trying to attract petrodollars from Arab countries.
In 2001, Tayyip Erdogan, a former mayor of Istanbul and the current president, formed the Justice and Development Party (AKP), an Islamist bourgeois party similar to what Christian Democracy meant for the West; an Islamist political variation which originally vindicated bourgeois democracy. Despite the discomfort of the military, two years later he came to power with the support of the provincial bourgeoisie and the dozens of Islamic fraternities and brotherhoods influencing bags of votes in the deep Turkey. Also, some sections of the working class and the people supported him for his “democratic” discourse against a regime that restricted those rights.
In the early years of the AKP government , he deepened the liberalisation of the economy trying to unite different sectors of the bourgeoisie under his leadership. He opened negotiations to try to integrate Turkey into the EU, made changes to the constitution and the restrictive laws on political, civic and religious freedoms; he even pretended to reach a peaceful understanding with the guerrillas of the PKK and the Kurdish movement.
In 2008, the AKP opened two large trials (cases called Ergenekon — legendary land in Asia where the Turks originated — and Hammer) against the nationalist military (Kemalist and secular) to reduce the army’s influence on the regime. Erdogan enjoyed, since he came to power, the support of the great brotherhood (Movement of Service, or “The Community”) of Islamist preacher Fettulah Gülen. However, their economic and political paths would fork out later, taking them to a deadly struggle and ending up with the failed coup. §
The Turkish military took power in 1980
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Living the apartheid in Jerusalem
Sergio Yahni
Sergio Yahni was born in Posadas, Misiones. His parents, members of the PST, had to exile in Israel during the military dictatorship. He is director of the Alternative Information Centre (AIC), a press organisation of Israeli-Palestinians jointly working in both the occupied territories and inside Israel, promoting an alternative policy to Israeli apartheid.
The movements of the left solidarity with the Palestinian people mistakenly tend to leave aside the question of Jerusalem. While this city and its problems are taken and monopolised by Islamic political organisations (Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others). Jerusalem is part of the core of the colonial conflict in Palestine and the value of this city lies not only in the symbolic role played but also in the geopolitical place it occupies.
Jerusa lem i s located in the geographical centre of Palestine, at the crossroads of Highway 60, the old road connecting the large urban centres over the mountains, and Highway 1. It is a crossroads dating back to the Bronze Age and until the 1948 war, it connected Egypt with Syria and the Mediterranean ports with Transjordan
markets. More modestly up to the Oslo Accords, the peace negotiations between the Organisation for the Liberation of Palestine and Israel, Highway 60 connected Hebron and Nablus, the largest trade centres in the West Bank and these with Jericho, the Palestinian gate to the rest of the East.
These considerations led in 1947 to an agreement between Anglo-American imperialism and the Soviet Union to isolate Jerusalem in the Palestine partition program, transforming it into a city under the sovereignty of the United Nations. Who controls the city controls the country, and, more importantly, controls communications between the Jordanian-Syrian interior and the ports of the Via Maris: Jaffa and Gaza.
Supported politically and militarily by Stalin who led the Soviet Union, Zionism was able to break the designs of the United Nations taking control of the city and carrying out a complete ethnic cleansing in the region. Already by April 1948, 80,000 Palestinians in Jerusalem and its environs had become refugees.
With the Jordanian-Israeli cease-fire agreements of 1949, 85 percent of the city was under the control of Israel, 11 percent of the city was under Jordanian control and the remaining 4 percent was under control of the United Nations.
East Jerusalem, already under Jordanian control, lost its place as a metropolis in a regional map to become a provincial capital, the economic, political and cultural centre of the West Bank. This situation continued
after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967.
But the Oslo agreements and the prospect that these would lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state led Israel to promote policies that uprooted Jerusalem from its surroundings forcing a possible Palestinian state to find another capital.
Twenty years ago, ministers in the Israeli government of Yitzhak Rabin, who maintained a fragile parliamentary majority thanks to the Communist Party, had proposed to the PLO to adopt the village of Abu Dis, east of the city, and declare it the capital of the Palestinian state. The PLO was willing to adopt the proposal and the Palestinian Authority even built its future parliament in this place. Finally, this did not happen: in 2002 Israel decided to break the Oslo accords invading the territories under the control of the Palestinian Authority and relegating Yasser Arafat to the role of president of an entity that did not exist and in a city under siege.
The heirs of Yasser Arafat became administrators of the international aid, transforming the Palestinian people into a nation dependent on handouts, erasing Jerusalem from its geopolitical map, and making Ramallah a show window of collaboration.
For the Palestinian population of Jerusalem, the sentence was to become subjects of a regime that sanctioned their existence in crowded Bantustans1 and subjected to the 1 Bantustan is the term that designates each
of the 20 territories which operated as tribal reserves of non-white people in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia), as
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greatest poverty. In 2014, the last year for which we have data, 82 percent of the Palestinian population of Jerusalem lived in poverty. In comparison, the poverty rate in Israel was 22 percent and poverty in Jerusalem as a whole 42 percent (Nir Hasson, Haaretz, 6 June 2016).
Palestinian poverty in Jerusalem is an element in the Israeli policy apartheid of. Other elements are the concentration of population in virtually isolated neighbourhoods and police repression. This policy is possible because the Palestinian population of the city is helpless and totally lacking rights.
Palestinians in Jerusalem are regarded by Israel as “foreign residents with the right to work”, in other words, immigrants or tourists with work visas. The silence of the international community has allowed Israel to deny the Palestinians in Jerusalem, even the few protections that the Fourth Geneva Convention gives to civilians living under occupation.
After the 1967 war, Israel annexed 70 km2 that include land and hamlets belonging to 28 different locations, including East Jerusalem itself. These territories were annexed with a double formula — strategically Israel was interested in annexing the tops of the mountains surrounding the city but demographically its interest was the annexation of the largest possible amount of land with the least population.
Today the 310,000 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem make up almost 40 percent of the total population of the city but only 13 percent of lands in East Jerusalem are assigned as a residential area for the Palestinian population. A 35 percent of East Jerusalem lands were expropriated for the construction of Israeli settlements. A 22 percent was assigned to areas of public use and 30 percent of the lands do not have any kind of planning [Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem,
part of the segregationist policies imposed during the apartheid era.
Urban Planning in Jerusalem, p. 1].
As a result of this type of p l anning the P a l e s t i n i a n p o p u l a t i o n cannot legally build and any new Palestinian construct ion, i t i s declared illegal and is in danger of being d e m o l i s h e d . According to data handled by humanitar ian organi sa t ions of the United N a t i o n s i n Jerusalem, in the first eight months of 2016, 112 Palestinian-owned structures were destroyed and 74 in 2015.
T h e Palestinian population is growing exponentially in neighbourhoods that already exist as a result of lack of planning. The only form of defence is the popular mobilisation. The authorities did not demolish any homes in neighbourhoods such as Shuafat refugee camp or inhabited houses in neighbourhoods like Issawyia or Silwan since they do not have enough forces to contain the popular reaction.
The need to contain the popular reaction transforms repression in the second element of Israeli apartheid in Jerusalem. On 10 August police announced a plan to invest $ 250 million for expansion of police activities in the Palestinian neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem. It is building five new police stations and increasing strength in the city with 1,200 extra police and also adding another 200 CCTV cameras [Daniel K. Eisenbur, “Police announce NIS one-billion overhaul of
East Jerusalem security”, Jerusalem Post, 10 August 2016].
The aim of these police forces is to contain a growing social unrest in the city. Often it is expressed in massive popular demonstrations and clashes with Israeli police forces, but sometimes carrying out lethal attacks against settlers walking in the streets of East Jerusalem. While these are sporadic operations and concentrated in the settlements and neighbourhoods of the annexed city, they have created fear in the Israeli population of the city.
Beyond an a lmos t su i c ida l heroism, the Palestinian population is tragically alone. While Islamic political organisations cultivate sectarianism defining the defence of Jerusalem as the defence of the holy places of Islam, the left and the international solidarity do not drive a plan of struggle to defend Jerusalem for the Palestinians and as a part substantial of the Palestinian national liberation movement. §
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Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump: the candidates of popular disbelief
Elections of the crisis Miguel Lamas
On 8 November the president is elected in the United States. There are no historical records where both candidates of Republican and Democratic bipartisanship are so unpopular a few weeks before the elections. Disbelief extends to the whole political system, and even socialist ideas become more popular.
This disbelief, as well as the rise of “strange” figures with an “anti-system” language as Trump on the right or Sanders on the left (although the latter is out of the race as Clinton won the Democrats’ nomination), are showing a deep crisis of the bipartisan political system of the wealthy in America.
In two surveys in August, of The Washington Post and ABC News, when respondents were asked what they thought about the election itself, i.e. Clinton vs. Trump, 68 percent responded they are dissatisfied. A recent poll by ABC channel and The Washington Post revealed that 57 percent of the US population are not happy with the two main candidates for president of the United States. They would not vote for Republican Donald Trump, or for Democrat Hillary Clinton.
“What is already clear, however, is that the political class in the US is only beginning to understand the depth of the anti-system mood that is gripping the US. Almost eight years after the financial crisis, this mood seems to be
growing in strength, not weakening” (Financial Times, 9 February 2016). This is not said by a leftist, but a neoliberal publication!
Economic crisis, Obama and the class struggle
Since 2008 the capitalist economic crisis hit squarely in the United States, which already faced a political and military crisis due to the collapse of the war in Iraq, and to the global condemnation of the United States and the domestic popular indignation against Bush and the war.
Offshoring of American industry to China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Vietnam and other Eastern countries, which has been happening already for several decades, is one of the root causes of the social crisis. While millions of American workers lost their jobs where they were earning $ 2000 or $ 3000 a month, their multinational bosses hired millions of Asians for salaries of $ 100. Industrial towns and cities were largely dismantled in the United States, some looking like ghost towns.
In that year and in the context of economic, social and political crisis, Barack Obama was elected with the support of large multinationals and banks, and arousing great expectations in most people. The first “black” president and one who promised to withdraw troops from Iraq and recover the economy.
He withdrew troops from Iraq, although he left a contingent, but he kept the invasion of Afghanistan. And his way of economic “recovery” was to continue the policy that Bush had already begun, the “bailouts”, rescuing the banks by giving them $ 5 trillion, unloading the effects of the crisis on the rest of the world and the American people. Meanwhile, layoffs raged, there were cuts to social budgets and people were losing their homes. This provoked public outrage, crystallising in the Occupy Wall Street movement, which denounced that the official policy benefited only the 1 percent to the detriment of the 99 percent. In 2011 there were protests against education cuts in Wisconsin and other states. In 2012 a teachers’ strike in Chicago. In 2010 saw the birth of the Dreamer movement of the undocumented youth of Latino and of Asian descent. And facing the escalation of violence and racist police crimes against African Americans, despite the black president, in 2013 was born the Black Lives Matter movement. Since 2012 there are growing strikes in McDonald's demanding an increase in the minimum wage. In April this year was held the biggest action with a strike in 300 cities of workers earning low wages, for a minimum wage of $ 15 per hour. The strike has brought together fast food workers and childcare, assistant teachers, health workers and much
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more. Wins were achieved in California and New York, which have become the first states to adopt laws establishing a minimum wage of $ 15 an hour although in a gradual manner.
These struggles prompted a shift in popular consciousness, the loss of prestige and the popular hatred of bankers and the wealthy, the idea that the wealthy and the bankers dominate the political system, and the emergence of the idea of “socialism” as a popular idea. Surveys conducted in June this year by Gallup, before the Democrat primaries (in which Sanders, a self-styled “democratic socialist”, was competing) were decided, show that 34 percent of respondents over
65 years said they would be willing to vote for a socialist, the figure among respondents under 30 was nearly double, 69 percent. And the national average was an unheard of 47 percent willing to vote for a “socialist”. This in the country where, until a few years ago, “socialism” even in a completely reformist version as European social democracy was something totally alien and frowned upon by 99 percent of the population who blindly believed in capitalism.
Hillary: a candidate of the wealthy
Against the grain of these popular sentiments, Hillary Clinton displays
herself as the candidate of the wealthy. With her decades as leader of the Democratic Party, Senator, Secretary of State, and with her background in demolishing social welfare, of approving draconian criminal laws, and of supporting imperialist wars, Hillary Clinton, is certainly a candidate of the capitalist status quo in the United States.
The main American newspaper, The New York Times says: “Only in the last two weeks of August, the former Secretary of State raised about $ 50 million in 22 events in some of the most exclusive parts of the country, like The Hamptons, Martha’s Vineyard, Beverly Hills and Silicon Valley”.
American capitalism for a long time managed to convince most of the working and poor people, that if you worked hard you could overcome your economic problems and become wealthy. This was called the “American dream”.
In recent years this false ideology collapsed.
Social inequality in the US has returned to the levels that prevailed in the late nineteenth century. Currently, the top 20 percent owns 88.9 percent of the wealth of the nation, while the bottom 40 percent owes more than they have. Moreover, while the wages of most workers have remained relatively stagnant since the late 1970s, earnings of the top 1 percent have increased by 156 percent and those of the 0.1 percent of the pyramidal apex have grown by 362 percent (Alvin Powell, “The cost of inequality”, Harvard Gazette, 1 February, 2016).
Recent research by Harvard University found that people belonging to privileged groups tend to live an average of 15 years longer than those in the lower income sectors. In the case of the latter, their life expectancy is similar to that of the people of Sudan or Pakistan (Peter Reuell, “For life expectancy, money matters”, Harvard Gazette, 11 April 2016). Paul
Krugman claimed: “The social collapse in the white working class is deadly serious… Mortality among white and middle-aged Americans, which had been declining for generations, began to rise again from 2000. This increase in mortality rate is reflected, to a significant extent, by an increase in suicides, alcoholism and abuse of prescribed opioids… Something is really wrong in the countryside” (“Republican elite’s reign of disdain”, International New York Times, 19-20 March 2016).
A recent newspaper article on the elections illustrates this inequality
“For a decade, the ‘American dream’ has become a nightmare. Especially for the millions of families who were repossessed their homes after the outbreak of the subprime mortgages, or the millions of Americans who lost their pensions because their money was evaporated with the failed investment banks: I have asked four elders (in New York, Las Vegas, Honolulu and Los Angeles) why the males are working as security guards at age 85, and the females as saleswomen at Macy’s and Sacks at an even older age: the four say the same thing: the crisis took their life savings and now, in old age, they have to work on duties that deplete the youngest…
“A year ago, I did not understand the political existence of Bernie Sanders, professed ‘democratic socialist’… Even less that millions of young Americans would follow him… And it is that for young people (25 percent unemployment rate) and the elderly I mentioned before, the American dream has collapsed on them: young people without college cannot compete with Hispanics eager to work shift after shift to keep their extended families. And the educated youth, as in Europe, find precarious and low-paid jobs…
“The racial conflicts we’ve seen in the last two years since the events of Fergusson in August 2014 are the tip of the iceberg: Baltimore, Detroit, etc. Elvis Presley was the first to denounce life in the ghettos, with his song In the Ghetto of January 1969. Unfortunately, things have not improved much.
“From the outside, it is not appreciated, but within the borders of the United States, it is noticeable the stress, anxiety and anguish. Seventy percent of Americans take antidepressants…” (Article by Jorge Diaz Cardiel, director of Strategic Advice Consultants, published in blogs.cincodias.com). §
The “American dream” has become a nightmare
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Although 57 percent of voters say in polls that they do not want any of the major candidates, they are likely to end up voting for one against the other, or simply abstaining (usually 50 percent abstain in presidential elections, voting is not compulsory).
The Libertarian Party, far-right, and the Green Party, environmentalist, are the two that can get significant small percentages taking advantage of the mass discontent.
There are also candidates from the left who are totally unknown for 99 percent of the population and cannot finance publicity beyond their circles of influence.
The largest organisation of the left remains the International Socialist Organisation (ISO). Unfortunately, they are not internationalists, they are reformists, do not pose a clear anti-capitalist position. ISO promotes the candidacy of Jill Stein of the Green Party.
Freedom Socialism Party (FSP) looks beyond the elections and calls for the unity of the left and social
movements, repudiates Clinton and Trump, but it also says that the Green Party is not alternative for workers. The FSP calls to the popular mobilisation whoever wins (Democrats or Republicans) to face the crisis and imperialism.
S oc ia l i s t Al te rnat ive (SA) supported Sanders in the Democratic primaries. They achieved a councillor in Seattle in the elections two years ago, Kshama Sawant, born in India, with the campaign $ 15 minimum wage. Defeated Sanders, they now support the Green Party.
Workers World Party (WWP), Castro-Chavist, has two African-American candidates for president and vice-president.
Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), Castro-Chavist, pro-Assad. Gloria La Riva heads the ticket as a presidential candidate. She is a leftist activist of long standing. This party is a split from the Workers World Party.
Socialist Equality Party (SEP) very sectarian Trotskyist party. Candidates are Jerry White for president and Niles
Niemuth for vice president, with a socialist program.
Socialist Action (SA), very small Trotskyist party. Its candidates are Jeff Mackler and Karen Schraufnagel.
Socialist Workers Party (SWP) this organisation has nothing to do with the old internationalist and militant SWP that for many decades helped spread the socialist ideas embodied in Trotskyism in the US. Nothing at all. It has become a pro-Castro cult. Always presents independent candidates. In this election, Alyson Kennedy for president and Osborne Hart for vice president. §
According to the same newspaper: “Overall, Clinton raised $ 143 million in August, representing her best month financially since she formally launched her candidacy for the White House last year.”
“It’s a well-known tune, one goes where the money is”, said Jay Jacobs, upper echelon Democratic leader in New York, to the newspaper of that city, in an attempt to justify the decision of the candidate to focus on these exclusive events instead of leading more rallies around the country or offer press conferences, something demanded by the media for months.
“Throughout the primaries, which occupied the first half of the year, Sanders, the ‘socialist’ candidate in the Democratic primaries, accused her of being the candidate of the big bankers of Wall Street and of receiving millions of dollars in election contributions from
big business “ (New York Times, quoted by Telam 4 September).
Sanders was evidently right. And this is what “normally” happens in American politics; the first and most important vote is by big business, which with its millions “guides” the voters and ends deciding the election. Candidates for any office always start by fundraising getting the support of bankers and billionaires without which they could not succeed. Once elected they owe favours to the wealthy class and particularly to those who financed them.
Hillary is then doing what almost all candidates in the American system do. But this time, there are millions of people from the working class and Latino and black minorities, and the poor in general who have begun to disbelieve the publicity and the candidates they perceived as of the
wealthy. If some of those people may still vote for Clinton, it is to stop Trump from winning.
The billionaire Donald TrumpHe is chairman of the Trump
Organisation and founder of hotel and gaming Trump Entertainment Resorts. In addition, he is a television celebrity; he was the host of the reality show The Apprentice, on NBC, between 2004 and 2015.
Trump’s campaign was “against the system”, saying that he was not dependent on the bankers and the multinationals of Wall Street for his campaign, he claims that the living conditions and the economic outlook have declined for all people, except for a minority in the top of the income scale and he blames the serious social situation on immigrants, Muslims, and the free trade agreements as cause of the ruin of American industry. This speech,
Other parties and the left
Kshama Sawant, councillor in Seattle for the Trotskyist group Socialist
Alternative
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simplistic, racist and, at the same time of denunciation of Wall Street, attracted the most politically backwards sectors of the ruined lower middle class and sectors of the white working class and swept its 17 competitors in the Republican primaries. Now, being very unpopular in the ethnic minorities and more conscious sectors of the workers, he is winning the “punishment vote” against Hillary Clinton. But one sector of Republicans themselves supports Clinton.
The political crisis deepensAlthough Clinton is considered to
have the greatest chances of winning, it cannot be ruled out that Trump win. But it is clear that winner of the two will have a fragile base and great parts of the voters are only voting against the opponent.
This situation, plus the social crisis, the development of important union and racial minorities struggles, the economic global crisis and the continuing imperialist policy, portend a future government that may be one of the weakest in recent decades, which will excite very few and which
will hardly be able to stop the growing discontent and struggles in the United States, and even less stabilise the world situation on the basis of imperialist intervention, as they did in the past.
This situation opens room for the construction of an independent socialist movement based on workers who are fighting, racial minorities, students, although not for these elections, with part of the huge base that Sanders. Also, it opens room for the development of independent and of struggle trade unions and currents, to break their traditional subservience to the Democratic Party. §
Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic primaries and now supports Clinton, but he had 13 million votes and millions of small contributors by calling himself “democratic socialist”. Possibly he would have won, if not for the elections in the Democratic Party which are always tricky and manipulated by big capital. He said from the beginning that he refused to be funded by bankers and big business on Wall Street and he claimed that Hillary Clinton was financed by them.
He channelled on the left the discontent of millions, just as Trump did it on the right.
Sanders, in his campaign, attacked the big banks and Wall Street, claiming that the wealth produced by the working class in the United States goes into the pockets of the wealthiest one percent and these are the ones who finance the parties and candidates within the parties. He also proposed a $ 15 minimum hourly wage in tune with the great movement of young workers. He promised to raise taxes on the rich to give free education and health care.
Sanders was an independent socialist in the state of Vermont. He decided to enter the Democratic primaries, with the idea that it was the only way to become president.
His orientation was reformist and social democratic. He proposed
changes without changing the capitalist system. But it was very progressive that millions have seen favourable this message of reforms in favour of the workers.
However, 30 years ago, in July 1986 at a conference in Berkeley, he had expressed: “It is discussed whether the Socialists we should work or not within the Democratic Party to impose our ideas. But the Democratic Party is not the party of the Socialists, but of their enemies, the bourgeois politicians […] is not the party of the workers, of their class, of the socialists, because it defends the class that oppresses workers […] If we have shown that we can win elections against the Democrats participating in that party, aren’t we postponing indefinitely our own birth as a political force? Would it not the worst crime against our own ideas?” (Correo Internacional, October 1986).
Unfortunately, 30 years later Sanders entered the Democratic Party, and made a great campaign, but lost against the apparatus that dominates the party, and as he said himself 20 years ago, “postponed indefinitely our own birth as a political force.”
Now Sanders supports Hillary to defeat Trump. The classic bipartisan trap of the lesser evil, which naturally produces a lot of confusion among his own followers after all that Sanders
said of Hilary. To the extent that surveys indicate that 25 percent of voters who would have voted for Sanders now would vote for Trump because they feel Hillary is worse. Sanders now, in his alliance with Clinton, says he can change the platform of the Democratic Party. But a Democrat party headed by Hillary Clinton and funded by Wall Street obviously cannot meet progressive measures in favour of workers and minorities. Nor has Obama before fulfilled them.
Sanders missed a great opportunity, in this election, to become the leader of a new mass socialist party that defends the workers and the oppressed minorities. But the movement that coalesced around him and the struggles of the workers and of these minorities show that there is great political room to build it in the coming years. §
Thirteen million votes for the “socialist” Sanders
Bernie Sanders campaigning
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The “unexpected” (for pollsters a n d a n a l y s t s ) t r i u m p h o f Republican candidate Donald Trump expresses a deep social discontent, which translated into millions of “punishment” votes against the establishment of the world’s leading imperialist power, against Hillary Clinton and the failure of Obama’s lie “yes we can”.
Although they practically tied, with a slight advantage for Clinton ( 5 9 , 6 0 0 , 0 0 0 ) a g a i n s t Tr u m p (59,390,000), the system is indirect and the electors elect (the one who wins in each state takes all the electors of that state). Trump obtained more electors and that is why he won.
The new president, a tycoon who owns casinos and real estate, received from the billionaires who financed the campaigns much less money than Hillary Clinton (adding to more than $ 1.5 billion in total).
Trump spoke demagogically against “globalisation”, for bringing back factories (which multinationals took to China and other countries) and against free trade, hitting on issues felt by millions of unemployed workers.
Crisis in the empire“What shows the electoral campaign
is a social body torn as a result of a policy that has concentrated power and income in 1 percent of the population (…). Heroin consumption now affects the industrial belt of the country, where hundreds of factories have closed and entire neighbourhoods have been abandoned.
“According to official data, income fell by 17 percent among the poorest and 10 percent in the middle classes” (Raúl Zibechi, in Sputniknews.com).
But, the profits of the richest 1 percent increased by 156 percent (Harvard Gazette 1 February 2016).
Mortality among the poorest is similar to that of Sudan or Pakistan.
The so-called “American dream” (that is, the opportunity for social progress) has become a nightmare for millions of people who had their homes foreclosed by the banks and, in many cases, lost their pensions. Also, for millions of young people who only get precarious jobs and must live with their parents because they cannot access any housing. While Obama bailed out the banks and automakers, he did not bail out the millions who lost jobs, home, health and / or retirement.
Political and social crisisTo a large extent the vote for Trump
and the increase in abstention (in eight years the Democrats lost 10 million votes, compared to Obama in 2008), was a punishment vote against the disaster that caused the crisis open in 2007 of the capitalist-imperialist system. And a punishment vote to the economic policy headed by Obama in recent years in the US and in the world, so that the crisis is paid by the workers and those from below. This was demonstrated by the falsity of the supposed “change” promised by the “Democrat” Obama and many from the reformist left purported he would be a “progressive” president. This was what the voters repudiated, mistakenly voting for Trump or with abstention.
Three months ago the Washington Post indicated that 57 percent of US citizens did not want either candidate. Another Gallup poll, conducted in June, indicated that 47 percent of voters “could vote for a socialist” (this rose to 69 percent among young people).
That is to say, there is a gigantic political and social crisis in the United States, i.e. at the head of the world imperialist system. Inside it is expressed a popular mass that has begun to hate the super-millionaires who led to this disaster and to disbelieve the politicians who govern them (the Bushes, Obamas or Clintons). This was expressed, to the left, in the Democrat primaries with the
candidacy of Sanders, who although lost to the tricky Democrat apparatus that made Clinton win, drew 13 million votes. And it manifests, in a distorted way, given the absence of a left-wing alternative, with the mistaken popular and working class vote for Trump, a racist millionaire who is also part of the same. A phenomenon of global political unbelief related to Brexit (the vote in Britain for the exit of the European Union) and the NO to the agreement with the FARC in Colombia. That is, white workers and popular sectors votes were added to the country’s traditional right and ultra-right-wings electoral base.
What’s comingTrump’s speech, after the victory, was
surprisingly moderate for his style. And, after congratulating his rival Hillary Clinton, he called for the “unity of all Americans”. That is, he stopped talking about the rich on Wall Street, and he rather wants to get along with them.
That is why his false promise that he will “return to the American dream”, to re-establish lost jobs or fallen wages, will not be fulfilled. Trump’s true face will quickly clear up for his voters. Trump is the new head of Yankee imperialism. He will govern for Wall Street and the multinationals.
Trump’s triumph had an impact on the world and all sorts of apocalyptic predictions are being made. Nothing good can be expected from this rightist, misogynist and racist.
We will see how far he can apply his policy in the US and in the world. What is certain is that the acute crisis of the capitalist-imperialist economy will continue and that, therefore, in the US will continue the social and political crisis. That is why the most likely prospect is that, in the coming years, the crisis and the social struggle for wages, work, health, education and the rights of African Americans and Hispanics will deepen. §
Why did Trump win?Miguel Lamas
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Colombia
The outcome of the plebiscite in Colombia has had a global impact. The tight win of the NO to the peace agreement between the Santos Government and the FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia], endorsed by Cuba, Obama, the UN, the Pope, Maduro, Macri, among others, has surprised everyone.
The NO won with a difference of only 55,000 votes (6,432,000 to 6,377,000). Apparently, the only victor would be the right-wing ex-president Alvaro Uribe who pushed the NO. This may lead to the conclusion that this result is a “new” expression of a supposed “right turn” that would exist in Latin America. It is not so. They are new distorted expressions of the anger of millions toward the “pacts” of those above.
The other data of the plebiscite is that actually abstention wins with a rate reaching 63 percent. It could be argued that in Colombia, where voting is not compulsory, this is a “normal” abstention. But in view of the exceptional fact of an agreement that had been endorsed by all the powers and political figures of the world, from Obama to Raul Castro passing through the reformist world left and even by the pope, to maintain a 63 percent abstention shows that the Colombian workers and peasants did not see that this agreement would change their lives of exploitation and misery.
The workers and popular sectors of the big cities did not see the agreements affecting them positively in anything and therefore, they did not vote. The plebiscite did not motivate sectors of the population to vote.
Urban areas with a predominantly middle-class composition (except Bogota, Cali and Barranquilla), minorities in occupated territory and less affected in terms of confrontation, imposed the majority. In places where the presence of the FARC was strong, the NO also won, such as the provinces of Meta, Caqueta (where the FARC held their last conference), Tolima and Huila.
The background to this result is explained by several reasons. First, the political and military degeneration of the FARC in the last years led them to earn a growing repudiation among the population, who daily saw that they acted against their interests. In addition, they were identified as a decadent and corrupt guerrilla linked to drug trafficking. This is why this agreement was very frowned upon as it offered a series of prebends for years to its members, while the agreement meant neither an agrarian reform nor great social achievements of the peasants and the workers. This is what Uribe took advantage of to promote the vote for NO, which translated into a punishment vote for the FARC.
Secondly, the result also reflected the distrust of the masses in this pro-bosses and pro-Yankee government of Santos, which has been applying an economic plan against the people. The 63 percent abstention is also a rejection of the agreements of those above. It shows that the masses do not respect the Pope and the heads of imperialism in which they do not believe. With this, we do not want to make the simplistic caricature that those millions go to the left. For sure there are in Colombia middle and upper-class sectors that are the electoral
base of Uribe. But it is categorical that an important part of the popular vote for the NO and the abstention is not on the right but that it expresses, as it can, their hatred of the pacts of those above. Which are the ones that in Colombia endorsed for years the action of violence of the security and military forces that with the argument of the guerrilla always repressed the peasants and the workers in their claims. The same reactionary governments that backed the Plan Colombia of the US (Santos was the Uribe government’s defence minister) and left behind the para-militarism and drug trafficking associated with the US mafias.
Our socialist current has always denounced that this agreement did not mean any solution to the fundamental problems of the Colombian people. The result of the plebiscite opens a political crisis in Colombia. The government of Santos, imperialism, Cuba, the leadership of the Cuban CP and the FARC have been paralysed. New negotiations will certainly open, in which NO representatives led by Alvaro Uribe will be present. It is not by chance that this nefarious character of the Colombian ultra-right has stated that the solution is a National Pact of all the political actors of which he and his party had been excluded in the initial negotiations.
But beyond this dynamic, whether or not there is a new agreement, Colombian workers, youth and peasants will have to keep fighting for their political and social demands. §
Why did the NO win in Colombia?
From the left, Colombia’s President, Juan Manuel Santos, Cuba’s Prime Minister, Raul Castro, and FARC’s
leader Timoleón Jiménez, aka “Timochenko”
Miguel Sorans
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Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is one of the most unpopular in the world. Everywhere he stands abroad, he will be accompanied by protests and harsh critical remarks of the international press, both for the corruption scandals in which his government is surrounded, and by the heinous acts of repression and violence with impunity, such as the disappearance of the 43 trainee teachers of Ayotzinapa, a fact that is about to meet two long years.
So far, weighing in the working class and the popular movement is the severe blows suffered over the past ten years, precisely because of the increasing repression. It has seriously undermined their capacity for organisation and mobilisation articulated at the national level. Much of the activism emerged in
past struggles has been co-opted by the “democratic reaction”, i.e., it has been won for the ideology that it is through electoral participation, through the bourgeois parties that make up the regime, that the increasingly serious problems of the majorities in the country can be solved.
In the context of the appalling government weakness, make their way struggles that face the implementation of the neoliberal model in Mexico, notably the struggle of the teachers, mainly in the south of the country, which has shaken the country, constituting an example that the whole working class should follow, overcoming defeats and learning from the mistakes as well as the shortcomings in these so important struggles.
The teacher’s mobilisation shakes the government
For more than three months, the National Coordination of Education Workers (CNTE) gave a tough battle against the fraudulent “educational reform” imposed by the government of Enrique Peña Nieto, in agreement with the main bourgeois parties in the country, National Action Party (PAN) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
The “educational reform” of the government and the parties is, in fact, a labour counter-reform, snatching fundamental rights from the teachers, particularly employment stability. It is based on an assessment by which it seeks to justify the dismissal of teachers who refuse to be tested and those who
The struggle of the teacher’s union, CNTE, achieved partial advancement
Peña Nieto at his worst moment
Francisco RetamaMember Executive Committee, MAS
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do not pass can lose their position as teachers, in addition to seeing their wages and benefits diminished.
Also part of the “reform” are a series of privatisation measures of education, under the pretext of “administrative self-management” as the charging of fees for mothers and fathers, the sale textbooks and to obtain credit for the improvement of schools, on the basis of mortgaging their properties.
The approval of the constitutional reform and regulatory laws, as well as the implementation of the first measures derived from them, was a heavy blow to the national teachers that could not be reversed with the days of struggle carried out by the CNTE and other teaching contingents. By now, thousands of teachers and professors have been dismissed and a whole number of administrative requirements, based on productivity criteria, became a heavy burden, hindering their academic work.
This year, as part of the celebration of Teacher’s Day, on 15 May, the CNTE began a new round of struggle, beginning indefinite strikes in the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca and Michoacán,1 the sections in which the CNTE has its greatest strength.
Especially in Chiapas, a real popular mobilisation was developed around the struggle of the teachers, which was a very active participation of mothers and parents, as well as social organisations and communities.
In addition to the indefinite strike, the teachers’ mobilisation incorporated force actions like sit-ins in petrol stations, the closure of commercial centres,2 s it- ins in government buildings, the installation of permanent pickets in major public squares, as well as the blocking of large inner-city streets and roads.
1 Namely, Chiapas sections 7 and 40, which respectively group the workers who toil in state and federal schools; section 22 of Oaxaca and section 18 of Michoacán.
2 At diverse moments of the recent day of struggle, contingents of the CNTE closed great commercial centres, where transnational companies are established.
The repressive response of the government was swift: The main leaders of section 22 of Oaxaca were arrested, the prosecution began of the leaders of other sections such as the 18 of Michoacán and thousands of troopers of the National Gendarmerie were transferred to the southern states where the largest mobilisation concentrated. But they were repudiated and opposed on several occasions. In Oaxaca, a permanent blocking of the main access to the state capital, in the community called Nochixtlán, to prevent the overland arrival of thousands of gendarmes was installed.
In an attempt of violent eviction by the police forces, 11 people were killed, among teachers and villagers in solidarity, sparking a huge outrage and stoking the intensification of the mobilisation, incorporating teaching contingents that had remained passive, especially the strategic sections 9 and 10 of Mexico City. With the participation of mothers and parents, hundreds of primary and secondary schools were closed, a good portion of them for several weeks, before the end of the school year. In Nuevo Leon, over 900 schools stopped activities for a day and tens of thousands of education workers mobilised to repudiate the repression and “educational reform”, particularly with the disappearance of a wage compensation,3 which reduced their income by up to 50 percent.
3 Since the 1990’s the “Magisterial Career” was imposed as a way to evade the demand of wage increases, conditioning this compensation to productivity criteria and the approval by the authorities of each
The massacre of Nochixtlán and the implementation of new measures stemming from the “educational reform” raised the mobilisation to levels that had not been achieved in previous years. Despite the end of the school year, the strike continued and the new school year did not start at least in most of the schools in Oaxaca and Chiapas, as well as in most of the schools of Michoacán, in addition to the continued participation of thousands of teachers in marches in Mexico City.
To turn off the mobilisation, the government had to formally announce that the evaluation will be voluntary, made the payment corresponding to the so-called magisterial career, paid withheld wages to teachers, and said that no fees would be charged in schools or textbooks would be sold. In addition, it released all the leaders of section 22 who had been detained in this day of struggle and four more who had been arrested on the day of struggle last year.
Despite its tremendous weakness, the government could not be defeated, in part because of the action of the official leadership of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE), which gambled for the teachers not to join the mobilisation in most states, becoming a repressive arm of the government, threatening teachers and dissidents. It
school, becoming a means of political control. With the passage of the years, the granting of the compensation became more general, becoming an economic benefit. This year, as part of the “reform”, the “Magisterial Career” was eliminated from the benefits, having meant a drastic reduction of the income of an important number of teachers.
Mexican teachers mobilise in defence of jobs and for decent wages
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The truth is that Enrique Peña remains in government, despite the massive popular rejection of his governance, thanks to the action of the leaderships of the mass movement, as well as those of the bureaucratic ones, that still control most of the working class and remain they linked to the PRI, due to the inaction of the greater part of the so-called independent leaderships, mostly linked to the PRD.1
1 The PRD had been known as the electoral left in Mexico; the head of government of Mexico City was postulated by this party. At the beginning of the government of Peña the PRD integrated the so-called Pact for Mexico, which also included the rightist National Action Party, for the promotion and approval in Congress of the calls to “structural reforms”. Two years ago, its main public figure, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, broke with the PRD and founded the party National Regeneration Movement, bringing about a strong crisis in the PRD, which in the recent elections has suffered strong defeats.
Given the obvious need to build greater unity of the workers and mobilised popular sectors, these leaderships have done everything to prevent such convergence. Even the leadership of the CNTE, in the recent day of struggle, refrained from widely calling on all organisations against the government and in support of their fight against the “educational reform”.
But undoubtedly the most eloquent attitude of support to the fragile government of Peña Nieto has been Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who at the height of the teachers’ struggle declared himself against the position of the CNTE — which demands the abrogation of the “educational reform” — by defending its “modification” arguing that there was no need to sacrifice the president. More recently, after the visit of Donald Trump, Lopez Obrador said via twitter: “Although it is by external factors and we’re dealing with the same deck, it matters to stop the fall of EPN”.
Lopez Obrador is a politician of the system, a bourgeois leader who does what is necessary to prevent the emergence of social mobilisation that would jeopardise the government of Peña and open serious cracks in the bourgeois regime. Like other parties and leaders of Latin American centre-left he bets on bringing the growing social unrest into the swamp of bourgeois elections, promising the big capitalists stability and security for their investments. §
AMLO and the “independents” of the PRD become the lifeline of the government
also played a very important role the null effective solidarity of the leaderships that claim to be independent. But also because of the mistakes made by the teachers’ leadership itself, which failed to articulate a more homogeneous national mobilisation, even of their own CNTE forces that were not added to the strike initiated by the southern sections of the country; it also failed to build unity with other teachers contingents that mobilised and are not part of the CNTE; in addition it did not seriously propose building a broad popular unity to add to their struggle and confront the government with greater success.
The government of Peña Nieto in its worst moment
While the teachers’ mobilisation developed in these months, the president’s popularity continued to
fall to historic lows. Surveys have been published that give him just under 20 percent approval rating and his shameful invitation to the Republican candidate for US president, Donald Trump, was widely repudiated, his level of acceptance falling further.
Peña on account of his act of stupidity and betrayal, was forced to withdraw from the strategic post of Secretary of the Treasury the man all his full trust, Luis Videgaray, who was considered one of the main PRI candidates for the presidential nomination in 2018 and was blamed for promoting the invitation to Trump, which left the government looking ridiculous and exhibited him genuflecting to the Republican candidate who does not get tired of making xenophobic statements against Mexican migrants to the United States and has campaigned promising
to build a wall on its border with our country, making Mexicans pay the cost.
Moreover, the so-called structural reforms promoted by the government, together with the main bourgeois parties, have been a failure. The promises of greater economic growth, generating formal jobs, reducing the cost of gasoline, gas and electricity tariffs were a hoax. On the contrary, the economy has plunged into stagnation, the public debt has soared to levels above 50 percent of the gross domestic product, unemployment soared and the casualisation of existing jobs grew, energy and electricity rates rose. In addition, it was announced a sharp cut in public spending, which will mainly affect spending in social areas, such as education and health.
Enrique Peña also carries the huge burden of being the president of impunity and corruption. Both for the
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
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scandal of the house of US$8 million owned by his wife, and similar acts of corruption of officials from his cabinet, and also for the massacre of Iguala, where three teacher trainees died and 43 more went missing, so far without justice being done for these atrocities or massacres by soldiers and federal police in various states of the republic. Insecurity, violence and the power of drug traffickers not only have not diminished but have increased.
We need to put in place a new leadership of the working class
It is urgent the construction of a new leadership for the working class and the popular movement, one that seriously be ready to build the essential unity to muster the strength to bring down the government and defeat the neoliberal model.
We should not wait for 2018 when the next presidential and legislative
elections at the federal level will take place. We need to take to the streets, extending the mobilisation across the country, preparing a national stoppage, which is the way to achieve get rid of the “educational reform” against which the teachers have fought heroically; and the same with the other reforms imposed in this six-year period.
The teachers’ guild bears a great responsibility in this task and there is a magnificent opportunity after the day of struggle it has carried out. Also, the New Central of Workers, mainly driven by the Mexican Electricians Union, is in a position to run as an alternative organisation for the working class that has suffered repeated blows in recent decades, being left without an option of leadership for the struggle.
Next January, its second National Congress will be held and its National Political Council has decided to promote a strong campaign to take
advantage of this event to grow their ranks, adding unions and planning the organisation of the workers who do not have a grouping union.
It will be necessary that towards that Congress, the leadership of the New Central of Workers postulate itself as an option to fight, intensely joining the fighting waged by other sectors of workers who are already being threatened by the government offensive, such as the health sector; equally, in the battle against the “educational reform” the New Central must add forces and be at the service of building the long-awaited unity of action against the government, pushing for other independent sectors do the same.
In this work, the modest forces of the Movimiento al Socialismo [Movement Towards Socialism], Mexican section of the International Workers Unity – Fourth International, have committed their efforts. §
Peña Nieto was in a ridiculous position by promoting the invitation to Trump and bowing to the Republican candidate who never tires of speaking against Mexican migrants
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“This is a starvation-causing and repressive government”
The political, economic, and social crisis seems to have no end in Venezuela. “Nicolas Maduro must go now, but we bet that the mobilisation of the people will be what puts him against the ropes”, said Hernandez, general secretary of Partido Socialismo y Libertad (PSL – Socialism and Freedom Party), in an interview published in Venezuelan newspaper La Razón,1 which we reproduce, for its importance, in its substantial parts.
What is happening in the country from the point of view of the PSL?
The situation we live is a real tragedy. There is a social and economic catastrophe of magnitude without precedent in the economic and social
1 La Razón, 16 August 2016, interview by Patricia Marcano, www.larazon.net.
history of the country. As a historian I always make reference to the past, perhaps at the time of the Federal War, or after it, the country was plunged into a great desolation and epidemics, in an extreme situation, but after a civil war. But it is now an extreme situation where there is no war. (…)
With less capacity to purchase goods and services an important part of the middle class has become poorer and the poorer sectors have impoverished to levels we did not know because in the late 1980s there were very poor sectors but there was a wide middle class who had access. At that time there was no shortage of medicines, today there is. There is a shortage of almost all inputs, the economy is practically paralysed and is affecting the daily lives of the majority of the population, especially those living on their salary and they are
those who are paying the consequences of the crisis and the adjustments.
Do you think a “paquetazo”2 is being applied?
This whole situation is generated by the economic and social crisis which the government is primarily responsible for, although undoubtedly some business sectors have benefited. But now the government, in accordance with multinationals, entrepreneurs and even bankers, who are meeting at the National Council of Productive Economy, agree all measures are being implemented and are a paquetazo, only that they did not give it a name or they are applying together but sparingly… They agreed to increase goods and services. (…)
2 Paquetazo, Spanish for a package of neoliberal policies and measures used to hit the working people [Translator].
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What does the PSL propose?From the political point of view, we
propose that the ranks of discontent, critical Chavismo, of the sectors of the left who still claim to be socialists and those who claim or not to be Chavist, that we articulate in a broad front, alliance and a great alternative pole of the workers and the people to face on the streets the adjustments and introduce the country to a political alternative facing the PSUV [Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela] and the MUD [Democratic Unity Roundtable], that all they do is fight over oil revenues.
We also consider it urgent that the Venezuelan people organise themselves and mobilise to demand their right to food. We are hungry and the government, with this adjustment, is subjecting to starvation most of the population. This is a starvation-causing and also repressive government. People must organise in independent autonomous committees in the communities to mobilise for food, to demand from the appropriate agencies, and particularly the Local Committees of Supply and Production (CLAP), to release the food.
Would these committees be to counter those of the CLAP?
Of course, because we oppose those of CLAP. The CLAP are a government agency specifically controlled by UBCh [Units of Battle Hugo Chavez], UnaMujer [National Union of Women], and the Francisco de Miranda Front, which from above — from the State— control or try to control the distribution of food and what they are is simply institutionalising the corruption and theft that already existed, and institutionalising hunger because people are fighting among communities for a little bag of food. (…)
How did it come to this?What entered into crisis here was
not socialism; here there is no vestige of socialism. Here those who benefit and have benefited in these years of Chavez and Maduro government are the banks, winning every quarter all the money in the world. We have not seen any banker fighting the government.
Also, the transnational companies of the telecommunications sector and the oil sector benefited from a false nationalisation with the delivery of the Orinoco Oil Belt. (…)
And with what happened in these 17 years, who should rule the country?
In the PSL we believe it should be the workers’ and popular organisations, leftist groups and all that critical and discontent Chavismo. That is why we have joined the platform called “People fighting and critical Chavismo” that has just introduced nine points to give a response to the crisis.
How to persuade again the people so they trust an option that speaks of socialism?
It is not an easy task. It is not going to the communities, to factories, to oil workers, teachers or university lecturers to tell them to believe in socialism. What we are proposing is that it is necessary that the Venezuelan people keep going to the streets. They are already doing it, that was something that did not quite surface.
People have to go out and protest but organised. Trade unions, community councils, community organisations not linked to the PSUV have an important task of organising people, just like these committees that we propose to fight for food must be forms of organisation that allow people go the streets to protest more in a more organised manner and with more specific and concrete objectives. (…)
Are the protests that are happening spontaneously or not?
They are absolutely genuine and are the response of the Venezuelan people to the hunger we are going through, there should be no doubt. Beyond those without clear direction and despite being genuine, some sectors may go out to fish in troubled waters.
No doubt that there are sectors, minority, of the MUD and common crime that insert themselves in these looting attempts to fish in troubled waters, but these situations would be numbered. The protests that are taking place and the attempts of looting, what
they reflect is the genuine despair of a people who are going hungry as had never happened, while others are earning all the money in the world. (….)
And should Maduro leave now or in 2019?
He should leave now, but we bet on the mobilisation putting him on the ropes, the people and the workers mobilised. That is the platform of “People fighting and critical Chavismo” which has recently been formed. Among other things, to fight against the paquetazo of the government, while at the same time to present to the country an alternative. We believe that the MUD is not an option, and thus there are many sectors of workers and unions, not just the PSL, and we call on all of them to regroup and organise to present to the country a political alternative.
Doesn’t the PSL see the revocation referendum as an option for the exit of the government?
We do not reject the revocation itself. It is a way through which much of the population sees that they can remove this government causing the crisis; we understand that and do not sneer at it. What happens is that for us this is not the way out and we say it responsibly to the people even though we are a minority.
Ii is a way out, a democratic and constitutional proposal that important sections of the people have assumed as a way out of the government. But unfortunately this did not come from people but from the MUD, trying to fish in troubled waters, which does not do much for the referendum to happen, and thereby it attempts to present itself as an alternative when we know that it is not. Because they are the same ones who ruled in the Puntofijist1 past, the same who led the country to the
1 The Punto Fijo Pact was a formal a r r angemen t a r r i v ed a t b e tween representatives of Venezuela’s three main bourgeois political parties in 1958, Acción Democrática [Democratic Action], COPEI and Unión Republicana Democrática [Democratic Republican Union], for the acceptance of the 1958 presidential elections.
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situation of crisis we had in 1989, the same who handed over the country to imperialism, and the same who made possible the rise of Chavez.
Do you share the position of the National Electoral Council (CNE) and the government on the revocation?
We reject categorically — -and we say it clearly — all the tricks and illegal obstacles that the government is putting to the realisation of the revocation referendum because it is also a mechanism established in the same Constitution that Chavez proposed in 1999 and that most of the people it approved on that occasion. (…)
How do you see the attempt at dialogue?
We are in a complicated situation because the government does not want to leave power and the US is pushing for a negotiation. They are trying to
defuse the popular mobilisation because they are terrified of a large outbreak of workers’ and popular mobilisation that put into question the entire established order, their businesses and interests. They fear the spontaneous mobilisation of people and in an unconsulted way they are trying to box in this process of mobilisation and discontent towards an electoral process, which is the referendum. (…)
What should be done then?In the immediate future we are
calling the people to come out to mobilise so that this government is finished going, so that it does not keep implementing this package of adjustments that have us subjected to hunger, so food and medicines appear, and in this frame to present from the critical Chavismo, leftist groups and popular and trade union organisations an alternative power to the MUD and
the government. We are not playing to be opposition. (…)
We believe it is possible to reconstruct the left from discontent existing in that Chavismo who had hopes and who today sees them thwarted. Because Chavismo was a double standard, it was a continuation, with red flannel, of the cronyism of Democratic Action and COPEI [Social Christian Party], which also squandered the country’s wealth and handed it over to joint ventures and transnational corporations. This situation we see today, and that we are suffering from this economic catastrophe, is leading many people from critical Chavismo, discontent and the left to consider an alternative but opposed to the bourgeois polarisation of the PSUV and the MUD, which is presented as an alternative in the midst of the crisis, fishing in troubled waters. §
The elections of the United Federation of Oil Workers of Venezuela (FUTPV), the largest union federation in the country, which was scheduled for 22 September, have been postponed to 7 November.
This is the second time the electoral commission — controlled by union bureaucrats loyal to the government — has suspended the elections which originally had been called for 30 August.
These continuous suspensions are merely evidence that the government and the union bureaucracy of the PSUV are faced with the real possibility of being defeated by slate 36, headed by José Bodas, a member of the PSL and CCURA (Classist Unitarian Revolutionary and Autonomous Current), which brings together the most militant activists and fighters within the Venezuelan oil working class.
The slate reflects more than 20 years o f s t r u g g l e a n d c o m m i t m e n t t o the demands of the Venezuelan oil workers. It is the representation of constancy and of fighting classism at the service of the workers.
It is composed of trade union delegates, delegates of prevention, rank and file trade unionists and honest workers and without any compromise with the government or the private bosses in the oil sector.
José Bodas and the members of slate 36 denounced this new suspension of elections in FUTPV, and continue in all oil areas demanding “Elections now!” democratic and transparent, since the bureaucracy
linked to government attempts to organise a fraud.
With the slogans “Enough of starvation wages”, “Change now”, Bodas and members of slate 36 continue touring the country, strengthening the only option with real possibilities to give a great fight to the government and their union bureaucracy. §
Oil workers union elections suspended
Fearing to be defeated by Bodas and CCURA
José Bodas campaigning
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The deep crisis in Venezuela is having a major impact on thousands of activists linked to Chavismo who see as their standard of living plummets amid a brutal shortage, never known in the country.
In this context, it is taking place a very progressive fact among the political, union, student, and popular fighters who since 1999 had hopes for a profound transformation of the country, and believed in Chavez and his proposal of “socialism of the XXI century”.
Many of them see how all the expectations generated over 17 years are fading, and question their support for the government of Nicolas Maduro, taking distance from the bureaucratic leaderships of the PSUV and of the parties of the Great Patriotic Pole.
The brutal economic crisis, food shortages, rampant inflation, devaluation of the currency, the relinquishment of natural resources, the systematic cutting of democratic freedoms, and rampant corruption are the breaking point that forces honest fighters to reflect on the crisis in the country and to move away from those who they feel directly responsible for this debacle.
An expression of this incipient process of rupture of important sectors of Chavismo with the current government of Nicolas Maduro is the “Platform of People in Struggle and of Critical Chavismo”, in which the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSL) has been actively participating.
This coordination of activists and fighters originating from Chavismo, in frank break with the government of Maduro, was formed from a meeting in Caracas on 29 and 30 April this year, organised by SinatraUCV (Union of Employees of the Central University of Venezuela), Sirtrasalud (Union of Health Workers) Caracas, Cultural Collective Toromayma,
Marea Socialista [Socialist Tide] and workers of the Caracas Metro, among other sectors and organisations.
The “Platform of People in Struggle and of Critical Chavismo” agreed to a document made public, in which nine points of emergency are put forth, among them: against the delivery of our natural resources on the Mining Arc of the Orinoco; 100 percent state-owned oil without joint ventures or transnational companies, and moratorium on payment of foreign debt.
The Platform proposes to face the crisis, fight against Maduro’s government and its economic adjustment plan, and to raise an alternative of the workers and the people grouping together the honest activists of Chavismo unhappy with the top brass of the PSUV and the government, and fighters of the left, whether Chavist or not, who still believe it is possible to fight for socialism.
Our party does not claim to be Chavist; on the contrary, we believe that the disaster that Venezuela lives today and the hardships experienced
by the working people are the results of a bourgeois mildly nationalist project, short-legged, that never progressed in the structural solution of the main problems of the people. From our point of view, both the Chavez government and the Maduro government never had or have had the goal of advancing to socialism. Maduro inherited a project that was already in crisis.
Those of us who believe it is necessary to raise the banners of political independence from Chavismo and the MUD [Democratic Unity Roundtable] we feel called to fight alongside these contingents of fighters that are open to the autonomous polit ical struggle, beyond the differences and nuances that still exist between the organisations member of the Platform.
From the PSL we believe that the nine points raised in the first public manifesto of the “Platform of People in Struggle and of Critical Chavismo” are a minimal programmatic basis, from which we could all advance in shaping this independent political alternative of the left. §
On the Platform of People in Struggle and Critical Chavismo
The Platform protested at the Ombudsman's Office. To the right, Miguel Angel Hernandez (PSL).
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Teacher’s strike and demonstration
The first 10 months of Macri
Adjustment and wear of the government of the CEOs
Juan Carlos Giordano
In just 10 months, poverty rose to 33 percent, as a result of the adjustment, the layoffs and low wages. With Macri, the banks and the multinationals win. He rules with a cabinet of CEO’s, former managers of large companies. The demands grow among the teachers, state workers and others. The CGT continues to maintain a truce that even called into question its notorious “strike without date”. The wear of Macri is felt in the polls. It opens a moment of bigger crisis, more social deterioration, struggles and discontent. The Left Front calls for a great rally for November.
Since the inauguration of Macri and the Cambiemos government in December 2015, a new political moment has opened up in the country.
Ten months were enough to increase the discontent in large sectors, given a government that with the cliché of the “inheritance received” continues to deepen the capitalist adjustment against the working people.
The devaluation, 200,000 layoffs (80,000 of them state workers), hike in rates (increase in water, electricity and transport services), loss of people’s incomes because of inflation and measures that only benefit the large employers are provoking an important erosion, which is shown in the fall of popularity of the presidential figure. Let’s Recall that Macri won in the second round by very little (in the run off he received 51 percent of the votes, against 49 percent of the Kirchnerist Peronism candidate, Daniel Scioli).
“It’s Raining poverty”, not capital
The government has kept justifying that the adjustment of the first semester was so they could attract “saviour capitals”; a supposed “rain of dollars” that would lead us to “Zero Poverty”. But the official statistics institute (Indec) has just announced the explosive news: there are 13 million poor people in a population of 40 million, a million and a half more in only 10 months of government.
The other chilling figure is the 5.9 percent fall in economic activity in July — compared to the same month last year — the highest in the last 14 years, ratifying the recession. The Ministry of Labour recognised 62,400 fewer jobs in construction and another 34,500
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in the manufacturing industry, and a new “review” of public employees with possible layoffs is announced for the end of the year.
Half of the registered workers earn less than the value of the basic basket necessary to stop being poor, and 40 percent continue to work in the black. The wage loss in the first six months was an actual 15 percent (yearly inflation reached 45 percent and salary wages were agreed on an average between 28 and 30 percent and in instalments).
Macri displays his anti-workers policy “to the world” by encouraging the inflow of capital. But his visit to China and the meeting at a recent Investment Forum with multinationals confirms that capitals would come to continue appropriating natural resources, mining, oil and agribusiness. The YPF-Chevron secret pact, now revealed, proves the huge tax breaks and triangulations for the benefit of the Yankee multinational. A covenant made by the Peronist government of Cristina Kirchner and to which Macri gives continuity. Or Barrick Gold, which promised jobs when settling down years ago, but which has already caused two cyanide spills in San Juan, polluting water and villages, and which has laid off thousands of workers. The Macrist naked truth is plain to see. “Between the inflow of dollars by foreign direct investment and the transfer of profits and dividends to parent companies of multinational firms, a negative balance of US$ 274 million was recorded between January and August of this year” (Página 12, 28 September).
The capitals that have come in are the 38 billion dollars of greater indebtedness that aggravate the foreign debt. The money is used to finance the fiscal deficit (which increased by the tax exemptions to the landowners and mega miners), to subsidise the bosses of the transport, energy and oil companies, and to pay the debt maturities and the vulture funds.1
1 So are called the bondholders who held trial against Argentina in New York and won. Macri paid them in cash by means a bill passed by Congress with the support of
The CGT’s “strike without dateAlthough the struggles are growing,
the CGT2 keeps the truce with the government. In the first half of the year, there were strikes and rebellions of teachers and state officials in Tierra del Fuego, Santiago del Estero and Santa Cruz (where the Kirchnerist Justicialist Party — PJ — of the Front for Victory is in government). There were teacher and state workers in Buenos Aires and 14 provinces, of judicial and health professionals (Cicop) in the province of Buenos Aires, and there are already three national teacher strikes (Ctera) and several of state workers (ATE).
The second semester began with educational stoppages in several provinces for the reopening of collective bargaining. At the beginning of September, a Federal March was called by the CTA3 (Yasky and Micheli) with 40,000 people in Plaza de Mayo. There was a resounding strike by the Sarmiento railway workers for 24 hours in the face of an attack by the company and the government (see box “No to criminalisation…”), a stoppage of several days in bus line 60 in protest for the death of a worker for lack of safety, measures in oil workers, banking and many other sectors.
In the middle, there was the confrontation against the rates hike, which achieved a partial break through a ruling of the Supreme Court, reflecting the social discontent. It was the opportunity for the CGT to call to some national measure. It has not done so until now, persisting in a “dialogue” that the government uses to continue with the adjustment. It is the line that
the PJ, the Renovating Front (Massa), the Front for Victory (Kirchnerism) and the centre-left. Argentina’s debt now stands at 400 billion dollars.
2 CGT: General Confederation of Labour that recently held a “unification” congress. It was not such because important unions were left out (national rail workers, auto mechanics, electricians, et cetera). It elected a triumvirate between different wings linked to the PJ. The most reticent sector is banking, which demands a general strike.
3 CTA: Central of Argentine Workers. It is divided into two: CTA Yasky (pro-K) and CTA Micheli (linked to the centre-left).
the Catholic Church and the pro-official Peronism advise.
The CGT tries to achieve some crumbs to continue justifying their submission. After voting for a “strike without date”, it has met with the government and given it 10 days to respond to the request for a year-end bonus to compensate for inflation (instead of reopening collective bargaining) and some sum for retirees and social plans. They are looking for a “signal” not to specify the date of the strike. “There is neither truce nor strike”, said Héctor Daer, one of the members of the CGT’s triumvirate. Another speaker for the CGT had said that “the best strike is the one that is not done”.
However, the continuity of the adjustment, the popular anger and the measures of force by different unions may finally compel the CGT to take some action. If they do, it would be a strong action of the mass movement against the adjustment. Macri and the union bureaucrats know that. That is why they do not want the measure, just like the referents of anti-K Peronism like Sergio Massa and other bosses politicians.
In this context, militant unionism demands the break of the truce and a general strike and plan of struggle by the CGT and CTA. And it keeps moving forward. It recently won the tire union (Sutna); the delegates’ board and the Western Branch of the Railworkers Union continue to be strengthened with the figure of “Pollo” Sobrero; the Multicolor Suteba (opposition teachers in Buenos Aires province), the Ademys union headed by Jorge Adaro and the internal committee of the Ministry of Finance with Pablo Almeida. In these months there will be elections among rail workers, Ademys and the teachers of Neuquén (Aten) with a unitary list headed by our comrade Angelica Lagunas. Also in Santa Cruz (Adosac of Pico Truncado — with our leader Adriana Astolfo — and Rio Gallegos — with Luis Diaz) and Bariloche (Unter-Río Negro), where the opposition and combative unionism are preparing
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to consolidate and to achieve bigger spaces.
“Renewing” the PJ or an alternative from the left?
Peronism, enrolled in the PJ, fails to come out of its crisis after the electoral defeat. It remains divided, with different internal lines, mostly supporting Macri’s adjustment. The CP is giving “governability” to Macri to apply the adjustment. Its different wings are now reshuffling thinking of the legislative elections of 2017, mounting new electoral traps. They talk about the “renewal” of the PJ, emulating leaders who ended up participating in the looting of former President Menem in the 1990s. Given the erosion of the government, they take some distance to seek to capitalise on discontent.
Sergio Massa and the Renovating Front (anti-K Peronism) seek to expand with centre-left wings like Margarita Stolbizer (with one leg supporting Macri and another in the “opposition”).
The so-called “hard Kirchnerism”, given its crisis, is the one that most criticises the government using parliament and its “national and popular” verbiage. But it is a sector in crisis, which continues to be impacted by public corruption cases (many of its businessmen and officials are in prison, such as Lázaro Báez and Ricardo Jaime), the adjustment where it governs and the permanence of its double discourse. Cristina Kirchner herself is charged in several court cases. Although a fringe of anti-Macrist and anti-imperialist fighters, especially in the student youth, still sees her as a way out.
Broad sectors break with the referents of the previous government, and with those of this one. “We did not vote for this adjustment”, say Macri’s voters. From our party, we continue to call for the broadest unity to confront the adjustment of the national government and the governors. We patiently dialogue with all of them, especially with the Kirchnerist rank and file that still believes in Cristina, calling on them to fight together against Macri, to break with Peronism K and to join in building a political alternative of class independence and the left, supporting and coordinating the struggles, fomenting the combative unionism and postulating the fundamental proposals that only the left can raise. For all this, we call to attend the rally to be held by the Left Front on 19 November. §
argenTina
A great rally of the FIT has been convened for 19 November at 3 pm. It will be held at the football stadium of popular club Atlanta. It has been several decades since the left last called to a rally in a football stadium. This shows the magnitude that the FIT has acquired and the reception it has among the vanguard and the fighters.
Thousands of workers, young people , ne ighbours f rom the barrios, combative trade unionism, women’s referents, the FIT MP’s and national leaders of the three forces that comprise it (Partido Obrero [Worker’s Party], PTS and Izquierda Socialista [Socialist Left]) will raise a workers’ and socialist tribune against the national government and the provincial governors, and against the surrender of the union bureaucracy, to continue promoting a political alternative of the workers and the unity of the left.
A joint statement was agreed upon, “Against the Adjustment of Macri and
the Governors. The PJ / FPV, Massa or the centre-left are no alternative. For an independent political alternative of the workers and the left”. We reproduce it at www.izquierdasocialista.org.ar.
The rally is a great unitary step between the forces of the FIT, which our party has been insisting on, that not only raise expectations
among its militants, but that will be an opportunity for the so-called independent left and the fighters who are breaking with the bosses parties (especially Kirchnerism) to attend and be part of the impetus for a substantive way out of the crisis, as stated in FIT’s program. §
Atlanta Stadium, 19 November
Great rally of the Left Front
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Ruben “Pollo” Sobrero at a railway workers mass meeting Horacio Catena, prosecuted teachers union leader
No to the criminalisation of protest!Parallel to the dismissals, rate
hikes and adjustment, continues the persecution of the government and the bosses against those who fight. The criminalisation and repression have focused on combative trade unionism and the opposition to union bureaucracies.
At the legal level, the Supreme Court of Justice issued a dangerous ruling that limits the right to strike, ruling that a strike can only be made with the approval of the national trade union leaders. The decision attacks trade union democracy, by curtailing the right of workers to decide on measures of force in assemblies, and favours the trade union bureaucracy.
The most important test for the application of this has been against the rail workers of the Sarmiento railway line, headed by Rubén “Pollo” [“Chicken”] Sobrero. On 11 August, railway workers stopped work against the suspension of 64 workers for demanding better safety and hygiene conditions and the fact that a worker was struck by a train formation when he was working at night, leaving him on the verge of death. The company, with officials responding to the Macrista government, threatened to ignore the measure and attacked Sobrero, following the anti-workers arguments of the Court. A huge national and international campaign in support of the railways (with signatures of representatives of all trade union centres, trade unions, factory committees, delegates, personalities, parliamentarians and pronouncements like the one of Noam Chomsky in the
United States), as well as a significant mobilisation in the City of Buenos Aires, were the response that stopped the attack.
Other resonant cases of attacks on the fighters and repressive acts have been given by the Kirchnerist governor of Tierra del Fuego, Rosana Bertone, who has tried to impose a package of anti-worker laws with persecution to the leaders who were in opposition, with a fierce repression. On 3 May, five trade unionists, who were leaders of a long struggle plan of the Union of Guilds: Roberto Camacho, José Gómez, Horacio Gallegos, Juan Stefoni and Alejandro Marcelo Gómez, were arrested arbitrarily from their homes with special forces and legal proceedings were initiated against them. On 31 May Bertone proceeded to violently evict with the police the peaceful camp of the workers in conflict, burning their tents. And she proceeded with the exoneration (dismissal) of the leader Horacio Catena, secretary general of the teaching union Sutef and the Autonomous CTA. As Catena could not be dismissed for having union privileges, the labour courts of Tierra del Fuego initiated a process of disbarment (removal of trade union immunity), and also against Veronica Alfonso, delegate of the Provincial Institute of Education. A campaign against such attacks is currently under way. Repressive and intimidating acts have also been done by the Kirchnerist governor of Santa Cruz, Alicia Kirchner, against teachers and state workers.
At the other end of the country, three leaders of the Municipal Workers’ Union (Seom) of Jujuy were arrested in violent raids on their homes in May. Prosecutors under orders from the governor had mounted a legal case against them. In the same province, on 14 July, the Infantry Guard launched a brutal repression against the workers of Ledesma Sugar Mill who were on indefinite strike for wages, with a balance of 80 wounded. In addition, the regional government of Cambiemos fined the sugar union more than two million pesos and attempted to deduct 6000 pesos from each worker’s salary in retaliation for protesting against the repression.
On 20 May, a gang of thugs of the government of Claudia Zamora lashed out at Termas de Río Hondo, Santiago del Estero, against a concentration of teachers that demanded reopening of collective bargaining and the return of discounted salaries. The opposition of the Meat Trade Union was attacked with knives by a bureaucracy’s gang on 27 September in the city of Buenos Aires when trying to participate in an assembly in view of the next union elections. Six days earlier, in Neuquén, police shot the worker Luis Bastía with a firearm during a protest at the Labour Ministry. And the delegate Hector Cáceres of bus line 60 is under judicial process.
We call to redouble the campaign in defence of those who fight, against the criminalisation and prosecution of protest, facing the repression at the service of implementing the adjustment.
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Chile
Thousands on the streets against private pension funds
Massive mobilisations against the AFP shake the country
Rainier Enrique Ríos Puebla
H u n d r e d s o f t h o u s a n d s of workers took to the streets throughout the country, leading the most massive marches since the student struggle of 2011. The questioning of the private pension system, which condemns thousands of retirees to poverty, has deepened the crisis of government of Bachelet. The struggle continues.
Pension Fund Administrators (AFPs) were imposed by the Pinochet dictatorship in the early 1980s. With this measure, the pension system was completely privatised. That is why today more than 10 million workers are forced by law-decree 3,500, to deliver 10 percent of their monthly salary to the AFPs.
A not insignificant business for the bosses, the AFPs currently manage US$ 170 billion taken directly from the workers’ pocket, representing 70 percent of the Chilean Gross Domestic Product. This money goes directly to
bank bonds, corporate bonds and stocks of companies and banks. Basically, the businesses of Chilean entrepreneurs and the multinationals are financed by workers’ pensions.
It is estimated that one out of every five pesos that banks and companies have earned come from the AFPs. According to figures provided by the Superintendency of Banks and Financial Institutions, banks in Chile have issued bonds up to March 2016 for $ 32.89 billion pesos. Of these, 47 percent come from the funds administered by the AFPs. Of the bonds issued by companies to pay debts or invest from March to December last year, 92 percent was bought by the AFPs.
An example of who really benefits from the AFPs is the economic group Luksic (financier of Bachelet’s campaign), which has received during this year $ 3.4 trillion pesos [US$ 5 billion] of the funds administered by
the AFPs through investments to its companies and banks.
The other side of the coin is that on average the AFPs deliver pensions of $ 147,000 Chilean pesos [US$ 217] (the minimum wage is $ 260,000 pesos [US$ 383]). The Superintendency of Pensions, the state agency in charge of this issue, had to accept a few months ago that these low pensions could include 90 percent of retirees.
The crack has beganThis is the reason why the Chilean
working class has begun to massively reject the AFPs. The privatisation of pensions has become a social crisis that grows day by day. While billions of dollars are being transferred to entrepreneurs, our retirees live an old age of poverty.
This is a generalised feeling, which has come to deepen the disenchantment within the country. The AFPs are perceived as a robbery that benefits
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only the business community and are defended by the government of Bachelet and the right. Entrepreneurs and politicians united by a bond of corruption against the workers and the people. And, for the first time in decades, in the bosom of the working class, the conviction that we are the only losers is beginning to arise strongly.
The latest polls prove this. Bachelet’s government survives with 16 percent support and more than 70 percent rejection; ruling parties (including the Communist Party) and the right parties receive less than 12 percent support. The intention to vote fell drastically: 80 percent of Chileans maintain that they would vote neither for the right nor for the New Majority to be government… Sixty percent would not even vote.
The pressure increases for the entrepreneurs and their government to the heat of an economic crisis that is deepening. The country grew at less than two percent during the last two years, and industrial production and the price of copper (our main export) are in freefall. The only economic data showing growth, and strongly, are unemployment and inflation.
As in the rest of the world, the Chilean bourgeoisie has decided to face this situation by cutting fiscal spending, reducing spending on education, health and other social rights which are also heavily privatised.
A peculiar mobilisationThe marches against the AFPs
have expressed a deep process of rupture and confrontation with the traditional parties, their governments and parliament. Unlike in 2011, it
is carried out by the workers, who have surpassed the CUT (main trade union centre led by the CP and the government parties) that did not want to support the marches. Moreover, it overtook the entire trade union bureaucracy and went to march without the unions.
The leadership of this mobilisation is the NO+AFP [No more Pension Fund Administrators] movement, composed of union leaders who have broken with the government and question the leadership of the CUT, but who do not come from the most combative sectors of the working class. Rather they are a combination of left-wing bureaucracy with honest fighters who are rather politically centrist. But pushed by this powerful movement, they continue to keep the demand for the AFPs to end.
The Government and the bosses manoeuvre
Bachelet responded quickly to the movement with a proposal for superficial changes. The bottom line is that she absolutely rules out ending the AFPs. Together with this, she proposed a state AFP that in fact does not finish even with a centimetre of privatisation, because it would be for the 0.5 percent of the poorest workers. She says state AFP, not to end with the AFP but to place makeup on them.
The government made public its proposal for changes before the second march, trying to deflate the movement and to guide it towards “institutional channels”; to move the discussion from the streets to Parliament. The workers’ response was a second march more
massive than the first and in more places in Chile.
Against this, Bachelet proposed a national agreement that seeks to keep the AFPs at any cost, with gradual changes in the next 10 years. Obviously, this is an answer that will not please the moving masses.
Taking part in this important struggle
Hundreds of thousands of workers are participating in the fight against the AFP, outside the control of the union bureaucracy of the PC and PS. It is the sector that broke or is breaking with the government of Bachelet and the opposition, and which questions the regime inherited from the Pinochet dictatorship.
The leadership of the NO+AFP movement strives to maintain the struggle as a broad movement, with no organic relationship between the leadership and the rank and file that is mobilised. Much less does it intend to organise this rank and file in the unions to build an anti-bureaucratic trade union current that confronts the leaders who support the government in this struggle.
The NO+AFP has called for a third march on 16 October and a national strike on 4 November; these are the base for our orientation. With the United to Fight Trade Union Current, we are pushing for a campaign towards the union rank and file to prepare for the march and the strike.
The challenge is to organise the ranks to participate in the mobilisations but supported in the assemblies. Voting to attend the march as unions, as well voting for the strike, denouncing the union bureaucracy, who seeks to avoid at all costs this campaign entering the workplaces.
To do this, it is fundamental to connect with the activists who have spontaneously taken the campaign against the AFPs as theirs and to drive the campaign with them in their workplaces through the United to Fight Trade Union Current and the MST. §
Finish with the AFPs, transfer all the funds to a state and autonomous entity, administered and controlled by workers and pensioners. Change
the individual capitalisation system for a tripartite system of distribution, with contributions from employers, the State and workers.
Our proposal for a new pension system
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Municipal elections
The collapse of the PT and the disenchantment with politics
and the regime Silvia Santos (CST/POL)
The municipal elections on 2 October were the first after Dilma Rousseff’s departure. If anyone won it was abstention, the blank and void vote, which expressed the highest percentage in several capital cities. The great loser was the PT [Workers’ Party] of Lula and Dilma. Temer’s PMDB [Brazilian Democratic Movement Party] was also weakened by not being present in any of the three key cities: Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Belo Horizonte. The PSDB [Brazilian Social Democracy Party] of former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso was strengthened, as it
won the country’s most important capital (São Paulo) in the first round, and won the largest number of mayors. The PSOL came out relatively well, but below the odds. Temer was left in a weaker position to apply an adjustment plan that will increase the clashes with the workers.
What stood out most in the municipal elections was the huge disappointment of millions with the PT and with the politics of Brazil’s corrupt regime of the bosses. The PT’s electoral downfall is the crowning of a process of betrayal of workers and
unbridled corruption, for which most of its historical leaders are imprisoned, convicted or prosecuted.
Another expression of the disbelief of the masses is that in many capitals “nobody” won, that is, the abstention plus null and blank vote (see box). In Rio de Janeiro, for example: “nobody” 1,866,621 votes, Crivella (PRB) 842,201 votes and Freixo (PSOL) 553,424 votes. “Nobody” had more votes than the first two candidates, who go to the second round.
“Nobody” channelled an important part of those who mobilised in June 2013, especially the youth. It also
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channelled a sector of the working class and the middle layers who did not feel represented by any candidacy, expressing a worldwide phenomenon given the capitalist crisis and the attacks against the working people. A large sector that viewed with sympathy the slogan of “Out with everybody” was also expressed by not voting for any candidate.
This process of popular unbelief had a leap in the fight days of June 2013.
In those historic days where millions took to the streets facing all the powers, prevailed a feeling of denying everything, and above all the politicians, their institutions and the “representative” democracy itself; a true lack of credibility in the regime.
The successive corruption scandals revealed in Operation Lava Jato strengthened this sentiment against all politicians, starting with former President Dilma, who was elected promising one thing and then did the opposite: as soon as she assumed a privatisation program began, a draft Retirements Reform and the antiterrorist law to penalize the workers’ and popular strikes or mobilisations.
If corruption has a fundamental bearing on the rupture with the PT government, the decisive element of the current situation and what explains the deep rupture with the PT by the working class is the brutal economic crisis in which the country sinks, with more than 12 million unemployed, inflation, recession and a worse future in sight.
The electoral collapse of the PTThe days of June 2013 showed
that the PT no longer dominated or controlled the mass movement. This was the central element whereby the majority of the bourgeoisie decided to impeach Dilma, who was dismissed under the utmost indifference of the sectors of the working class and the people.
The electoral beating the PT received in these elections is a historic fact: if in 2012 had 630 mayors elected this time it only achieved 256, and the only capital city it won was that of the small state of Acre and goes to the second round in Recife. In 2004 the PT had elected mayors in nine capitals, in 2008 in 5 capitals, in 2012 in 4 and now, in 2016, re-elected mayor in a capital where the candidate hid the traditional star and red of the PT and where neither Lula nor Dilma went to support it. But what is expressive of its crisis is that it was left out of the governments of the three fundamental states of the country: Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Belo Horizonte.
This is explained because, during the 13 years and a half in which the PT ruled, in alliance with the corrupt PMDB, it did so in favour of the great capital and the financial system, with the public debt growing geometrically. It opened the country to transgenics and agribusiness grew. The big construction companies got hundreds of works, destroying the environment and killing and / or expelling communities. It made all kinds of concessions to the multinationals, such as tax exemptions,
and a strong repression with a record of murders of poor and black youths in the peripheries, as well as indigenous and peasants killed in conflicts in the countryside.
This was combined with some compensatory measures recommended by the World Bank for dependent countries with serious social problems. Thus, a small amount of the budget was for the “Bolsa Familia” family allowance and other social programs.
This election continued expressing a rupture of masses with the PT that manifested itself in the struggles and went through the days of June 2013 and numerous strikes, many against the trade union bureaucracy.
The second loser is the PMDBThe party of Dilma’s vice president,
the PMDB of Michel Temer, suffers crisis and attrition. It manifests itself in the high rate of rejection of the current president, obviously lower than the debacle of the PT. The PMDB, a corrupt and pork-barrelling party whose practice is the purchase of votes, managed to rise from 1,015 municipalities to 1,027 and goes for the second round in six capitals.
But the fact of having lost in Rio de Janeiro is a qualitative element. There they will be disputing the second round with the pastor of the Universal Church, Marcelo Crivella, of the Brazilian Republican Party (PRB), and Marcelo Freixo of PSOL. Rio is the second political capital of the country, the so-called “jewel in the crown”, where the PMDB dominated
With the triumph of “nobody”, we mean the abstention and void or blank vote. Let’s look at some data. In São Paulo Dória won (PSDB) in the first round; “Nobody” obtained 3,096,186 votes, Doria (PSDB) had 3,085,181 and Haddad (PT) 967,190. In Rio de Janeiro (second round) “nobody” drew 1,866,621 votes, Crivella (PRB) 842,201 and Freixo
(PSOL) 553.424. In Curitiba (Paraná State, second round) “nobody” got 360,348 votes, Greca (PMN) 356,539 and Ney Leprevost (PSD) 219,727. In Porto Alegre (second round) “nobody” obtained 382,535 votes, Marchezan (PSDB) 213,646 and Melo (PMDB) 185,655. In Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais State, second round) “nobody” 741,915 votes, João Leite (PSDB)
395,952, and Kalil (PHS) 314,845. In Belém (second round) “nobody” took 265,731 votes while the current mayor Zenaldo (PSDB) obtained 241,166 votes and Edmilson (PSOL) 229,343. Rio de Janeiro was the capital with the most annulled votes, abstentions and blanks, reaching 42.6 percent.
In many capitals “nobody” won
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for eight years with the invaluable collaboration of the PT and PCdoB that occupied important secretaries. They only broke when the PMDB voted for the impeachment, although they still occupy some positions. The deputy of the defeated mayor Eduardo Paes, for example, is a member of the PT.
In Rio de Janeiro the PMDB made alliances with 15 parties and had a huge television airtime. However, in the midst of Rio de Janeiro’s feminist spring, Paes bet on Pedro Paulo as a candidate, a character repudiated after being denounced by his ex-wife for repeated assaults. “Rio does not vote for women beaters” ended up rumbling through the Rio neighbourhoods.
On the other hand, the opportunist PCdoB (Stalinist) also lost by not being able to retain Olinda, an important city of Pernambuco where they governed for the last two mandates. And it goes for the second round only in Aracaju, the capital of Sergipe. This is the result of having accompanied the PT with which it ruled these years contributing important names in ministries like Defence or Sports. Their defeat is part of the defeat of the PT.
Finally, coming out very poorly off this election is the new REDE (Sustainability Network) of Marina Si lva, former Minister for the
Environment of Lula with whom he broke, although she never ceased to aspire to “unite the best of the PT with the best of the PSDB”. Its insipid program, its hesitations, and above all the support given by REDE in Porto Alegre to the candidate of the PMDB produced crisis and ruptures. For this reason, after having had more than 20 million votes in the 2014 presidential election, its presidential pretensions for 2018 have decreased considerably.
The strengthening of the PSDB does not imply there is a “conservative wave”
There is a relative strengthening of the PSDB, a traditional party of the most powerful sectors of the bourgeoisie. It ruled with Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC) between 1995 and 2002 and came out hated when Lula won, after enduring strikes, occupations and strong struggles against its economic policy.
It went from 686 to 793 mayoralties, being elected in the first round in São Paulo, capital of the main State of the country (in population, economy and political importance), performing a feat that since 1992 no one achieved.
Unfortunately, it was the wrong way that most sectors chose to prevent the PT from continuing to rule. To this, we must add that in São Paulo there was no
alternative for the left that differed from the PT with a clear program of rupture.
Thus ended the cycle of the PT in São Paulo capital, with outgoing mayor Haddad getting 16.68 percent of the votes, with a very high rate of rejection that was further aggravated by Lula’s presence in the rallies.
Mayor-elect João Doria, a big businessman who presented himself as “non-political” despite having held various positions at other times, had as “godfather” the state governor, Gerardo Alckmin. The governor is strengthened for the presidential dispute of 2018, although there will be much water under the bridge in the primaries of the PSDB between Serra, Aécio Neves and the own Alckmin.
This does not imply the advance of a “conservative wave”, a common ideology on the left, as the PSDB will face the same problems as Temer. They have to put together a hard adjustment plan against the workers and the people, who will resist because they have not been defeated. It is there we have to bet on the class struggle, the resistance that the people and the youth will oppose the adjustment of Temer and the PMDB / PSDB. That is where our strength lies and the possibility of defeating these governments and their plans. §
The PSOL and the electionsAt a time when the PT [Workers
Party] lives its most dramatic pol i t ical moment , of moral decomposition and electoral loss, the PSOL [Socialism and Liberty Party] had a good election, but as good as the objective conditions allowed.
If in 2012 there were 49 PSOL councillors elected, this time they were 53, with the difference that it grew up in important cities like Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Porto Alegre. It entered the Chamber of Belo Horizonte for the
first time. It disputes the second round in two capitals: Belém with Edmilson Rodrigues and Rio de Janeiro with Marcelo Freixo; and also in Sorocaba an important city in São Paulo. It won two mayoralties in the interior of Rio Grande do Norte and lost Itaocara. But to have gone to the second round in Rio de Janeiro is a qualitative fact that elevated PSOL as a whole, since having beaten the PMDB in his heart is no small thing.
The weakness of the PSOL is its policy: having been stuck to the PT, it was seen by large sectors — rightly
so — as an auxiliary line of this party. Already in the second round of 2014, the majority of the leadership called to vote for Dilma as the famous “lesser evil”. Faced with the “impeachment” they were positioned correctly against it. But not, as we defended from the CST, noting that this corrupt and adjuster congress had no morality to judge anyone, but because it considered that it was a “coup”. Meanwhile, Lula and the PT formed alliances for these elections in more than 1,400 cities with the supposed “coup participants”, denying that thesis.
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In Rio de Janeiro, before the elections, Marcelo Freixo held a meeting with the PT, PCdoB and REDE to build a “non-aggression pact” that guaranteed that if any of them went to the second round, he would have the support of the rest, implying “no attack”.
Most of the leadership of the PSOL and currents of weight in Rio de Janeiro as Insurgencia (USec) justify this policy by asserting that the PT and PCdoB are left-wing. That definition does not withstand a minimal Marxist analysis, since a party that ruled for 13 years favouring the big businessmen, the multinationals and applying adjustments against the people, besides having benefited with public money in corrupt schemes, can never be considered as of left
Another serious problem is the orientation of the majority of the PSOL leadership. They do not intend to replace the PT in what made this party great in its beginnings: to be the instrument of the class and the strikes. On the contrary, they show little interest in running for office to support the workers in their struggles to defeat the adjustment and forge a new leadership.
The PSOL is in the main a party of the middle class, university sectors, intellectuals, academics and young university students. There are few leaders or parliamentarians of the
PSOL who, like our councillor Babá, participated in a strike, an assembly, a workers’ picket or a workers’ meeting.
The focus of party politics is the elections, and, in particular, it seeks to connect with the rise of the women who were the protagonists of the “feminist spring”, the rise of the black movement and the gay / lesbian / transsexual sectors, a phenomenon that acquires an important social weight, especially in the middle class. These sectors are also defended by the CST, which is proud to have participated in the feminist spring. But they cannot be the central axis of a socialist party, which must be obsessed with penetrating the working class and contesting the leadership of the trade union with the bureaucracy. As Marxists, we continue to think that workers and their struggles are the keys to a social transformation towards a workers’ government and socialism.
The campaign for the re-election of Babá
The CST [Socialist Workers Current], together with dozens of activists and independent fighters, and with the valuable support of the LRP (Freedom and Popular Revolution) current, made one of the strongest and most widespread campaigns of the entire PSOL of Rio de Janeiro.
Tirelessly, and with an iron-willed militancy, we took the proposals of Freixo and Babá to the urban cleaning
and post office workers, the water company CEDAE, the oil workers, the youth, the high school teachers, and we spread through almost all the neighbourhoods of the city with daily campaign tables.
Unfortunately, we could not get Babá re-elected, who was the first substitute. In the final stretch of the campaign the comrades Tarsicio Motta and Marielle Franco, officially supported by Freixo and by the PSOL of Rio de Janeiro, made an excellent election, getting between both of them 135,000 votes.
We must also recognise that there was a campaign that said “Baba is already elected” — as many voters told us – “then vote for this or that”, which undoubtedly hurt our campaign.
Now, to defeat the candidate of the Universal Church and take Freixo to victory is an important challenge that we have all the PSOL militants, as well as our commitment to Edmilson in Belém or to Raúl Marcelo in Sorocaba.
From the CST and together with our Councillor Babá we assume this new political battle, in which we will defend the program that we believe the prefectures (municipalities) should have: on the side of the workers and their struggles, facing the adjustment that Temer wants to impose, questioning in deeds the nefarious law of fiscal responsibility, made to pay the debt to the banks reducing the public expenditure and the salaries of the employees of the municipality, who are already going through a dramatic situation. §Babá supporting the bank workers
Marcelo Freixo and Babá in Rio de Janeiro
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brazil
On 23 July in São Paulo, an important launching ceremony for the MAIS (Movement for an Independent and Socialist Alternative) was held. This event was the presentation of a new organisation that emerged from the rupture of a strip of 739 members of the PSTU [Unified Socialist Workers Party]— section of the IWL-FI —, the MAIS, which remains a sympathising section of the IWL-FI. These hundreds of militants and leaders are the signatories of the manifesto “We need to start with joy for the future”. Present at this event to greet the launch were parties such as PSOL, PCB and other political organisations and trade union currents. For the CST (IWU-FI national section) a greeting was given by comrade Adriano, a member of the Opposition of the workers of Rio de Janeiro’s Post Office and leader of the CST-PSOL.
We salute that a very important sector of internationalist leaders, cadres and militants have decided to reorganise themselves by vindicating the legacy of Nahuel Moreno and criticising the sectarianism and self-proclamation of the majority of the leadership of the IWL-FI and the PSTU.
This rupture is the expression of the crisis of the IWL-FI that for years has been carrying out a self-proclamatory policy, with its highest expression in Brazil. The PSTU has systematically refused, for example, any possibility of a leftist political-electoral front. In the trade union field, they mix sectarianism with opportunism. On
the other hand, the IWL-FI has a history of using internal bureaucratic methods, questioning any discrepancy and coming, many times, to resolve dissent with moral accusations and expulsions.
As for the IWU-FI, we always fight self-proclamation in Trotskyism and, especially, in our current. We remain convinced of the need to unite the revolutionaries, first and foremost those we claim to be part of Nahuel Moreno’s legacy. Unfortunately, we had no echo in the IWL-FI when in the years 2007–2008 we opened a political exchange.
We remain willing to open a dialogue in this perspective of unity. We are aware of the need to avoid a greater dispersion of our forces when reality demands that we continue the struggle to overcome the crisis of world revolutionary leadership.
We know that the comrades of MAIS and its current have raised several issues of theoretical, political and methodological debates, about which we can have agreements and differences. But the great question is whether we can open this exchange,
fraternally and looking for a regrouping of revolutionaries.
The MAIS Manifesto, for the construction of a new socialist and revolutionary organisation in Brazil (6 July 2016) points out several important points such as that the crisis of 2007-2008 opened “a new world situation marked by instability and by the political, social and military polarisation” and that this situation “opens important prospects for the socialists”. They vindicate, as revolutionary Marxists, the construction of a revolutionary organisation with the regime of democratic centralism. On Brazil’s national question, although there are political-tactical issues to be discussed, we agreed on the need to build a third field of class independence and the electoral tactics of a leftist and socialist front.
While we are looking for spaces to organise these political and theoretical debates, it would be important to carry out unitary actions or campaigns in the international or national aspects in which there are agreements. §
A new organisation emergesSplit in the Brazilian PSTU
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World neWS
Tunisia
Call to solidarity with the peasants of Jemna oasis
In southern Tunisia, the agricultural workers in Jemna’s oasis are pursuing a struggle to maintain collective management and production of their lands. An international appeal for support has been launched which we reproduce in its substantive parts:
“At the moment, and in the context of the revolutionary process in Tunisia, the peasants and the workers of the of the field of Jemna’s oasis urgently ask the workers of the whole world an action of solidarity with their just cause to maintain the communitarian property on the oasis of Jemma.
“The oasis of Jemna is actually the historical property of the peasants since the times of our ancestors. It was expropriated by the French settlers and then by the Tunisian state at the end of the colonisation.
“During the revolution of 2011, the peasants managed to abolish state ownership after heroic struggles. They then organised the production and management of the oasis in a collective way, within the framework of a truly solidarity based micro-economy. It has given a significant boost to the action of human development at the local level (financing of various education, health and infrastructure projects). (…) At the moment the Tunisian state, in the context of a counter-revolutionary attack, tries desperately to re-expropriate the oasis to cede it to mafia owners, local or foreign….”
You can send your signatures and your e-mails to [email protected].
S i g n a t o r i e s : A b d e l m a j i d Haouachi, Journalist and activist, Tunisia; Görkem Duru, International
Workers Unity–Fourth International (IWU-FI), Turkey; Patrizia Mancini, Tunisia in Red, Italy; Hamadi Zribi, Tunisia in Red, Tunisia; Mario Sei, Tunisia in Red, Italy; Clara Capelli, Development Economist, MENA Region Expert, Italy; Lorenzo “Fe” Feltrin, Correspondent Globalproject.info, Italy; Alessandro Rivera Magos, doctor Université Paris 8, Italy; Alessia Tibollo; COSPE, Italy; Damiano Duchemin, Ya Basta, Italy; Diane Robert, Independent Journalist, France; Habib Ayeb, geographer, researcher and documentary filmmaker, Tunisia; Santiago Alba Rico, writer, Spain.
South Korea
Wave of strikesIn September the capital of Korea,
Seoul, and the rest of the country have been crisscrossed by a wave of strikes in different sectors.
South Korean automaker Hyundai stopped its assembly line on a Monday after the union rejected the company’s latest pay raise offer.
The Hyundai workers’ union rejected an offer from the company and its proposal for a maximum salary cap. Hyundai Motor’s 50,000 workers began a full-scale strike on 26 September, the first such strike since 2004, which has forced the production line of the country’s biggest automaker to stop.
Unionised workers of the metro and railway in the South Korean capital held their first joint strike in 22 years, in rejection of a new payment system based on performance.
Due to the protest, the metro was halted for the first four hours of the afternoon and later the railway services stopped for a similar period, according to the Yonhap agency.
The strike is part of a series of public sector demonstrations launched by the Federation of South Korean Public Industry Trade Unions.
According to the Yonhap agency, the new system that links salary and performance is part of the government’s efforts to stimulate labour flexibility.
Meanwhile, the South Korean Railway Workers Union reported that the corporation unilaterally changed the salary system without negotiating with employees. Local media outlets point out that this joint strike is the first to take place after about two decades, from the last six days in 1994.
China
After 27 years the last prisoner of Tienanmen to be freed
The last remaining prisoner in Chinese prisons for participating in the 1989 protests in Tienanmen Square was to be released from prison in October. Miao Deshun, a worker from Hebei Province, was put in jail at the age of 25 and is now 51. Miao was sentenced to suspended death penalty — equivalent to life imprisonment — for attempting to burn a tank during clashes with the army, when the Chinese CP dictatorship decided to use force to evict thousands of demonstrators who had occupied the square peacefully for months demanding liberties.
Mass meeting of Jemna’s agricultural workers
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World neWS
PolandMobilisation of women halts total prohibition of abortionThousands of black-clad women
protested in Poland on 3 October against the law passed in parliament which provides for the prohibition of abortion and the imposition of prison sentences on those who practice it. The day has been called “Black Monday”, and even several Polish companies gave the day off to their employees in solidarity with the protest, which through social networks had asked all women in the country “to be absent from work, plead illness or any other pretext” to join the marches.
Different groups had called the Polish women to a general strike and Warsaw was the scene of the main protests, which culminated in a demonstration in the CBD of the city in which, despite the heavy rain, thousands of people participated. “Let’s stop the fanatics!”, “We want doctors, not missionaries!”, or “My body, my choice” were some of the slogans chanted by the demonstrators.
Current Polish legislation, dating from 1993, is considered one of the most restrictive in Europe. The protest took place on 23 September when the Polish Parliament admitted a popular initiative that proposes to prohibit voluntary termination of pregnancy, imprisonment for women who have abortions, greater punishment for
doctors and even investigation in cases of miscarriage.
Two days later, Polish Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Gowin acknowledged the protests and assured that Parliament would not approve the total ban on abortion.
EgyptSolidarity with the workers of Alexandria’s shipyards!
Twenty-six workers from the Alexandria Shipyard company are being held in gaol, awaiting trial by a military tribunal, in October, on charges of refraining from work and incitement to strike. (…) The shipyards are built in a military zone, therefore, all the events occurred are considered under the jurisdiction of the military courts, according to military law. The military trial of these workers is a clear violation of international treaties guaranteeing the right of workers to peaceful protest (…).
The signatories of this petition: Demand the end of the military trial of the workers and that the trial, if the infringements so require, pass to the civil courts; the satisfaction of the legitimate demands to improve the conditions of work that motivated their action. We support the claim to the reopening of the establishment and its resumption. The management of the company had closed the company in violation of the law, with the purpose
of “sending back home” about 1500 employees of the company with a minimum income waiting for the fate of the company. They warn that continued arbitrary measures against workers, including civilian employees working on projects managed by the Army, are the gateway to the militarization of labour relations and the resurgence of forced labour. They call on the authorities to immediately release the accused workers and stop the trial of workers and civilians by military courts.
Freedom for the workers of the Alexandria Shipyards!
18 August 2016Send signatures to Hodakamel1996@
gmail.com
IndiaOver 200 million workers on strike
Over 200 million workers went on a 24-hour general strike on 2 September demanding an increase in the minimum wage, inclusion in the labour law, equal pay for outsourced workers and other demands.
India is part of the so-called BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). Until now they were described as “emerging” countries, examples of the advance of capitalism and economic and social growth. Reality shows something else.
In industry, transport and banking offices the strike was total, and the streets of the cities saw the cessation of all activity. Among public and private banks, almost two million bank workers answered the call. In large cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, workers paralysed urban transport, trains, ports and factories.
With the call to the general strike, the unions demand the withdrawal of the labour reform promoted by the government, as well as the increase in the minimum wage and pensions. And they want the government to agree to extend social security to the countries many workers sectors, which remain unprotected. §
Women mobilise in Warsaw
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addendum
AddendumThis English edition of International Correspondence has been delayed because of unavailability of key
personnel. However, the lateness of this edition compared to the Spanish edition, has allowed u to include three extra articles. You can find “Why did Trump win?” in page 26, and two articles in this addendum with notes on Fidel Castro’s death and the great rally of the FIT in Argentina. The Editor
On the death of Fidel CastroThe announcement of the death
of Fidel Castro has had a great global impact. The Cuban people are in mourning. Millions in the world mourn the leader who directly led, along with Che, the Cuban revolution of 1959 who was an example for the revolutionaries and fighters of the world. We accompany the grief of the Cuban people and the fighters of the world left, but as socialists we have had serious discrepancies with the positions of Fidel Castro and the leadership of the Cuban CP.
We repudiate all the expressions by the reactionaries of the world, especially the gusanos of Miami witchery and Donald Trump, who came to celebrate his death.
The Fidel with whom all the anti-imperialist and socialist fighters identify
themselves is the one who with Che and Camilo Cienfuegos headed the triumph of the people that crushed the dictatorship of Batista in January of 1959. The Fidel of the agrarian reform, the one who broke with Yankee imperialism and expropriated the sugar and oil multinationals and the Cuban bourgeoisie and landowners. These were measures that enabled the Cuban people to enjoy broad achievements in health and education. The Fidel fighting the Yankee invasion in Playa Girón and the Fidel who in the second declaration of Havana of February of 1962 declared for socialism in Cuba and said that "the duty of every revolutionary is to make the revolution".
But unfortunately, there was another facet of Fidel Castro that we cannot fail to point out at the moment of his death.
We know this can bother thousands of fighters who still believe in him.
The revolutionary course we have described was truncated by the agreement of Fidel Castro with the bureaucracy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Since the mid-1960s Fidel had accepted the Stalinist policy of "peaceful coexistence" with imperialism and of abandoning Che's policy of extending the socialist revolution to America and to the world. Since then, Fidel Castro began to play against the advance of all revolutions. A single-party bureaucratic regime that still exists was consolidated.
When the people of Czechoslovakia in 1968 rose against the dictatorship of Stalinism, Fidel supported the invasion of the Russian tanks that drowned in blood the anti-bureaucratic revolution.
50
addendum
In Nicaragua, when the dictator Somoza was defeated in 1979, Fidel supported that the Sandinistas form a government with the anti-Somoza bourgeoisie and not to advance in measures of expropriation, advising "not to make of Nicaragua another Cuba". More recently, in Venezuela, Fidel supported Chavez and Maduro's false "socialism of the 21st Century", making believe that the country was "building socialism" when the opposite is being done. Chavismo kept the capitalist structure, created joint ventures in oil in agreement with the multinationals, like Chevron, Total or Repsol, fomented a Bolivarian bourgeoisie, criminalising protest and starving the Venezuelan
people. Also in these years Fidel and the Cuban leadership endorsed the false "progressive governments" of Lula and Dilma in Brazil, Evo Morales and the Kirchners who applied adjustments against their peoples. And to the interior of Cuba, the achievements of the revolution were being eliminated over the years.
Since the end of the last century, he had been promoting the policy of relying on foreign capital, opening up the Cuban economy to Canadian and European multinationals, restoring capitalism.
We accompany the pain of the Cuban people at this time. And we continue to call on them to fight
back to retake the banners of the revolution of 1959 and Che's message, "socialist revolution or caricature of revolution", and supporting their right to independent organization — trade union, student and political — against the regime of single party.
Cuba needs a new socialist revolution with democracy for the working people, which will once again be the beacon for the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist fighters of Latin America and the world.
Juan Carlos GiordanoLeader of Izquierda Socialista
[Socialist Left] and national deputy of the FIT
26 November 2016
The football stadium of the Atlanta football club was filled with fighters from different points of the country, with more than 20,000 people attending. The rally was opened by Rubén “Pollo” Sobrero (Izquierda Socialista [Socialist Left], IWU-FI], followed by Myriam Bregman (PTS), Soledad Sosa (Partido Obrero [Workers Party]), Liliana Olivero (Izquierda Socialista, IWU-FI), Alejandro Crespo (Partido Obrero), Claudio Dellecarbonara (PTS). The main speeches were Juan Carlos Giordano (Izquierda Socialista, IWU-FI), Néstor Pitrola (Partido Obrero) and Nicolás Del Caño (PTS).
Present in the rally were the most important expressions of militant unionism, the women’s movement, the youth movement and the student movement. A highlight were the columns of the railway workers of the National Burgundy slate led by the combative leader Ruben “Pollo” Sobrero, who had just won the union elections of the Sarmiento railway against the slate of the bureaucracy of
Pedraza. The teachers of the Ademys union, who a few days later revalidated the democratic and combative leadership headed by Jorge Adaro, and the teachers of the Sections of the Suteba union led by the multi-coloured front. An important presence of the teachers of the ATEN union headed by Angélica Lagunas, the brand new General Secretary of the Neuquén branch, the Sutna (tire union), from the Underground (subway), workers, youth and women who are
fighting against femicides and for the #NiUnaMenos [#NotEvenOneMore] movement. Important delegations and political figures of the independent left and of workers and young people who have been breaking with the traditional parties and who came to listen to the left were also present.
At the end of the event, “The Internationale” was performed by the Artists with the FIT initially and then by the thousands who filled Atlanta in this historic event. §
Massive rally of the Left Front in Atlanta Stadium
Atlanta stadium was full of workers, women, and youth
Great World Day of Rage for Aleppo
On 1 October a world day of “rage”
for Aleppo was held in 39 cities of the world. It was a
reaction of indignation and a demand for a cessation of the
bombings, in which the complicity of the imperialist powers
with the dictatorship of al-Assad was
denounced. There were acts in London, Berlin, Copenhagen, Paris, Washington, Chicago, New York,
Minneapolis, Boston, Montreal, Toronto,
Manchester, Essex, Dublin, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Milan, Amsterdam, The
Hague, Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga,
Stockholm , Istanbul, Tunisia, Beirut,
Khartoum, Canberra, Mexico, Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires
and Córdoba, among others.
Copenhagen Berlin
Istanbul
London
Barcelona La Haya
Santiago de Chile
Buenos Aires
Tunis
Paris
Repression in Diyarbakir, Kurdish capital in Turkey
Rally of the People’s Democracy Party (HDP), with the participation of IDP (Turkish section of the IWU-FI)
In September Turkish tanks invade northern Syria, attacking the Syria Kurdish militia
TURKEY
Enough of Erdogan’s repression!
No to the attacks on the Kurdish people!
Turkey out of Syria!
